Tuesday was the fridge drama and cardio day.
There really isn’t much I can tell you about HIIT cardio other than I’m not sure I’ll ever enjoy it whilst I’m doing it! I’m always glad when it’s finished and I LOVE the ‘high’ I get from it afterwards along with smug self-satisfaction that I actually got it done.
Wednesday was my 37th birthday – I’m not sure how this happened; well obviously I know HOW it happened, but I’m not sure how I got to be 37…more luck than judgement when I think back on some of the stupid things I’ve got up to 😉
But I don’t FEEL 37! I look at other people who are similar ages to me and (being brutally honest) some of them look r e a l l y OLD for their years.
Am I just looking at my reflection through rose-tinted ‘Peter Pan’ glasses and managing to persuade myself that I still look 21…?
Apparently, I don’t change and still look the same as I did 20 years ago .
Now I KNOW this isn’t true and I have the big hair early 1990s photos to prove it!

Oh go on then, I’ll show you ONE!
Feel free to laugh – but I’ll have you know that hairdo was bang on trend at the time, took 3 cans of Shockwaves ‘Mega Hold’ hairspray a week to maintain and could withstand nuclear attack!
I didn’t do anything special for my birthday; birthday celebrations are on hold, but I did manage to get an hour to myself – in the car on the way back from the supermarket!
There was a huge accident on the A14 which closed it and I was stuck there for a g e s along with everyone else in the now non-rush hour traffic.
Once that was all out the way and I was closer to home (the supermarket is only 10 miles away from home, it’s not as if it’s lots!) I saw a sea of flashing blue lights and THAT road was shut too!!!!
Our village is off that road! I have to be on that road to get home! Luckily I was able to turn off and rat-run through other villages  and come in from the other direction; what is usually a 15 minute trip took an hour!
Ellie made me laugh though when I told her, “Yeah well it’s THAT time of year again isn’t it! The roads are slippery when it gets dark now but stupid people are still driving with their summer heads on because it’s sunny during the day; DUH!!”
She’s right though – it was 7pm when I pulled into the driveway and the car was showing that it was 1 degree!
The snow rumours are flying around already – this always happens as soon as it gets cold,  “There’s going to be snow by the end of the month!”
Now, we hardly EVER get snow in October.  We did in 2008 and it caused chaos but last time before that was 1934! What starts off as a weather report of ‘a cold snap’ quickly becomes tales of apocolyptic weather, 6ft snowdrifts and being trapped indoors for weeks within a couple of days *sigh*
Thursday (yesterday) was cardio again and a day that was so busy it vanished in an instant; I also cleaned my teeth with soap in the name of work – I’ll tell you more about that another day…it was an interesting experience!
And so here we are at today – Friday, again; already!
My day today is going like this:
4.30am – get up, get dressed, clear overnight email
5am – train (56kgs deadlifts – I think I’ve reached my max grip now, I can’t physically hold any more in my hands without dropping it after a couple of reps)
6am – eat, train Jack
7am – walk the dog, come back, shower, wash hair, get dressed for the second time of the day
8.30am – finish writing and edit a  review that’s going live at 1pm
9.30am – eat, sort out banking, make a shopping list for the coming week along with other runaround bits and pieces I need to do, write a post for here
10am – go into town: post office and bank
10.30am – supermarket. Yes, again – I refused to do household shopping on my birthday, and went there instead to buy a nice piece of fish and some scallops for my birthday dinner. Not only that, Jack is eating me out of house and home!
12.30pm – home, unpack, sort food to eat for when I’m out later.
12.45pm – write a competition for release at 5pm
1pm – out to meet Bear’s dad and then go to school for his end of half-term award assembly followed by sitting down and having a look at all the work he’s done over the last seven weeks.
5pm – back out with Bear and his dad to watch his little swimming lessons (he’s doing really well!)
6pm – any combination of: play Star Wars Lego on the Playstation 3/build something WITH Star Wars Lego/Lightsaber battles – or maybe all three of them!
7pm – drive home
7.30pm – pretend there’s not still a ton of housework, and other stuff, sitting on the to-do list that’s getting fed up of being bumped over to the following week for weeks.
So far I’m only 30 minutes behind! NOT BAD 😀

EDIT:
12.40pm – Whilst I’ve been out I’ve been musing on all of the above…did it sound like I was moaning?!  I’m not, I promise! Right, 15 minutes to unpack the shopping, get changed and go back out again!

