Things To Do For Halloween 2020.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’re having a good October so far and are enjoying these autumn days. I love this time of year, getting to cosy up in blankets and baggy jumpers; not to mention the fact that it’s now spooky season and in the run up to Christmas! But before we get started on the Christmas festivities, it’s time for the Halloween ones!

Since we’re all still socially distancing and can’t really go trick or treating this year, I’ve come up with a few things you can do at home this Halloween!

Let’s get into it.

• Halloween Costumes Games – Make some cards with halloween costume ideas (or use an app) and taking turns, each person has 60 seconds to find and create the costume they’ve picked out. It makes for some hilarious versions of costumes!

• Make cute halloween themed bento lunch-boxes. Cute and delicious!

• Hide sweets around the house and have a trick or treat treasure hunt! Who said you need to go outside to get treats?

• Have a halloween movie night! I’ve got a movie marathon list here!

• Carve pumpkins! A Halloween classic that you can do in your pyjamas!

• Make your own popcorn and experiment with flavours and toppings! I once tried butter popcorn with caramel, white and milk chocolate drizzles on top and it was so good!

• Have a spooky themed dinner! Or order takeaway, either works haha!

• Hold a virtual Halloween party!

• Go pumpkin or apple picking!

• Try out some halloween crafts from pinterest!

• Do a tarot reading – Something you may not know about me, is that I’m a baby white witch, so I’ll be taking some time to celebrate the full moon, Samhain and I’ll also be doing some tarot readings among other witchy stuff!

• Have a spooky tea party with halloween themed food and drinks!

• Bake some halloween biscuits!

Here’s the Halloween biscuit recipe I used, it’s a very simple one I grabbed from BBC Food and adapted a little:

Ingredients:

`

• 100g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 medium free-range egg (lightly whisked/beated)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Cinnamon
• 275g plain flour
• Icing sugar
• Water
• Food colouring

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C(170C Fan). Put greaseproof paper in a tray.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar. Then, beat in the egg and vanilla extract, a little at a time, until well combined; then stir in the flour and cinnamon and bring together to form a dough (if your dough won’t form, add a tiny bit of water or milk).
3. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of just under 1cm. Using biscuit cutters (I used halloween themed ones), cut biscuits out of the dough and carefully place onto the baking tray.
4. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to harden for 2 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
5. Once cool, make up bowls of icing with icing sugar (I just eyeballed it) and gradually add water until the icing is thick but can still be spreaded.
6. Add in your different colours to the bowls, and then put the icing into piping bags.
7. Pipe on your designs and leave them to set.
8. Eat!

These biscuits take about 40 minutes from start to finish, and they’re super simple. If you’re making them with kids you can get them to design their own monsters!

If you make some of your own halloween biscuits tag me in them on instagram @theweightofmyworlds!

Well, those are my ideas for how you can spend Halloween this year! How are you planning on spending your Halloween? Let me know in the comments!

Have a great week my loves and Happy Halloween!

Love

Halloween 2020 Ideas

Why I’m Refusing To Make New Years Resolutions About My Body.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you have all had a happy Christmas and a very peaceful few days in the lead up to the end of the year! And of course, because we’re coming up to the New Year, New Years resolutions are popping up all over the place.

Which brings me to this post. For as long as I can remember, I have made New Years resolutions each year; and EVERY SINGLE ONE has been about how my body looks and my weight. It’s always along the lines of: I will lose weight, I will drop a dress size, I will change my body, I will go to the gym 6 times a week, I will stop eating certain foods etc. etc. etc.

This year I REFUSE to make a resolution about changing my body.

Now, some of you who are subscribed to my blog will know that I have spoken out about my body image issues and having suffered with Anorexia (see my previous post about it here!). Well, this past year I have been lucky enough to get some help and support and I am happy to announce that I am in recovery!

Writing this post came from seeing everyone’s resolutions on social media, with the majority of them being about their bodies and how they want them to look; and before I started my recovery journey, mine would have been like that too. I started thinking about what I want for the new year ahead and for the first time in.. well forever, I don’t know what my resolution should be if it isn’t about my appearance.

Here’s why I’m refusing to make my new years resolutions about my body:

• My body does NOT need to change to be beautiful. It already is.
• Resolving to eat less food/calories is stupid, food is fuel and we need energy to do all the amazing things we want to accomplish.
• Food is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it’s just food.
• Taking up less space does NOT mean I am a better human being.
• Losing weight does not solve all your problems.
• Spending hours in the gym trying to make my body into something it’s naturally not supposed to be is useless. And boring!

