Love from, Florence Grace

Every January before this one, I made one of my goals 'Lose weight - at least two stone'. That started when I was 15 and continued for seven years, until I was 22. This year, upon turning 23 and ready to enter 2019, weight loss was a priority thanks to a health warning from my doctor. No set amount, however, and strictly no 'dieting'. Because over the last couple of years, I've become quite "anti diet". I hate the word, what it means and I absolutely despise all the crappy fad diets that entice vulnerable and insecure women into their clutches with promises of extreme weight loss in minimal time. I think - in fact, I know  - that it's possible to lose weight without going on a 'diet' so to speak. Without depriving yourself of your favourite foods, without starving yourself and without living off appetite suppressants and shakes. I know, because I've done it - and so have so many other people. Dieting sucks and if you're consid...

I spent the whole of 2016 trying to lose weight, become healthier and fitter, and this is a journey that has continued into 2017 with me- and, I'm happy to report, is going pretty well too! I've written before how I don't struggle to adjust my eating habits, but do struggle with exercise. Thankfully, I've taken up Zumba now and it seems to be working wonders. In my transformation post the other day, I shared how I struggled to curb my addiction to fizzy drinks- specifically, Coca Cola. I love  the stuff and used to go through countless 2 litre bottles a week- which now seems repulsive to me because I can't even bear to think about how much sugar I was pouring into my body! I haven't cut Coke out of my diet completely but I have reduced my intake of it quite drastically, which is sad but it had to be done for my own health. So, you can only imagine how happy I was when The Juice Shed Company got in touch with me about their Juicy Fuel Cola- a healthy alternat...

We all know the story of the hare and the tortoise like the back of our hands, right? The annoying fable that taught us all as children that "slow and steady wins the race". Adult life has taught me that this is in fact true. A similar quote that I love is "A little progress each day adds up". Because it's true. Life so far has taught me that rather than rushing right into things, expecting brilliant results straight away, it is better to work hard on something for a long period of time to obtain even better  results. Baby steps really do add up to something greater in the long run, and this was proven to me with my school work and exams, in running my business, and now in my weight loss too. Although I'd like for there to be, I don't think there ever will be a time where I'm not in some kind of infuriating conflict about my body and how I look. I love myself, but at the same time I want to alter so many things. How is that even possible? It'...

As always, my first New Year's Resolution for 2017 was to lose weight/get fit. I always find it quite hard to talk about my personal relationship with my body and weight because I'm such a strong advocate of body positivity and I feel that by talking about dieting I'm going against everything I believe in. I think everyone should embrace the body they're in, as long as they're happy and healthy. Whilst I am definitely a lot happier and healthier than I used to be, I'm still not fully happy and healthy, and that's why I'm trying to lose weight. However, it's not just about the weight for me; I want to get fitter too! Just because it would be nice to walk up the stairs without getting out of breath, you know? Anyway. Whenever I lose weight, I change my eating habits accordingly and eat a lot more 'good' food and a lot less 'bad' food (although I do still indulge in treats like pizza and crisps every now and again!) but the one thing...

Today, a new 'challenge' appeared on social media: I knew straight away I had to join in! As most of you must  know by now, I'm a strong advocate of self love and over the last year my self love, as well as my self confidence, has improved and increased quite dramatically! Before 2016, I would have described my self confidence and self esteem to have been extremely low. I hated how I looked, I had no confidence in myself or my abilities- I'm happy to say that the story is quite different now! So let me share with you what I like to call my 2016 Glow Up (a glow up is better late than never, right?) End of 2015/Start of 2016: End of 2016: I'm not gonna lie, I really feel myself now. In the last year, I've lost a lot  of weight. Like, look at the first image in this post and the last. I feel like I'm almost half the size I was! I'm not, but I feel that way! I've also learnt how to do my make up bett...

