The Things you Achieve when you DON’T Drink Wine…oh wine, how I miss you.

This is what I decided to do this fine Sunday…….

Create chaos? Start a corner shop? Create a piece for a still life drawing? (Fat chance, I struggle to draw stick men). No no…all good guesses but I was actually trying to create kitchen zen by making everything neat and tidy. And basically stop buying the same things over and over again because the ones I already have, and have no idea I have, are right at the back with the lentils that went out of date in January 2011 (who knew lentils could even go out of date, don’t dried things last forever?)

Now typically, as it is Sunday, what would happen is I would start and then about a quarter of the way through think….’hmmm, I know, I’ll have a nice glass of wine while I do this’. I would than continue until about three quarters was finished and then realise I was deathly bored, hate organising and just shove whatever was left back in and then go to the supermarket the next day and buy another packet of quinoa.

‘Oh quinoa, say hello to aaaaaaaallll your little brothers and sisters here at the back of the cupboard!’

BUT………LOOK WHAT HAPPENED…..

A Christmas miracle in January.

Ok, I should confess that the real miracle is that I have not had a sip of booze, alcohol, sweet, sweet wine…ooooh wine, how I love you, come back to me….. Oops, sorry, zoned out for a minute there. YES……I decided to quit drinking for thirty days. No, I am not doing ‘dry January’ I actually had never even heard of it (that should really tell you all you need to know about me) but decided on a whim that my tiny liver needed a nice, wee rest. And that is what is is getting. I am now on dry day 18 and it is actually not too bad, I mean my chocolate chip cookie intake has gone up by about 1000% and I look lovingly down the wine aisle at the supermarket but other than that it is just great. I may actually just keep going for a few more days when my final dry day is done.

Or you’ll find me rolling around on the floor in the wine aisle, hugging bottles of Rioja. It could go either way.

Natalie

Happy New Year…….now help me up would you?

Hello beautiful people!

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a great Christmas and festive season. I am having a lovely time in Dubai with the family. I have been eating and drinking like a man with no arms as we say in Scotland – which pretty much makes no sense but phrases never do – but I have also been running with my sister and to Crossfit. Speaking of which, check out the lovely shoes that I bought for myself!

Oh yes, I also bought that fuchsia lip gloss. 😘

I took them to their first Crossfit class the other day (the shoes not the lip gloss) and they thought it was awesome but since then my muscles have not been quite so excited. My 92 year old Gramps is currently getting off the sofa faster then me and you can tell whenever I ‘powder my nose’ because you can hear me groan as I lower myself (with support from my arms) to a siting position, where I then spend about five minutes wondering if I am too old to shout and ask the Mama to help me back up. Then yesterday, as it was the first of January, my sis and I decided to go for a nice 8km run along the boardwalk. ‘It’ll loosen you off’ she said. LIAR. The first km was agony, I could barely get my legs to move, it was 30 degree heat beating down on us, and then the last two my thighs decided to take a little nap but we made it in the end, albeit for a less attractive final photo than I would have liked, but then who looks good at the end of a boiling hot run!??

The good thing is the sea was a delicious temperature so we went for a little paddle afterwards to cool down. I am trying not to think about the freezing cold Madrid weather I’ll be returning to next week, which normally would be ok because I feel it gives me an excuse to drink red wine (no? Not a good excuse?) BUT I am going to do thirty dry days when I get back to kick off my 2015 fitness mania so there is no wine consolation prize this year. Oh dear. I’m going to have to become productive. SHOCK. HORROR.

Anyway kids, I must be off, it is Daddy Daughter day today and we have a trip on the creek to be getting on with.

I wish you all the best health and happiness for this new year!

Natalie!

How has your festive season been?

Chilli Flakes, Marry Me?

Hello beloved readers!

Here is a random fact for you – today is Sunday and I am not hungover! Whaaaaaat? I know! I went dancing last night until 4.30am and today I feel fine! Christmas miracle? Nooooo, it is only the 30th of November – I think it is because I danced my ass off all night long. Fun times.

So in my Sunday non-hungover-productivity I have made my lunch and dinner and lunch for the next three days…..unbelievable! Literally the most organised I have ever been in my life (and I am a PA, alarming? Perhaps). So I thought what better to do than take loads of (very similar) photos of it and share it with you all……..

