January

January started with good intentions. So many good intentions. Resolutions were made to give up alcohol, caffeine and chocolate for the whole month. All those resolutions had fallen by the wayside by 4pm on New Year's Day. What followed was a month of nice meals out, nice meals at home, delicious wine, delicious gin and not a whole lot of moving off the sofa. And I have zero regrets.

February looks to be fairly decadent too, particularly given that we're off to NEW YORK on Thursday for six days. I won't say any more, for fear of spiralling into mania and burning myself out before we even land. Needless to say I'm very excited and looking forward to many many slices of pizza the size of my face.

January, in all its Instagrammed glory:

1) Amazing hot chocolate after a bracing walk early in the new year; 2) Leftover Christmas cheese and port; 3) An epic roast dinner cooked by my friend Becky and her fella; 4) A big gin in an awesome Betty Jackson Black glass; 5) After work wine at Superstore in the Northern Quarter; 6) Pulled bbq brisket, halloumi, sweet potato chips and coleslaw - believe it or not this was actually Slimmin World friendly; 7) Meal planning. We tried. We really did; 8) Fruit platter following a huge Chinese banquet for my Dad's birthday; 9) A chilli mojito and a mai tai at Bangkok Bar & Restaurant; 10) All you can eat chicken and ribs with Charlotte; 11) Token picture of Millie, because she doesn't normally sit still long enough for me to capture her cuteness

Belfasting

Just a few cheeky little Instagram snaps from my long Easter weekend in Belfast with The Soldier. We ate (Boojum, Alley Cat, Hudson, Sakura), drank (The John Hewitt, The Northern Whig, The Crown Liquor Saloon), walked miles, slept well and long, ate chocolate eggs, watched Game of Thrones, saw the Warhol exhibit at The MAC and went to the Ulster Museum.

Just lovely.

Spring-ish

In an attempt to combat the grey, freezing days that we've been having recently, I've been on a mission to bring some spring to my life. Blood oranges (SO GOOD), some pieces from the new Celia Birtwell x UNIQLO collection, double florals and colourful, healthy food have all helped to brighten up this week. I can even almost ignore the snow that is falling outside my window as I type this.

Just as a bit of housekeeping, as I'm sure you've read on virtually every single blog recently, on 1st July Google Reader will cease to be. When I first heard the news I was actually a little bit sad. Google Reader has been a part of my life for a fair few years now and it does feel slightly like the end of an era.

However, clearly I'm very fickle as I've already switched over to Feedly and, whilst I do feel slightly like I'm cheating on Google Reader, I have to say that I think I actually prefer it. Shhh, don't tell Google Reader, I don't want to hurt its feelings.

If Feedly isn't your bag, then you can carry on following Clear Your Heart over on Bloglovin' or by clicking on either of the Feedburner links in the right hand sidebar and subscribing.

Oh, and just in case you'd like to see more incessant pictures of what I've been eating, wearing or doing (all filler, no killer) then you can follow me on Instagram too.

October looked like...

If you've never heard of "Photo a Day", then this may just look like an entirely random collection of Instagram pictures but I promise you it's not. The Instagram user fatmumslim produces a list of daily prompts each month and people follow the daily theme and tag their pictures with #fmsphotoaday. It's something that I've wanted to do for a while (mainly because I struggle to see anything through, damn my short attention span) and I finally managed it in October. Hurrah! Some of the photos were definitely last minute "argh, I haven't taken a picture yet today" photos (I'm looking at you Day 29: Moon), but some were slightly more thought out.

Points of note:

Yes, that is my boyfriend making a face that looks uncannily like Robert De Niro. It's one of his main skills.
Yes, my boyfriend's name is Aingeal. Fallen angel more like.
Yes, I take too many pictures of my parents' dogs.
Yes, I do have far too many clothes. That wardrobe contains approximately 1/3 of my clothes. Maybe even 1/4. Oops.


If you want to see photos of my dinner on a regular basis (and WHY wouldn't you?!) my instagram username is clearyourheart and you can see all my pictures on Webstagram, here.

Progress

I don't intend on doing weekly or even monthly updates on how I'm getting on at Slimming World but, from time to time, I probably will mention it and let you know how I'm doing. So, I've been back on the plan for roughly 3.5 weeks and at my third weigh in last week I'd lost a grand total of 12 pounds, which I'm pretty pleased with. I know that a lot of people are sceptical of or baffled by Slimming World so I thought it might be helpful to show you what I actually eat.

Someone on Twitter asked me if I'd been living on salad and my answer was a resounding "no." In fact, I haven't had salad once in the past month. What I've been doing instead is cooking some of my favourite meals, but with a Slimming World twist. That twist? Basically adding no or very little fat to anything that I eat. The photos above are (from top left, clockwise) baked beans, fried egg and homemade chips; fake "doner" kebab made with extra lean beef mince, onions, homemade chips and coleslaw; spinach and king prawn curry and "sweet and sour" chicken made using Fanta Zero. Yes, really.

