"Sugar sugar oh honey honey!"

Today I feel:

I haven't been blogging in a while. The reason is simple... I haven't had anything interesting enough to say. I've been posting a lot of food pics and random tid-bits on my Facebook page, but other than that I haven't really been inspired to write any long blog posts. I think it's because I've fallen into a routine that works for me, and I've already told you all about it. I am not really doing anything "new", just maintaining and eating delicious and healthy food (80% of the time ;) ).

Now that I sit here typing this up I realized that I actually DO have some new "news" (is that redundant? I think it's redundant...). I recently got a job at a gym on an Army Station minutes away from my house! This means I have ZERO excuses to skip the gym, I can literally work out on my lunch break! Plus there's fitspiration everywhere I look (and perspiration....but that's to be expected). I am just SO excited to work here and finally be "busy" and get out of the house. Did I mention it overlooks the beach? No? IT OVERLOOKS THE BEACH!!!

Now that I've updated you guys on what i'm up to, lemme tell you about my amazing friend Lorna!!! She's an Irish gal who is currently working and studying in England. She's probably the busiest person I know but she decided to CHALLENGE herself to do a 21 day sugar detox! She was also awesome enough to share her experience and allow me to post it on this blog. So, on that note, I'll be posting anything she sends me and maybe it will encourage some of you guys to kick your sugar addiction too!

Lorna: 21 Day Detox, Day 1

We decided to give sugar one hell of a send off, with a Ben & Jerry's Core Sundae and toffee popcorn at the cinema last night, followed by an extremely late dinner of peri peri chicken, fries, garlic bread, corn on the cob and peas - all from a certain ubiquitous Portuguese chicken chain which left us waiting 40 mins for our food so we ended up taking it home in a doggy bag.

The post-Python midnight feast meant that I didn't wake up as hungry as usual, which was a good thing given my carb - free brekki, and being in a rush I didn't even miss my usual few sips of coffee.

Breakfast: (07.30) Scrambled eggs with green peppers; water (I had an effervescent energy tablet in mine, which I am sure has sugar as it is orange flavoured, but I need to get my vitamins!)

The real challenge came at the end of my commute - the posh supermarket chain offers its customers free coffee so I have gotten into a terrible habit of picking up a glutinous post - breakfast pastry with my free latte every morning. This entire store will have to be avoided for the next 3 weeks to avoid temptation!

Lunch: (11.30) Tesco Finest Edamame & Pea Salad - without the ginger and lemongrass dressing because the very first ingredient on the dressing list was sugar. I washed down my crunchy veg with some ginger tea.

Having spent the morning in school, I then had to go to work for 3 hours, and then it was time for a research trip to IKEA. It's a pretty long trek from the posh, quiet village where I am studying to north east London so I stocked up on nuts for the trip.

Snack: (15.30) About 50g almonds. Sparkling water (500ml).

Today was our first day showing the production assistants around the store and talking them through what will be required of them during the shoot in September, so we spent over an hour walking around the store - and then it was time to hit the restaurant for dinner. I decided to forgo the famous IKEA meatballs in favour of their special of the day - bangers & mash.

Dinner: (18.30) 2x pork & herb sausages with creamy, cheesy chive mash and peas. Sparkling water (500ml).

Ok, so I am sure that the mash had milk, butter and cheese in it and I'm supposed to avoiding dairy but I reckoned it was better than chips...and it was really delicious.

And I didn't even feel a tinge when my colleagues were all indulging in post - dinner desserts.

We left IKEA shortly after 19.30 and I finally got home close to 21.30 (damn you 'planned engineering works') after taking the bus the last leg of the journey instead of walking (lazy, I know, but I was quite tired and I had already done over 10,000 steps!).

My other half hadn't eaten, so was settling down to what looked like a delicious dinner of roast chicken and roast veg (sweet potato, courgette & red peppers) so I said I would have a little as a snack - but a few bites in he realized that the chicken wasn't 100% cooked (our oven is not the most reliable contraption) so we both ended up just having a few bites of chicken and veg.

Snack: (21.45) A few pieces of roast chicken & some roast veg.

Total exercise: 13,897 steps (approx. 12.15km) which burned about 557kcal.

Day 1 down fairly successfully I reckon...

I hope Lorna share's more of her sugar-detox updates! I will most definitely post updates :)