I’m behind! I don’t like that…
Here’s a post that’s been sitting in drafts since Tuesday morning.  I have NO idea how it can be Friday tomorrow already…

“All assumptions are dangerous, even this one,” is a quote by Benjamin Disreali, a former UK Prime Minister, and he’s right.
Today started far too early, after training hard the day before, so I switched the alarm off at 5am and decided 7am sounded far more civilised.
I was working away on the laptop when Jack came and told me that there was something wrong with the fridge, “…it’s warm on the inside!”
Oh marvellous!
Now, it was either Sunday evening or Monday morning when we noticed the light in the fridge wasn’t working. There was nothing to suggest anything else was amiss, so I thought perhaps it was just the bulb that had blown and made a mental note to get a new one the next time I was out.
But now the fridge is warm on the inside, so it has to be something more serious than a broken bulb.
The fridge is actually a fridge freezer and it’s fitted into one of the kitchen cupboards, so that means if the fridge is warm then the same will be true of the freezer and it had potentially been off for over 24 hours!!!
I was on an 8am deadline and the fridge revelation came in at 7.40am.
The kids moved everything from the kitchen fridge to one of the fridges in the garage, I managed to move my deadline back an hour and dashed downstairs to discover that EVERYTHING in the freezer had defrosted.
Now, I’m not a big fan of food poisoning and not remembering when exactly we noticed the light had gone out, I wasn’t going to take any chances so all food in the freezer had to go.
This was BAD news as there was rather a lot of salmon and chicken in there, which now needs to be replaced.
I was NOT happy!!!! Okay, that’s a huge understatement – my mood was not pretty at all. Not only that, I had a broken fridge-freezer to deal with. Brilliant!
Half an hour, or so, later I’d calmed down a bit and was talking to my mum about it all when I had a sudden brainwave!
The big tubs of protein powder are kept on the worktop next the cupboard that houses the fridge…and guess what’s on the wall behind those tubs of protein? The main switch for the fridge…which was half on, half off.
A quick flick of the switch, back to on, and everything whirred back in to life! There was nothing wrong with it at all – one of us, and who knows which one, must have shoved one of the tubs back against the wall and knocked the switch.
So, all is well in the land of my kitchen appliances *hurrah*
The fridge-freezer doesn’t need replacing, neither does the light bulb, and the freezer is all clear and nicely defrosted which saves me a job I wasn’t looking forward to (there’s always a positive in something somewhere!).
I had jumped straight to the worst possible scenario and assumed that the fridge-freezer had gone bang – half an hour of ‘rage’ and stomping around for nothing!
Yes the food still needs to be replaced but there’s nothing I can do to change that, so there’s no point getting worked up about it. And if that’s the only thing I need to worry about (which it is, pretty much) then I should consider myself very fortunate (which I am!).
It’s too easy to assume things and if we don’t make a conscious effort not to, we tend to jump straight to the worst possible conclusion when things aren’t what we expect, or going the way we want them too.
So you’ve started a training programme and the results aren’t coming in the way you want them to; you’re disappointed and start assuming the programme doesn’t work.
If you’re training hard, eating properly and drinking the correct amount of water then you can’t be making anything other than forward progress, even though it doesn’t seem like it.
Now, I’ve left my rather ready-for-cosmetic-surgery measuring marks in my photographs recently, so you can see where my inch results are being tracked from.
But I can see other areas improving that AREN’T marked!
Don’t assume that because the tape measure, scales and calipers aren’t being as ‘nice’ to you as you want them to be, that it’s no good and that nothing works for you so you might as well give up (again!).
Take a rational step back and consider the following:

• Have I REALLY followed the training programme to the letter?
• Have I REALLY followed the eating programme to the letter?
• Have I REALLY drunk enough water every day?
• Have I REALLY got enough sleep every night?

If you can truthfully answer yes to all of those things then you can SAFELY ASSUME that you are making positive progress, there really isn’t any other alternative 😀

I’ve got so many things I want to write about that I’m having to make notes of them so I don’t forget!