Here’s when it’s okay to make a new years resolution about your body:

• Deciding to get help with a medical condition or something you’ve been struggling with.
• Deciding to love your body.
• Resolving to develop a healthy relationship with food and exercise. And no I don’t mean deciding to go on a so-called ‘healthy’ diet that makes you hate yourself and feel guilty for eating!!

So, because I am not making any resolutions to do with changing my body here are some resolutions that I AM making:

• Riding my bike to work instead of driving so I become more confident in cycling. (I just got my first bike this Christmas!)
• Read more.
• Continue writing my blog, it’s by far one of the best things I decided to do this past year and I absolutely love it!
• Learning to love my body more for everything it is and does.
• Wearing clothes that I feel comfortable and confident in, regardless of what other people think.
• Raise some money for charity. (you can check out my JustGiving page for MIND here if you want to!)

Those are just a few of my many resolutions for the new year; and I just want to share with you how much I truly appreciate every single one of you for reading, commenting, liking and interacting with me on here. You have made my year so happy and I can’t thank you enough for all of your support! What’re your new years resolutions? Let me know if the comments!!

I hope you all have a great New Years Eve and a very Happy New Year! Love,

P.S. Thank you for voting for me and all of the other amazing bloggers nominated in the UKBloggerAwards!!

Easy Naughty Christmas Elf Ideas

It’s that time of year again!! And for loads of parents, this means not only Christmas shopping but also their ‘Naughty Elf’ will be making an appearance soon. Now, when it comes to said elf or elves, remembering to actually have them do something overnight can be a bit tricky.. especially when the Christmas drinks are flowing! So this year, I’ve put together 25 quick and easy ‘Naughty Elf’ ideas for you to do when you’ve simply forgot or haven’t got much time.

So, here we go!!

I had so much fun doing these and I’m sure you will too! My personal favourites out of these are:

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how inventive your ideas for the elves are because the whole idea behind the elves is to have fun at Christmas and to make your kids laugh.

It’s a short and sweet post this week, but I hope you enjoyed it! And feel free to use the ideas for your own elf/elves; let me know which ones are your favourites in the comments below!

Have a great weekend everyone and stay tuned for my Christmas Gift Guide next weekend! Love,

If you liked this post then it would mean the world to me if you could vote for me at the UK Blog Awards here!

I Tried BoomBod For A Week!

Happy Saturday everyone! This week my mum and I came across a product called BoomBod. I came across this when my mum sent me a link at around 10pm at night (that’s usually when she’s looking at the daily mail online and finds all sorts of hidden gems which are usually a load of old twoddle). The article that was linked said that BoomBod prevents bloating and helps you lose weight and inches. So, mum and I decided to order ourselves a seven day supply and put it to the test/review it.

Here’s what you get for a weeks supply, 7 x ‘Morning Energizers’ Sachets, 7 x ‘Afternoon Motivators’ Sachets and 7 x ‘Night Rejuvenators’ Sachets.

So.. I’ll take you through my experiences with BoomBod day by day.

First things first, THE PLAN: Take a sachet  30 minutes before every meal 3 times a day whilst eating normally and exercising as normal.

Initial thoughts and predictions: If this actually does something this could be great, however, it’s probably going to do nothing.

Day 1: I’ve just taken my before photos (which I’m dreading uploading but never mind !). First sachet down and I’m regretting doing this already.. They taste like those cystitis sachets you have to take when you’ve got cystitis – in other words, they taste disgusting imo.

It’s lunchtime and I’ve just realised that I’ve eaten way more than usual which is weird considering these are supposed to fill you up and make you eat less. Bit confused..

Ok, so it’s  been 2 hours since my ‘night nourisher’ with dinner and I’ve now also worked out and I actually feel full finally but also feel like a slob and bloated.. which is the opposite to how I normally feel after a workout!

End of day 1 thoughts: This is a load of rubbish.

Day 2: It’s first thing in the morning and I feel so bloated and like I’ve put on weight! Fingers crossed this goes away and I start feeling better later today or tomorrow.

Lunchtime has come and gone and I’m still eating loads more than usual; don’t know if this is because I’m really trying to test if this thing works or if it just happens to make me hungrier.

End of day 2: Mood is that I hate everything about this.

Day 3: Finally feeling better!! My ‘morning energiser’ has kicked in and I’m feeling good and FULL! About damn time too because I was really giving up hope on this thing..

