confidence

Couch to 5k my journey and tips from someone who is struggling!

confidence, Fitness, running, weight loss

I have said before that if I have an idea I can do something it’s because I can. This has always been my approach to life. You would think that this would mean that I am highly successful and motivated.

Ha ha

Nope

So when I decided to run I thought I can run 5k. Don’t get me started on the half marathon farce. I started couch to 5k had two bad runs and gave up.

Oh I can do anything can I?

In my head I ran 3k which was good enough for me. So this time my end game is 21K which is so bloody far I cant truly focus on it.

So because I started couch to 5k last time I knew that I didn’t have to start from the very beginning. I could run 5minutes fine so I started from week 5.

Beginning

Which was a perfect place to start. If you are a beginner please please start from the beginning.

All you need to start is

  • Good running shoes ( go get fitted)
  • A phone that you can down load the app onto
  • The app
  • Headphones
  • A pocket you can zip away your phone
  • Keys to get into your house
  • Money in case you are desperate for a drink or a bus ride home!

That’s it. Nothing fancy. Oh ladies please get a sports bra!

Don’t beat yourself up

What I have learned from last time is that if you don’t make it. Just repeat it till you do!

I have stayed on week five for 3 weeks now. Monday I ran for 20 minutes straight and I was fine, I could have run further but I was so happy. Wednesday is was a 5minute, 8 minutes, 5minute run and I was a hot mess.

Yes it’s hot but that redness is not sunburn. I have SPF on, that redness is my heart pounding so fast! I was sweaty and my knees felt weak!

Heart rate was 151!

Did I feel good after, yes after my shower. It put a little doubt in my head. But I will push on to week six day 2. I have too. You have to. Pushing yourself is part of it.

If I don’t complete my next run I will just go back to the start of the week until I can complete it.

The NHS app is great. I love Laura, her voice is soothing and encouraging! She is getting me through it even if I do swear at her when I think I only have a minute to go and she tells me I am half way through. Sorry Laura.

Now I am in a good place.

I am visualising completing the 5k and moving onto the 10K. I am visualing my training up to run the 21K. It will be a great accomplishment for me.

Looking after me, skincare update

Advice, Beauty, confidence, skincare

My mum is proud of me because I know more about skincare or at least the latest skincare since getting engaged.

I have become a little obsessed with my skincare, I have mentioned that before. I don’t wear a lot of makeup. But I have started buying a wee bit more.

We went to SpaceNK on Kings road and I am so happy we did, there was a lot of staff ready to help and we did a sweep around the store trying the sample and planning the next purchases for my Nydulge card.

I can’t wait for payday I am out of B hydra and the CFirma serum. Or I could just buy the Elizabeth Arden serum oh I still don’t know.

Skin type: I have

  • Combination skin
  • Oily tzone
  • Large pores
  • Millie
  • Blocked pores
  • Broken veins
  • Dry patches on my eyelids

How sexy do I sound! You probably think that it’s strange that I don’t wear makeup. If I go out at night then I put eye makeup, a red lips and a wee bit of blusher. I have a Lancôme tinted moisturiser with SPF. Which doesn’t smother my skin.

So with all these issue I now have skincare staples.

Morning

After reading drunk elephants skincare routine from the littles I have learned that after cleansing at night I don’t really need to cleanse in the morning as I was my face in the shower. So afterwards I just use a vitamin serum and a moisturiser. Then after that has set into my skin I use an SPF.

At night

I cleanse my face. Then I use a serum and then a retinol and sometimes a moisturiser or a night oil if I think my skin needs it. I cant get along with sheet masks. Maybe I am the ones I am using the wrong ones but I don’t really understand them. I use a face mask once a week I would use it more but I don’t want flakey skin to add to all my other issues!

I do like to mix and match

My favourite products are

  • Elemis Rose balm cleanser
  • Indee Lee Toner
  • The Ordinary Matryxal 10% +HA
    Drunk Elephant Whip moisturiser
    Alpha H retinol
    Sunday Riley Luna Sleeping Oil
    Elemis night moisturiser
    Drunk Elephant BHydra
    Drunk Elephant C-Firma
    Drunk Elephant Babyfacial
    La Roche Posay Anthelios SPF 50+

I own a lot more products but these are my favourites.

I will go into more detail on what the products do for my skin in a later blog and will try not to repeat myself. If you want any information about Drunk Elephant click here but Baby Facial isn’t there because I hadn’t bought it yet. Plus it deserves its own blog, I love it so much.

My mum is proud of me because I care about what goes on my skin. I am worried about my makeup on my wedding day. I understand that preparation is key.

So I am looking after it now.

Idle hands are the devils online shopping subscription

Beauty, confidence, Make Up, Wedding Budget

I have signed up to too many beauty / home websites. This pay day I had a ridiculous amount of emails offering me money off discounts, free postage ahhh. I want it all. my idle hands are shopping as soon as the subscription emails roll in.

My account looks healthy and my fingers start emptying it again.

I went on Cult Beauty filling up my basket with Zoeva brushes and Charlotte Tilbury makeup. When I got to a £100 of products I took a step back. What am I doing?

Stop the splurge

Yes I want to buy a lot of gorgeous things for my home but right now I don’t need them. I am not a shopaholic but there is something about a pay check that makes me want to spend money That has literally just entered my account!

I need to save

It’s not long till the wedding! This month has been all about paying for wedding deposits and payments. Blah blah blah. My savings are looking pretty empty.

Time for less outings

More walking ( bus fares add up)

Definitely no beauty, I have enough. I don’t wear much makeup so why am putting all this makeup into my basket? I am too susceptible to advertising and influencers. I do use all my skincare products but everything else is just money I could have spent on the wedding!

Idle hands

Luckily I also need to watch my diet! Which means less takeouts and premade meals.

