A love letter to yoghurt

Back in May this year, I went to Crete for a week with Mr MFC for a much needed dose of vitamin D. Although, if I say I go on holiday simply for the sunshine, I would be lying. I go on holiday to indulge. I'm sorry. I spend 51 weeks out of the year trying to eat what is best, so sue me if I can't take a week off to enjoy myself.

The Greek food is amazing. I love noshing on gyros (shredded lamb with pitta bread and tsatsiki), moussaka and souvlaki (pork on a stick. glorious). When I'm not eating, I am normally lazing at a seaside bar working through a cocktail that is bigger than my head.

Mmm artificial colourings!

Without a doubt, my favourite Greek cuisine was the yoghurt. Every morning I was away, I would start my day with a big dollop of luxuriously thick yoghurt and lashings of gorgeous sweet honey. Mmmmmm yummy!

Now don't get me wrong, I have always really liked yoghurt, but recently I have really ramped up my affair, slurping down at least one portion a day.

Lidl do a 500ml pot of really smooth yogurt for 50p, and it's enough to last me about five days (none of this "consume within three days of opening" nonsense). I sometimes have it the Greek way, with yoghurt, but recently I have been experimenting with yoghurt and fruit. For example:

Yogurt with Blueberries

Yoghurt with Tinned Mandarins

Basically, any kind of fruit I have lying around, I'll just chuck it in and see what happens. I haven't been disappointed yet, it goes great with peach, nectarine, strawberries, pineapple...

I also love the fact that yoghurt is full of protein, so added with the fibre from the fruit you get a really satisfying snack/ after dinner treat! And the scale rarely tips 100 kcals. Bonus.

But enough about me, how do you take your yoghurt? ;)

Alibi

As a girl in my mid-twenties, I love to party. Don't get me wrong, I am not out EVERY weekend getting sloshed, but when the mood takes me, I can certainly get going with the best of them. The only problem is, I really get punished for my sins the next day. 

Even when I was a teenager, my hangovers were awful. I wouldn't be able to leave my bed, and when I did it would just be to go to the toilet to throw up. Unfortunately, it's only got worse as I have gotten older, and now even a couple of glasses of wine is enough to give me a fuzzy head the next morning. 

So I suppose Alibi was made for people like me. According to its website, Alibi is "the world's first PRETOX drink... [it] has been developed to prepare your body to recieve and process toxins quickly and efficiently."

I have seen it around for a while, but my default setting on all things ending in "-tox" is "cynical", so I never really felt tempted to give it ago. It wasn't until I saw it on offer in Holland and Barrett last week that I decided it might be worth a punt. 

I had a flat party last night, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to give this stuff a test run. I had the pomegranate flavour, which was sweet, light and refreshing. It was so tasty in fact, I would probably just have it as a regular drink. At 99 kcals, it's not exactly saintly, but it could certainly be worse. I chugged it down before I left the flat, and then just carried on with my night as normal.

The results? Well I had a pretty heavy night (as was to be expected), but I made sure to do what I usually do and break up the alcohol with some soft drinks throughout the night, and chugged down lots of water before I went to bed to prevent excess dehydration, which I know even on its own helps massively.

I woke up this morning with the expected fuzzy head, but it wasn't nearly as bad as what I was expecting. You could have been forgiven for thinking that I had only gone out for a couple, and I hadn't stayed out the entire night tanking vodka jellies, downing jagerbombs and dancing to godawful R'n'B (which I DID NOT do.... obviously...).

So, even though I have been quite cynical in the past, I must say that I will definitely be using Alibi again! I know that it's hardly a replacement for not partying hard in the first place, but life is for living! And a girl's got to have some fun, right? ;)

TL;DR

So once again, I have let a few months slip by without posting. Man, that's a nasty habit I am developing.

I know that excuses aren't really my style, but if I was going to make an excuse, my personal life has been a bit of a roller-coaster recently. Luckily, I haven't let my fitness routine slip, but unfortunately life pretty much drained me of any extra energy to do anything else.

Have you ever felt that your life is so exhausting, that you are happy with just existing? Not sure if that makes sense, but basically for a while back there, I would get up, work out, go to work, come home, and sit in front of the TV until I fell asleep, then start the whole routine again the next morning. That was all I had the energy to do.

I am not going to go into it, but basically pretty rough shit has been going on in my professional life. It wasn't anyone's fault, but it was a pretty tough situation that started a whole existential crisis about what I was doing with my life, was I doing the right thing, am I capable of doing more... and then when I thought I didn't have enough emotional energy to deal with anything else, BAM! Death hit. 

It was Mr MFC's grandad. I don't think he would mind me saying that it was expected, he had been ill for some time, but it didn't make things any easier. Losing someone close to you never is.

That was a couple of months ago now, and it's just now that I have started to feel like I am coming back to life again. I think I still have some way to go, but I feel now like I am taking positive steps to change things things, rather than just sitting back and letting stuff happen to me.

So, with all that chat out of the way, let me update you on the stuff that has been going on in my life since I chatted to you last:

• I went to Crete for a week and discovered my love for Greek yoghurt and honey
• I have run in not one, but two races!
• I have gained 6lbs in weight (but it might not necessarily be a bad thing...)
• My ankle is still giving me hassle, but not so much that I have had to stop the running. Thankfully, I am getting fitted for my own custom made orthotic which should make things even better!
• I have handed in my notice at my current job (see reference to "rough shit" above) and start my new job in two weeks. Yes, I am cacking it.

But enough about me, how have you been? :)