Vegan Tropical Treat Loaf / No Weigh!

i've had a week off uni this week, and it's so so so good to have some time to myself and some time to explore the healthier side of baking/cooking. i've always loved baking, i mean... it definitely contributed to my weight gain but now i've managed to find a balance between treating and clean-eating. yay for healthy snacks.

 before anyone says anything YES this bread does have sugar and flour in, you could easily swap the plain flour for a cleaner alternative (coconut flour would work just as well) and i'm sure if you tried you could swap the sugar for stevia or truvia or another alternative but this is a bread designed as a treat, not an everyday snack. it's 278 calories per slice if you get 8 slices out of this loaf but you could easily make it 10 or 12 for a smaller less calorific treat. ALSO the majority of fat in this recipe is coming from bananas and the coconut oil, so nothing unhealthy or scary about that. 

Vegan Tropical Treat Loaf.

you will need;

- 225g plain flour.

- 3 tsp baking powder.

- 100g brown sugar.

- 1 tsp cinnamon.

- 75g pure coconut oil. (thanks to the lovely @fussy_foodie on instagram for sending me my tub in february's #sendthelove package!)

- 50g desiccated coconut.

- 3/4 medium bananas (these need to be BROWN, the riper the better).

1. pre-heat your oven to 200c and while you're there give your oil a melt, obv you're not gonna be able to mix it in it's current state.

2. mash yo 'nanas! this is fun. just whack 'em in a bowl and give them a good mash. take all your frustration out on them. i like to give them names of people i'm not particularly keen on OR pretend they're an essay i'm yet to complete. once they're mashed to perfection, mix in your melted (AND COOLED) oil and sugar. give it a good stir!

3. when that's all mixed up nicely, add all your other bits (flour, baking powder, coconut, cinnamon) and combine well. i hate it when it says combine well, idk what that means. SO what i mean is make a sort of dough. it smells super good and you can see the banana-y goodness in it. yum.

4. right that's most of the hard-work done. now grab yourself a loaf tin (mine is a silicone one from home bargains for £1.99) and grease it a little with some of the remaining coconut oil you melted earlier. this'll just help it fall out later rather than break and ruin the loafy goodness. spoon your mixture out and make it nice and even.

5. bung it in the oven for 20 minutes! exciting.

6. after 20 minutes cover it with foil and leave for another 40, checking at around half an hour... just in case it's starting to get a little dry. use the time to clean yo mess up! i'd made a lot. thought this would be a great time to show off my new worktop saver, another £1.99 home bargain treat.

and that's it you're done! with mine i sprinkled some more coconut over the top and melted a dairy-free chocolate bar to drizzle over. just for a little extra edge. you don't have to do that though, i'm just a bit of a show off haha!

in other news, i'm trying not to weigh this week. sometimes what i read on the scales in the morning can determine my daily mood and it's not something i want anymore! 'specially as i'm getting closer to goal. so i'm trying not to and i didn't aaaaalll day today. taking every day as it comes, but fingers crossed i can make it to monday. #pray4beth

hope you enjoyed the recipe & do lemme know if you make the bread,

beth :)

Weight Loss Tag!

i thought i'd do this (youtube...) tag today cause it covers so many of the initial questions i get about my weight loss/diet/nutrition plan nowadays. i know it's a youtube video tag so soz if you get bored reading it. ahem, here we go:

1. when did you start to gain weight?

er, this is hard. i guess when i quit dancing full-time when i was about 12/13. up until that point my eating wasn't greatly healthy but i was doing enough exercise to burn off most gains. i used to eat home-cooked healthy meals every day with my sisters & momma but i would top it up by raiding the cupboards when they slept and spending all my pocket money on sweets and crisps.

so i started getting chubby and then i remember my pocket money going up to £5 (!!!!) and going to the corner shop on a saturday night and spending it aaaaalll in one go on coke, pot noodle, pringles and skittles. and i'd eat it all while sitting on the computer chatting on habbo hotel (bangin' chatroom) and messaging on msn. i also remember melting cheese in a bowl at 4am and eating an entire block.

so yeah, that happened for a few years and i put on weight. in year 11 i kind of cut back and started going out more and moving around a bit but i always spent money on food and fizzy drink. it was a comfort to me. i enjoyed nothing more than going home, sitting in front of the computer and eating.

when i went to my first uni (kent, holla!) i had financial independence and freedom of the food shop for the first time and went mental. i developed a bit of a social anxiety problem about sharing my kitchen and just went mental eating pre-made junk in my room. OR getting takeaway (which was my greatest problem until recently), i could devour a large pizza, curly fries & garlic bread in one sitting twice or three times a week. add-on the 2l of fizzy drink (coke, cherry coke & irn bru being the biggest culprits) and my weight just got bigger and bigger.

