voucher blog

Falling off the diet wagon is something that many women are all too familiar with as our resolve to fit into last year's LBD soon crumbles at the mere thought of a teatime chocolate brownie or having to forgo our weekly lunch out with the girls in favour of a distinctly underdressed homemade salad.

In fact, our aversion to dieting is so ingrained that research has shown that many women are upping guilt levels rather than their quota of low-fat food or monounsaturated fats, despite professing a commitment to cutting calories in the ongoing battle of the bulge.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Utrecht University has revealed that those women who boast of their diet exploits and state that they are watching their food intake as vigilantly as their favourite box sets are, in fact, doing just the opposite. Read More »

Working up a sweat is bottom of gym priority list

I haven't set a foot inside a gym since a failed attempt to get my health regime kick-started circa 2011 and I'm not ashamed to say it. The monotony of going from machine to machine, doing 15 reps a piece bored me to tears and even the constant blare of MTV music in the background did little to inspire me.

So here I am a full two years later attempting to convince myself that the 40 minutes I spend to-ing and fro-ing to the train station and back each day can be constituted as power walking... although I daren't invest in a pedometer for fear that I am not hitting the calorie-burning optimum of 10,000 steps or more a day.

But while I haven't been afraid to wave the white flag when it comes to any hopes of me becoming a gym bunny, it seems that others aren't so ready to give up their gym junkie images despite the fact that their workouts could better be described as work flouts. Read More »

The sun has finally made its way out from behind the clouds and for those of us who have spent the best part of winter hiding our make-up free faces from the world at large under snoods, beanies and strategically placed scarves, this can be more than a little daunting.

Here are just a few tips that will make facing your spring beauty fears that much easier. Read More »

Day ONE of my diet and it's already gone up the spout. I should have seen it coming really. Kick-starting my new healthy regime a day late was probably my first mistake.

After deciding that there was no point starting on January 1, when the wine and champers would be flowing well into the morning (thus requiring disgusting amounts of bacon the following day to stave off the hangover) I settled upon January 2 as the starting point for my healthy 2013.

I did really well during the first half of day one (if I do say so myself) but when someone brings home an Indian takeaway and soft fresh bread for dinner, it's incredibly hard to resist. It was my first day back at work after some time off, though, so surely that's okay? I need to ease myself back into working life; and besides, an after-work pick-me-up is an essential part of everyday life, right? And thus the excuses begin... Read More »

Weather conditions can have a huge impact on our bodies, from our skin to the inner workings of our immune systems which is why it's important to make some changes to your health and beauty regime as Britain edges ever closer to the coldest months of the year. Read More »

Keeping up appearances can be a full-time job. From making sure our nails are perfectly polished to  covering up blemishes using a full array of lotions and potions. Looking below par just isn't an option for 21st century go-getters who want to have it all including a toiletries cabinet that would put a L'Oreal warehouse to shame.

Our penchant for inner and outer beauty has come at a heavy price and, although our consciences are niggling at us to put budgeting before beauty, our desire to put our best foot forward always wins out in the end.

Here's a brief guide to how you can preen to your heart's content without burning an unsightly hole in your Anya Hindmarch handbag.

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Alright, here's the situation: you get home after a bad day at college/uni/work, your teacher/boss gave you an impossible assignment, you missed your deadline and Chad won't stop annoying you about the supposed party he is having next week, which will probably be some people standing in a room, drinking alcohol while awkwardly bobbing their heads to some background music.

You're really mad at your teacher/boss for being impossible and don't feel like having a mutual "Bob your head" party at Chad's house. The solution for many of us is simple; as soon as we get home we grab a snack, sit down somewhere cosy and play our favourite game. Within moments, we've hacked enough limbs off to completely forget about how bad our day was and consequently start to feel a whole lot better. Thanks to the magic of video games, our day has been saved at the last moment and the only feeling we have when we get to bed is the one of satisfaction from beating the main antagonist in our favourite Final Fantasy game.

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For some of us, taking vitamin and mineral supplements is something which we were taught to do every day. Of course, at these times we were probably unaware that the Vitamin B group was a complex of twelve water-soluble vitamins or that supplements which offered "all" the vitamins weren't necessarily the best option. Read More »

With the Olympics set to hit London in just six months time, I'm sure I'm not the only one who expected 2012 to begin on a sporting foot. Yet, according to a leading price comparison site, two thirds of us will be ditching the gym this year, seeing it as an 'unnecessary cost'. Read More »

Editor's note; It seems everyone is feeling a little less healthy at the moment which is why two of our regular bloggers have independently blogged about weight and exercise today. Do you think the problem is the weather, perhaps unhealthier eating due to finance problems or something completely different? And which of you savvy savers has the magic solution?

Work commitments have meant that I've not been exercising as much as I'd have liked to of late. I do manage to pack exercise in each Saturday on the rugby field but, at the moment, getting down to training has been tough and work has kept me from going for a run for a long while. Read More »

Hello everyone, it's good to be back. It's been a while so let's catch up, shall we? Something truly disturbing happened to me last Friday. Getting ready for movie night out with a few girls, I squeezed myself into a pair of jeans and found them to be slightly too snug. I wasn't too upset because that's why we all have a pair of "fat jeans" hidden in the back of our closet, right? It turns out that these were my fat jeans! Oh, the horror! I ended up pulling on a pair of jeans that I had just tossed in a box meant for donation a few weeks earlier because I'd told myself that I'd never be that size again.

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Last weekend was not a good rugby weekend – for me at least. Not only did I lose my own rugby match (a second half capitulation in the last 15 minutes saw the opposition run away with it) but Wales lost their opening rugby match in the Rugby World Cup against South Africa by a demoralising single point, too. Read More »