Eine Bestandsaufnahme

While my german-speaking followers know this word, the rest of you might wonder what the hell that means.

I love the English language, so much that I'm studying it, but there's no way around the fact that German has much more words to describe stuff.

Bestandsaufnahme basically means inventory or evaluation of a situation.

The last six months were really difficult and it wasn't easy to get back on my feet. But here I am. What I wanna change is my lifestyle. I wanna be healthier and lose weight.

I decided to join Weight Watchers again. It worked well for me the last time and I must admit that it's too difficult for me on my own. I tried and tried, but it never worked. I stopped going, because it's expensive, but now I'll see it as an investment in my health.

I'm gonna try to keep you up to date with my progress. My husband and I will go together to the course.

So, my evaluation for now - I'm too fat and I hate it. I want to change it and I will try my best. For the workout part I will start Blogilates. :)

I hope you join me on my way. :)

Love,
Valerie

New Years Resolutions - Vegan For Fit & My Wedding

I guess we all think about things we wanna do better or finally master this year. For me, one of these wishes is to continue my weight loss project, I haven't talked about it for a while and the simple reason is - nothing changed.

I maintained my new weight which isn't bad, but there is still a lot I wanna lose, I wanna look perfect for my wedding. How wouldn't want that?

I got two books for christmas I wanted "Vegan for Fun" and "Vegan for Fit". I read a lot about it and was really enthusiastic.

The second is a 30 days challenge where you only eat the vegan recipes in the book and focus on your training. I have been a vegetarian for years, I also don't eat fish and I don't like eggs and I only drink milk when it's in hot chocolate or coffee. So I thought, hey that change can't be too hard.

I started three days ago and it's okay, but it's not as easy as I thought. I'm not good at cooking, so my fiancé helps, but it's kind of annoying. I like eating freshly made food though.

The recipes are good mostly, though especially the ones I was most hopeful for, didn't taste that good. A recipe I was excited for was the vegan Sauce Carbonara with zucchini noodles (no noodles, potatoes or things like that are allowed)

I don't like the almondmousse the sauce is made of and the first time I tried the raw! zucchini noodles I had stomache age the whole day.. He only puts a bit oil and salt on them, so I did it as well. They were hard and it made me feel sick. The sauce Bolognese wasn't bad, but that kinda ruined it. The second time I tried those noodles, I cooked them for about two minutes, that way it was okay.

A meal I liked was the Vegan burger:

Something he also swears by is Matcha -> a green tea powder, supposed to be stronger than coffee and healthier.

I'm sure it's healthier, but stronger.. no. At least, not for me. The first time I drank it, I was so disgusted by it, I had troubles drinking the whole cup. In my opinion, it tastes like milled seaweed.. I retried it every day though. There are three recipes with Matcha in the book. The Matcha chocolate-banana shake tastes nice, but only because the taste is burried underneath the other ingredients which aren't low in calories.

Another thing, you have to invest a lot of money to get started. You need a powerful mixer, he recommends and swears by the Vitamix, a genius product, but with a 600€ price tag on it. Nothing I can afford, I bought an immersion blender and it does the job, but not as flawless as the Vitamix. All the vegan substitutes and ingredients you don't have at home, have to be purchased as well. That alone cost about 80€. Since I counted a lot on the zucchini noodles, I got the vegetable noodle/spiral maker as well. Oh, and the Matcha powder cost over 20€ as well. All in all, I spent over 200€.

Everyone, who tries that challenge seems to be completely happy and has gorgeous results. It's quite disappointing that I appear to be the only person who's having problems.

At the moment I'm not feeling good, several health problems haunting me and making every day a challenge.. So probably it's too much for me to handle right now, I don't want to give up too soon, but for now I'll take it slow. I'm definitely frustrated and disappointed.

Some of you are curious about our wedding plans. I gotta tell you, it's been everything but a nice planning process. So much to factor in that's expensive. Originally, I wanted a small wedding with about 20 people, now we are at 50..

In two weeks is a wedding trade show in Vienna where you can see all sorts of products and services, photographers and catering companies i.e. We'll go there and I hope to get some input.

My dream wedding still would be in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by just a few close friends and family, but it's just too damn expensive. It's frustrationg to put it mildly..

That's it with the news on my life. *gg* I wish it wouldn't be like that. For the beauty posts awaiting you, a lot of reviews and I'll try to do more make up looks as well. :-)

Love,
Guinevere

Weight Loss Update

Sorry for the silence, but Uni is still eating up all my time.. Can't wait for the christmas holidays. *g*

I just wanted to give you a quick update. I, finally, found my rhythm again and am back on my Weight Watchers diet. In addition, I work out every day on my crosstrainer for about 30 minutes.

I lost 2 more kg by now. I've been slowly trying on clothes I didn't fit in for a long time and so far all of them fit. :-)

Here's a picture of a winter coat I bought about two years ago, but never wore cause it ended up being too tight.

I know, no make up, glasses and a messy room, but at the moment it feels like I'm just running from work to Uni and inbetween I walk Kronos. I'm too tired to care. *gg*

Nevertheless, it feels great to finally fit in this coat and I know there's still a lot to loose, but I'm on my way. :-)

Love,

Guinevere

Weight Loss Update

Hey guys,

I'm sure you've been curious about how I'm doing. Only okay, to be honest.

