whats that? You want to know 10 random facts about me? Okay...

So, it all of a sudden dawned on me that I am actually a rather strange person with  a lot of random things that you my bloggies do not know about and I decided that seen as I have discuss a lot of important stuff with you recently I would take a little break from the super heartfelt malarkey and do something totally un-original and do the “10 random facts tag” …. Enjoy!

Fact numero Uno – I sometimes like to use some random French (which I do not have any formal qualifications or knowledge about) in my day to day life, especially around my sister… Yip, she is also a weirdo (:

Fact 2 – I have a beautiful guitar sitting in one of the corners of my bedroom that I have never, not even once, played. To be totally honest with you I don’t even know if its in tune … but I think it looks pretty and makes me seem super artistic and musical (basically everything I am not) so its staying.

Fact 3 – I have this really strange habit of calling my Dad “papa smurf”. I really don’t know why I do this, he looks absolutely nothing like a smurf, he does not have blue skin or grey hair and beard but for some reason I do it all the time. It’s now gotten to the point where if I am talking about him at work or with friends I accidently refer to him as Papa Smirf #awkward 

Fact 4 – I HATE cloudy apple juice. This really is random because I genuinely enjoy the taste of the clear concentrated apple juice and I enjoy the occasional glass of cloudy lemonade but even just the thought of cloudy apple juice makes me feel a little ill.

Fact 5 –It took me 5 times to pass my driving test … awkward I know but that’s the truth. I absolutely hated learning how to drive. I disliked my instructor, I hated the early morning lessons and learning about things I will never, ever do again… hello reverse parking.

Fact 6 – I have a seriously bad addiction to pepsi max… like LOVE the stuff. 

Fact 7 – I can’t turn my light off in my bedroom when I am about to go to sleep until both my feet are off the ground. Once the light is off I can get back up again but for some reason I feel really uneasy about going to bed and turning the light off while standing up or sitting down but with my feet on the ground. 

Fact 8 – I always used to wish I had a brother. I’m not really sure why because myself and my sister have always gotten on really well, but I always dreamed of having a “cool” older brother that would bring all his “hot” friends round and they would all talk to me… Yep, I know a little strange.

Fact 9 – I am a procrastinator. I doesn’t matter if I have known that my essay is due in for months and months I will be sitting there at 7am the day its due trying to make sure it all makes sense. But one thing that I do not do is all nighters… I would rather go to bed and get up super early than stay up late and not sleep at all.

Finally… fact  10 – One time when I was in high school someone let me borrow there OC box set, so I pretended to be ill and got sent home and then spent the next 24 hours, literally didn’t sleep or anything, watching the first season… majorly obsessed.

So, internet that is me, Yasmin Christina. You probably know far too much about my life but if you feel like you could like to know more, please stick around and I will keep you updates on my life very soon.

Love Yasmin Christina

xx

Happy half way through November … is that even a thing?

So, it’s a Sunday morning and I treated myself this morning to something a little bit special! I made pancakes, shocking I know. Now, I am using the word pancake very loosely as it was to be honest probably the healthiest pancake recipe known to man! I made banana oat pancakes and the recipe came from a blog called “cookieandkate”… and before you wonder, I have never met cookie or kate before I just found it though google. I do have to admit however that it’s a pretty decent whole food kind of blog. Lots of pretty cool and interesting looking recipes (most of which I can’t really create or enjoy because they contain… dairy or wheat or flour or anything delicious!) but you should totally check it out… even if it’s just for a wee nosy. 

 

Now, I have been on my healthy eating plan for 10 weeks and I have lost a grand total of 40lbs, that’s 2st 12lbs to people who work in the good old fashioned matrix that is stones. Now, 40lbs in 10 weeks on paper is a huge amount of weight and people around me seen to agree that I look like I have lost a load of weight and that I am continuously improving and continuing to lose but for some reason this week has been a real challenge for me. I would like to highlight by challenge I don’t mean I didn’t go to the gym and ate burgers and chips because I can inform you that’s not what I mean. I mean more I have only lost 2lbs this week (which I know is a lot) and I am feeling a little down about it. I haven’t really hit a weight loss block like this before and I am just feeling a little down about it. I am still totally on this, I went to the gym three times last week and I have eaten really well and even my first treat in the whole 10 weeks I have been on this I can say was totally a healthy choice but I just feel a bit blahh ( I know blahh isn’t a word but I can’t really think of the correct world to say). It’s difficult when you are being super healthy and not eating anything bad for you, not going out drinking with the girls because you don’t want to have too many grams of sugar because cocktails are full of them, when you go to Costa coffee instead of a hot chocolate and a muffin you are having a bottle of diet coke (which I know isn’t good for you, but is still totally 100% my weakness) and a small tea with soya milk when the person  you are with is having a large coffee and a biscuit… these things are all really hard and just become harder when you are not feeling the benefits, when you stand on those scales and the number is the exact same as it was a few days ago, when those jeans are still that little bit too tight and when you look in the mirror and just wish it would all change overnight but I doesn’t and I know this but sometimes, no matter who you are, where you are from, what age you may be or how much you want to lose these situations can be a little bit disheartening.  

Having said all this I refuse to let this get the better of me!! I will continue to close weight and I will slowly begin to like myself a little more, I would just like this to start happening a little sooner rather than later, if that would be ok world. 

This week while having a little look through pintrest I found this quote and this is what I know have as the background picture of my phone, what I look at every day and I feel this sums up what I want to be able to say to people when I have reached my goal… I want to be able to say I lost 100lbs and when they ask how I got the motivation and when I decided to make the changes to my lift I want to say to them “Actually, I just woke up one day and decided I didn’t want to feel like that anymore, or ever again, so I changed. Just like that”

Love Yasmin Christina 

xx 

happy?

