The Body Book

A while ago I read Cameron Diaz’s The Body Book, which is ‘the Law of Hunger, the Science of Strength, and Other Ways to Love Your Amazing Body’. It’s divided into three sections: Nutrition, Fitness and Mind.

I personally found the book incredibly inspiring and interesting (oo alliteration). Her voice throughout it is friendly and relatable and the way she describes the science behind what we eat, how we move and our mentality towards health and fitness makes it very easy to follow and genuinely fun to read. She really focuses on the importance of positive body image and self-acceptance, exclaiming in the first few pages 'YOU ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN YOU HAVE EVER IMAGINED'. She writes that The Body Book is 'a guide to accepting what you have and loving it with everything you’ve got, to appreciating how incredible this physical vehicle is. It’s a guide to maximizing your strength and endurance so that your body can take you everywhere you want to go in life: to all of your success, to the love of your life, to your passions and adventures.' To me this is a really important message in a world where women are constantly expected (and expect themselves) to look like the airbrushed, photoshopped, unrealistic pictures we are presented with on a daily basis.

What is great about the ‘Mind’ section is that the psychology behind bad health habits is addressed. I think by finding out why we do certain things and why it can be so hard to form new, healthier habits is firstly quite fascinating and secondly pretty fundamental if you want to change the way in which you eat, exercise and think.

The Body Book also provides loads of helpful but also really easy tips, which are all tried and tested by Cameron, they’re her personal habits for staying healthy. For example, her idea of filling up a big bottle of water at night and leaving it by the sink to drink as soon as she wakes up in the morning is a really great idea – and it’s so simple. That’s another thing I like about this book.. other than the scientific facts collected from extensive research, the information regarding tips and tricks for staying on track with health are all things that Cameron says have helped her personally – the book doesn’t say that one thing is right for every person, but encourages the reader to find what works for them, and in this way it doesn’t come across preachy and annoying like many health-related books and articles can do.

If you need some inspiration to get healthy, or just want an interesting read, I really recommend picking up a copy of The Body Book. I honestly couldn’t put it down.

Hank Burger

Tucked away on Rue des Archives, the Marais, my friend Georgie and I found this little organic vegan burger restaurant, Hank (Have a Nice Karma), so we obviously had to give it a try.

It's really tiny, only fitting about 10 people at a time, but Georgie and I managed to get a table quite easily (I don't think the demand for vegan food in Paris is extremely high...), but they also do burgers to take away if you don't want to wait for a table.

All the food is organic and vegan, including the mayonnaise! Georgie had the 'L'allumé' burger, which was a veggie burger with roasted peppers and bbq sauce, whereas I had the 'Tata Monique', which had a tomato and basil sauce and black olives. And we both had chips :D Although this food is great because it's fresh, homemade and totally vegan (with a gluten-free bread option for the burger buns), it's not a typically healthy meal, especially with chips... BUT it's cheat day Sunday so we decided to treat ourselves, and it was so worth it.

I definitely recommend this to any vegans/veggies in Paris, or to anyone who wants to try out something a little different to a normal hamburger.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Let's Run Paris

Salut salut!

I've been wanting to join a running club for a while now, so I thought moving to a new city would be a great opportunity to join one as I obviously don't know the good running routes and it's a fun way to meet new people.

I found Let's Run Paris on meetup - a really good website where you can find so many different clubs..I'm going to investigate a yoga group soon.

I did my first run with Let's Run Paris last night. It was a 10k in the pouring rain which I know doesn't sound hugely appealing but it was great, the people were all really friendly and I got to see some pretty parts of Paris I hadn't been to before.

So, if you're in Paris (even if it's just for a week) and love to run, I really recommend joining. It's free and there are runs organised several times a week - you just have to look on the meetup site or join their Facebook group for details.

PARIS

I've moved to Paris!

This is a photo I took from the restaurant on the 6th floor of the Pompidou Centre - I definitely recommend dinner there - Amazing food and an amazing view, what could be better!?

My mum and I went to visit the Sacré Coeur in Montmartre. I couldn't believe how blue the sky was.. and the walk up to it was a great little work out!