Six Pack Girl Future Posts

Sleep Can Help You Get A Six-Pack

I love biology and physiology (I guess I’m just an ‘ology girl at heart); it’s utterly fascinating what goes on in the body when we sleep; what happens to, and the effects on, it when we start to get tired due to lack of ZZZZs.
If you don’t get enough sleep you’re sabotaging your six pack efforts; if you want to see a set of six pack abs reflected back at you in the mirror then you’ll need, as an absolute minimum, at least six hours of the stuff…eight is even better!

Eating For A Six-Pack

I spent a lot of time juggling, calculating and working the numbers for several people last week, including myself.
One of the biggest conclusions people jump to when they either meet me, or see my photographs, is that I don’t eat very much.  Their eyes tend to get a little wider when they hear that I eat every three hours six times a day.
I’ve been eating this way since April 2009 and the thought of only eating three times a day now is rather odd. Bang on the two and a half hour mark, my body starts to tell me it’s time to eat within the next 30 minutes.
One of the questions I’m being asked most often is “how many calories are you eating every day?”
Well, my high calorie days are currently sitting at 2,500; by the beginning of week six that will have gone up to 3,000 a day.
There was a time when the logic of eating more to get a six pack and reduce body fat levels completely escaped me, let alone watching the scale weight go up as clothes sizes were coming down!
But since taking part in Tom Venuto’s Holiday Challenge and experiencing all this for myself, first hand, it’s becoming less odd.
In fact, my body is now a firm believer that more is…MORE! It seems to hit a certain level and then go off like a rocket! I would never have thought that the road to a six pack would mean eating more.
*NB – remember that everyone’s different and that my food numbers and escalation schedule, eating plan, time scale and training weights are all tailored for me; please don’t up YOUR calories to 3,000 a day overnight and expect to wake up with a six pack 😉

How Can Girls Get Six-Pack Abs?

There are six weeks, five days and something hours left of this inaugural Six Pack Girl challenge and I’m getting lots of emails asking this question.
The short and simple answer: eat properly, train properly, have focus and intensity when it comes to your six pack goals, be compliant and accept nothing less than excellence.
I’m getting messages from girls who’ve been inspired to take up their own health and fitness challenges – I absolutely LOVE hearing from you and finding out about your new, or rediscovered, health and fitness goals and your six pack ambitions.
I also know that a lot of you are itching to get going with your own Six Pack Challenge – I promise I won’t keep you waiting on the Six-Pack Max Impact programme any longer than I have to; it has to be right though and I won’t release it until it is.

I downloaded the new Kings of Leon album today – it’s been playing since 11am and I LOVE IT!!! I just thought I’d share that with you 😀
So here we are in week four already and another training day has been signed off; I’m really feeling that I’m getting into my stride now.
I find it takes the first three weeks to settle in to a pattern, get a feel for all the new numbers – food and weights – and see how they all react with each other.
By week four you then have a very clear picture of what’s going on and then it’s full speed ahead to the end.
It’s a bit like driving a new car I suppose – you start off carefully, because you don’t want to have an accident, to get a feel for how it handles and where all the controls are. Then as you get to grips with it all, you get a little more confident and speed up a bit.
After not too long, you’re very comfortable behind the wheel and head for open roads where you can unleash the full power of the engine and have some FUN!
That’s where I am at the beginning of week four in my quest to be a six pack girl 😀
Today’s training featured the much-loved (by me at least) deadlifts, and today I lifted 2kgs shy of my entire body weight – COME ON!
I weigh a smidge over 56kgs and today I did deads with 54kgs. Apparently it’s considered pretty cool to be able to lift or push your own weight…well, if I’d known beforehand I might have been tempted to add another kilo to each end of the bar 😉
But as it was, two 10s and two 2s on each end was quite enough; it was touch and go for the last few reps of the last set whether I’d be putting the bar down or just letting go of it – my grip isn’t strong enough to hold much more. So, my legs ache nicely, as do the muscles in my back and shoulders.
Cardio tomorrow and time will continue to march on; don’t waste it, make it count and make every minute of it awesome!
See you tomorrow 😀

