Get Fit Feel Epic Week 4 #GFFE

Well after the continued success in week 3 was I going to be able to stick with the plan and keep up the good work after losing 1/2 stone so far this month? I wasn't feeling particularly slimline when I approached the scales tonight at class so it was a mix of relief and annoyance that I had stayed the same weight.

I have been doing really well on the exercise front. In the last week I've managed to get to one aerobics and one salsa class plus I've managed 3 runs with my NHS Couch to 5 k podcast getting me up to 3 minute running intervals. Not having a car for parts of 2 days forced me into walking a lot more and at quite a brisk pace. So this has been a good part of the plan that I have stuck to! 

So if the weight hasn't shifted it must be due to consuming more calories than I was planning. I started off well this last week and then the weekend came along... It was a bit of a graze fest with sledging working up an appetite! The rest of the week has been a bit hit and miss too. The down side of the lack of car has been that I've had some very rushed days grabbing food where I can. Of course this has meant that its not all been very healthy - for instance on the way to class the only food in the car was crisps and having not eaten since 11:45 I needed something! 

Therefore I need to get myself more organised for the upcoming week. In my car I need to remove any naughty snacks and replace them with fruit or something else that won't do any damage. I know as well that I didn't track all my calories on MyFitnessPal so I need to do better. With my alcohol free January coming to an end this is even more important so I've downloaded the new Change4Life drinks tracker app to make sure I keep within sensible limits. 

Let's hope I can get back with the plan and lose more weight next week! I do have a fitness assessment at the gym tomorrow (postponed from December) to see how my gym programme has changed my weight and fitness. It will be interesting to see what that throws up too..

Change4Life: Be Food Smart

Sponsored Post

It's a while since I've written a post about Change4Life so I pleased to be asked to promote their Be Food Smart campaign. Apparently too many of us still don't know about the hidden sugar, salt and fat in our foods. The majority of respondents (including me!) scored 50% or less in the quiz... The Be Food Smart campaign wants to show parents where the hidden ingredients are so that we can make better choices when feeding the family.

Everyone signing up to Change4Life will get a free meal mixer:

This has ideas and recipes for healthy breakfasts, lunches and dinners! You just flip over the cards to get a combination of meals for the day.

In order to promote the campaign I've been asked to run a competition to give one lucky reader a £50 voucher for the Co-Operative plus their very own Meal Mixer. What you need to do is pop over to the Be Food Smart IQ Quiz take the test then post your scores in the Rafflecopter widget. I also want you to give me your top healthy eating tip for families - be it a recipe or any other way you keep your family healthy. There are additional entries possible once you have left the comments.

Good luck and stay healthy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Change4Life: Don't let the drink sneak up on you

The Department of Health's latest Change4Life campaign for adults is to get us all to watch how much we drink. I know that this is an area I need to look into. They have done a fun little video to get us started:

Most of us know that we should try and stick to the recommended limits:


Women: should not regularly* drink more than 2 to 3 units of alcohol a day. That’s no more than a standard 175ml glass of wine (ABV 13%)

Men: should not regularly* drink more than 3 to 4 units of alcohol a day. That’s not much more than a pint of strong lager, beer or cider (ABV 5.2%)

* “Regularly” means drinking this amount most days or every day.
ABV is the percentage of alcohol in the drink.

It's ever so easy at home to exceed these guidelines - if you open a bottle of wine and drink just half that's about 4.5 units of alcohol! If you want to know how much you have drunk then use this handy calculator: http://www.nhs.uk/Change4Life/Pages/understanding-alcohol.aspx.

They have also given some useful tips to cut down:

Change4Life: Supermeals: Vegetarian Shepherd Pie

Today you can get a voucher from The Mirror to redeem against the Supermeals cookbook in Asda. To whet your appetites Change4Life sent me this recipe today:

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie: Ingredients: 2 carrots, chopped 300g swede, chopped 600g potatoes, cut into small cubes 1 tsp vegetable oil 1 onion, chopped 300g vegetarian mince 300ml reduced salt vegetable stock 1 courgette, grated 100g frozen mixed vegetables or frozen peas Ground black pepper 1 tsp cornflour  Approx cost: £2.72 Per head: 68p for 4 adults Nutritional Info: 411kcals / 1720kJ 38g protein 8g fat of which 1.5g saturates 49g carbohydrate 14g sugars 6g dietary fibre 3564mg sodium 8.5g salt 1 Cook the carrots, swede and potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes. 2 Meanwhile, heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion for 2-3 minutes, until softened. Add the vegetarian mince and stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and add the courgette and frozen mixed vegetables or peas. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 4-5 minutes. Season with black pepper. 3 Preheat the grill, warming a baking dish underneath for a few moments. Meanwhile, drain and mash the carrots, swede and potatoes, seasoning with black pepper. 4 Blend the cornflour with 1 tbsp cold water and add it to the mince mixture, stirring until thickened. Transfer it to the baking dish and spoon the vegetable mash on top. Grill for about 5 minutes, until browned. Serve.

