A Slimming World Christmas

If you've been a long time reader of my blog, you'll know that I've previously followed the Slimming World plan to lose weight, and I'm now a member again as I lose my baby weight. And let's face it, Christmas is the most challenging time for anyone trying to lose weight. Today I'm going to share a little bit of advise for anyone else who is trying to follow a Slimming World Christmas.

Lush Sleepy Body Lotion Review

I've been a really bad sleeper ever since my early teens. Every night without fail, as soon as my head hit the pillow, my mind would be racing with things I need to do and remember, or something that has been troubling me would suddenly pop back into my head, and that would be it, I'd be lying their for hours, wishing my brain would just switch off. I tried changing up my pre bed routine from time to time, banning technology after a certain time, slowing myself down by reading or colouring, which helped to a certain extent, but I would still never fall asleep particularly quickly, and I would still often wake in the night. Back in the days when I could nap whenever I got home if needed, this wasn't such an issue, but looking after a baby all day is exhausting, and I can't just rest whenever I want. Since Oliver started sleeping through the night, I thought it would be best to start taking advantage of it and try to start getting as much sleep at night as I could. This is where the Lush Sleepy Body Lotion comes in...

Gestational Diabetes & Pregnancy Update

Apologies for todays post going up a bit late, I'm sure you'll all understand though. This post was just meant to be a gestational diabetes update after my last round of appointments on Wednesday, but a lot has happened in terms of the pregnancy in general since then too, so I thought it best to fill you in on everything.

My Favourite Ways To Pass Time Without Technology

I'll admit, one of my favourite ways ever to spend my spare time is having a good old YouTube marathon, but I've become a firm believer that we should be spending less time with our gadgets, and more time doing the simpler things that we used to do, especially in the late evenings, as too much time on our phones etc before bed can disrupt our sleep. Here are my favourite things to do when I need some time away from technology.

What I Learned From The Little Book Of Hygge

Hygge is a word that's been throw around quite a lot in the last few months, particularly in the blogosphere. If you've never heard of the concept (pronounced Hoo-ga) before, it originated from Denmark, one of the happiest countries in the world. Whilst it has been translated in many different ways, it is essentially all about creating a cosier, more intimate environment, and better quality of life. After reading a few blog posts, and thinking the whole thing sounded amazing and just what I needed to incorporate into my life, I decided to learn a bit more and treated myself to The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking.

Gestational Diabetes - One Month On

I've actually known I have gestational diabetes for a few days longer, but today marks one month since I had my first appointment and got my bloody sugar testing kit from the hospital, so I thought I'd share with you my experiences and feelings so far, and how I've been getting on with managing the condition.

Body Confidence In Pregnancy

This is a bit of a sensitive subject for me to write about, and a post that I considered scrapping on many occasions. I've suffered with body confidence issues, on and off, for around half of my life. I used to think that when I got pregnant it would go away - there was a wonderful reason that I was getting bigger, so the fact that I was wouldn't matter. Unfortunately those sorts of feelings don't just switch off, and I've battled with mixed feelings about my body often throughout the last seven months.

How To Beat The January Blues

So we've all dragged ourselves out of bed for the second working week of the year, when really all we want to do is lounge around at home eating the remains of our Christmas chocolate and watching our favourite Netflix series. The January Blues can hit some people really hard, and can be difficult to shift, especially whilst it's still cold and miserable outside. Here are ten things you can do to give yourself a boost at this time of year.

7 Things I'm Looking Forward To In 2017

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you all had a great time celebrating last night, whatever you did, and you're not paying too much for it this morning! As you can imagine it was a bit more of a sober affair for me, just having a nice evening with my friends & husband, but it was still lovely.

I've seen loads of "Goals for 2017" posts popping up in my feed over the last few days. I did consider writing once of those myself, but I always end up looking back at the end of the year & realising I've barely done anything I set out to do, and my goals always end up being really samey. I think also with so many big changes coming up in my life this year already, I don't want to push myself into committing to anything else - I'm just going to take each day as it comes. Instead I decided to write a post about the things I know will be happening this year and that I absolutely can't wait for. 2017 is gonna kick 2016's ass!!

Slimming World Sunday - The Best Motivational Tools

When you're on a weight loss journey it's inevitable that at some stage you'll hit a wall, which can often be difficult to get past. It's important that when we get to this point we've got something there to push us to keep on going, to keep us motivated. I tried all sorts throughout my journey, and also gained some great ideas from fellow group members, and these are the tools I've found to be most effective.