HURRAH! A full week of training – yippeeeee!
I can’t even begin to tell you how good it feels to be able to fill in numbers and times on the training sheet for every single training day, I don’t like gaps in my training schedule…it looks naff!
The first day back at training was a strange one – I r e a l l y struggled! It was the longest training hour of my life and felt more like THREE, instead of one.
The week got progressively better and by Friday I was just beginning to get back into my stride again.
So bring on next week I say!
Week four…one more week after that and we’ll have hit the half way mark already.  Well, they do say that time flies when you’re having fun 😀

Week Three pictures

Comparisons against day zero

If someone would like to tell me exactly WHEN my backside is going to join in with the whole six pack party thing we’ve got going on here, then that would be great!
At this rate, I’ll just be one big pair of butt cheeks on legs! 😉

Week Three numbers

National Chocolate Week is coming to a close here in the UK, with just the weekend left for all those chocaholics to really go to town and enjoy as many things chocolate as possible under the ‘guise of having a valid reason.
On Monday I told you that the UK is the third fattest country in the world – forget TSOTD (Training Song of the Day, remember) kings Kings of Leon, Britain are Kings of LARD! – and we reign supreme as the fat boys of Europe; I’m so ‘proud’.
So I was rather amused when I read one of the press releases I was sent today…

“Brits Think the Obese Should Pay Double to Fly”

How interesting!  6,000 British holiday makers were questioned and 70% of them said they would like to see overweight people, who span the width of more than one seat, pay double. Two seats required? Then pay twice!
Splitting it down further, 75% of the men questioned, and 68% of the women, felt that people who are too big for one seat and encroach into the seat that YOU paid for, should pay more.
The rest felt that being obese was embarrassing and difficult enough without being forced to pay extra for it too; generous souls.
It’s a thorny subject and one that can be pretty divisive.
Airline seats (in economy classes) aren’t big, what if you’re only ever so slightly over the width of one? Should there be degrees of ticket increase? If you’re not massively over, perhaps you should only pay 25% more than the standard price for one seat?
The government are talking about all sorts of ways to reduce our soaring obesity levels – a ‘fat tax’ has been discussed, paying obese people to lose weight is another suggestion that keeps doing the rounds.
Worryingly the trend seems to be heading towards conveyor belt gastric band surgery for free on the National Health Service! The ultimate quick fix which is eating into the already overstretched NHS budget.
Is the approach all wrong?
Rather than taking punitive action against the overweight and obese, perhaps rewarding those who keep themselves fit and healthy is a better way to go.
What do we respond better to – praise or criticism?
Do we feel better and inspired to try harder when someone says, “Good job, well done!” rather than, “You’re rubbish!”
If you’re part of a society where being fit and healthy is rewarded, would you rather be part of that group or remain one of the unrewarded due to poor lifestyle choices?
I know which I’d prefer.
Baggage weight restrictions on flights are becoming increasingly tight. British Airways have a long haul checked baggage allowance of 25 kilos for economy seats; my case was three kilos over the limit when I once flew with them.
What to do? I mulled over my choices en route to the airport…
1) Take some things out of my case and leave them in the car (I wasn’t keen on that one)
2) Pay the excess baggage fee (I was even LESS keen on this one!)
3) Point out to the nice check-in person that I weighed a significantly less (and at least 3kgs) than some of their more ‘soft around the edges’ customers, so everything should balance out in the end (I quite liked this one)
4) Politely suggest I be upgraded to at least Business Class because then my case would be well within the baggage allowance (I liked this option, a LOT!)
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try out option number four as the generous British Airways chap, who checked me in for my flight, raised one eyebrow as if to say ‘naughty naughty’, slapped a ‘WARNING – HEAVY – 25KGS+’ label on my case and sent it on its way to the hold and me to economy – better luck next time!

 After my germ-ridden week two, week three saw a complete week of training for me and it felt GOOD!
Although training is over for the week there are still two days of compliant eating to be done, a six pack isn’t achieved by training hard all week and then blowing it all at the weekends!
Food is a big issue for most people: – how much can I eat, what can I eat, does it have to be the same thing every day?
So I’ve been quietly working away on some recipes and taking photos for a new recipe section that will go live sometime next week 😀
Sleep is a big issue too and I need to get some! I haven’t forgotten about the link I promised yesterday – I knew I should have bookmarked it as it was particularly well written…perhaps I’ll just write about it tomorrow instead!
Until then, night everyone.