 You can watch Ainsley Harriott cooking a Supermeal and talking about healthy eating here:

Change4Life: Latest News

The latest Change4Life newsletter has just popped into my inbox so I'd like to share some of the highlights with you all.

Drinking

February will see the launch of a new Change4Life campaign to show how easily drinking too much alcohol can sneak up on you.

Here are their top tips for cutting down on your alcohol (and sugary soft drinks) consumption:

• Carry a bottle of water when you go out to avoid sugary soft drinks
• Don't stock up on alcohol and sugary drinks when you shop
• Have a few consecutive days with no alcohol at all each week
• When you out at the pub drink more slowly (this will lead to fewer rounds)
• If out with heavy drinkers avoid joining in with rounds
• Have your first drink later in the evening and don't feel like you need to finish the bottle in one go
• Try something different instead of going to the pub

For more information go to the Drink Swap page and see what else they offer.

Supermeals

I have already written about Supermeals and the campaign is expanding. They are now running offers from 3 supermarkets to tie in with the recipes. To see what you can get have a look at the offers currently available.

SmallSteps4Life

This is a competition for English schools to win a visit by a top UK athlete by getting their pupils to think like an athlete. It opened on January 9th and runs to 9th March 2012. Teachers need to download entry forms and information for the SmallSteps4Life page.

Change4Life: Supermeals

I have rather neglected my blogging for Change4Life recently so thought I'd better get cracking as they have recently launched their Supermeals campaign. In order to help parent change their families diets they have brought out recipes for meals that are:

• low cost
• quick and easy to make
• tasty

I ordered a paper copy of some of their meal ideas but they also have an online Supermeals recipe finder. With this you can search by ingredients, create a shopping list and make a 7 day meal plan.

If that doesn't appeal then you can have recipe ideas e-mailed to you instead. All you need is to register and then wait to see what pops up in your inbox. All the recipes cost about £5 to make 4 adult servings.

You can get the children to join in by creating their own Cookbook crammed full of their favourite healthy recipes. Think I need to try this with my 2!

The  final part of the Supermeals programme is a free cookbook featuring Ainsley Harriott. All you need to do is buy a copy of the Daily Mirror on Friday January 20th and hand the voucher in at your local Asda store. The book has 30 easy, healthy and tasty recipes which all cost around £5 to make.

So what are you waiting for get over to the Supermeals site now and start changing your families diet!

My blog year in review: Part 1

It's been an amazing year for my blog which I started back in 2008. This was definitely the year that the blog switched from being purely personal to including reviews and actually started earning me some much needed income.  So much has happened over the last 364 days that I'm breaking this review over 2 days to make it more manageable. 


Part one is the first half of the year from January to June and how I saw it from my blog:


January


This was the month for resolutions and new challenges. These included:

1. 100 Books in a Year - hoping that if I add all the books I read to the children at bedtime I'll have completed this!
2. Fitness Friday - this was a great supportive blog hop that unfortunately dwindled as the year went on but it did help me do really well getting in shape at the start of the year. Lots more work to do! As part of this I became an ambassador for Change4Life
3. I also pledged to work on becoming self sufficient. I haven't 100% succeeded in this but things have improved
4. This was the month I joined Reasons to be Cheerful for the first time. A great blog hop that helps to focus on the positive not dwell on the negative.

The high point of the month was appearing on BBC Radio Cumbria. Amazing where blogging can lead you! The low point of the month and indeed the whole year was the loss of my Granny at the age of 98. A much missed lady she will never be forgotten:

February

I have really tried to use this year to showcase my photographs. Not only through The Gallery and Silent Sunday posts but through stand alone posts such as this one from Bowness. I carried on my great relationship with Treasure Trails Cumbria with their fabulous murder mystery walks.

Karin started a Flashback Friday hop which I really enjoyed taking part in. This was the month I started reviewing iPhone apps with a debut from Peppa Pig. I did also manage a rant about the National Health Service. After signing up to the Become a Mumpreneur course I was quite happy to promote it.

