I went vegan for a week and...

I've just realized it's been a month since I wrote this and left it in my draft. I honestly thought my days of procrastination were over but here we are... procrastinating, again.

Anyway, I'm just going to hit publish. Everything below was written on the 25th of September, 2020. Happy reading!!

Helloooooo,

It's been a week since I started my little diet. I went in thinking I'd lose about a kg but by day 3 I'd lost 0.8kg. 

To say I was shocked was an understatement. I literally went on the scale 4 times just to be sure. 

I tried my best to take pictures but on most days I was way too hungry to focus so I took two or 3 pictures at most and dived in. 

All pictures were taken with my phone.

Everyday, I check in and write a little something. Kinda like a diary. Therefore everything you are about to read from the next paragraph was written prior to today.

Let's dive in.

Day 1.

I miss milk. I'm typing this on Thursday 17th September, 2020 at 12:03pm while I have my first cup of coffee for the day. I knew this was going to be the hardest bit because I doubt there's any milk substitute better than cow milk but we move. At least now I know its black tea or coffee for the next few days. 

My final thoughts on day 1 is that it’s not so bad but I still don’t understand why anyone would choose a vegan lifestyle. The food was really tasty and yes I had only that portion of rice and a lot of fruits and half a bowl of salad. My energy didn’t drop at all so that’s a plus. 

Because I'm bad at measurements, here is a visual of how much I used. I hope that helps a little.

I used 3 of these for the recipe.

Mushroom, garlic & onions.

Day 2

Again, I miss milk. I’m having a cup of tea and I’m about to make a smoothie with almond milk, frozen raspberry, banana a teaspoon of ginger and honey. The recipe says to add a spoon of coconut oil but I don’t have that. 

I DROPPED MY SMOOTHIE! WHAT IS GOING ON?

Calmed myself dow and made another cup of smoothie. Halfway through, I realize honey is technically not vegan but after the morning I had... I'm excusing it!

Final thoughts of day 2, started off rough but after the plate of pasta everything was right again.

Day 3

I didn’t have any tea today because wth! It was a good day. My body is getting used to it and I’m not missing or craving chicken so progress. I’ve convinced myself that I’m in some European country and I can’t find halal food lol. I have to say I love mushrooms and tofu. It’s super tasty and the texture is amazing. I also made my meals spicy and tried to add as much flavor as possible. All in all it was a very good day. My energy level was up although I was sleepy throughout. I think that was caused by lack of caffeine.

I forgot to take pictures of my mushroom soup cause I was HUNGRY!! I will still share the recipe anyway.

For the potatoes, I would suggest adding some type of sauce on the side because I felt like I needed a sauce while I was eating the potatoes.

Day 4.

My scale is lying to me cause there’s no way I lost 0.8kg in 3 days. WHAAAAT???? Lol for some people it doesn’t seem like a lot but to me that’s a lot to lose in such a short period. Anyway let me not get too excited. Let’s wait till the end of the week. My tea with almond milk doesn’t taste bad at all today. About to put in a workout then make lunch. 

Today on the menu is jollooooof! I’ve been making tiny changes to the menu so instead of just veggies, I’m going to add some plantain in the mix because why not.

For dinner I was meant to have stir fry but felt like eating some plantain so I added that to the menu.

I feel like today's menu is pretty easy and straight forward so I won't be sharing the recipe.

 

Day 5.

When I wrote the menu, I knew it would be subject to change but I needed some kind of guide and it has helped a lot. Today's meal was super tasty. I'm no longer craving chicken or milk so I guess eventually like all things new, your body gets used to it.

I'm enjoying myself and honestly the hardest part is deciding when to start a diet. Unfortunately I couldn't try out the onion soup cause I ended up going out so I settled for left over masa with yaji.

Let me just say I outdid myself with the cous cous.

Day 6.

I’m not one to blow my horns but yoooo that falafel sandwich was IT! It was so tasty, I absolutely loved it. Anyway here’s a link to the recipe I used Falafel recipe . I ended up eating more than I should today and I'm so full. I don't know how I'm going to sleep. 

It was a good day. I've stopped having bad days although I keep eyeing the chocolate in my side drawer. Tomorrow is my last day and I'm curious to see if there will be further weight loss or not. 

Day 7.

I finally got to the end!!! I MADE IT!! Alhamdulillah. It started out rough but it ended on a great note.