I love the start of a new day, I find it very exciting!
I’ve long had a real fondness for pausing just before I open the bedroom curtains, in the mornings, to remember there’s a whole new day waiting for me to do whatever I want with it.
I can waste it, if I choose to; I can make the most of it and try to cram in as much as possible, but it’s all mine and I can choose.
Most of it’s planned but there is always that unknown element to every day, where you just have no idea what’s going to happen.
Maybe someone you haven’t heard from for a long time gets back in touch and takes you by surprise; perhaps an opportunity arises that you hadn’t seen coming or had even considered before it came and ‘knocked’ on your door.
Opening the curtains in the morning is like unveiling a blank canvas and YOU get to paint a new picture on it every day, I LOVE THAT!
It’s up to you what you draw; it’s up to you whether you use watercolours, oil or pastels and it’s up to you to choose the colours.
Some days your pictures won’t quite turn out to be the masterpiece you originally had in mind; some days they’ll just be plain rubbish, which is okay if you work out WHY and learn something from that.
But, regardless of whether you created a masterpiece or a mess, the good news is this: the following morning, when you open the curtains, a brand new blank canvas is waiting for you to make your mark on it.
I love closing the curtains just as much as I do opening them – apart from because it means it’s bedtime and I love being in my bed 😀
If the day hasn’t been so great it’s nice to shut the curtains on it and consign it to the history books. If it’s been great then the promise of a new day tomorrow that could be just as great again, is rather exciting.
I’m a creature of habit but I also love being spontaneous and having to juggle several things at once for work when the odd ‘can you just do this for me…and I need it in half an hour!’ lands on my desk – but I like to end each day the same way.
Bed, soft lights, a candle burning, night time tea and classical music in the background whilst I look at, and reflect on, the picture I drew on my canvas for that day.
(I’d just like to say that I haven’t really gone all Christmassy two months ahead of time with a Christmas candle – it was sent to me to review and is utterly delicious! It smells of orange and cinnamon and I’m going to be rather sad when it’s all burned away)
This quiet time in bed is also the when I plan out the following day – lay out my brushes, pencils and colours you might say.
So by the time I blow out the candle and switch the light off, my mind is pretty clear and I can SLEEP for my six pack.
I read a great article the other day on why getting enough sleep is a very important part of achieving your physical goals – I’ll dig it out and link to it tomorrow.
There’s lots going on here behind the scenes – if you’ve got in touch recently I’ll be getting back to you as soon as I can!
Right, talking of sleep…it’s time for me to get some! I hope you painted a great picture on your ‘life canvas’ today 😀
See you tomorrow

(picture: Reuters)

I’m sure there aren’t many people around the world who don’t know about the culmination of the AMAZING rescue effort that’s been going on to bring the trapped Chilean miners back up to the surface.
I’ve been following events, primarily on the radio, since 5am this morning and it’s been truly wonderful to listen to.
One by one, hour by hour these men are making the half mile journey, from deep underground, back to the surface to be reunited with their friends and family.
It’s almost inconceiveable to think they’ve been down there since the mine collapsed on 5 August! That’s more than two months! TWO MONTHS!
What were you doing on 5 August? What have you spent the last two months doing?
The 33 miners have been sitting more than 600 meters underground, in the dark and in temperatures of around 30 degrees centigrade for all that time.
They have chronic dental issues which will require surgery, that’s happening tomorrow; their corneas may be damaged due to lack of light and one of the miners, thought to be the eldest one, has a mild case of pneumonia.
Apparently the miners already above ground and in a nearby hospital haven’t slept since their rescue, they are just too euphoric. For the first 17 days they didn’t know if they were going to be rescued or were destined to die in that mine.
The families on the surface have been incredible – a lot of them moved to the San Jose Mine and set up camp there, which became known as Camp Hope.
Camp Hope has a school there, a place for pre-schoolers and four denominations of the Christian faith are catered for too. These families have pushed the mining companies, and anyone else necessary, to ensure that fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, grandfathers and friends were rescued and brought back to the surface.
Today the courage, hope, self-belief, collective belief, unwavering determination and absolute refusal to give up of everyone involved has been rewarded.
Someone very close to me started their own personal journey ‘back to the surface’ today.
They’ve been trapped in their ‘mine’ for the last three years; over the last week a strategy has been put in place, and today was the day they stepped inside the health and fitness ‘rescue capsule’ and began to make their way back up.
I’m at the top in my own Camp Hope waiting for them 😀
If you feel the same, start making YOUR way to the top too; start NOW.
There are things you can do this instant that will get your journey underway – stop eating sweets and junk food, stop drinking alcohol or fizzy drinks (and yes, the sugar free versions are just as bad so lose those too).
Go for a walk, go and mess around with your kids in the park if you’ve got kids, just DO something that’s physical. The rest can follow after, the important thing is that you start making your way back up right now.

