As you will have seen from Instagram – I went skiing in Val Thorens last week. Oh my god, it was THE BEST week. So much fun. So nice to get away with my friends, and so so nice to be skiing again, and everything that comes with it.
However, ski trips always completely knock me out. Firstly, I am either freezing on a chair lift or over heating in my thermals by the time I get to the bottom on a slope so I am always the wrong temperature. Secondly, I do more exercise in that one week of skiing that I do for in total for the entire year, so I get SO TIRED and so run down. My friend Lauren and I genuinely fell asleep whilst eating lunch on our last day. Because we were that tired. That isn’t ok.
It also involves early morning (I was on holiday with 3 other people – 2 of whom are mega early riser and morning people – I am neither of those things) and late nights (either hitting up le discotecques or playing card games/Cards Against Humanity until 2am), plus drinking vin chaud (mulled wine) pretty much all day and going to après ski bars eventually starts to take its toll. PLUS we spent most of the week, when we weren’t skiing, eating delicious but unbelievably unhealthy food. I lived off baguettes, cheese, pasta and more cheese for 7 days. One night we literally went out for a meal of melted cheese. SO GOOD. But doesn’t make you feel fresh and alive. In fact I feel horrible now, tired, sluggish and ill. We all woke up on the last day feeling horrendous – sore throats, glands up, shivery, achey. (Very worth it, but the worst feeling). So now, I am now curled up on the sofa shivering in a blanket, drinking Lemsip and watching New Girl and trying to feel vaguely alive again.
I am not, and never will be, the healthiest eater, HOWEVER I felt now was probably an ideal time to do a weeks detox and try and restore some health. And we aren’t just talking food – we are talking skin detox, nails detox and a juice detox, early bed times detox and lots of water detox. The full works.
I teamed up with Holland & Barrett a few weeks ago and they sent me over a box of goodies so I could try out a ‘7 day meal plan’ to see if it made any different to my health or overall wellbeing. Couldn’t think of a better time to test this out. So starting from today / after this last bacon and cheese toasty I just made, I am going full health to see how I feel in a weeks time. I will update you in a week with meal plans, what I liked, what tasted like grass and how I feel after a nice little detox from melted cheese.
Also this week, I have been sent an amazing ‘Nail Apothecary’ set from Elegent Touch. I can’t wait to try this. My nails are totally ruined after skiing. I used the Essie Gel Setter top coat which I ADORE. But I stupidly picked all the varnish off my nails on my last day whilst I was bored on the coach to the airport, so my nails look gross AND they keep breaking or being generally socially unacceptable. So thought I would do a little nail detox this week too.
First off… lets start with nails.
These gorgeous products include a Cuticle Elixer to nourish & soothe cuticles and nails, a Cuticle Eliminator to soften cuticles to help remove excess cuticles (can’t wait to do that), a 24kt gold Ridge Filler to get rid of all those bumps and lumps and imperfections in your nails for an even coverage (such as where I have ripped off my nail varnish..), a gorgeous base coat and a gel effect top coat to help with non-chipping. I can’t wait. I am letting my nails breathe this week – so I won’t be painting them but can’t wait to do a nice little cuticle removal DIY.
Also – lets just appreciate how gross my nails are looking right now. Some long, some short, broken and chipped and gross.
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| not what you want.. |
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| I spent hours looking for number 5 too… |
So I will be testing these products out over this week and I will let you know how they go. I am expecting beautifully manicured claws by the end of the week…
Next up we have another aid in my detox week of health – juice.
This brand of juice is AMAZING. It is called Roots Juicery – they have a cafe/ juicery? on Charlotte’s Place (Fitzrovia area near Goodge Street Station) and I am pretty sure you can also order online. Their juices are £4.80 which sounds expensive but is nothing compared to other products in the cold-pressed juicing world. Also these are decent sized drinks rather than paying £6 for a sip. So I highly recommend these. They also do Nut Milks (which are slightly cheaper too) – so dreamy.
This juice has literally been named after my post-skiing detox week – “The Big Cleanse”. It consists of pineapple, cucumber, apple, lemon, celery, leafy greens and romaine lettuce. I mean – how healthy can you get. I thought I would have to shut my eyes and hold my nose but I was so so pleasantly surprised at how nice they are. Seriously.
This is coming from the girl who lives off hot chocolate. I wish I had more of them to have one every morning for the entire of this week.
Also – such beaut packaging.
Here we have one of their nut milks – which are AMAZING.
All their juices and nut milks are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 etc so you can basically go in there are pretend you are ordered Chinese take away – I’ll have two 4s and a 7.
I repeat – I wish I had a delivery to these to my house every morning – I would basically be the healthiest person alive.
Now moving on to food. I got the best hamper from Holland & Barrett (thank you!). As someone who grew up on fish fingers and pasta – I never really had a clue what the difference was between chia seeds and hemp seeds, let alone what a flaxseed is. I am fully aware what a strawberry is, and a blueberry, but not sure I have come across a goji berry before. I am far too excited to try all of these things. I have coconut oil, I have cacao powder and I am going to make raw brownies with that (Deliciously Ella vibes). I have oats and drinking oats (never tried that before) to make all kinds of exciting breakfasts. Plus all kinds of seeds to go in smoothies (which I will be drinking a lot this week). I am basically going to be a health food goddess.
I recently got this Breville Blend Active blender from Debenhams. It is amazing. Honestly the best thing ever. You basically fill the plastic bit with fruit or whatever you want, screw on the blade lid (that IS a thing) and then twist it into the base and blend away. When it is all blended, you unsrew the blade lid and pop on the drinking lid and just carry it off with you. There is no decanting from the blender into a bottle. THE BLENDER IS A BOTTLE. Blew my mind. It comes with two bottles so you can always have one clean and ready to go. It’s the little things.
My favourite smoothie that I have been making since I got the blender is a strawberry, frozen blueberries, banana, natural yogurt and orange juice. Can’t wait to start adding some super-foods into it too. A few weeks ago I may have accidentally also added Nutella into my smoothie… by accident… on purpose.
Holland & Barrett also sent over some snacks to keep me tied over between meals. No Hula Hoops this week – oh no. All about the nakd bars.
Next up we have skin. My skin was disgusting whilst I was skiing. I was covered in suncream – because as cold as you are, your face is still up a mountain, basically next to the sun, so I was smothered in factor 50. My skin hates suncream. It just errupts into a mountain of oil bumps. Which is always pleasant. So, just not wearing suncream is basically a skin detox for me – just back to my SPF 30 moisturisers or foundations and loving life.
However I am trying out the Rodial Stemcell super-food cleaner this week to go with my super-food lifestyle. This can be used as a cleanser or as a mask so I will be doing both of those – very excited to try this out.
I also received some Cloud 9 goodies. I have never tried any Cloud 9 Skin Solutions before but they look AMAZING. I won’t go into too many details now, as I will review these for a week or two before I let you know what I think but if they do what they say on the tin/packaging, I will be one happy bunny.
Also look how beautiful those colours are.
So wish me luck on my healthy eating and healthy beauty regime this week. I will keep you up to date on Twitter (probably complaining that I miss mac & cheese) and do a full review of my experience next week so stay tuned.
If you have any healthy recipes for food or smoothies then please do let me know!
Lots of love – from a very snotty, sore throated Jessica
xx