I tend to live on hearty, spicy, big-portioned food. I could never survive on tiny salads or without carbs. And by 'survive' I mean be happy. I LOVE food. It is my one true love. I read far more food blogs than I do fashion or beauty blogs (and the list of food blogs I love is growing weekly) and I have a list as long as my arm of restaurants that I want to visit, once I finally get to my Slimming World target. Life is too short, for me, to not enjoy what I'm eating and to feel hungry all the time.

And thankfully, on Slimming World, I can even still enjoy a few cheeky glasses of wine occasionally...

Amazing beef and bacon casserole with a new-to-me Marlborough, which was sadly disappointing

Going Forward

1) Amazing curry at Namaste Nepal; 2) Pulled pork sundae at SoLIta; 

3) Burgers at Almost Famous; 4) Bento box breakfast at Harvey Nichols

As some of you may know (if you follow me on Twitter), I rejoined Slimming World last Tuesday, after a few months away. If I'm honest, I haven't followed the plan properly since January last year. For those of you who don't know, I lost 5 stone 4lbs in about 11 months in 2010 by following Slimming World. Unfortunately I've regained rather a lot of that weight, although I'm still a hell of a lot thinner than I was when I first started, way back at the start of 2010. There are a number of reasons for the gain. I bought my own house in late 2010 and moved into an area with approximately one million takeaways. Takeaways test my willpower when I've had a long, hard day at work and the last thing I feel like doing is chopping vegetables. Also, the majority of last year was a bit rough for a number of reasons and, for me, food = comfort. Oh, and I kind of fell in love with a wonderful man. Which meant meals out (see above), cosy meals in and too much nice wine and cheese.

I've been pretty unhappy with my weight for most of this year but, a couple of weeks ago, it got to the point where I was avoiding looking in the mirror. Then I saw a couple of photos of myself that almost had me in tears. There's also the small matter of the wardrobes that I have that are stuffed full of gorgeous clothes. Gorgeous clothes that no longer fit me. So back to Slimming World I went and while I can't pretend that I'm at all happy with the number that appeared on the scale, I'm absolutely certain that I'm never going to see that number again in my life.

So, expect less photos of OMG!FOOD and more photos of me wearing the clothes that I haven't been able to fit into for so long.

Oh, and there'll be less photos like these too... 

Au revoir, boozy times! For now, at least.

Special K Biscuit Moments

A few weeks ago, I was invited by the very lovely people at Kellogg's to hear all about their new Special K Biscuit Moments. It just so happened that the presentation was being held at Champneys in Tring, so I couldn't really say no, could I? Armed with the world's biggest coffee, a big bottle of water and some restorative pineapple chunks, I boarded a train at obscenely-early-o'clock and headed off to Hertfordshire.

Champneys was, predictably, heavenly. There are no decent photos of the spa itself (or, in fact, anything, despite me lugging my DSLR up and down the country) because I was just far too busy relaxing. There are few things I love more than turning my phone off and leaving it in a locker for the day. As well as sitting in a glorious outdoor jacuzzi for more time than was strictly decent, I had a Candle Light Massage and it was quite possibly the best thing that's ever happened to me. Just perfect.

So, what of the biscuits? Well, I don't have a massively sweet tooth. In fact, nine times out of ten I'd pick a bag of crisps over chocolate or sweets. But I do occasionally get a little hankering for something sugary. For that, Biscuit Moments are perfect. They're sweet and fruity (either blueberry or strawberry) and really really nice. They're particularly good with an afternoon brew. Fact. You can get them in major supermarkets now, priced at £1.99 for a box of five packs of two. They're also under 100 calories for the two biscuits and they really don't taste like they should be! Which is always a good thing.

Disclosure: I was a guest of Kellogg's at Champneys but I received no monetary compensation for this post. In fact, I was given some of the Biscuit Moments to try as part of the presentation, but I have since rebought them!

Snapshots

So, I got flu then.


After three ridiculously stressful weeks at work I got home last Friday, ready for a lovely relaxing weekend, and promptly got ill. It also happened to coincide with seeing The Soldier for the first time in a month. So that was, er... a bit bloody annoying really. We still managed to have a lovely time, as ever, including a trip to Almost Famous. Which was epic, really. Last time I went I declared that it was "nowhere near as good as MEATliquor" but now it kind of is. So that's nice. What was less nice was the trip to the IMAX afterwards to see The Dark Knight Rises. My flu decided to take a firm grip on me and I slept through 75% of it. Fumin' babes.

I've been dogsitting for my parents for the last couple of weeks so my Instagram has been awash with photos of the little hounds. It's been possibly the quietest couple of weeks ever but it's been lovely, illness aside.

1) Homemade brisket, sweet potato fries and coleslaw; 2) Almoust Famous joy; 3) New favourites; 4) Pyjamas and cider; 

5) All I wanted were liquorice allsorts and tissues; 6) Poorly sick with my hound; 7) & 8) MEGA cheese; 

9) My Mum was such a little hottie; 10) Incredible sunset; 11) & 12) Millie and Daisy

I know Instagram posts are seen by some as a bit of a cop out but I'm not quite back to full health yet. Plus, I really bloody love Instagram. So there you go.