Stir fry central. It all starts with a lot of garlic and ginger…..

And then my new, personal favourite, coconut oil……

I almost feel like this should be a song, don’t know why, maybe if have had too much sleep.

Anyway, moving on. Then you add in a delicious mixture of prawns and salmon……

Cook it for a little while and then whack in the stir fry veggies. I wanted to add in water chestnuts but I realised I don’t have a tin opener so that went straight out the window…oh well, next time……

Then, the master ingredient – CHILLI FLAKES (dun da da dun….trumpets, music , drumroll). I have a serious dependency on chilli flakes. Seriously, I would actually put it in my cereal if I ate cereal. My family are terrified of my addiction – they like it when I cook for them but as soon as I move to even look for the chilli flakes it is like they turn into commandos and just appear out of nowhere screaming ‘nooooooooo and I feel like this happens in slow motion. Maybe it does maybe it doesn’t. The point is, yes I did actually have one, add chilli flakes – maybe just not as many as me unless you actually enjoy that sensation where you think ‘a Shake more of the chilli jar and I would be calling the fire brigade right now to use their power hose on my burning lips’.

Then you just add in your noodles, stir it all about and that is it! I just ate it and it was delicious, I am not lying.

I also made the exact same thing but with chicken which is also yummy. I love how the coconut oil makes it a little bit Thai tasting.

On a totally different note, a friend of mine challenged me to list my top five workout songs and I was really, really stuck. It was so hard. In the end I went for:

DMX- Up In Here
LL Cool J – Phenomenon
50 Cent – In Da Club
Ice Cube – You Can Do It
J Cole -God’s Gift

Even now I can’t stop thinking about what revisions I would make.

Anyway, tangent over – take another look at my delightful stir fry…….

And that’s all folks! Have a wonderful Sunday!

Natalie

So what songs would you choose?

I Can Barely Sit Down…..

And tonight is spin class.  Man alive.

Let me share my pain with you all dear readers.  Yesterday after Crossfit I made the mistake of telling my physio the truth: that my glute and thighs were killing me, that every time I squat (which does seem like a strange thing to say actually now I read it, hmmm – don´t squat? – get out)

Anyway, yes…every time I squat I get a pain down my right glute into my leg.  So what did he do?  that´s right, he tortured me.  He dug his viscous little fingers and his elbows into my giant glute muscle and ignored my screams.  I believe he actually said ´suck it up´no joke.

But it´s ok…I feel much better today.  Oh no wait, I am in agony.  Some lady brushed her bag gently against me this morning and I had to resist the urge to punch her.  It hurts to the touch…..it hurts without the touch and in one hour I need to go to spin class……smallest, hardest, least comfy seats ever.  Seats that make you sure you will never be able to have children and to all my girls out there….seats that make you scared to pee after class……you feel my pain right?

Well, faced with this terrifying prospect I thought over my options:

1. Don´t go…..Not gonna lie, it is a good plan but then I remembered that my favourite Christmas dress is still an inch from doing up, it is five weeks til Christmas and I am going for wine and pizza with my friend tonight.

2. Look into adoption.

3. Dehydrate myself after class so I don´t need to pee til tomorrow…..something tells me this is not a good idea but I just can´t quite put my finger on it….

4. Don´t sit down at all during class –

I´m sorry.  It just had to be done.

So these are my choices – What would you do?  Help a sister out with some suggestions because let´s face it – this isn´t the first time this has happened and I doubt it will be the last.

And on that cheerie thought……Happy Tuesday kids!

I hope your arse hurts way less than mine,

Natalie

 

 

 

I Climbed a Rope and I Liked It……

Taste of her cherry chapstick.  Oh no, wait….that is something else.

I DID IT.  That’s right kids…the elusive rope climb….is now my bitch.  Kind of.

Remember I posted (about ten years ago now) about how I had a whole new take on the world?  And how I was embracing feeling nervous and out of my comfort zone and loving it because I realised I can do all kinds of things I didn’t know I could?