Change4Life: 60 minutes activity - some alternatives

If like my daughter your child isn't particularly sporty it can be hard to achieve the 60 minutes of recommended activity a day. In her case we are having to come up with alternatives that may not quite be as cardio intensive but do raise her heart rate and also help build up her muscles and her bones.

Since she was 5 my daughter has dabbled in using a longbow because of us as a family being part of the Medieval Siege Society. It's been hard for her to do much practice since we moved up north as 1) I'm not an experience enough archer to be confident to coach her 2) having somewhere safe to shoot sharp arrows. Luckily we have been given permission to use an orchard where she can set up her target and let loose:

Her longbow has a draw weight of 15 lb which means it requires quite a lot of effort for her to pull it back. She hasn't used this one much and still can't draw it back to its full extent. This means that even when she hits the target the arrow hasn't got enough weight behind it to stick in but does leave a mark to prove that she hit it:

As she is still only 7 she can't do it for too long in case she over develops her muscles on one side (just like the medieval archers did) but she gets a good workout. Her little brother prefers a different sort of medieval exercise and enjoys sword fighting. In a controlled manner this is great exercise for both cardio and strength building:

Have you got any more unusual energetic activities with your kids?

Change4Life: Step into Spring - Up and About

My latest Change4Life newsletter popped into my e-mail inbox this week with lots of tips to get Up and About and to ensure they have 60 Active Minutes a day. With the Easter holidays either here or happening next week its great to be able to get some tips to get us all fitter with 2 and a bit weeks off!


Up and About


As I know to my cost its ever so easy to find bottoms glued to comfy sofas on the wetter Spring days so Change4Life have got some tips on keeping more active with your children. I have borrowed a few for here but for more go to kids activity tips.


Budget tips

• Have a disco in the lounge with some of your CDs
• Have a catwalk at home and get the kids to parade their favourite clothes
• Have a toy and clothes swap party with other families.
• Make a den using some chairs, tables, sheets and towels.

15 minute fillers

• Play hide and seek
• Make up a dance routine to a song
• Use a broom/mop to play limbo
• How many times can you hop on the spot in 10 minutes

All day games and activities

• Family Olympics
• A Treasure Hunt
• A bike ride

Whatever the weather

• Fly a kite
• Puddle jumping
• Leaf catching 

Getting activity into your daily life:

1. Limit TV to 2 hours max
2. Feet first instead of using a car use your feet and walk/cycle
3. Dance to the TV ads
4. After school don't let them veg out
5. Be active after eating to burn off the calories
6. Have a family activity day at the weekend

Use your feet

There is a great tool on the web site to give you ideas to use your feet more. 

I will be having a look at the 60 Active Minutes at a later date....

Change4Life: Step 4 Sugar Swaps

There are some great tips on the Change4Life website which can help us parents make informed choices about the sugar in our children's diet. As they say:

We wouldn’t let our kids eat sugar straight from the sugar bowl. But we tend not to think about the sugar hiding in the other things they eat and drink.

So what can we do to reduce the sugar in our children's diet:

1) Drink Swap: switch from sugary drinks to sugar free ones. Best of all are water, milk, unsweetened fruit juice or sugar free versions of your normal drinks.

2) Snack Swap: give your children fruit, unsalted nuts, breadsticks, rice cakes or toast instead of cakes, biscuits, chocolate or sweets.

3) Food Label Swap: Look at the traffic lights for products with green or amber instead of red. Make sure the product is marked low sugar or sugar free.

4) Breakfast Swap: Switch from sugary cereals to low sugar versions, fruit or toast. Just be careful how much sugar is in the toast topping!

5) Dessert Swap: Instead of sugary desserts have a yoghurt or fruit. Look at the labels and choose the version of your favourite pudding with the lowest sugar content.

Change4Life: Step 3 - Cut back fat

As the Change4Life website states:


We all know too much fat is bad for us. But we don’t always know where it’s lurking. It seems to be in so many of the things we like, so it’s sometimes difficult to know how to cut down.


Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to go easy on the fat; simple things like comparing food labels, swapping certain foods for others and changes to the way we prepare and cook food.


For example, grilled fish fingers have much less fat than fried fish fingers and trimming the fat off bacon can reduce its fat by about a half.

As a mum I am concerned that my children may sometimes eat too much fat in their diet but on the whole they do pretty well at eating lower fat products and use semi skimmed and not full fat milk. 