In keeping with yesterday's body positive post, I thought I'd write about food today. More specifically, about eating exactly what you like, when you want to. (Also it's #worldpastaday so a good time to write about food, right?) Too often, people go on diets that starve them of food. Usually, it's carbs and sugar and fat. People think the only way to be healthy is to live solely off of vegetables and fruit, but they're wrong. There are different food groups for a reason; your body needs a healthy  balance of them all in order to function properly. On top of your fruit and veg you need protein, you need carbs, you need fats and sugars. The key to eating anything you want and maintaining a healthy body is to eat your favourite foods in moderation . Me, I could eat a share bag of dorito's to myself every day, easy peasy. Crisps are my weakness! But I know that I shouldn't- and therefore, I don't. Okay, okay, one in a blue moon I might treat ...

Weight is something I struggle with a lot . If you are a regular reader of my blog, or even just my social media, you'll know my relationship with food and my weight is a constant battle and I have good days and bad days and some really  bad days.  Recently, I've been losing weight. As always, it's been fluctuating a lot but I've been losing, and any loss is a loss which is obviously way better than a gain in my case. However, while I haven't noticed much weight change myself, other people have been commenting over the last few weeks over my weight loss and change in body shape, which has obviously made me feel far happier with myself and a lot more confident.  Which is why today, I wanted to talk to you guys about clothes. More specifically, the sizes of clothes.  I can confidently say I am a size 12. On good days, I am a size 10. On bad days (aka when I'm in H & M) I can sometimes be a 14. *Note I say bad day: bad for me as that's bi...

So for about a month now I've been doing this 'healthy living' thing. I was vegan for a short time, I've cut out sweets, chocolate and crisps from my diet considerably, I use vitamin supplements and protein shakes and I eat some form of salad almost every single day. I'm not exercising anywhere near as much as I should be, and this is the next thing for me to work on. But what has happened as a result of this? Let me tell you. I've lost just over half an inch from my stomach's widest point and have lost an inch from my waist. I have lost not one but two  inches from my thigh. And, according to my dad's scales, I have lost a stone! I'm thrilled, of course. However, I know my dad's scales have been a little unreliable in the past so while I'm not sure of my actual weight, I do know that whatever I did weigh, I know I now weigh a stone less than that. Amazing, right?! I'm so happy!  People have begun to notice too. When I sa...

A week ago today I started my vegan diet. I had been to the shops and spent £20 on free from food, from snacks such as crisps and sesame seed bites, to more essential items such as tofu and falafel to replace meat and soya cheese. Having watched Cowspiracy on Netflix, I was ready to try and be a better person by cutting out all animal products from my life. It would obviously be a challenge, but challenges don't phase me. I was happy enough to try. Three days in, I was already struggling. I already knew I wouldn't be able to go 'full' vegan straight away, as I still live at home and have family dinners. With everyone else being meat eaters, I had decided to make their life easy; I would have a vegan breakfast and lunch and then I would eat whatever was made for the family for dinner. It seemed like a good enough compromise to me. But half way through the week I was beginning to miss things. Hard boiled eggs, for instance, that I had been having on almost a daily...

On Saturday night, I watched popular documentary 'Cowspiracy'. On Saturday night, I decided to become a vegan. Yep, can you believe it! I love cheese! I love eggs! I love prawns ! How could I possibly go vegan? To be honest, I really, really don't know. But after I watched that documentary, I knew I couldn't go on eating animal products. Not only does meat consumption contribute towards the majority of global warming, the way animals are treated is horrendous. Of course, I was aware of this before. I always knew this, I'm not stupid. But something about the documentary made me think differently. It's now Monday and it's day two of my 'vegan diet'. I am already struggling. I knew straight off I wouldn't be able to jump right in to being a full on vegan for numerous reasons. Firstly, I had no vegan food in my house. Secondly, none of my friends or family are vegan. So I had already decided to wean myself into the diet. On Sunday, I ...

Yes, it's true. I have been considering becoming a vegetarian. (Gasp, shock, horror I know!) I have been a meat eater for my entire life. It's how I was raised, I eat it almost every day, I adore bacon sandwiches and cheeseburgers, and I have never felt the urge to be a vegetarian. I have had to have a partial vegetarian diet in the past, due to the fact a guy I was dating and his family were vegetarian. I was over at his house almost every day sometimes, and it meant eating vegetable pizzas, having quorn mince instead of beef mince- and having lots and lots of cheese. Eventually, though, he started to eat meat and we didn't have to do this anymore.  Now I've started this new healthy eating 'phase', I am eating salad, fruit and vegetable's almost every day. I have some animal products, such as some ham in my wrap, or a hard boiled egg for protein, but I'm wondering if I could cut these out for good?  I don't think I'd m...