As it’s a big sunnier I do want to eat better food with more veg and in the evenings I need to keep busy.

Idle hands are the devils online shopping subscription. They sit and wait for my pennies to roll in then they send me what I have always wanted but have absolutely no need for.

Yes I want velvet cushions with embroidered bees on, yes I need more plants! I just topped up my rather sad makeup collection with my Boots points. It really is the bare minimum and didn’t cost me anything however did I need it?

Plan

I need to be busier without exhausting myself like I did over Christmas.

I have so much to do so rather than spending my weekends completing tasks I am going to complete them in the weeknights instead. I will still schedule nights where I can just cuddle my best friend the sofa ( I wrote a blog on my lack of energy)

I will still relax when I need to, I won’t even look at my subscriptions this month unless Elizabeth Arden has an amazing deal on ( never going to happen).

I won’t delete them because I do have enough will power to stop buying them. This month will be a no buy month!

No spending on silly things

No make up

No skincare ( Cult Beauty I already miss you)

Do you have the same problem with pay day offers?

So obviously I bought the new Birchbox because Rock My Wedding sent me a naughty email and I wanted to try out half the items in it! It arrived within two days and I will try out the bits tomorrow when I go shopping with mum.

On Sunday I got a call from my mum suggesting that I had, HAD to buy the new Gatineau tanning accelerator.

“You don’t want to be a pale bride darling”

So thank you QVC for your special offers! I look forward to looking like a bronze goddess at our wedding.

So I failed!

But a few treats here and now are important to me not going insane with all the wedding planning.

Or so I tell myself.

This is me, not so perfect photos!

body confidence, confidence, Personal Experience

Blog 17, photo of you, 30 day blog challenge.

This is me. A photo of me is that the same as being me or just what I would like you to see.

I scrolled through images, too fat, bad skin, massive hair, weird angle. They were all me I just chose to ignore them! Then I thought. Maybe I won’t put the perfect photos in. Maybe I will just put the photos of me when I look happy! So be prepared for frizzy hair, laughing and pulling faces!

When your food matches your hair

Funny face

Me and Gavin met online. His first image of me was I thought a nice photo. It was a hot summers day and I was out in the garden. Not a bit of makeup on, looking up into the sky.

Gav hates this photo. He said it looks nothing like me. Even though he disproves of the image he still asked me out on a date so it couldn’t have been that bad.

After a while we befriended each other on Facebook and he, like me scrolled through lots of pictures of each other! He soon came to realise that I look different in most pictures. Something to do with the angles of my face.

Christmas tree shopping

I thought I would show you a range of photos to help you understand that I am not one photo. I am not one face, one body but I am me. Multi layered. Mostly happy, often hungry, loves to laugh and doesn’t need much to make me happy.

me and Becky dressing up and pulling faces. We always have fun and don’t care what other people say.

I want to look nice but I care more about having fun then I do about posing for a perfect photo.

Don’t get me wrong I still pose! I just don’t care so much! Have you seen the photos of me me trying to jump with my niece? Ha ha ha

So this is me!

Fear only holds you back, so what am I afraid of?

confidence

Day 6, what are you afraid of, 30 day blog challenge.

We all know that fear holds us back from achieving or doing things so here are my fears.

Being safe

Like most people the older I get the more I fear things. I worry about walking home in the dark about being attacked or worse. I also fear that this may happen to my friends and family and it petrified me even creeping into my dream and haunting my sleep.

Personal safety is a crazy thing to fear but I do.

My father has always made me aware of personal safety but as I have gotten older I have stopped taking risks. I don’t need to put myself in a situation so I don’t. If I can I get the bus all the way home in winter rather than walking through the underpass. I do. I am not feeding my fear, I am just being smart.

Chamonix Aiguille de Midi

Heights

When I went to theatres, I would sit in my seat freaking out at how high my seat was. I wouldn’t enjoy the play, it would paralyse me until the second half when I would finally relax. A few years on I was training to be a theatre designer. I started working on scaffolds changing the lights etc. I had to do it.

I pushed myself to do it.

My knees locked, My breath gets shallow. It is a proper fear. I also have to face it on the slopes.

Snowboarding is very high up but I mainly feel the fear when I am on the chair lift and it stops. I hate it when it stops. It bounces and scares the shit out of me. I have learnt to not focus on it.

Aiguille de Midi, Gav trying to hold himself together

The picture is of the glass box in Chamonix. You feel so unsafe that it will just shatter at any moment. Gav teased me the whole queue and then just as were about to step in he had a break down! He laughed like a crazy person when the fear struck him. I couldn’t focus on myself just looking after him. He had talked about his fears before but they had never manifested in front of me.

We faced our fears hand in hand, him a maniac me trying to support him!

Snakes

I lived in Australia for a while. Snakes were an actual thing. In Dorigo we had Red Belly black snakes which are the stuff of nightmares.

I still have nightmares about them. I know on the whole snakes aren’t bad and they just eat vermin but when the darkness comes in….

Bauhaus architecture at Flaine

Failure

I think everyone fears this. It’s what holds us back most in life. I do have regrets, most of them are about stupid things I have said rather than choices I made.

When it comes to my friends I am a good listener and try to be balanced. I give sound advice ( I hope) but when it comes to me, I close my ears, shut my eyes and dream.

I stayed in retail far too long and I can only blame a certain boss for that for so long. She had a talent for putting you down so low that you just wanted to prove yourself to her even though she was full of shit. A calculated bully with a vapid existence. It was still my choice to stay!

Fear held me back and I changed job, still in retail but a different role. Now I am still technically in retail but it is a complete contrast.

There is a lot I still want to achieve in this life and only fear is holding me back.

can’t believe how deep this challenge is! So tell me, what holds you back?