I’ve had my lunch and it went okay, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the taste of these things.. But yay I’m less bloated so far!

End of day 3: Forget my earlier comment, the bloat has just come on..

Day 4: I’ve just taken my half way photos and it’s done absolutely nothing! No visible difference so far, but that is sort of what I expected.

Again I’ve eaten way more than usual because I’m super hungry and could happily demolish a bucket of chocolate right now.

End of day 4: Why am I doing this again?

Day 5: I’m feeling good, still not used to the taste of the sachets but at least I’ve only got a few days left!

I’ve noticed you definitely have to plan ahead when doing plans like these because if you’re eating out at any point, you need to get your sachet in in advance.

End of day 5: Not as bloated this evening so that’s a plus! Don’t think it’s the sachets doing this though..

Day 6: Yay! One more day to go!

Feeling super bloated today.. what is happening?! What happened to yesterday’s no bloat?

End of day 6: I’m so ready for this to be over!!

Day 7: IT’S THE LAST DAY OF BOOMBOD!! Hallelujah!

Ok, so I don’t think it’s done anything other than inconvenience me.. actually I know all it’s done is inconvenience me and made me hungrier than ever.

So, what am I taking away from this week of BoomBod and do I think it’s worth doing?

Well you tell me, here’s my before and after pictures:

Here’s before, during and after my week of drinking BoomBod sachets.

I will say, it did make me think about my food choices and plan ahead more, but in saying that, if you’ve read any of my earlier posts then you’ll know that I suffer with an eating disorder and half way through this week I realised that this is just playing into my disordered thoughts. It occurred to me that I’ve come so far with my recovery from my eating disorder that this is testing my determination to get better and I’m actually kind of happy that BoomBod did nothing for me because otherwise I’d be spending a fortune to just decrease my recovery progress.

My mum was supposed to do this with me but she kept forgetting to take her sachets so she’ll write up her thoughts on it when she does it in a few weeks time.

I want to say that BoomBod is a complete sham; but I can’t say that for certain as this is just my personal experience and everyone’s experience is likely to be different depending on your body, food and exercise habits. BoomBod just didn’t work for me, and I’m glad it didn’t overall because it taught me a lesson.

Can I just say, I nearly didn’t post those images on here because I am not comfortable in my own skin, but I think it’s important to shine a light on the fact that we all have body insecurities and it’s about damn time we embrace them and love ourselves. And if this helps anyone feel a little less alone with their body insecurities then I’ll know that something positive (other than learning a few lessons along the way) came out of this week!

Moral of the story is that you should do you. And if you want to try something new then go ahead, but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Doing this has just reminded me of how we need to forget all of the ‘rules’ about beauty and health that has been drilled into us from such young ages. Don’t conform to what all the stupid women’s magazines are telling you you should look like.

I hope this helped any of you thinking about taking or trying any diet supplements(I’ve also reviewed BooTea here)! And I just want to say that being what society has conditioned us to think as being ‘imperfect’ is actually what makes us perfectly imperfect, and I think that’s beautiful just like all of us (cheesy but true!).

Have a great week ahead everyone! Love,

I Took An Intolerance Test!

Hey everyone!! So this week I’m going to be talking to you about intolerance tests. Why you’re asking? Well because my mum and I have suffered with annoying coughs for months on end for no apparent reason (the doctors said it’s nothing) and we both suffer with psoriasis which can be triggered from certain foods, stresses and other things! And to be honest, we both love sending stuff off to get health results!

So, the labs we used are called ‘Test Your Intolerance Labs’ or ‘TYI Labs’ (very creative name I know..). Also, just for the record, this isn’t sponsored, but if any labs wanna send us away for health tests feel free!!

We bought the ‘essentials’ test, partly because they were on offer for £29 instead of £39 at the time. Also, if you recommend the test to a friend you get £5 off so that’s what my mum did for me so it was even cheaper which is also a bonus.

So how did the test work, well, it was super easy and wasn’t painful at all; all they needed from us was around 5 strands of hair, ideally from the root (so we gave a few more just in case). Then we had to send off the hairs to the lab’s address ourselves; we’d recommend putting your hairs in a small clear bag and writing your order number on it just to ensure it doesn’t get lost (we wanted to make sure we got our results as quick as possible so took all precautions to make sure it didn’t get lost!), and then we put it in an envelope with our order sheets and send them off!