My final thoughts are I'll definitely do it again. I enjoyed myself and ended up losing 1.3kg which is not bad considering I had low expectations. 

Since I've tried it, I'm more understanding of vegans. I personally wouldn't want to stop eating meat forever but I've decided to cut down on my consumption. From now on, its healthier options for me. 

Next stop, I'm looking for diets that will help improve skin appearance. Any suggestions? Would love to hear from you. Send me a message on here or IG if you'd love to ask me more questions.

Aisha

xx

P.S I'm very happy that I can finally have tea with real milk. 

What's on the menu?

Writing this menu was by far one of the hardest things I've had to do this week. Half way through, I had to ask myself if I was actually ready to do this and the answer bounced from yes to maybe and back. Alhamdulillah I'm done done done with my menu.

Before I dive in, I'm in no way a nutritionist so follow this at your own risk. 

Don't say Aisha said, ba ruwana!!!

There is a typo but honestly, I can't be bothered to fix it. 

The hardest thing was figuring out what to eat. I'm so used to not having to plan my meals cause I eat whatever is available. But with this I needed to plan ahead so I can get my grocery in time. I tried to think of how to make Nigerian soups without meat and it just wasn't working. My cousin suggested using beans but I'd rather wait and stick to the oyinbo stuff. Starting from Thursday 17th September, I will not eat any meat or its by products. This is the first time ever that I'm trying this and I won't lie, I'm a little worried but I can do it. I don't think I will notice much change but we'll see what happens at the end of the week. 

Now, I'd like y'all to know that I'm still doing intermittent fasting which is 16-8. Basically what that means is I only eat solid food for 8 hours in a day. That is why I don't have much variety for breakfast because I don't eat breakfast everyday. My breakfast is usually tea or coffee with something from the bakery or yogurt but since I can't eat any of that, I will just stick to tea/coffee with almond milk. 

*insert photo of almond milk*

To replace meat in terms of texture and flavor, I got a lot of fresh mushrooms, tofu and chickpea. Since lunch will be my heaviest meal, I've added carbs to that cause I get moody when my sugar drops lol. I need my energy. I already keep my dinner light. This is going to be a lot lighter than usual. 

Some of what I'll be using to get the taste/texture of meat.

That's it. See you on the other side!!

xx

What has Aisha been doing in 2020?

2020 is a weird year cause this time last year I was eating my way through life without a care in the world.

Like a lot of people, I walked into the new year full of energy to the sounds of my favorite guy Bruno and my sisters by my side. Fireworks, cheers and a long night of fun exhaustion. 

Few weeks later, I ended up in Nigeria to celebrate with one of my oldest friend as she tied the knot. I wasn't too worried about ms rona because I mean they said it was just the flu. We lived through ebola and Lassa, so how bad could it really be? Long story short, that was the beginning of a nerve wrecking few weeks as anxiety and paranoia peaked. Alhamdulillah regardless. 

Being a home body, I wasn't at all worried about the lockdown at first. I watched people have tiny meltdowns and as a form of reassurance told myself it would only last a few weeks. Here we are 6 months later, life slowly returning but not quite there. I think about 2 months into the lockdown, I decided to set 2 goals for myself that I wanted to achieve regardless of what was going on outside. 

To achieve what I wanted, I had to get my mind right. I decided it was finally time to stop wishing and dreaming and actually make things happen. My 1st goal was to still make money but now I had to figure out how I could make money from the comfort of my father's house. My 2nd goal was to finally introduce myself to a healthier lifestyle and shed off the weight I'd gained since moving to AD. 

I said 2020 was going to be my year in sha Allah and I meant it therefore I'm taking baby steps and measures into figuring out how to get that pay out.

First I had to figure out what was next for AR clicks. I tried wedding photography and didn't like it, I did events as well and I soon realized those weren't for me. So this year I've been focusing on a lot of self portraits and documentary style photography. It's more up my alley and I thoroughly enjoy doing that. Obviously I have been super quiet on ig and extremely quiet on here and its not deliberate. I'm working on myself by learning and improving my skills. I'm hoping I will soon be comfortable enough to jump right back into it. Until then enjoy my IG stories of absolute randomness.

The one thing I was going to focus on this year was my baby AICHA. I got the idea to start a brand when I was doing my NYSC in 2017 but it never kicked off because procrastination. During the lockdown I was able to complete a business plan and come up with branding, designs and everything in between. However, production will have to wait a little while.