(If you missed that highly entertaining, informative and thought provoking post you can re-read it here )

Well…the first time I climbed a rope I didn’t want to.  I thought, ‘I’ll never manage that, I’m going to look stupid’  and what happened?  I hung there like Tarzan’s 99 year old Granma and as for the looking stupid – with my newfound knowledge I’m sure no one thought I looked stupid except me.

The second time I climbed a rope I had my new mentality fully working and so thought ‘Let’s do this…what’s the worst that can happen?’ and what happened?  I got the hang of how to hook the rope but didn’t get too far.  How did other people react?  Amazingly supportively.  There was a lot of ‘Natalie, you’ve almost got it, you need to do this and that and the next thing…try again!  You can do it!’  I didn’t get much further but I felt good about it.

LAST NIGHT people.  Last night was the night.  I got it!  I can do it!  I didn’t touch the ceiling but I was literally 2 inches away and when I got back down everyone gave me a round of applause!  WHY I LOVE CROSSFIT right there.

So there you have it.  I laugh in the face of the rope (not out loud though, people would think that was crazy) and I am actually super excited about getting to try it again.  My how things can change.

On that healthy note….I’ll head off for my belated, work, birthday lunch.  Mexican food and beer, what could be healthier than that?!?!

Happy Friday kids!

Natalie

What have you mastered recently that you didn’t think you could?

A Massive Recap

WARNING: this is going to be a very random post and I will talk about aaaaaall kind of non related things…just so you know! ☺️☺️☺️

Wowzer…….where have I been for so long? Poor wee blog got all abandoned but I didn’t forget about any of you and am back now! I must confess, that with everything that has been happening my blogging will probably not go back to its old rhythm but at least I will be back. That’s the main thing, no?

So what’s been happening? Well, remember I was in Murcia doing a course? No? Ok, not to worry I forgive you….. So, I went to Murcia to become a life coach or, more specifically, an NLP Practitioner and Coach and life has not really been the same since. I came back and just felt like everything had kind of fallen in to place. I am still in my day job but setting up my coaching practise and as soon as my website is up and running I will put the link on here in case anyone is interested in seeing what it is I do now.

So what is so different? Hmmm, excellent question if I do say so myself. Basically, I feel the happiest I have in a long time, I feel like I am going in the right direction and I am not scared anymore of getting things wrong or looking stupid. My attitude has just changed like someone flipped a switch. I want to be out of my comfort zone, I want to do the things that made me nervous before because if I don’t it seems like life goes by and you never become the best version of yourself and I want to be the best me ever.

Holy moly, that sounds a bit odd…I promise I haven’t joined a cult (Crossfit isn’t a cult people).

Which brings me nicely to a good old example; I hated any movement you received in squat because, well, squats hate me but when I went to my first CF class after the course I wasn’t scared of it anymore and do you know what happened? I fell over! I tried it with a light weight and I actually did it and so I thought ‘you are amazing Natalie, add more weight’ (I was having a modest day) so I added more weight, tried again and it was too much – the bar went forwards, I went backwards and thank god I’ve been working on my JLo ass is all I can say about that…..barely felt a thing. The best part though? I wasn’t embarrassed, I didn’t care because I tried. I tried something I had always been afraid of and I failed and it wasn’t a disaster and in a wee while from now I will nail that bad boy squat.

So needless to say, I am absolutely loving CF these days. I think about going and at no moment do I think ‘oh, I love it so much I just hope we don’t have to do XXXXXXXX’. I think ‘I wonder what thing I can get slightly better at today’. Which also brings me nicely to the fact that on Thursday they made us do 6 minutes of sit-ups. If you broke you had to do 10 superman, 10 hollow rock and then get back to it. No one broke! Not one person and there was no way I was going to be the only one. So, afterwards I was feeling all smug until later that night….and the next day…..and the next day…..and still today….when I realised I can’t turn over in the night in bed without waking up from the sore muscles…..but it feels kind of good too. Plus, I am doing a lot of this to help ease the pain…….

It seems to be working so I will keep it up. (Do you like how I got my Swiss ball in the picture too?)

And that my friends, is that for now!

Happy Sunday!

Natalie

Ps.have you ever had one of those moments when everything just seems to click into place?

Workout Of (maybe your last) Day

Man alive. Or dead actually, depending on how you want to look at it.

