Swede traveling the world

I have many wonderful strong women in my circle of friends. They are all beautiful, inside and out, kind, extremely successful and intelligent. On the outside the look like the epiphany of success, they have their entire life together, but that may not always be the case. I’m probably myself suffering from it, moments of doubt and challenges. The past couple of months have been exactly that…filled with challenges and questioning myself if I’m good enough to do all the things I want to do.

This thought appeared in my head last night when I realized that everyone around me has gone through extremely difficult times, abuse, failure, poverty in some cases and heartache. Myself included, I would define as I was stopped from being who I am, and pushed into a confined mold of how I should be. Living with someone telling me how I should speak, who I should speak to, how I should look. Well time for a reality check and enough of negative thoughts, that’s my personal promise to myself today! Ok I can’t guarantee my thoughts will change over night, but my love told me I should stop looking back and stop remembering bad things and instead look at the future and the happiness I have now. Pretty smart words I have to say…maybe I need to get it tattooed in so I remember it?!

Happy Wednesday to everyone and just to remember how fantastic life is a few pictures from a great weekend!

 

yummy chorizo salad for sunday dinner

  

egg white omelette tor brunch, going to kill my fitness goals this year

  

trying out the new Krasnapolsky Amsterdam restaurant for lunch

  

friends over for dinner last weekend

 

Perhaps a little late but here’s a short update of my New Year’s celebrations which took place in Geneva this year! We hopped on the train from Zurich to Geneva and spent a couple of days at a very nice hotel called EastWest. Perfect location and well priced as well as having a decent gym and a nice trendy atmosphere!

 

a hotel gym with a Technogym must be a good hotel!

 
The SBB took us to Geneva as we opted for the train and naturally the SBB is as reliable as the Swiss watches. If you’re taking a longer tripa hot tip is to pop by the restaurant cart. It’s not your average restaurant on a train, it sports white cloths on the tables and table service! The food isn’t shabby either, so here a rather long trip can feel like a short few minutes.

 

dining on the SBB

 
Once we got to Geneva we set out to explore the town. Geneva is a beautiful city both in the summer as well as in the winter. In the winter, there’s almost an after ski mood in the city as the locals enjoy sitting outside, wrapped around with big blankets sipping their traditional Aperol Spritz or why not a glass of champagne. We found a cute little place called Riverside Café and they had a great selection of wines by the glass and little nibbles to with it.

The Au Lac hotels are perfect if you’re looking for some high class cocktails and drinks, so if you’re in this mood I’d try out either Four Season’s cocktail bar or a bit further up the lake to President Wilson.

As spaces were limited in Geneva at New Year’s we ended up having New Year’s dinner at l’Angleterre hotel and if you don’t want to splash the cash on going upstairs to the restaurant Windows, I can recommend having some after hour drinks at the Leopard Bar downstairs in the hotel. They have live music and great cocktails!

lakeside in Geneva

  
 For a traditional dining experience which in Geneva often is a steak with Bearnaise sauce or some seafood head to Café du Centre. I naturally forgot to capture the delicious dinner I had but I did manage to snap a picture of the desert which was a gigantic macaroon. The picture doesn’t do it justice but I’d say it was the size of half a dozen normal macaroons and absolutely delicious!

  
Once back in Zug, we finished a couple of weeks off by going to my favorite restaurant Hafen on the lake in Zug. I had a lovely fitnessteller with fresh grilled shrimps and the love had fischknuperli, the fish and chips of Switzerland!
   
   
Grüezi from Switzerland and speak soon my friends!

wow last weekend my love and I celebrated three years together! The happiest years in my life and if someone had told me I would one day meet such a wonderful man I would never have believed it! As a celebration we went to Le Restaurant in Amsterdam?.

 

love is indeed the small things in life…

 
Unfortunately Monday rolled around and back to Switzerland to finish up work before a looooong daughter after Christmas break. I did manage to go out for dinner at Aklin, one of Zugs definitely best restaurants…and they certainly go all out with the Christmas mood

Aklin serves up cod with spinach

 We also got a lovely bouquet of flowers from friends to celebrate our three years…the rest of the week I’ve spent planning the Christmas food. My new favourite website is www.jameoliver.com. He has fantastic Christmas recipes, and not just one or two but loads! I’m having trouble choosing. We’ve decided that Christmas will be spent relaxing, enjoying our twosomeness, eating good food and probably a The Wire marathon…

beautiful flowers…

 
But I’ll post all the pictures later, now time to get ready for girls dinner at The Hoxton?