2. what was your heaviest weight?

from the age of around 15 up until 21 i never weighed myself. but i know when i was 21 (january 2012) i weighed almost 19 stone.

3. what diets have i been on before?

i did the cabbage soup diet with my sister (with some weird pills) when i was around 15, shortly after i went on a no-snack diet with my mom. that was pretty good actually! i lost probably about a stone before i finished school, but it didn't last long. 

more recently i tried a VLCD diet called slim & save (think cambridge, but cheaper) for all of about 3 days in february 2014. that was £134 down the drain.

4. what is your goal size/goal weight?

at the moment my goal weight is 9st. (126lbs). i don't really have a goal size, i'd love to be a size 8 but i am kind of all over the place at the moment so an 8/10 would be great. i'm already in certain size 10 dresses/skirts at 10st. 3lbs so i'm hoping that will be possible in 17lb more pounds!

5. what is your favourite food (before you lost weight)?

oh man, i have so many i used to love. here's a brief list: 

xxl garden party authentic thin crust pizza (papa johns), curly fries, halloumi, marmite baguettes, quorn scotch eggs, texas bbq pringles, curly wurly, nandos beanie burgers, cake, every cake, all the cake.

6. what is your favourite food now?

dried fruit: mango, apple, strawberry and pineapple specifically. i just love that dried fruit goodness man. oh and baked eggs are pretty up there aswell. with spinach. oh and ricecakes. 

7. what food will i not give up?

er... well, to be honest most of my favourite foods were super bad for me. so giving them up hasn't been too hard. but a food i haven't given up is snack-a-jacks! i've always loved snack-a-jacks and my weight loss journey has led me into bigger and better and tastier ricecakes. 

8. how do i reward myself with my accomplishments?

clothes. clothes. clothes. those who follow me on instagram will see my regular primark/h&m hauls. i love the fact i can go shopping now and get frustrated at the store only having bigger sizes rather than my 10/12. i love being able to wear the clothes i always wanted to wear. i am such a fashion victim.

9. what will i do when i get to goal weight?

uh-oh scary business. i'm starting to think about maintenance and all that business and truly it terrifies me. but i will probably cry and run around and tell everyone and do a dance. and get a tattoo haha. i don't know what of but it'll be ace obviously.

10. what diet plan am i following now?

i don't follow a plan! i eat 1200 calories per day (mostly just under around 1190) and i try and limit the amout of carbs i consume. i still don't really eat bread, potatoes or pasta and stick to lentils, sweet potato quinoa and other wholegrain alternatives. i also try and up my protein with bars (for convenience) and try and keep my sugar as low as is possible with whatever i'm doing that day.

11. what is my favourite part of my body?

probably my legs or my waist. it's getting teeny tiny! (yay!)

12. what are my none-scale goals?

i want to wear a bikini and feel fit-as-fuck on holiday with my mom and sister in july. possible, i hope.

13. what makes losing weight hard for me?

socialising is hard without food! i mostly instigated socialising within my friendship group last year and it mostly always included a nandos, a pizza hut etc etc. i do treat myself but i can't always and sometimes i'd rather go without sitting there looking sad with a salad. so yeah that's a bit dodgy, but otherwise nothing has really held me back.

14. would you ever consider weight loss surgery?

no. no. no.

WELL, there you go. now you know everything about everything ever but if you still have any questions about my diet/lifestyle or whatever i'm happy to help! just leave me a comment.

til next time,

beth! :)

Hi World!

143lbs (10st. 3), February 2015  > 232lbs (16st. 8) February 2014.

so,

i've decided to start a blog, how exciting! i suppose i should tell you who i am and why i'm here but i'm hoping most of that will be covered in my next post (the weight loss tag from youtube).

BUT YEAH: my name's beth(any), i'm 24, from birmingham (but living in northampton) and since july last year i've lost over 6 stone (89lbs to be precise). i've created this blog to document the latter part of my journey cause actually, it's proving to be the hardest bit... but also, i want this blog to help others cause i get a tonne of questions on instagram (@befinition) and it's literally the most awkward social network to reply to anyone at length.

so yeah, welcome to my blog. i hope it does help someone, even if it's just one person because losing all this weight has completely changed my outlook on life, and if i can even gift one person with that new energy i feel, then i'll be super happy.

see you soon,
beth :)