My first homemade green smoothie

Posted by IrieDiva on Oct 6, 2011 in Health | 1 comment

I need to get more greens in my diet. Don’t we all? I remember as a child my grandma used to try and get me to eat these ice cubes she froze with calaloo and milk and I dunno what else. I thought they were the most disgusting thing on earth, unless she put lots of condensed milk in it. So she made a deal with me to sweeten it up. I guess yo gotta do what you gotta do when it comes to kids.

Fast forward to me as an adult in a time where green smoothies are “cool” and all the health nuts are doing it. I’m well aware that my diet is sorely lacking in greens. Apart from the few leaves of lettuce I put in an occasional homemade burger, there’s really nothing else green in my life. I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you why we need to eat at least 3 cups of leafy greens per week…but I will anyway.

New progress dress and HCG cycle one results

Posted by IrieDiva on Sep 28, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

Lord…my HCG results were just watch the video. But before that. As I said in my last video, it’s a good idea to have a “progress dress” to use as a measuring stick. I need to take some pics in those jeans to see if my 15lbs made any difference but I now have an official progress dress. The sleeves on this dress are too tight and it can’t zip all the way up on me. Hopefully if I do decide to go ahead and do another cycle of HCG, I’ll be givng away the dress as it will be too big. It’s a size large anyhow and my aim is to be a medium at least.

Vegetarian for a day….or at least…a meal

Posted by IrieDiva on Sep 4, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

Deneice Falconer

Ex-colleague turned friend of mine Deneice calls herself an earth strong foodie who’s a vegetarian and on a quest to teach us how to live off the earth around us. A quick glance at her twitter timeline reveals how passionate she is about this topic as she tweets resources daily that confirm how much clean eating sans meat is good for us and ways that we can incorporate it in our lives. I told her recently that she really should anchor all this info on a blog and she responded that she started to but fell off the wagon…I’d like to think I inspired her to start blogging again and hopefully she’ll keep it up.

Recently she invited me, or rather I invited myself, to a little show and tell she had for a few of her friends. She says people ask her all the time what exactly is it that she eats and how to prepare vegetarian dishes and so she thought it would be a good idea to share her knowledge in an intimate little cooking class. She was excited to have landed an industrial kitchen to use but boy the heat! Working in an industrial kitchen everyday is bound to make people miserable. It was unbearable. I was drained for the entire day but I’m really happy I went.

On her menu for the class was:

A shake a day keeps the cholesterol at bay

Posted by IrieDiva on Aug 22, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

my fave kind, old fashioned

When I used to work a 9-5, I brought my oatmeal daily to the office to have as my breakfast. I cup of oatmeal, preferably the hard old-fashioned kind, some skimmed milk powder and some raisins for sweetness. When I got to work I just added water and went to town. It kept me from buying fried dumplings with gravy or fried fritters and ackee or curry chicken. Or Burger King breakfast with hash browns. YUM.

This was a win for my pocket as well as my health. Now that I work from home, oatmeal has lost its appeal to me. Dunno why but I have the same box I bought in May when I quit my job right now on top of my freezer. I prefer to have cereal when I’m home. The problem with cereal is that its got a lot of calories and not the same filling effect, and I imagine oatmeal has much more nutrients as well. My husband came for a visit recently (we currently live on two different islands) and reminded me that oatmeal is quite flexible. He loves him some oatmeal too. He made a shake with it every morning. I love me a shake!

Donning a Swimsuit

Posted by IrieDiva on Aug 21, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

So these past two weeks have been a whirlwind of a time for me and my family. There was lots of food and fun times involved and I threw all diet rules through the window. At some point along this journey I’ll find a comfortable spot where I can be in a 5 star resort and not eat all the decadent things laid out before me….but this was not that time.

There’s a swimsuit that my mom made for me a couple years ago that has never seen the light of day on its own, I’ve always been in some kind of coverup. I decided that this was the trip that I’d be brave enough to wear a swimsuit and nothing but. Its black, and you know what they say about black, and it covers all the right areas.

Vodka, chocolate cake and 5lbs…its the holidays

Posted by IrieDiva on Aug 2, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

Dieting on holidays is not fun. Well…its non-existent. Weekend after weekend I have been unable to stick to my regimen completely and this past holiday weekend was the worst of the lot. KFC, Burger King, ting and vodkas,  all inclusive parties, chocolate cake. Sigh……………

It makes everything else looks like a waste. 5 days on and two days off…..I’ll still lose weight right? Because it seems that I’ve been on the 5/2 diet, not the HCG diet. I only have 10 doses of HCG left before my regimen is over and I enter maintenance mode. I did say that I will not repeat the HCG diet and that still stands. Lifestyle change…not a diet. Moderation, not starvation. More clean eating, more home-cooked, more veggies, less eating out, less desserts, less drinking. Oh, and much more exercise. That’s the way we’re going here.

I did at some point make it down to 175 and how glorious it felt. It didn’t last long though and as of right now I stand at 180 again. Sigh. It was a horribly decadent weekend. Next time I’ll try to go half in, not all the way in. I was like fck it, I’m on vacay and threw out all my rules. That was not a good idea. I could have had jerked chicken instead of KFC, I could have passed on the chocolate cake. I could have had cran-vodkas instead of ting and vodkas. It was an all-inclusive party, I wasn’t gonna not drink.

But being back at 180 is lesson well learned. Seeing progress and knowing I was acting counter to that isn’t a great feeling. So I’m back on my regimen and trying to go hard this week to at least get back to 175. I was looking and feeling great in my little layered black and white party dress (above) on the beach and I want to continue this progress.

Today so far I have had strawberries and a bowl of cereal. I will be having chicken and corn for dinner and more strawberries for my second snack (if I feel hungry again after dinner) I will hopefully make it out to the park for my 3 mile walk/jog But if not, I will be doing my Jillian Michaels work out in a few minutes….just in case. All this week I plan to do both work outs daily to try and hit back my 175 mark.

Inspiration: 3 Bebe dresses. I love the Bebe brand. Don’t own one….working my way into one soon tho!