Slimming World Sunday - How I'm Spending My Syns

It's been a while since I did a Slimming World Sunday post. Unfortunately, the lure of Euro /2016 has been too much for me, so I haven't had much time to sit down and actually write any blog posts recently, let alone anything Slimming World relating. Luckily I had a day to myself yesterday and had a mammoth blogging session, so they'll be plenty of content up for you for a while.

So today I'm going to be taking about Syns - probably the best part of the Slimming World plan! I'm always scouring places like Instagram looking at what people are using their Syns on. If I can find something with a low syn value that's going to keep my cravings at bay, I'm more likely to stay on track, so I always make sure I;ve got my cupboards stocked with tasty treats. Here's what I've been loving spending my syns on recently.

Slimming World Sunday - Nacho Style Feast

I was really late on the bandwagon when it came to this recipe, but those of you that follow me on Instagram will know that I've become obsessed with this dish since I tried it a few months ago. It's so tasty, just like having a naughty Mexican dish, and is really fillling.

Slimming World Sunday - Back To Basics

I am going to be completely honest with you now. I've really struggled with any kind of Slimming World plan these last few weeks. In order to maintain my weight after reaching target, I was going to have one evening off plan, and stick to it 100% for the rest of the week. Well.....so far that has not been the case! One evening, turns into a whole day, which turns into a whole weekend, you get the picture. At the moment I'm a couple of pounds outside of my target range and I'm determined to stop it there. I don't want to go back to how I was, so this week I'm making an effort to get back into target range, or as near as I possibly can.

My Happy List

A few days ago I talked about the steps I've taken to becoming a more positive person, one of those being to think of those things in life that I'm truly grateful for. Since I started doing this, I've put together a "happy list" on my phone that I look back on when I'm having a bit of an off day, just to remind myself of all of those little pleasures that make life great. I now have fifty things on this list, all just little things that make me smile, so as I'm at a nice round number I thought I'd now share that list with you. So, aside from the obvious friends, family and home, here's what else makes me happy in life.

Slimming World Sunday - Free Body Magic

Whilst I think that the key to successful weight loss primarily lies with the food you are eating, getting in a decent amount of exercise also helps to give it that boost, and builds towards living a healthier lifestyle. When I first joined Slimming World, I also signed up to my local gym. It wasn't the most expensive membership in the world, but with a wedding to save up for and other more important commitments to pay for, it wasn't the best use of my money. I also found that I wasn't really getting my monies worth, particularly in the winter months when motivation to get up and go was at a low, so I soon found myself cancelling my membership. Since then I've found much more purse friendly ways to get a bit of body magic into my routine.

Becoming A Positive Person

Two years ago I was in a pretty bad place. I'm not going to go into why, but if you're a long time reader of Kizzy Hearts, you may have a rough idea as to what was going on in my life at the time. As a result I was down all of the time, and struggled to find any positivity at all. It wasn't until I began attending Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions last year that I really started to feel like I was getting somewhere. Even since then, it's been a long road to recovery, but sat here writing this now I feel like a completely different person to who I was two years ago. That's all down to training myself to think in a more positive way, even in tough situations.

Slimming World Sunday - My DIY Recipe File

I think one of the keys to Slimming World success is to make sure you've always got inspiration to hand when you're completely lacking in ideas and are bored of eating the same old meals week in week out. It's always good to try something new now and again to keep interest in the plan. I used to keep a stack of my Slimming World magazines in my bedroom to dip into whenever I needed some recipe ideas, but it wasn't exactly the greatest filing system in the world. It took up a lot of room, and took a lot of flicking through to find something that took my fancy. It was time my stacks of magazines went off to the recycling, so I needed a new plan to make sure I still had my inspiration to hand.

Slimming World Sunday - 10 Weeks At Target

I'm back!! I considered writing a whole rambly post about why I've been away etc, but I wasn't sure how interesting you'd actually find it, so I decided as it was a Sunday just to crack straight back on with my Slimming World Sunday posts. Whilst I've been away though, I've been putting together a big list of blog post ideas, and to put it to good use I've decided to blog every day during the month of May, so if you're following me, expect to see a new post pop up on your Bloglovin feed every morning at 8am!

This Thursday marked 10 weeks since I reached my target weight at Slimming World, and I thought I'd share with you how this new part of my journey has gone so far.

Slimming World Sunday - Speedy Spag Bol

Spag Bol is easily one of my favourite meals to make on Slimming World. It's so quick and cheap to make, and tastes delicious. I've even managed to convert my mum, who really isn't adventurous with food at all, to this recipe. It's packed full of speed foods too, to help boost weight loss.

Slimming World Sunday - I've Reached Target!!!

Just a quick post from me today, as I'm still currently knee deep in boxes and carrier bags from our move yesterday. If you follow me on Instagram you may already know, but on Thursday I finally reached my target weight at Slimming World!