in sickness and in health...?

Geez, it feels like forever since my last post. To be completely honest, I haven't really felt like posting. Or keeping in line with my diet for that matter. I know there is no excuse for stuffing my face with chocolate chip cookies, white bread and Burger King, but that's exactly what I did the past week. Sure, I didn't miss a single workout, but who was I trying to kid, after everything I had eaten the cardio at best kept me around the same weight. 

And why on earth would I do that, one might ask. Well, I went to the doctor two weeks ago, due to this constant headaches that just won't leave me alone. He told me I produce excess adrenaline, which could possibly explain the searing pain in my head, but that I needed to get an MRI just to be sure. After all, headaches could be a symptom of brain tumors or aneurysms, so we needed to be certain. So of course I spent all that week acting like an anxious, nervous little girl that couldn't get her hands on enough crap food. The anticipation was driving me crazy, and it still is. I had the MRI done on Saturday, but I won't know if there's anything seriously wrong with me until next week. Talk about suspense.

This week I'm trying really hard to stay away from temptations, but I've always struggled with my eating habits the most under severe stress and anxiety. And the fact that I may or may not have some giant foreign mass in my head is the MOTHER LOAD of all things stress-inducing. But, I have committed myself to changing my bad habits and eating properly cannot be dismissed under any circumstances. So I've forced myself to talk about this and post it for the world to see (bahaha yeah right...at least for my one or two readers to see) so the sheer peer pressure will make my cravings quit. So that everytime I want to take a bit of that delicious fudgy brownie, my mind will come back to this post and I'll steer clear. 

Hopefully that will be enough. Otherwise I'm going to have to resort to hand-slaps everytime I even consider eating something I shouldn't. Like a Pavlovian conditioning of sorts.

So on to brighter topics, yes? This is today's outfit and hair, the latter inspired by Pinterest. I've seen the bottom-up braided bun around a lot, and I decided to give it a try. Here's the original inspiration:

Looks harder than it actually is, trust me

At first, I had a hard time braiding with my head upside down, but once you get the hang of it, it's easy peasy!!! Plus, it gets your hair out of the way and has people oohing and aaahing at it all day, so it gets extra points in my book. This is my result:

Oh, and I'm going to take this time to shamelessly promote my Pinterest account: Cristina R. YOU SHOULD ALL FOLLOW ME.

Thank you, and that is all :)

weight-in sunday

I know today is Monday, but I had the most hideous weekend and was unable to post until today, I'm so sorry!!! But I'll try to keep all my weight-in posts strictly Sundays, as planned. Anyhoo, on to the good news!!! I stepped on that scale yesterday not really expecting positive results, since last week I didn't strictly adhere to my diet plan. On Tuesday I dined out with my best friend and had a baguette (white bread!) with duck paté (fatty fat), and then on Wednesday I went to Starbucks and had an oats-and-honey muffin, which I thought would be alright, but turns out it had like 400+ calories!!! So yeah, not the best week diet-wise. 

So you can all imagine my surprise when I stepped on that scale and realized I had lost almost 1 kg! I went from 72.1 to 71.3, which is major for me. I am so close to reaching the 60's, I can practically feel it! To celebrate, I decided I would give two no-bake healthy cookies recipes a try. I am a cookie monster, so having to restrict myself in that area has always been a challenge, especially when my mother bakes the BEST chocolate chip cookies you will ever try. I had found these two no-bake cookie recipes on Pinterest a few weeks ago, and they looked rather yummy despite being flour and butter-less. 

I must warn you, they definitely do not look as tasty as the pictures on the original websites, but trust me, they turned out so darn good!!!

On the right- the frosty chocolate oatmeal cookie, on the left PB + chocolate chips cookie

The first recipe I tried can be found at the Oh She Glows blog (which has lots of awesome healthy recipes), and while mine didn't turn out nearly as pretty, they are just as tasty and perfect for a chocolate fix like she promises. I left out a couple of ingredients (like the chia seeds) and used semi-sweet Hershey's chocolate chips, but otherwise followed the recipe to a T.

Frosty No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies 

(adjusted to what I used)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup non-dairy chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)

1 large banana

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Directions:

1. In a microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips for about 60 seconds. WARNING: Be extra careful not to burn.

2. Stir the mixture until all the chips are melted, then mash up the banana and incorporate it into the chocolate.

3. Stir in the oats, the vanilla extract and the cocoa and mix well. 

4. Line a plate with parchment and drop around seven cookies onto it. Freeze for about one hour or until firm. 

Yields: seven small cookies at 80 calories each.

The second recipe I tried used a lot of the same ingredients, but added peanut butter. I got it from the Fitsugar website, and while I pressed mine into a cookie shape, while their pictures show more bite-sized pieces, everything else was unchanged. Oh, I also substituted the cup of sugar for Baking Splenda, to avoid all that sugar.

Healthy No-Bake Cookies

Ingredients:

1 banana, mashed

1 cup Splenda

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup nonfat milk

1/4 cup peanut butter

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups instant oats

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients minus the vanilla and oats in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often.

2. Let the mixture boil for one minute, remove from heat and let the mixture cool for one minute.

3. Add the vanilla and oats and stir well to combine.

4. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper and cool to room temperature.

This recipe yields around 15 small cookies.

My mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks for today!

The result was so yummy, I was forced to leave several cookies behind at my aunt's house -they all loved them! And now I have a yummy snack for the office today, one I won't feel so guilty about.

Next weekend I'm visiting my mother, so I'm thinking about making a new recipe. This time I'll have an oven and expert hands (aka my mum) around, so perhaps I'll give these babies a try. Don't they look incredibly amazing? My mouth is watering just from looking at them! I'll have to skip out on the powdered sugar of course, but I'm thinking Splenda will make them just as good.