Mediskin: Focus focus focus

I knew from Friday afternoon my weekend was going to be a little all over the place as I was going to be heading home to Tipperary for the weekend.

My boyfriend's friend was having a party on the Saturday night and we were having a 70th Birthday dinner for my dad on the Sunday.

All of this was going to leave little time for my exercise. It also meant I was going to be having a few drinks and possibly a cheat meal (or two...)

For me, this can be difficult as I find myself feeling guilty when I break away from my routine and when I eat something I possibly shouldn't I sometimes think, Oh well, I may as well eat this as well as that, since the damage is already done..

This is a bad mindset to get into.

Cheat meals and treats are good as they allow us some pleasure when it comes to tasty food but over indulging just sets you back.

Once you are able to control it, there is no harm in allowing yourself a treat every now and then.

On Friday I spent the afternoon baking my dad his birthday cake.

He has a serious gluten allergy so it needed to be 100% gluten free.

I have more of an intolerance to gluten than an actual allergy, whereas my Dad reacts very badly if he takes any gluten in his diet.

So much so, we had separate toasters at home so no crumbs from ordinary bread could contaminate his gluten free bread!!!

I decided to bake a gluten free Victorian Sponge with alpro soya cream and fresh strawberries.

Ingredients

150g vegetable margarine

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

2 drops vanilla extract

150g wheat and gluten free self-raising flour

1 teaspoon gluten free baking powder

3 tablespoons almond milk

Method

Prep:20min Cook:15min Ready in:35min

Preheat the oven to 190 C

Cream the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Beat well.

Fold in the flour and baking powder, beating well to combine.

Add the milk.

The mixture may be a bit sloppy, but that is fine, do not add more flour to dry it up!

Turn the mixture into two lined sandwich tins.

Bake until a skewer inserted near the centre comes out clean, about 15 minutes.

Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

I also baked some gluten free fairy cakes to have if people didn't want cake.

I will post the recipe for these soon!

This took up most of my afternoon and evening so I missed my Friday evening yoga. To compensate I did 30 minutes restorative yoga before bed at home myself.

If you find you miss a gym session, try substitute it with another form of light exercise so you are at least getting something done. It's good to keep yourself motivated as missing a workout can set you back quite a bit if you get in the wrong frame of mind.

Sat morning I got a good HIIT workout in as I knew I was going to be having a few drinks on Saturday night.

I made sure to take in a strong protein shake afterwards for recovery.

Sunday was my cheat meal and treat day as I was having dinner out in the golf club with my family and I was going to treat myself to some of the birthday cake. I also was taking Sunday as my rest day so I was consuming a lot of extra calories.

This being said I allowed myself to enjoy the day and I ate what I wanted, knowing I would make up for it on Monday with an extra hard workout.

So this morning, I needed to focus!!
I had to get back on track to make up for the slippery slope that was my weekend!

First things first I created a list of all the things I needed to get done as today is my day off from work.
I am the kind of person that gets great satisfaction out of ticking things off a list when I have completed them.