After a couple of weeks of hectic work and traveling I have been back on my gym routine the past few days. I did a heavy session by myself on Sunday, followed by a cardio class, BodyShape, and finished off with a Body Pump yesterday. Personally I love the classes because you can get an all round training you wouldn’t otherwise get

The past few days I’ve been feeling a bit low and stressed for both personal and work reasons, and training is truly like a drug. After just a few sessions I feel all my stress and worry disappear.

I also felt I’ve been slipping with my healthy eating lately so I whipped up a aubergine parmigiana for me and my love! Isn’t it fantastic to have a date night on just an average Tuesday evening!

  

This past weekend I’ve been back to home base Stockholm and it hits me every time…how different life is now than when I left four years ago…
Back then I was yearning for confirmation and admiration. I wanted to please everyone and have a perfect life. Which I think from the outside I had but the challenges of generation Y, we’re never really truly content with everything we have, we need a purpose. I feared making a mistake, fighting with friends or losing my job. You could say I was very status driven…
And then one day I packed my bags and had to face my fears head on. My first night in Amsterdam, in a messy apartment with all my furniture and not a sole in the whole country to talk to because I knew no one, I knew I had made the right decision. Because the first thought that came to mind was that no one knows me here so no one can say whether I was right or wrong and no one here to confirm what I did. It was a fantastically liberating thing! I had the chance to create a whole new destiny for myself. Not that the one I had in Sweden was a bad one, but I got an incredible energy from trying something new.Trust me, things didn’t pan out the way I expected them to. I moved to yet another country, changed jobs, met a man, lost and gained friends and above all have taken a few blows but all in all its been the best years of my life!

A tip though whatever you do get to know the locals whichever way you can, don’t just stay in the expat community because this local knowledge can really broaden your horizon…and whatever you do learn the language! For me it was the biggest mental block, and now feeling I command both Dutch and German is extremely empowering. Seeking confirmation, it really does give you a bit of street cred with the locals.

I still struggle with just doing what I want and not really thinking too much about what other people think…but I’m a few steps forward. If there’s anything I can share with anyone else is, the move abroad really isn’t too hard, it’s purely a mental ghost, being in a strange environment is what’s hard and you have to be humble to this new environment and the people, and above all do what you want without worrying of this is what’s perceived by others as the right thing to do. ????

 

work ready this week!

 

Beautiful Zug Skyline

 

You who have read the blog have followed my journey of losing quite some weight and staying healthy while at the same time one of my life passions is trying new cuisines and restaurants all over the world. So how do I manage to stick to losing weight while doing this. Well I’ve come into a very good healthy of always choosing to indulge when I really want to and during the week I generally stay very lean and mean, no sweets, alcohol, unnecessary fatties and excessive portions. Honestly one of the biggest aha moments for me was portion control through my dietician Esther. She taught me only to truly eat 300-500 kacl per meal…I was probably hitting 750+ kacl without even realizing it!

Training!!!

Training both gives you a mental boost AND a metabolic boost. Something we call in business win-win?. My favorite exercise routine is definitely pimping weight, but my personal trainer Richard also taught me to get a few intervals in there to keep the fat burning for days! Usually I either start or finish my workout with 8X20 seconds intervals on a still treadmill. Having to push the treadmill yourself really kicks your cardio into gear, and best of all I’m not a runner so this is a very short but effective cardio workout!

Usually I try to get 3-4 workouts in a week…sometimes that doesn’t succeed but if it doesn’t I won’t beat myself up about it! Below is a 5 am jet lag workout with a view of New York at the Standard!

Make use of the jet lag and workout early on the other side of the pond

Food!!!

This is something I think I’ve already told you about. My diet only consists of around 1250kacl a day, so I truly need to keep it slim during the week. I am officially an expert on low calorie options for breakfast, lunch and dinner! One of my best friends is also my calorie counter app! I would really recommend downloading one. Going to my dietician every months ensures I keep on track…after all my competitive nature stops me from weighing in gaining weight month to month!

Results!!!

So how did my last week look? Well mostly pretty healthy. Most of the week I was on Zug and quickly threw together some type of salad or protein/veggie wok every night. Wednesday offered a simple salad with smoked fish, raw vegetables and a little bit of olive oil dressing. During the week I never spend more than half an hour to make dinner!