Training today…DEADLIFTS!
I love those things, I might not be saying that at the time – in fact, I don’t say that at the time, it’s more like, “FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!” – but of all the exercises I do, this ranks right up there among my favourites.
But these weren’t just ordinary deadlifts – I’m not a fan of ‘ordinary’ -these were WIDE GRIP deadlifts!
I learned my lesson from the last time I did these, and made sure I didn’t have any writing deadlines looming for at least two hours afterwards.
This time I knew that an innocent sounding leg routine made up of only three exercises was going to beat the living daylights out of my shoulders, lats and forearms; it did too, again!
It’s cardio Thursday tomorrow! How can it be Thursday already? That means there are only two more training days left and then that’s week three in the bag!
The next edition of the Six Pack Girl newsletter is going out tomorrow; if you don’t get it yet and would like to, simply download your free copy of ’10 Things You Absolutely Must Know’ and you’ll automatically be added to the list 😀
See you tomorrow!

It’s always nice to think that all the hard work you put into something pays off, like eating and training for a six pack.
OR, like bringing up your kids to be strong-minded and confident. To know what they want, be able to make a plan and then execute that plan with the efficiency, and ruthlessness, of a deadly assassin.
Meet Edward, my baby. My utterly delicious, cheeky and far too clever for his own good mini-teenager!
He turned four in July and has always been ahead of his years – I suppose it’s inevitable when you have a brother and sister 12 and 11 years older than you.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
When he was two one of his favourite words was ‘trebuchet’. He’d ask people, “Do you know what a trebuchet is?” At best a fair few people did know what a trebuchet was and, at the very least, the remainder thought it was just a font in Word (which it is).
Feel the pain of the poor ‘it’s a font isn’t it’ people when Edward sighed at them, with a tone that can only be described as saying ‘you really don’t know very much do you!’ and proceed to tell them that, “a trebuchet is a huge catapult thing that fires big rocks at castles to knock them down!”
Cue stunned look of disbelief from the person newly furnished with trebuchet knowledge.
He used to play a game on the computer with Jack called ‘Crash the Castle’ you see, and Jack taught him all about trebuchets.
From pretty much the same age, Edward was able to turn on the shared computer, log on to his user account (it was the one that had a picture of a little frog) and open up the Thomas the Tank Engine games website.
This really should have given us a clue for the events that were to unfold earlier today…
Edward started school a few weeks ago back at the beginning of September; he’s wanted to go to school ever since he was old enough to wonder where Jack and Ellie went every day.
When he saw them getting on the big shiny school bus it was even worse, we had tears for weeks because he wasn’t allowed to get on and go with them.
His school is in a little neighbouring village, there are five academic years and only 120 children make up the entire school register.
It’s a very close community and last Friday, Edward was given the ‘Star of the Week’ award for the Reception year.
They were studying healthy eating that week (something he knows ALL about!) and trying lots of fruits and vegetables in class. He was given the award because he was very enthusiastic, was able to name all the things they tried and used some big describing words (apparently it’s “disasterous and calamatous when the supermarket doesn’t have any kiwi fruit left!”).