After a few days we got emails to letting us know that the lab had received our samples and then after that it took about 10 working days for the results to come through, online it said between 7-10 working days for your results to come through so we were prepared for having to wait a bit. The good thing is that they email you your results so you get them as soon as they are ready in a pdf; and it helps the environment by not sending out paper!

I will admit that I was a bit impatient waiting for my results but that’s because I sent them off just before a bank holiday, so I had to wait a little longer for my results because we had a 4 day bank holiday which is obviously non-working days!

Once I got my results it was pretty surprising what I am intolerant to, and it was the same for my mum! We found out that foods and ingredients in foods we were eating everyday we are intolerant to and that may actually be causing our psoriasis to flare up and these annoying coughs!

Here’s my results:

My Intolerance Test Results

Here’s my mum’s results:

My Mum’s Intolerance Test Results

So, this is what we found out! Turns out my mum is intolerant to basically all plants near us which definitely explains why she has all year round hay fever. Also, turns out she’s intolerant to buttermilk and mustard which she eats ALL THE TIME. So that has been a fun thing to try and cut out for her..(I’m joking, it’s been a struggle but she’s finally used to it!). And we did find it funny how my mum is apparently intolerant to gin, just because she loves a G&T every now and again!

For me, we found out that I’m intolerant to pears, which I absolutely love! That was disappointing but I figured I could manage a few weeks without them to see what difference it would make to my health. I’m also intolerant to butter lettuce which was something I was eating nearly everyday as well as pears; so it’s no wonder why I was feeling bloated and coughing all the time alongside my skin flaring up. One thing I couldn’t believe was that I’m intolerant to cat hair; especially because I’d never even considered being intolerant to certain pets and I love cats and my boyfriends cat seems to love me!

After getting the info back, we decided that it’d be a good idea if together we gave up all of our food intolerances (well at least for a while as an experiment). For my mum it meant changing a huge amount of her diet, you’d be surprised at how many things mustard is in!! It’s in everything!! And it’s the same with buttermilk, also in everything! Gin and everything else was easy for my mum to cut out just because she wouldn’t have that everyday anyway, so that was no big deal. My mum began taking antihistamines in the morning to help with her other intolerances and that has definitely helped her a lot.

For myself, I cut out butter lettuce, which was pretty easy because there’s so many other salad leaves you can have instead! Pears were also pretty easy to cut out, but I definitely miss eating them because they’re so good when in season. Everything else on my food intolerances list didn’t really make any difference to me luckily just because I don’t like those foods in general (I’m a fussy eater, and for once it’s a good thing!). Obviously I’ve not cut out my boyfriend or his cat haha.. I love them both way too much to do that!

So… how has cutting these things out helped us? And how long did it take for us to feel a difference?

Well, for one, it took about 4 weeks for us both to feel a difference in ourselves. Cutting out these foods made a big difference for us both! For me, it actually stopped my annoying cough altogether! For my mum and my own skin, it definitely helped with our psoriasis flare ups, obviously it isn’t a cure for it (partly because there is no cure unfortunately) but it was something we found that helped a little. And now that I think about it, my mum hasn’t been coughing as much anymore either to be honest!!

So what should you take away from this weeks blog post? I would definitely recommend taking one of these tests if you’re suffering with a health issue that doesn’t appear to be caused from anything; and then trying out something like this to see if it makes a difference! And if it doesn’t, keep going to you GP until its resolved.

I think I’ve babbled on for long enough now so I’ll let you get back to your day; but I’ll ask you this, have you tried any health tests? If you have, which ones? And finally, do you want my mum and I to try some more to see what we find? Have a great weekend everyone!!

Love,

What happens when you realise you’re developing an Eating Disorder

*disclaimer – this could contain trigger warnings*

If you’re wondering why I’m writing this post, it’s because it’s something that I relate to a lot. If you’ve read my about me page or my previous blog post – Anxiety, Body Image Issues and Me you’ll know that I struggle with my body image and food. And this past week I finally went to my doctor to talk about it.. Which I will tell you right now, was terrifying.

So, what happens when you’re developing an eating disorder.. Well it’s not something you decide one day, like deciding you want to go for a bicycle ride. It’s something that happens over time, and often you don’t realise what is happening until it’s already developed.