Next on the money train came from the encouragement of my older sister. I wasn't exactly sure it was the business for me but she pretty much said "if anyone is looking for a personal shopper, I'm referring you." So in other words, get your sh*t together Aisha lol. 

Teamed up with my sister to revamp her online store and we renamed it Little Souq. We are pretty much a shop and ship business so check us out, hit us up and show some support in anyway you can. It is 100% an excellent learning experience for future jobs and businesses.

On to the next goal!!!

 

I've always been on the heavier side. All my life my weight has fluctuated. I'd like to think subconsciously I made the decision to get healthy when I turned 25 (no joke my knee started hurting the day I turned 25). However, I didn't start the work until 26. So my first goal was to take my workouts a little more seriously than I was taking them and in the process obviously lose weight and get stronger. I wasn't about to be a 26 year old with a weak ass knee (GOD FORBID). 

I started working out on October 1st 2019. I started with simple basic exercise for 30 minutes a day. So walking on the treadmill/attempting to run, HIIT workouts etc. Even though I was getting stronger, I hadn't lost any weight. In April 2020, I stumbled on intermittent fasting and that was a game changer. It doesn't stop me from eating what I want but it limits the number of hours I eat and subconsciously thought me portion control. I increased my workouts to 1 hour a day and with a combination of workouts and intermittent fasting, I was able to loose 6kg from April to September. I've never felt this healthy and strong. Which is why I started entertaining the thought of giving up meat for a bit. 

I LOVE CHICKEN! I've never thought of a day I'd give it up.

Honestly, I found it weird when people said they were vegan. I mean why? But here we are, September 2020 and after much consideration, I've decided to try it out for a week. I don't have a particular reason for wanting to go vegan. I thought it was to lose weight but after my mum asked, I soon realized that wasn't the reason. I just wanted to try it and see if I could survive. After all its always good to cut down or at least eat meat in moderation. If I end up losing weight then that's an added bonus for me. 

Now the first thing I had to do was figure out what exactly I could and couldn't eat. I already had an idea but I wanted to be sure. Basically a vegan has a strict diet of plant based foods only. This means apart from not eating animal flesh, a vegan also doesn't eat animal by products. So we are talking butter, eggs, yoghurt, ice cream, milk etc. From what I've read, there are vegan options but I'm not about to stress myself looking around for these products since my diet is for a short period and the only thing I will miss is milk (because tea!) and yoghurt but I have almond milk so I'm good. 

With that said, let's move to the positive bit. I thought it would be fun to share my journey with whoever ends up reading my post. At the end of the week, I will be sharing my meals, whether or not I lost weight, how my energy was affected, if there are visible changes to my skin and everything in between. So I'm excited and scared at the same time but if there's anything I've learnt this year is if I set my mind to it, I will eventually achieve it. 

I'm currently working on a menu and my mum has decided to join me on this journey. We will be starting on 17th or 18th of September and I should have a post up by 25/26th. 

That's pretty much all I wanted to say. This is unlike my other posts cause its just words and no pictures. I unfortunately lost my pictures from 2013 - 2018 so I can't even do a throwback. It will be different next time.

Thank you for reading and I wish you all a blessed week. See you on the other side.

With love,

Aisha.

My go to editing tools.

Hello,

Hope you're being safe and staying at home? Like everyone else, I cannot wait until normal life resumes. One would think that my normal life is different from my quarantine life. It's been a rocky start with 2020 but in shaa Allah things are about to turn around for the better. I have to keep my optimism high.

With that said, today I'm going to talk about some editing tools that I use to touch up my photographs. Generally, I do little to no tweaking with my photos. I'm always looking for the fastest way to edit because if I spend too much time on my computer it starts to misbehave. On the other hand, when I use my phone I just want to be done so I can resume playing my games. Priorities guys, priorities! So without further ado, here are the 3 apps I use.

1. VSCO

My baby! The apple of my eye, the L in my lazy, the c in my creative etc. Although I'm not a fan of their premium feature, I still love it. Back then I could easily buy my presets and use whenever. However, now I need a monthly subscription to get the full range of presets. That doesn't stop me from loving the app. Just so we are clear, I do not pay for the premium because call it what you want, if I'm not making regular income from my photos then I'm not paying a dime for an editing app.