So you’d think in a tiny close-knit village school, that’s like Fort Knox, it would be impossible for a small child to go missing; this was the situation Edward’s dad found himself faced with yesterday afternoon when he went to collect him.
Here’s how our conversation went when I asked how Bear’s day had been (we call Edward, Bear)…
“How was Bear today after school?”
“Oh, he was fine; tired and very grumpy!”
“Oh no!”
“When I got to school to collect him, though, he was nowhere to be found; neither him or Reece [his partner in crime] were anywhere to be seen. No one knew where they were!”
You can already imagine the panic beginning to rise in the stomachs of everyone who knew the boys were missing.
The calm and rational side of the brain would be saying ‘it’s okay, they can’t get out, they’re here somewhere and safe; the other side of the brain, however, would have already lost the plot and be imagining all sorts of horrors.
“Oh my goodness!  What happened?”
“We eventually found them on the BUS! They had told their classroom assistant they were getting the bus home! As they weren’t on the list the bus wouldn’t have left with them, but the teacher on the bus couldn’t get them off to bring them back in, until all the other kids had boarded!”
At this point I must confess to actually laughing out loud! I know my youngest son had been temporarily missing in action but this is just fabulously him – he knows what he wants, he makes a plan, then he puts it into ACTION!
“So Reece’s mum and I were NOT popular with the boys for making them get off the bus. The school were very sorry that it happened and assured us it wouldn’t happen again.
His classroom assistant, who originally let them go, was mortified! [poor woman, must have felt sick!] She said they had excitedly told her, “We’re getting the bus home today!” She said, “Why would they SAY that?!” I told her maybe it’s because they’re…FOUR and wanted to get the bus home..?
Bear’s angry face at being pulled off the bus in front of all his friends was a picture! I’m thinking that as he had the gumption to get on the bus, we might do a trial run after half term. There is a dedicated parent who goes on each trip to look after the kids, so we’ll see if he still wants to after half term – what do you think?”
“Ha ha haaa, I think that’s probably a VERY good idea! You must have been SO worried!”
“It was just AWFUL! Still…we’ve got to admire his ingenuity – remind me I said that after his next adventure!”
So that was the adventure of Bear and the Bus; a tale from his childhood that will go down in family legend, “…like the time you told your teachers you were getting the bus home!”
What does this have to do with six pack abs? EVERYTHING!
You can’t achieve a six pack if you’re fainthearted or wishy-washy.
You won’t have a six pack if you only ‘sort of want one’.
You have to KNOW you want a six pack, WHY you want a six pack and then you have to be prepared to go and GET that six pack by doing what it takes every. single. day whether you feel like it or not!
Edward has wanted to travel on the school bus for years. Yesterday he got just a few steps closer to achieving his goals *GRIN*

I must confess I wasn’t looking forward to cardio!

I felt a bit like I was squaring up to Goliath when I climbed aboard the exercise bike. 

But by the end of the warm up, and with a great ‘Training Song Of The Day’ (TSOTD) playing LOUD, I was ready to NAIL 20 minutes of HIIT!

Yes, I fell climbed off the bike muttering things about whose stupid idea was all this six pack nonsense 😉

Legs tomorrow, bring on the DEADLIFTS!