I haven’t been to Crossfit for just under two months and today I rock up and see all of my least favourite things on the board….pull-ups (uuuuuggghh) front squats ( cry cry cry) and so it goes on.

Now, I know that some of the people that read my blog (thanks btw) aren’t into CF and couldn’t care less about WODs or how messed up our hands are (and you wonder why we are so pleased with ourselves about it too) so I am sorry in advance but I HAVE to share with my fellow Crossfitters how awful (and yet really fun) today’s WOD was. So here it goes……this is what those b*stards made us do:

30 back squat
30 pull-ups
20 shoulder to overhead

30 front squat
30 pull-ups
20 shoulder to overhead

90 seconds burpee box jump
90 seconds double unders

600m run
40 thrusters
20 chest to bar

At this point I’d like you to imagine a monkey hanging from a branch, now imagine it is an old age pensioner monkey that has had two shoulder replacements and you are pretty much starting to understand what I look like attempting to do pull-ups.

Disclaimer: I do not have a tail and/ or am I furry. Just to be clear.

So that was that. I staggered home and am now about to eat my amazing dinner I just made.

Happy Monday kids!

Ps. I have only met my neighbour once…it is inappropriate to go round and ask him to help me get dressed in the morning when I can’t move my arms right? I thought so….just checking. I’ll be working in my PJs tomorrow then.

Oh Green Juice…..how I missed you…..

Day two back from my holiday and course (which I shall report back on later) And I have missed my juice so, so much. I never want to be parted from it again! I am going to take my juicer everywhere with me in future…..like a giant weirdo with a juicer in their backpack but it is what it is….juice rocks.

Cartagena (the original one!)

So for those of you who have never been and/or didn’t know, there is a Cartagena in Spain. Hoenstly! There really is – look…this is where the picture would be if my hotel internet wasn’t useless

It is really quite nice and has a beautiful, old, Roman theatre and since I had a day off from my course I visited it with my friends.

I should probably mention at this point that Tuesday was kind of a challenging day – mainly because we decided on Monday night that it would be a good idea to celebrate the end of module one of our course and celebrating is not something I have ever really been able to do on a small scale. So basically Tuesday morning equalled an immense hangover and an inability to stay awake when in the car, which further resulted in total surprise on my part every time we arrived somewhere. It more or less went like this:

I get in the car
I close my eyes
Ten seconds pass
I open my eyes
We are there
I announce very loudly “we’re here!!!”

Best. Car. Journeys. Ever.

If it wasn’t for the fact there were witnesses to the contrary I would be sure I had harnessed time travelling ability.

Let’s just wait and see how my five hour train journey works out next week.

Anyway…how I digress. We went to Cartagena which whilst quite pretty is a little small and so promptly time travelled to the beach nearby which had beautiful, clear blue water. I stared at fish, I swam around, did a good Little Mermaid impression, ate an ice lolly then had two beers, felt much better and we went home.

When I get back to Madrid and my marvellous fibre optic internet I will show you all some photos. In the meantime I will continue to curse and throw things whilst trying to upload to the blog.

And my final point is……….

Still sticking to my workouts even though I am in a hotel with an ancient gym and in classes about 11 hours a day. High five to me?

Well, tomorrow is sea swimming first thing so a girl needs to get her beauty sleep.

Happy Thursday kids…nearly the weekend!

Natalie

Has anyone been to the other Cartagena?

There’s Always One

….of those guys that walks into the gym totally inappropriately dressed that starts to ‘work out’ and you just wonder what is going on?

Well that was me today: all alone in the gym (or what passes for a gym in this hotel) doing my circuits and in walks a guy wearing flip flops, shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses. I actually thought he was just checking it out for another day until he took off his flip flops and t-shirt and started looking ‘seriously’ at the equipment. At this point I was aubergine coloured, sweating like a maniac and jumping around like a kangaroo on speed but my, what I consider to be, serious working out didn’t deter him from randomly lifting weights, doing half assed push ups and generally being strange WITHOUT WARMING UP. He just got half naked (feet included) and started doing things.. Then after about 20 minutes he left.

And that was that.

Isn’t there always one?

And the shirt taking-off? Really? Really? Why?

Natalie

Ps. Do these things happen to you too or only to me?