Here are a few of the ideas Change4Life have for reducing the fat in your kids' diets:

1. Limit snack foods that are high in fat such as cakes, biscuits, crisps, pastries and buns.
2. Choose low fat spreads, lower fat content products and lean meat. Using skinless chicken or turkey mince can easily reduce fat intake.
3. When cooking cut off visible fat, remove skin from poultry, drain off fat after cooking and grill instead of fry.
4. Make tasty, healthy food swaps such as oven chips instead of deep fried ones. Use low fat yoghurt instead of ice cream or cream.
5. Make supermarket swaps:

Leave on the shelf	Put in basket
Streaky bacon	Back bacon
Croissant	Bagel
Butter	Lower fat spread
Sausages	Vegetarian sausages
Doughnut	Currant bun
Biscuits	Malt loaf
Cream	Reduced fat Greek yogurt
Cheese sauce	Tomato or vegetable sauce
Ice cream	Lower fat frozen yogurt
Full fat milk	Skimmed or semi-skimmed milk
Cheddar cheese	Lower fat cottage cheese
Burgers	Fish fingers (grill instead of fry)
Minced beef	Turkey mince

Can you think of any other ways to get your children on to a lower fat diet? And of course help yourself get healthier too!

Change4Life: Step 2 - Me size meals

So it's not rocket science our children are smaller than us so they need smaller portions of food. Excess food is turned to fat so by giving our children adult sized portions we are setting them up to overeat and gain weight. Another problem is that when they leave leftovers the adults have a habit of finishing them off. 


Here are some simple ways to ensure that your kids have portions that are the right size for them:

• Base their portion on the relative size of your fist to theirs. 
• Use different sized plates so that their plate still looks full but its not too much for them.
• Don't nag them to clear their plates, it is better to serve them less and let them ask for seconds if they are really hungry.
• Packets and bottles are often based on an adult serving size and not a child size one. Get your children to share or put some aside for later. 
• Eating at the table without the TV to distract enables children to listen to the signals from their body saying they are full.
• Regular meals and snacks will train the children's bodies to cope with correct portions.
• Get them to just have a single mouthful of the foods they aren't keen on rather than forcing them to eat everything on their plate.
• If the children say they are hungry whilst you are cooking then offer them water or juice so as not to fill them up before their meal.

For more tips and to see the questions other parents have asked go direct to the Change4Life website.

Change4Life: Week 2 - How are the kids?

Last Saturday I set out the challenges that the Change4Life campaign suggested I should try to get my kids fitter and healthier. So how has it gone this week?


Up and About


Limit TV/Computer time to 2 hours:
Some days we have had virtually no TV at all. My daughter is finding this harder than her little brother and I have come back into the room to find she has switched the TV back on! They are finding ways to entertain themselves without resorting to just sitting there watching CBBC/Cbeebies. I have to admit that when I am trying to get chores done with the 4 year old home alone the TV was on for longer.


Have an activity day chosen by kids:
Unfortunately with me being unwell I haven't felt up to being too energetic with the kids! I did get them signed up for weekly swimming lessons at L.I.F.E.

Change4Life: Step 1 - 3 meals a day

As per my first Change4Life post yesterday I am going to do a post each week based on each of the 8 points they recommend to get our kids living longer, healthier, more active lives. So this week it's getting your kids to eat 3 meals a day. If you have a blogpost that goes with this topic then please add to the link below (it's supposed to be a blog hop so hopefully you can grab the code...).


I have to say that having 3 meals a day is not a problem area in our house. The children are not allowed to leave for school without breakfast and we always have one light and one main meal as well. Making these at a regular time is not as successful. One way to make them more regular is to plan ahead. I have found that since the week's menu is clearly up on the wall in the kitchen I can work out how long it will take to make. This means that meals are happening at an appropriate time and therefore at better intervals for the children. 

Change4Life

Many of you will have heard of the UK government's Change4Life campaign to get our children healthier following concerns that the younger generation is fatter and less fit than it should be. I know that my children need to do better when it comes to a healthier lifestyle and it's up to me as their mum to point them in the right direction. So I signed up on the web site and filled out a questionnaire which resulted in an action plan arriving through my door yesterday. I have also signed up as a volunteer to help promote the campaign so we can all keep out children healthy and help them live longer more active lives.


The key 8 good habits we need to encourage are children into are:

1. meal time: try and make time for 3 regular meals a day
2. me size meals: remember kids and grown ups don't need the same amount of food
3. cut back fat: keep fatty foods like burgers and sausages to a minimum
4. sugar swaps: swap food and drink that is high in sugar to no added sugar versions
5. snack check: limit unhealthy snacks
6. up and about: active play is much better for kids than vegging in front of TV
7. 60 active minutes: kids need at least 60 active minutes a day
8. 5 A DAY: make sure they get a variety of at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day - fresh frozen, canned, dried or juiced