Life Lately: A Half Year Update

Goooood evening beautiful people! I thought I would share a quick outfit post with you guys today, a long with a few rambles about what I’ve been up to lately. From blogging, to living, to fitness and more…

I’m (re)starting my health & fitness journey! Fitness/health and me have gone through multiple break ups over time. Our best stint was when I was around 18 years old and fighting hard for a ‘summer body’ for my first girls’ holiday. I would do an at home work out every morning – and I mean every. single. morning – no rest days. I was still packing on the carbs (living at home – in an African household – you simply cannot avoid them!), but heavily reduced my portion sizes (probably too much) and seriously restricted fat from my diet. I ended up shredding multiple kilos and in pretty good shape for my holiday, but the issue here is that I was working out just to look thin on the beach next to my friends – I wasn’t making a total lifestyle change. So, of course, once I got back from that holiday and started university (which meant lots of alcohol and junk food), I packed on the pounds and reached my heaviest by summer the following year. From here, I’ve been on and off. Typically, I’m pretty good at going to the gym at least once or twice and have been for almost three years now (I do have my breaks where I totally fall off), but my issue is really my diet. I LOVE FOOD. And I know ‘everyone loves food’, but I mean it when I say I love it more than the average person. Food is probably on my mind 75% of the time, and this is no joke. In terms of my diet, I’ve had times when I’ve restricted what I eat (I wouldn’t recommend), I’ve had times when I’ve cut down fats, I’ve had times when I’ve cut down carbs, but somehow I always find myself back in a stage where I’m eating crisps and burgers and kicking myself for being unhealthy. Anyways, I’m back on the grind and this time in it for the long haul/in it for a (healthy) lifestyle change and not just for a short term ‘summer body’, I’ve already started seeing results so if all goes well, will also share on the blog! Getting fit & healthy for all the food lovers.

I’ve lost a lot of blogging motivation… although I’ve still been updating (I typically have a back log of planned blog posts that I can churn out), I’ve really started losing my ‘online’ motivation. I’ve been less active of the social media, and have generally been very ‘meh’ as of larw about Skylish. I guess it’s a stage, and I’ve gone through stages such as this with my blog before, but I’m wondering what will break me out of this rut. Is it time for a complete rebranding? Do I need to take my content in a different direction? Do I need to take on a brand new project? I’m not sure but what I do know is that I need something to make me feel inspired again and keep me putting in 100%. It’s six months through the year and I can’t tell you that I am where I wanted to be at all – but I guess all that can be done is to keep on pushing!

Photobucket broke my blog! I currently host 90% of my images on a photo host called Photobucket – however as of recently they have taken all their free users’ images hostage and are basically asking for $400 a year for us to be able to continue using their services. Of course, that would be a hell to the no from me. But it does mean that if you go on some of my blog posts you will unfortunately see a lot of broken images. I’m currently in the process of moving all my images to a new host called Imgur, but it will literally take months to re-upload every image. So, please bare with me and the messy website in the meantime.

I moved out (kinda…) As you all know I moved out when I was 18 into central London so that I could be close to my university (I studied at the LSE). I lived in halls in my first year, but for the next two years lived out and a rented flats. Essentially, I manged to live in pretty much the same area for those three years – Bloomsbury. Although I thought that starting work and moving closer to work would have me out of Bloomsbury after those three years – my boyfriend coincidentally moved into the area. Of course, I spend a lot of time at his place as well as my own, meaning I essentially squeezed in a fourth year in the area. However, this weekend he moved out, and it was very bitter sweet saying goodbye to the area of my university, and saying goodbye to a place that truly shaped me a lot up until this point. But of course, life goes on and you always have to keep it moving, so I’m excited to see where life will take us next. Whilst it’s a goodbye to Bloomsbury/the LSE, it opens the door to so many more future opportunities.

And that is as exciting as it gets in the meantime! Along with feeling uninspired with my blog (which I wrote about above), I’ve also been feeling generally uninspired with life. I feel like I’m just running along a wheel and living my life in a cycle. I met up with some friends recently who mentioned that they thought I was currently having the time of my life and going to “so many cool events”, which makes it so evident that social media (particularly, Instagram), glamorizes the reality. But, don’t worry, I’ve got that debate coming up another day! Hopefully – by my next “Life Lately” – the tone would’ve picked up a lot!

Have a lovely week!

Photos: Marianne Paul