There are several different types of eating disorders out there, and no two are the same. The most common ones you hear about are:

• Anorexia Nervosa
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Binge Eating Disorder

Although the above three are most commonly spoken about, the other eating disorders although spoken about less, are equally as important and common among people. The other eating disorders are:

• OSFED
• Orthorexia
• Pica
• Avoidant or Restrictive Food Intake Disorder

The first time I realised that something wasn’t quite right was just before Christmas 2017, it was cold outside, I was 7 pounds away from what I had decided was my ‘goal weight’ of 9 stone 7 pounds. I think it was the week before Christmas and one morning out shopping I realised that I was extremely anxious about having Christmas dinner. Anyone that knows me, knows I would happily live off roast dinners, and that Christmas dinner was what I looked forward to the most. So naturally, suddenly worrying about my favourite meal of the year sort of hit home that something was not quite right.

Here I am in one of my old t-shirts in November 2017, before I knew what was happening!

I think part of the reason I was anxious about eating Christmas dinner was because I didn’t have any control over what was in the food. Before I lost a load of weight I wouldn’t give a monkeys about what was in it so long as it tastes nice. Because I didn’t have control over what was going in the food I was worrying about how much fat, oil and what I considered ‘bad’ food I would be eating.

I think I was a little in denial about what was going on at this point, I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I refused to admit that to anyone.. Including myself. So, Christmas finished, I ate hardly any Christmas dinner (and I basically only ate the vegetables and about 2 roast potatoes!!) than I would normally would, and worked out to try and burn the food off.

When I eventually admitted to myself that my relationship with my weight, body image and food was not good, I spoke about it with my family, friends and work family and they all were very understanding and supportive with what was going on with me.

Some of the symptoms of eating disorders I was demonstrating were the following:

• Religiously counting calories and ‘syns’
• Binge eating and then feeling incredibly guilty
• Excessive exercising to deal with the guilt of eating
• Restricting what foods I do eat (images below are what I typically eat in a day)
• Feeling guilty for eating
• Immense fear of gaining weigh and not continuing to lose it
• Obsessive with making my own food
• Constantly looking at workouts, low calorie recipes
• Denial of hunger
• Starving myself in the evenings so I would weigh less the next day
• Weighing myself continuously, every morning, sometimes evening and sometimes even more than twice a day!
• Fatigue
• Obsessively checking how fat and unattractive I felt I looked
• Anxiety around meal times
• Distorted body image (this one is a weird one for me to write because I know I must have it, but I just don’t see how my body image is distorted because fat is just how I see myself)
• Seeing certain foods as ‘bad’ and ‘good’
• Feeling of having no control or complete control around food.

It’s a long list I know!! But the thing is, all of these things don’t just happen over night.. They develop over time. Now, although it’s a long list, a lot of these things overlap within each other, and the good thing is that I’ve realised that these behaviours are not healthy. Below is what I would eat in a typical day, and it’s not great, and by realising this, I know taking the first step to getting better is the right thing to do; which is why I am now getting help.

Small bowl of porridge with 1 strawberry and a small banana.

Pear with Strawberries and Fat Free Yoghurt.

Wholemeal Toast with Scrambled Eggs.

 

It was not easy asking for help. It was in fact incredibly nerve racking and it felt so weird talking about what was going on in my head. I felt ashamed and strangely guilty of my eating/weighing/body image problems, but after talking to my GP, family and friends, I felt much less ashamed, guilty and alone.

The thing with getting help for eating disorders is that you assume you have to visually look like you’ve got an eating disorder and have a BMI extremely low; but that isn’t always the case. I have now been referred over to a service for young adults with the hopes that I will be able to get some help and potentially see a dietitian in the future if wanted.

If you ever think that you might have an eating disorder you should always go to your GP and ask for help!

You may be wondering what happens when you go to the doctors about potentially having an eating disorder. Well, when I did go to my GP for an appointment I was asked to tell my story of what has been happening to begin with, after that, I let the doctor know what symptoms of eating disorders I was suffering with (I took a list of what I wanted to mention in with me so I didn’t forget, my lovely co-worker suggested that and it definitely helped!), then we checked my oxygen levels, temperature, weight, BMI and I have been booked in for some blood tests to see if I have as a result of my eating habits, become deficient in anything. After going through all of that we decided that it would be a good idea to be referred to a mental health service for young adults (I’m 22).

Once I came out of the appointment I felt so much better knowing that I was going to get the help I needed I would highly recommend it to anyone worrying about any aspect of their mental health.

Anyway, that’s enough jabbering!! I’ll do a follow up post when I am in treatment for my own issues and keep you all updated with what’s happening!

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead everyone!

Love,