I think there must  be something wrong with me, because this evening I had the urge to go for a run. Like, I actually wanted  to go running! How weird, right?  But you know, because I'm doing this whole get fit, get healthier thing, I made sure that I went. I got my work done, got into my Ivy Park gear and then went for it. I really, really went for it. Normally on my runs, I run and walk and run and walk and run and walk, using lamp posts as markers to stop and start at. However, today, I ran and walked and then ran. Yep, I only stopped once!  I ran faster than normal too, really pushing myself. I put on some really fast, upbeat music, focused on the horizon and really sprinted- I have always been more of a short distance runner than a long distance one and I find sprinting so much easier.  I also took a bottle of water along with me, something I don't normally do, and I'm wondering if keeping hydrated throughout the run actually helped m...

It's been one week since I started my new 'diet' of eating healthy foods that I actually enjoy...and boy am I enjoying it! Who would have though that I would ever enjoy eating healthy foods, and yet here I am, having eaten more fruit and vegetables in the last week than I have done in the last, I don't know, six years or so! Anyway, as it's been one week, I thought I'd share my food diary with you so you could see what's been going on... Monday. Breakfast: Bowl of Coco Pops, glass of water.  Lunch: 4 cream crackers with low fat margarine and ham, a handful of button mushrooms and some prawns with two glasses of water. Dinner: Pitta Pizzas (one pitta bread with tomato pizza base sauce, three slices of mozzarella and three slices of pepperoni), two spoonfuls of home made potato salad and some ordinary salad consisting of lettuce, pepper, spring onions and cucumber. No chips!  I also had one glass of a tropical fizzy drink from the fridge as ...

This post is going to be a bit of a weird one. I'm going to sound more millennial and social media obsessed than ever before, but I'm always honest on my blog, and this was something that I wanted to share with you guys, so. Today I'm going to tell you guys how social media is helping  my weight loss.  We all know just how addicted I am to social media. Not only is it my job to post on social media but I also love to update my social media every minute of every day! Not only does it help me to promote my blog and magazine, it helps me to make new friends, stay connected with old friends and creates a digital diary, so I can look back in a years time using things like TimeHop to see what I was doing a year ago, two years ago and so on.  My favourite social media site is Instagram , and it's Instagram that has been helping me to stay on track with my healthy eating and my get fit regime. Like many people, I'm obsessed with making my Instagram look prett...

So yesterday I told you guys how I was trying out a new way of thinking about food, improving my eating habits in an attempt to help my weight loss plateau. I feel like today has gone pretty well, so thought I'd share how it went with you guys!  (P.S I know this is the third time round I've done this on my blog, I'm so sorry if you're bored!) Breakfast.  Small bowl of coco pops (I hadn't been healthy food shopping yet!) and a glass of water.  Walk to work, shopping, walk back from work- did around 3,500 steps.  Lunch. 4 cream crackers with butter, one slice of ham shredded across the four crackers, a handful of button mushrooms and some prawns. Lunch came to around 300 calories, which isn't bad at all! I also had 2 glasses of water.  Went on a Pokemon walk with my sister for around 45 minutes, taking my steps up to just over 9,000.  Dinner. Pitta Pizzas- pitta bread with pizza topping sauce, some mozarella cheese, and ...

Guys! You're going to kill me because yet again  I am writing about my (failing) diet and my weight loss attempts.  So I guess the good news is that I haven't gained any weight...but the bad news is that I haven't lost any either.  I had wanted to lose a stone in July. Now, half way through the month, I'm kind of guessing that's not going to happen. So I started having a read of some blogs and a watch of some videos to see if there was any  way that I could really get inspired and try harder than ever before to lose the small amount of weight that I want to shift!  It wasn't until I watched Velvet Gh0st's latest video about healthy snacks that I realised where the problem lied. It wasn't that I didn't want to eat healthily. It wasn't that I couldn't eat healthily. It was that I didn't like  eating healthily. My mum makes healthy meals full of vegetables, but I don't like vegetables, so I don't always enj...