Inside My “Womanhood Survival Kit”

Despite the somewhat ridiculous nickname I've given it, the collection of items that I've nicknamed my "Womanhood Survival Kit" has come in handy on many occasions since it's birth and I can't believe I went so long without one. It's basically a little makeup bag that I can move from bag to bag that houses useful things, and here's what's inside mine:

I have my top three most-used medicinal products in there: pain killers, flu capsules and throat lozenges. My job involves a lot of talking so I've found carrying throat lozenges to be a good move, I find myself needing these every now and then and it's nice to have them when you need them. I've also started carrying around flu capsules recently since there seems to be a lot of bugs going around at the moment and these are great since they have paracetamol and caffine in them. I've also got standard painkillers since I'm prone to headaches and get stomach cramps, speaking of stomach cramps...

I don't know many girls who don't carry around supplies for when mother natures monthly gift arrives. Toilets everywhere have them but they're so expensive in the machines and they're never anything good. I always have a few on hand just in case of an emergency.

I've got a small Soap & Glory Hand Maid Hand Sanitiser in there, it's my sanitiser of choice since it has that classic Soap & Glory scent to it that I love. Another hygiene-related item is a deodorant or body spray - the amount of times I've been to the gym and forgot to pack one is ridiculous so I've started carrying one in my handbag to avoid disasters.

For miscellaneous items I have a black biro pen (I like the Bic ones) and a bobble (hair tie for you folks in the States). When I decided that I wanted to get dieting I added in a travel-friendly container of sweeteners - I've been finding this great as it's meant I can cut back on sugar wherever I am. A few weeks back I had a dry-skin issue that was super uncomfortable so I've added a mini tube of the Pommade Divine Nature's Remedy Balm to the bag and that's been working great - after just one day of continuous use it eased off my dry skin almost completely.

I've actually got quite a few beauty products in there: I always keep a mascara in there for emergency teary eyed moments. A pressed powder and a concealer are always nice to keep in there for general touch ups. At the moment I'm carrying the Maybelline Instant Anti-Age The Eraser Eye Perfect and cover Concealer which is nice if a little too dark for me (more shades please Maybelline!) and the Maybelline Fit Me Pressed Powder which I prefer for touch ups since it has a little coverage in there.

I always have at least one lip balm on hand, at the moment I have the Arrow Boost Color Enhancing Lip Balm which isn't the most hydrating lip balm out there but the hint of colour it gives the lips is nice. For actual hydration I've also got the Malin+Goetz Mojoito Lip Balm, can you tell I like my lip balms sweet?

The final thing I have in there is a couple of the Olay Daily Facials Cleansing Cloths. These are so travel friendly since they take up no room at all and you just add water and all you need to wash your face is in there. I have a few friends that live a little further away than I'd like them too and these are useful for times when I'm planning to go for a day visit but end up staying the night.

So there we have it - does anyone else have something like this? I can't be the only one.

Tips For Eating Healthier: Meal Planning

When I decided to start trying to get back into shape (and I know round is technically a shape) I looked to Slimming World to be the healthy-eating push that I needed but getting used to cooking from scratch most nights was difficult at first. I have a schedule that's all over the place (shout out to anyone on a shift rotation!) and some weeks traditional meal-times just wasn't working for me. That's when I started looking into meal planning.

I must admit, going into it I wasn't sure; I thought meal planning would be really restrictive and that I'd struggle with not fancying what I'd planned for that meal, but it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be. Here's how I've been making it work for me:

1. Work out your schedule. A pretty standard tip I'm sure you'll agree, but one that's so important. If it's not just you that you're meal planning for take their schedule into account too: there's no point planning a meal for 2 people if the other one isn't home for that meal. I find this helps especially if you don't really have a set work routine - I work a shift rotation and my mum (who I'm meal planning with) also has a job with varying working hours but we meal plan together where we can.