...Just for ten months. I've been here almost a month now and am already in looove with this city. Before I came out here I was a little worried about how I would cope being a vegetarian - I've always found France to be the least veggie-friendly place. However, I don't know whether it's because Paris is a capital city and so has more of an international influence than other parts of France or whether it's because times have changed since I used to visit when I was little, but I've actually found that there is so much choice for vegetarians and also vegans when eating out.

So, I'm now making it my mission while I'm here to find as many health related / vegetarian and vegan friendly shops, restaurants, cafés and juice bars as I can to try and keep up a healthy lifestyle - with the occasional pain au chocolat or macaroon thrown in there...

I'm incredibly lucky to be living in le Marais, which is really central so everything is so easy to get to! Including this amazing fruit market just down the road from me which sells the most delicious fruit and veg ever - it all tastes 10 times better than the supermarket produce.

Such a smiley lady at the market!

For anyone visiting or living in Paris, this market is open on Saturdays from about 10am til 2pm and is really close to Hotel de Ville metro station.

Nama - Vegan Raw Food Restaurant

On Sunday I went to Nama, a raw vegan restaurant in Notting Hill, with three of my lovely friends Lucy, Frankie and Georgie. This was my first trip to a fully raw vegan restaurant - very exciting!

Having been a vegetarian pretty much my entire life, it was a new (and really amazing) experience for me to be able to pick absolutely anything from the menu - usually I just give it a quick scan for the little v sign.. Anyway, so Nama had me at the menu. There is a huge choice of a range of different foods, from wraps and salads to pizzas, curries and spaghetti dishes - and ALL the food is unprocessed, free from dairy, wheat and refined sugar.

I had the 'Italian Pizza'. The base was made from courgette and walnuts and it had the most delicious tomato sauce topped with a nut and seed 'cheese', caramelised onions, mushrooms, olives and sun dried tomatoes. It was amazing.

The Italian Pizza

Frankie had chilli which was made from walnuts, carrot, mushroom and pepper, with guacamole, vegan sour cream and corn chips - so yummy!

Frankie's chilli

Lucy and Georgie went for zucchini pasta with tomato sauce, caramelised onions, sun dried tomatoes, olives and mushrooms which was also really yummy (I tried them all..)

Beautiful Lucy with her zucchini pasta

After my unprocessed, raw, vegan pizza I felt like something sweet so I had a lovely little bottle of chocolate nut milk. Frankie ordered the chocolate ganache tart which we all had a little taste of - it genuinely tasted better than any other sugar-filled, processed chocolatey tart I've had in the past; the coconutty base made it incredible.

Chocolate ganache tart

Gorgeous Georgie with her chai tea, almond milk and coconut sugar (she was obsessed with that teapot)

I definitely recommend Nama to anyone who is interested in trying out some amazing raw vegan food!

Oat & Banana Energy Balls

I made these a while ago when I did the London to Brighton bike ride to keep my energy up for the 56 miles!

They're really quick and easy to make and you can either bake them or eat them raw, both options are really yummy.

This recipe makes about 15 energy balls but obviously this depends on how big/small you want to make them.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of gluten free oats
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 2 ripe bananas
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• 1 tsp Organic Burst's Maca powder (for an extra energy kick)
• Handful of dried cranberries or any other dried fruit (optional) 

Method

1. Mash the bananas into a bowl
2. Add all the other ingredients and mix well until it forms a doughy kind of mixture
3. Shape the mixture into bite-size balls
4. To bake place on a baking tray greased with a little coconut oil
5. To eat raw, refrigerate them for about an hour

These were a great snack during the ride as you can just pop them in your mouth. Also it's a common misconception that snacks that are high in refined sugar like haribo and many types of cereal bars are good for energy - they are at first but then because of all the sugar you are likely to have an energy 'spike' and then crash after a little while, which is not ideal.

Enjoy!

Home-Grown Strawberries

These are my home-grown strawberries! There's nothing better than knowing exactly where your food has come from, that it's completely organic and that you've grown it yourself.

As well as being pretty easy to grow yourself, strawberries have loads of amazing health benefits. They are a great source of vitamins C and K and are thought to be able to improve digestive health, to aid teeth whitening and cure skin irritations.

Also they taste sooooo good!