A simple rule to drink more water

I love ICE cold water! Love it! Nothing tastes better…except maybe Prosecco with friends. However if it isn’t ice cold I don’t really think to drink it.  Needless to say I’m pretty dehydrated all the time. Only now that I’m in my 30s do I realise how important it is for my health. 
But how do I remind myself to drink more? It isn’t rocket science but I’ve come up with a small rule for myself…and I almost always remember it. Almost. Hey I’m a mum, I’ve got a lot on my mind. 

Rule: Drink a glass of water:

• First thing in the morning
• With each meal
• Right after dinner 

That’s it. I said it wasn’t rocket science. 

If I drink the last one too close to bedtime then I’m running to the loo. I need all the sleep I can get so I try to cut myself off by 9pm on drinks in general. 

This isn’t a hard and fast rule but I can say I know I should at the least be drinking that much water. If I can get more in great. For someone who would drink the equivalent of one bottle of water a day max this is a big step up. 

If you are trying to drink more water in your like try it for a week. I found it was a gentle way to introduce a good habit. 

Are you like me? Low on H2O? What are your tricks to get it in?

x L

Little by little…

Healthy, wealthy and wise

I’m not sure I’m any of those things yet but I know I want to be.  But this morning I realised I am the lightest I’ve been since before January 2013, I know this because I’ve been using MyFitnessPal since then to track my weight. I also use it to track fitness and diet when I get into a health kick. I know I haven’t been this light since I was in my early preggo days with Layla in 2012. 

I have slowly started changing my eating habits and become more conscious of what I’m putting into my body. I say this after I ate my weight in chocolate yesterday, however! Why is it when we see weightloss success we start to reward ourselves with junk? To push our limits? To see how much shit we can actually consume and maintain this new number on the scale? But for some reason my weight continues to slowly go down. At the moment I think this has been due to an increased appetite in my 7 month old breastfed baby, Isabelle. 

Side note:  She is my little gingernut who came out red headed and blue eyed despite me being a blond at birth and my hubby a brunette, both of us have brown eyes. Layla got the memo. Izzy did not. And she does have hands, despite evidence to the contrary in the photo below. 

Back to being healthy. I’ve watched a few fantastic documentaries about diet and I was most fascinated with Katie Couric‘s Fed Up (Netflix). Did you know in the early 1980s there were NO, NONE, NADA reported cases of type 2 diabetes in children in the USA? It was only in adults. There’s now estimated 208k cases! Doesn’t that just blow your damn mind?! I think it should be compulsory to watch. Of course the bottomline is that massive amounts of sugar pumped into food to replace fat is the culprit and the government knows it and has allowed itself to be corrupted into turning its head in exchange for political funding. Lobbyists are monsters. Even Michele Obama’s health campaign for children was not immune. 

I hope I don’t sound like I’m up on a massive soapbox but it’s truly infuriating. Again, says the girl who ate a dizzying amount of chocolate lately. 

My small changes have been education, ground flax seed, chia seed, Oatly oat milk and exercise when I can. I ran Monday morning for 30 minutes and burned 300 calories! Can’t beat that! Especially if I do it first thing in the morning, I feel like a beast! I AM A BEAST! 

Side note: Porridge has never been creamier as when I use oat milk in my oatmeal! Seriously I’m part of the Oatly cult now. And none of this is sponsored though how I wish it was! Who doesn’t love a kickback for shouting about things you love.  Anyone else with me on the oat milk revolution?

So slow and steady. Little by little I am making changes to enrich my life. I envy the next generation who are already ahead of me on being healthy. Properly healthy and fit. 

So as I work on enriching my life and my children’s, I welcome and tips. What other stories should I be reading or docs I should be watching?

Have a fantastical day!! xx

^How cute are these prints on Etsy? 

Hello!

Hello!

I took a bit of a break from blogging because life got very full. I loved doing the step-by-step recipe posts and hope to some day do more but moving back to America really shook things up. 

We are now back in London after 3 years in the States. They say you can’t go home again and maybe that was a bit true for me. In fact we would have loved to move to my hometown of Pittsburgh but my husband would have been hard pressed to find a job there so we went to the NYC area. 

In those three years I can honestly say I’ve never been more stressed, I’ve never had a more amazing job, we bought our first home, we got pregnant for the second time, we made incredible friends who I hope we will stay in touch with always but it never quite felt like where we should settle. 

London kept looking more and more attractive. I missed the food, my friends, the holiday/vacation policies (luckily my last job was amazing but my husband’s was awful), the anti-gun laws… I could go on and on. 

Anyway, I miss sharing recipes and having something that was my own in this world. My current goal is to make a mini recipe book to sell on Amazon, just to see how it does. 

I’d also like to post more about things I like and life musings. It seems like everyone is using Instastories and blogs as their diaries these days. Talking into the camera, replaces writing in your journal. I get it. It’s the human connection. It’s wanting someone else to say, “That happens to me too!” or “I agree!” 

So for now I’m not going to be too hard on myself and I’m just going to post as and when the wind takes me. Hopefully something will resonate with you and you’ll walk with me on this journey. At the least I hope that I’ve helped you make a yummy dish to enjoy with loved ones. 

So hello world. Missed you. 

x Lauriebell

Lauriebell Loves: Stitch Fix

I’m baaaaacckkk.  Or at least for now.  It’s been nearly one year since we moved from the UK to the USA and it’s been a roller coast ride.  We moved to NJ, work in NYC, Layla has started daycare and we are buying a house.  Next challenge: A DOG! I hope! As you can imagine, we are busy!  I am running through life from the moment I wake at 6:15 in the morning until 11pm when I (should) go to sleep at night.  So I don’t have much time to shop.  And as a mom I often put my needs last.  But I’m saying goodbye to those days with my new Stitch Fix subscription! I LOVE IT!!!

Messy Mince Pies

Though the threat of reducing someone to “mince meat” can sound quite messy, these easy mince pies are sticky and lovely.  Using store bought mincemeat saves time during an already stressful holiday season.