2. Have a consistent day of the week to actually do your meal plan, I do my planning on Sunday's. I start by looking at what I have that needs using up, find recipes that involve those ingredients and then make a list of the things I need that I don't already have. Simples. If you want to get clever with this step, you can work your plan to have things that you can switch up in there too. For instance I like getting full chicken breasts because while my meal plan may have been for chicken kievs, if when that meal arrives I don't fancy them, I can marinate and roast my chicken breast, or I can cut my chicken breast into small chunks and have peri peri chicken pieces. I find having a well stocked spice rack helps with spontaneity which can help keep you from getting bored with your meal planning.

3. Plan things that actually work realistically with your schedule. My first week on late shifts, I was planning a proper evening meal and taking it to work in a Tupperware. Which meant I was waking up earlier to cook and I actually ended up hungrier and more tired for it. Now I'm more realistic and have a big breakfast before I leave and take pre-prepared fruit, veg and maybe a packet of pre-cooked meat or pasta with me to snack on and that's working much better than a proper meal on those shifts. Similarly when I'm on early starts I try to pre-prepare my lunch the night before so I can throw it in my bag and go in the morning.

4. Work your food shops into your plan. This is another area where I was messing up initially with my meal planning. I'd plan to something with fresh ingredients 3-4 days after my initial food shop and then have to give up on that plan as I didn't have time to go out and re-stock mid-week. We generally do the main shop on a Sunday and try to nip out again on the Wednesday or Thursday to restock if I can. If you know you're not going to have time to nip out for fresh ingredients mid-week, maybe plan to have fresh things like salads earlier in the week, and get your veg in later in the week by cooking up and freezing meals for days 5-7.

5. The most important thing to remember with meal planning is to not be too hard on yourself if you don't stick to it 100%. Things change, plans get switched up. Don't beat yourself up if you meal planned to have a healthy breakfast every day this week but woke up on the weekend in need of pancakes: you still had the healthy breakfast 6 days that week which (if you're anything like I used to be) is probably more than you normally would have.

Hope this helps!

I’m Back! Some Changes Around Here And The Beginning of My Healthy Living Mission

So... It's been a while. As much as I've been loving the blog and writing I've been investing time into some other things recently and found that my amount of free time was running pretty low. I'd been burning my candles at both ends and ended up crashing pretty hard and decided I needed to take a step back to re-evaluate some things. Which is really just a long winded way of saying I'm going to be switching up my schedule for the foreseeable future and will now be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays.

It's been a tough decision but I realised that I'd been avoiding the blog for a few weeks now because I knew I don't have the time or energy to continue producing 3 good posts a week. I didn't want to start posting sub-par content or become unpredictable with my schedule and thought reducing it down to just 2 posts a week might make things more manageable. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for myself but I have a full time job outside of blogging and trying to keep up with a relatively demanding schedule on top of my job was taking some of the fun out of it for me.

Anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, what have I been up to lately you might be asking? Trying to get myself back into shape, mainly. (I know that somewhat rounded is a technically a shape, but you know what I mean). For those of you who didn't know; I work in a call centre, which involves a surprising amount of being bribed with junk food and a very non-surprising amount of sitting down all day. That in combination with my range of very active hobbies (blogging and binge-watching TV shows on Netflix) and a diet of Domino's and freezer food resulted in a gradual but substantial weight gain.

Whilst, strictly speaking, I'm currently on a diet, I'm following the Slimming World programme and I'm hoping to use it's "food optimising" mindset to make some long-term healthy lifestyle choices. I've used this healthy-eating model before but fell off the band wagon when a combination of a severe lack of cooking ability and messy shift patterns made proper meal prep something that needed attention. I've also joined a gym and have vowed to go at least 3 times a week (we'll see). I'm planning to do a few posts about how I'm making healthy living work for me which should hopefully be helpful to my fellow shift-rotation friends who are struggling.

So that's it for today, I hope you don't mind that I've had to cut back on my posts a little. Thanks for taking the time out of your days to read my posts. See you on Friday!