Vsco is my go to cause its on my phone and I'm always with my phone. I usually use it to edit all photos including portraits that don't require skin retouching. I have about 24 presets. The app allows me to make adjustments, tweak exposure, contrast etc. I like to add a little grain to my photos. I especially love the grain feature for my self portraits.

The app is user friendly and has a clean look. With Vsco it takes me roughly about 10 minutes to do what I need to do on multiple pictures. Which is why I highly recommend it.

A few pictures I've edited on VSCO.

2. Lightroom

This is the first software I ever paid for. This was way back when it was a 1 time buy and not monthly subscriptions (if you can't already tell, I don't like monthly subscriptions). I still haven't unlocked Lightroom's full potential because I pretty much do the same thing I do on vsco with Lightroom. However, Lightroom gives me more options to work with. For instance, when I want to do a light skin touch up. I can blur out blemishes/spots and create an even skin. I can play around with colors and so on. I use Lightroom for more serious work and editing client's work. I can put my watermark with Lightroom as well.

Lightroom edit

3. Photoshop

The big daddy. My biggest fear once upon a time. Photoshop offers soooo much range from creating art to distorting reality and so on. I use photoshop for skin retouching. It gives the absolute best result. Imagine my excitement the first time I used it and saw my end product. 

Super proud moment.

Skin retouching using photoshop

What I'll say and what you may have heard before, always try and get it as perfect as you can on camera. These apps are only here to help enhance whatever you create.

Well I hope that was interesting or at least helpful.

Until next time, 

Aisha 

Your introvert photographer who creates but finds it hard to share.

xx

Self portraits & struggles

I got into this self portrait business way before I even knew what it was called. I was new to social media and I really wanted my profile picture to bang. This was probably back in 2007/2008. I remember the struggle to take pictures with a point and shoot, getting the right angle and light to get a clear image. Looking back the quality was obviously trash but I made trash art lol. Anyway I've evolved from my 12 pixel or less (can't remember) days and I'm grateful.

Once upon a time it was routine to take pictures of myself at least once a week but somewhere along the line I wasn't feeling it. I haven't been on here in a long time (standard) but of recent I've barely been active on my IG.

After what felt like an eternity I took my camera out and decided I wanted to take pictures of myself cause why not. I have way too much free time, might as well practice taking portraits.

Now usually I know everything is easy and I get the job done with a few tries but I struggled a little this time around.

Struggle 1

My camera went off mid shot (low battery).
I was using a fujifilm xt20 and the nice thing about taking self portraits with it, is that there's less hassle trying to get the camera to focus. I set my timer at 10 seconds, sat on a bench with white walls as my background and the only source of light was coming from a window.
I shot RAW images of course with a 16-50mm kit lens. I maintained ISO 2500 & 1/125sec. I pretty much played around with the zoom depending on what shot I was going for which meant my f stop was adjusted occasionally. The most annoying part about shooting with my fuji would probably be the need to have enough light for sharper images other than that she's a beauty and I can't wait to try out other lens.

Struggle 2

After I lost the power on my fuji, I decided to carry on cause I was in the zone. Whipped out my canon 650D and that's when I met up with struggle number 2. Considering it'd been a while since I used it, my trigger's battery had run out which meant I had to have my hand on the shutter release, get it to focus then sit and pose while the timer counts down. Now this means that there was a high chance at least half the pictures would end up blurred. Wahala! My solution to that was taking close up images only.
I have to say I'd almost forgotten how amazing images are on a canon. I used my 50mm 1.8 lens and pretty much had one hand on the shutter release while posing with the other hand or balancing myself. Shutter speed was at 1/80 sec and obviously f1.8 but here I played around with the ISO.

Goshi Masha Allah

I should have probably mentioned it in the beginning but if it wasn't obvious, my camera was mounted on a tripod.

All in all, it feels like a nice reintroduction to photography. The thing I like most about having limited equipments is that it forces your creativity to come out a little. Do what you must as long as you get your shot! Make sure you have an idea of what you want your final image to look like and start from there.

To recap; I used natural light from one window, a tripod, fujifilm xt20 16-50mm and canon 650d 50mm, white walls, make up by me (yes I had make up on, shoutout to fenty beauty) and lastly photoshop for a little bit of skin retouching and Lightroom for a few adjustments.

Link to the tutorial I followed if you'd like to try out skin retouching.
Tutorial 1 & Tutorial 2


Thanks for reading. Happy to answer questions and hear some tips and your experiences with shooting self portraits or portraits.

Aisha
xx