Simple everyday dinner

Once the weekend drew nearer I headed out for date night at a new restaurant in Amsterdam, French Connection. One word, amazing!! They serve up small dishes so you can order three or four per person and it’s also sharing concept. I think this is a true date night restaurant and the food was solidly inspired by the traditional French kitchen with a twist. My personal favorite was the amuse bouche surprise olive and the brioche with cheese was dreamy!

French Connection

 

Friday started off with dinner with one of my best friends at Amsterdams best Vietnamese according to me, O Mai! Menu is simple, very kind on your wallet and always fresh. They only have a selection of one wine so if I could have a say…perhaps extend it?! Whatever you do, don’t forget to try a Vietnamese coffee if you haven’t already!

raw beef salad from O Mai

 

vietnamese coffee

Of course I finished off the week with a relaxed Saturday brunch with my better half….this time some fresh bread with a pesto kale salad and turkey.

healthy brunch

Tonight I’m off for a mani and pedi to get my nail game on??. Speak later friends!

 

A blue week

The past few weeks I’ve been feeling less than energized. Some family problems, slow month in the office and a dragged out cold…so yesterday I was supposed to summarize how my year has been at work and I decided to pick myself right out of this miserable mood!!

Not only did I finish my evaluation, but I have myself a pat on the back for managing to almost learn a new language this year, lost 15kg of weight, start a new job and staying happy with my love at the same time!!

Have a fantastic Thursday and to celebrate I even posted a selfie of myself on Instagram! #todayifeelbeautiful

IMG_4496.JPG
By the way…also got to show of my new gooooorgeous Kenzo pants! ❤️

Christmas glitter

I went to fix my nails the other day and because the days have been getting shorter and there’s a chill in the air I opted for a lush Opi Christmas color…oh and I also got matching pedicure!! The small blisses of life.

Finally my regular nail technician was also back from vacation so all is well in the world?! She’s really fantastic and does a lot of the sculpting by hand without any machine which really leaves the final result with a very natural look and not as thick as acrylics can generally get.

On the beauylist I also just heard from a friend that Hotel Diplomat in stockholm has opened a blow at…and as a surprise I’m heading over there soon. Naturally I’m already booked for a Friday afternoon appointment.


  

I’m starting To approach my weight loss and health goal which is effectively turning the clock back four years to the day I moved abroad and was in reality my fittest of my lifetime! I have secretly been taking before and after pictures throughout the process so have a look at th below??

waiting to get weighed in and measured…

As always as I walked into Esther we had a great chat about various trends in nutrition such as Paleo diet. We both reached the conclusion we believe that a healthy lifestyle not excluding any diet is probably the best however in our current society we are overwhelmed by too much sugar in everything we eat! The. We also discussed vi real fat versus the fat under your skin and the healthy hazard of vi real fat. All in all I don’t think I have too much to worry about in that department…but you never know?!

Below you can see my progress in about four months and 15kg! I’d still need to lose another 4-5kg to be in my target weight but I’m starting to feel that the target is near at which point I can start focusing on maintaining the weight!

left before and far to the right after…and some progress inbetween!

The one thing I feel happy about though is I have found a fantastic nutritionist that will hopefully follow me the rest of my life! Esther’s already told me I can call her whenever, if I feel I need a boost after vacation or a tough period she’ll be there for me!

friends I haven’t updated you lately on my fitness/health journey! All in all it’s going well, I’ve lost about 14kg and I’m another 6kg away from what I define as my original weight because it’s the weight I’ve always felt comfortable with! I’m calling this blog healthy lifestyle update because to be honest I never want to go through a weight loss diet ever again!! It’s tough work although the results are worth it, one thing I noticed last week was that my Zumba class was all of a sudden light compared to a few months ago. The movements and routines actually felt easy, but no wonder I’m over 15kg lighter!! Only give more to go so wish me luck??!

I was really good this weekend when it came to my diet, tried out both a nice healthy fried egg with garlic broccoli and pickled kohlrabi. Dinner was a quick homemade rye bread on a bed of arugula and pulled pork and a little grilled aubergine dip. Sort of baba ganoush but of course I didn’t add any oil?!

 

breakfast of egg, rye bread, broccoli and kohlrabi

 

pickled onions with pulled pork…yumminess

 

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