Ok, so normally I make a genuine effort to make my blog posts a little light hearted and a little bubbly... a bit like my personality but I should warn you today isn't really a normal day. 

Lets start at the beginning shall we...

At the beginning of last week, I noticed that something didn't feel "normal" on the right breast... it wasn’t a lump or anything but it just didnt feel the way it normally did. I mentioned it to my mum on sunday and she very calmly said that I should just go to the doctors and get them to make sure that its nothing too serious. Now at this point I should make it very aware that there is a seriously long family history of cancer on my dads side and even more importantly there is a long history of breast cancer. 

So, on Monday morning I called and made an appointment at my doctors (a place where I haven't been for a number of years) and luckily managed to get one for 10 to 5 that evening. Now I am at uni on a Monday so I didn't really have much time to think about it, thankfully. So, me being me (and by that I mean the kind of person that will turn up for lunch 30mins late but will turn up for work, uni and when i used to attend school about 20 mins early) I got there about half past 4. So I went in and the receptionist informed me that the doctor I was going to see was running about 15mins late. So, I happily picked a seat and sat down to wait. 

After about 10 minutes of playing with my phone, checking facebook, twitter and instagram, pinning a few things on pintrest and checking sky news, I found myself thinking about what I could soon be told. 

I don't often allow myself to evaluate my life for a couple of reasons, one being that I am still so young and haven't lived a very long life that there would be no point because a lot was yet to happen but on this occasion I did allow myself and I got thinking about everything. 

I have always been the kind of person that is a little bit whacky but doesn't really jump into things. I have always really wanted a tattoo, I have wanted one for years but I have always been to scared in case I made a mistake and ended up not liking it. I have for years wanted to be slimmer (something which I began to tackle about 10 weeks ago) and ultimately I just want to be a little happier than I am just now.

As I sat in the waiting room, I began to ask myself... if what I was about to find out was bad news, would I be happy at the way I have lived my life? and I sadly realised that the answer was no. I would be annoyed at myself that I have disliked my body for so many years but hadn't done anything about it. I would be frustrated that I hadn't just gotten that tattoo, if I like it when I get it should be all that really matters. I would be so angry that I didn't make more of an effort to make myself happy and to ensure that everything I wanted I got. 

"Yasmin Christina..." and I realised that the doctor was calling my name. 

For now the answer for the different feeling of my breast is a little unknown but she did give me the news that I was praying to hear... it wasn't anything to worry about. 

So, as I walked out that doctors surgery with a little bounce in my step I realised that I had the time and ability to make sure that everything I was so disheartened by I changed, everything I wanted I accomplished and most importantly, everything that I was unhappy about I became happy with. 

Love Yasmin Christina 

xx

Wait a minute... It cannot be November already!!

One year older... check!
Red Starbucks takeaway cups... check!
Christmas socks.... check!
Far to many nights out planned... check!

This can mean only one thing, Christmas is officially on its way! So, I know this list is a little bit YouTube beauty guru with the whole red cup statement but I really don't care... I have room in my heart for both youtube beauty guru's and red cups alike. 

So... a miniature life update is possibly the order of the day! I am now 20, can i can officially say that my teenage years are behind me. This sounds like I am super happy about this fact, and I kind of am, I do believe I shall make a MUCH better twenty year old than I did teenager! I am a huge fan of a good old cuppa tea and a wee chitter chatter around the kitchen table compared to my joy about hi-tops and swag! (Yes, I even sound like an old women). So you may ask what did I do for my big 20? The answer my friends would be nothing much. I went out for cocktails and a little bit of shopping with my big sister and our mum during the day and then went out for a family meal in the evening, don't get me wrong it was enjoyable but I wouldn't say its going to make its way into the world record book for the most raging and crazy birthday event of all time! 

University has been ok... as always really. All my course work is due in within the next 4 weeks and this fact does make my stomach do a minor flip but I am sure it will all work out in the end. 

Employment you make as yourself... ehm... its the exactly the same as it has been since the day I turned 16, I still work in a shoe shop with the majority of the same people I worked with back then getting paid the same rather rubbish wage, but ohh well its just a Saturday job and not a career thankfully... so nothing that I can't stick for another we while yet. 

I have been doing myself titled "healthy lifestyle" for just over 9 weeks now and I am more than happy to inform the internet that I have officially lost 37.5 lbs ... which is 2 stone 9lbs for the brits out there. Don't get me wrong they say that results don’t come without the hard work and I can honestly admit that I have been extremely strict with my eating ... no wheat, no dairy!! I have got to admit however that the whole attending the gym that I pay a huge amount for every month is the one aspect of the whole thing that I find rather daunting. I do go to the gym at least 3 times a week but I totally dread going. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the establishment itself as it is really rather lovely, hence the reason I joined. But I did join this particular gym because it was way to expensive for students to be able to afford and this is still the case however a guy I went to school with is in fact one of the personal trainers. Now, I would like to highlight that he has never once said anything that should make me feel uncomfortable but being a curvy girl in a gym is scary enough without the added pressure of a totally ripped guy that you use to go to high school with being there to see what can only be described as a hot mess (literally, look like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards while working out). But I just really look forward to the day when I am much happier with myself and I can hold my head up high and realise that it was all these dreaded mornings and hard afternoon sessions that got me to a place where I actually like myself. 

I do think this is all I have to report one for now... however I'm sure there will be more soon.

Love Yasmin Christina 

xx