By now, I lost 11 kg and am holding that weight, which isn't bad, but I want to lose more. Life got in the way though..

With the death of our family dog and the black hole I fell in afterwards, I kinda stopped thinking about working out and counting points. I'm finally feeling better and am starting again to work on my body and nutrition.

I told you that I joined Weight Watchers and it really worked great, I constantly lost about a 1 kg a week, but I also payed 20€ a week for going there just to weigh myself..

There is an one hour course each week, but it's like a group therapy with topics such as "Stock your refridgerator right". I'm not the group therapy girl, so I usually skipped these courses and 20€ a week was too much just for using their scale.

I know how the system works, so I thought I can do this myself, but I must admit that as soon as I stopped going, it became much harder. The motivation and the "pressure" to succeed is gone and you get sidetracked way too easily. So in some way, I regret quitting, but as a student it's just so expensive..

It's twice as hard to keep going, but I'm really gonna try again, one just needs willpower and since I'm finally feeling better I'm positive I can do it on my own.

I'd love to copy and upload all the documents you need for using their system so you can try it without spending so much money, but I'm pretty sure I'll get sued by them if I'm doing that..

I decided to show you a picture of myself, not just of my face. It's not easy for me, cause I hate myself, but on the other side I think (or at least my therapist told me - yes I'm in therapy and not ashamed of it) it's important to be proud of each step as well.

This outfit is a big deal for me. You can't see it well, but I'm wearing trousers, something I haven't done for over a year, if not longer. My old one didn't fit anymore and now it does again. I'm also wearing this lovely coat I bought in Edinburgh which then only barely fit me, now it does. 

What do you think? Do you like me? 

Kronos does or I guess he's wondering why the hell I'm (for once) not focusing on him. Such a poor dog.. Maybe someone should call animal protection.. ;-)

Love,

Guinevere

Weight Loss Journey - My Background

This is the first post about the long journey I'm currently making. Before we go to the present, I thought it might be interesting to know the background. Especially, since mine is a quite unusual one.

I've never been one of those lucky girls who is naturally thin. It always was hard work. 

Ever since I can remember I wanted to dance and sing. The first time I saw the musical "Elisabeth" (I was 6) , I knew this is what I wanted to do. I started working for this dream and I think I did well. 

With 12 I really started to focus on my dancing skills and started taking classes. I went four times a week and with 16, I joined a musical company for teenagers. Ballet was my passion and my talent, after two years I already started dancing on pointe shoes. :-) On the other side I sucked at Hip Hop.. *gg*

My body was lovely, I found a picture which shows it best. It's from our school ball: 

I started taking singing lessons and everything I focused on was this future. Everything I did was for this dream and I loved it, but then all those plans were destroyed - just when I was about to start auditioning for the schools.

It started with a stinging pain in my ankles, it didn't get better so we went to the hospital and I got a horrifying diagnosis. Parts of my ankle splintered off and destroyed the cartilage, on both sides.

I was told I was the only person worldwide who has that kind of damage on both sides and I had two choices - operations or never doing any kind of sports again. I was 18, so the second option wasn't an option and so the journey started..

I had four big operations. The first one was to remove the splintered bones and take some cartilage for growing it in a laboratory if the pain wouldn't go away. Of course it didn't, so I had to get cartilage transplantations, on each side. I had one on each side with a 7 month break inbetween and the last one was to remove the screws.

Three times, I had to learn to walk again and had crutches and a wheelchair. 

All in all, this nightmare lasted two years.

Needless to say you gain weight when you're not allowed to move. I fell in a huge dark hole as well and since my fiancée ate crappy fast food all the time I joined him in doing so and I just had other problems than watching my figure.

After three years I was officially allowed to start doing sports again, but I was too scared. 

6 months ago, I started again. I tried dancing on a much lower level, but had to stop after two lessons. It broke my heart, after all, being able to dance again was what kept me alive during those times in the hospital and rehab. I tried horse-riding again (another hobby I had), but it didn't work out as well. 

I started with Power Plate and using my parents Crosstrainer. So far, my feet are okay with that. When summer really hits us, which it will do soon, I'll start swimming as well. 

So this is it. My background. Not a happy one, but it made me the person I am today. It makes you appreciate even the little things. The first time I was able to use the bathroom on my own again without a nurse was incredible.

Next time I'm gonna talk about my nutrition and what changed since I joined Weight Watchers.

Love,

Guinevere

My Weight Loss Journey, wanna come with??

Morning Lovelies,

In some way this has to do with beauty, so I thought you might be interested.

I recently started seriously trying to loose weight and get into my old shape. Quite a long way, but I already lost 4 kg/8 pounds on my own and three weeks ago I joined Weight Watchers and since then I lost an additional 3,40 kg/ about 6 pounds.

What I wanted to ask you: would you be interested in accompanying me on this journey?

It would mean I'd post weekly updates and tell you about my prehistory (which is quite a unique one), how I'm doing and so on. I'd like to share this with you, but I don't wanna bore you either.

So, let me know in the comments, okay?

And now to a totally random picture that we took this morning:

Most of you already know my cats - this is Chloe and she loves doing that.. Sometimes while I'm holding her (she actually seems to think she's a baby, not a cat..) she sneaks up on my shoulders.. *gg*

She loves being carried aroung and this viewpoint is one of her favorite ones, even though she's too large for it.. lol Obviously, she doesn't care. I love her so much!

Love,
Guinevere