Yes, that’s right, it’s National Chocolate week here in the UK – the world’s third fattest country and the rulers of European obesity!
It’s not just a little made up ‘event’ either; Tom, Dick and Harry didn’t come up with it in the pub one night:
Tom: “This week sounds a bit boring…there’s no much happening in it is there…”
Dick: “…nope.”
Harry: “nope…maybe we should call it something then…”
Dick: “…yep.”
Tom: “You mean give it a title?”
Dick: “…yep…”
Harry: “…yeah, National ‘Something’ Week.”
Tom: “But National ‘What’ Week?”
Dick: “……..CHOCOLATE!”
No no nooo, this has been a campaign carefully coordinated and crafted by the numerous chocolate companies and emporiums that we have here – there’s even a National Chocolate Week website.
I know it sounds like I’m an anti chocolate-bashing looney; I’m not, I promise, it’s just I’m beginning to feel a little jaded by all the press releases that have been hitting my inbox about this for the last two weeks.
That and the constant drip-feeding of the fact that a size 14/16 is now the average female dress size here; that it’s normal and it’s ok.
That’s the size I was 18 months ago! How has it become acceptable, and part of the national culture, to be overweight and a walking heart attack in the making?!
HOW has this become an acceptable standard? Where fat is the norm’ and those of us that aren’t are the weirdos and the odd ones out?!!
So not only do we have a National Chocolate Week but we also have an National Health Service crisis [from ukwirednews.com]
“The NHS has come under fire this week amid reports suggesting that approximately £29 million of public money has been spent in the past year on quick fix, obesity related surgery.
Since 2001 figures have shown a 15-fold increase in the numbers of people receiving free NHS Surgery in order to cure obesity related illnesses.
The British Medical Journal has defended the increase, claiming an increase in surgery will reduce hospital admissions and will make financial sense in the long term.”
There are even serious talks going ahead for a ‘pounds for pounds’ scheme where the Government (aka the tax-payer) will PAY people to lose weight!
I sometimes wonder if my country hasn’t gone stark raving mad!
(Bear with me a minute, I just need to climb down off my soapbox…it’s a long way down from this one too 😉 )
Right, back to the chocolate bashing!
I don’t dislike chocolate in fact, I’m rather partial to it now and again – albeit VERY now and again.
I’ve just flashed back to when Galaxy brought out their Cookie Crumble chocolate bar – this would have been October/November time 2008 I suppose:  I’m sitting at my desk, it’s late afternoon so it’s just getting gloomy and it’s a bit chilly too.
Time for a hot cup of tea (two sugars) and some chocolate; lovely, but for ‘some chocolate’ read – WHOLE BAR of chocolate…and it wasn’t a small bar either!
What’s even worse is the fact that if there were two bars of this Cookie Crumble chocolate in the house, they would both be eaten.  Not one after the other (I did have some restraint *hur hur*) but maybe with a three or four hour gap and with another cup of tea (two sugars) as well.
A few months ago now, I was sent a pair of rather clever scales to review. They have the nutritional values of various foods programmed into the tiny on-board computer, so when you weigh something and input its corresponding code the scales will give you the nutritional breakdown for the amount of whatever it is you’re weighing.
I went on a bit of a weighing frenzy – what can I say, I like numbers! They do things for me *grin* – and as part of my review I also took photographs.
See if these numbers don’t make you think twice about having a large bar of chocolate just as a ‘one off’…

One 197g bar of chocolate…

You’re not reading those number wrong…there really ARE just over 1000 calories and 55g of fat in that 197g bar of chocolate! And to save you doing the maths, each square is worth about 31.37 calories.
On the few occasions that chocolate leaps in to my mind, I just think of this picture – chocolate thought…GONE!
Ok, ok, how about this one?  (oh this is mean *evil grin*)

One teaspoon of peanut butter (crunchy, of course!)…

WAHOOOO! 66 calories in one tiny teaspoon!
Now I realise that peanut butter is also recognised as a good source of protein and fat, and if you can stick to small amounts you’re a better person than I am; I could eat half a jar of this stuff in one go!
I’m clearly in a foody mood at the moment, I think it’s to do with the change of seasons.
Gone are the summer days of six pack prawn salads…

and six pack tuna salads…

Instead, I’ve been creating six pack versions of Moroccan Beef and very light chicken and veg SIX PACK SOUP! No pictures of those yet, but there will be.
I’m musing on creating a six pack recipe section – if that’s a resource you’d be interested in, let me know.
Or maybe you have a culinary challenge for me, drop me a line and I’ll see if I can come up with a Six Pack Girl version of something that takes your fancy!

It was my first day back training since my, all bar one day, sick week off and what a rollercoaster ride I went on!
I wanted to give it everything I had, but not go to over the top (yes, I know – me? Go too hard too fast? Noooo, surely not!), but I struggled with weights that I was lifting last week for double the reps! I won’t pretend I wasn’t a bit upset about this at the time.
It also felt like the longest training session in the world – I’m telling you, it was THREE hours long not just under one!
By the time I reached the half way mark I was beginning to wonder if I’d done the wrong thing training today, maybe I still wasn’t recovered enough…
Then I got the last super set and ohhhhh did I love it; all upset about the first sets forgotten in an instant.
It’s cardio tomorrow…is there a doctor standing by?