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"From out of the dark"

From Out Of The Dark

From out of the dark is a collection of 6 songs finished during the infamous Covid lockdown of 2020, drawing musical influences from many different genres and based on different themes close to my heart.

Some with a narrative, others about how I felt a particular junction in life, playing music, writing and recording songs has been a great outlet for me and helped me deal with and express myself in a productive fashion.

With no single genre over the six songs I decided to put them out as From out of the dark, to show how something good can come from the darkness. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed making them.

I appreciate so much all the friends and family who have helped critique these tracks ready for public consumption. Thanks also to my younger sister, Hannah, for providing her vocal talents and lyric writing on two of the songs.

Please listen below and follow me on all of my social networks using the links above.

Matt x

#HealthyLiiving & #Weightloss update (14 months)

Roughly a month since my last post I wanted to post about how things have been going. It's been a very hard month on the healthy eating front, but as of my latest weigh in I'm 13 stone dead, an 11 stone total loss since I started consciously trying to improve my lifestyle.

I'd been feeling a little weak from time to time, especially mid mornings at work, and I thought this was due to me being anaemic, being that for a long time my main food stuffs was indeed salad. I started taking a couple of extra vitamins, added a low cal protein mix to my porridge and decided to see a doctor to make sure it wasn't anything serious and to get some advice. 

I'd also been getting a bit down about things, for no real reason - life has been bloody good of late. Work is same old but it finally seems to be going places - love life is going really well with someone I really like and I'm still trying to be sociable when I can. I'm normally such a happy chappy, even when life doesn't want me to be, so I wanted to ask the quack about this also, and with all of the above he suggested a blood test and to come back and have another chat.

Well, bloods came back extremely positive, levels of good stuff normal, and levels of bad stuff low - including one of the lowest cholesterol levels the doc had ever seen (his words!). So that wasn't it.

Got to talking with the doc and he said that I was currently at an ideal weight and expressed a little concern for my eating attitude - I mentioned that straying even slightly from the diet was making me feel incredibly guilty, and generally quite down. I'm not particularly good about talking about this stuff, hence the blog, but he was very helpful.

To avoid developing a full blown disorder, doc recommended an app called My Fitness Pal which has been mentioned by some of you before, and doing some calorie counting as I was definitely eating under my recommended allowance of calories still every day. I had previously avoided calorie counting for fear of becoming obsessed, but seeing as that seemed to have happened anyway I thought I'd take his advice and downloaded it.

It is a brilliant way of tracking what you eat - I particularly love the barcode scanner which automatically shows you nutrients and content for most products - actually I'm yet to find one that doesn't work! I also recently cooked a meal out of The Hairy Dieter's cookbook (Turkey chilli with cauliflower rice) and was able to google the recipe, find a link online and for the app to find all of the ingredients for me, allowing me to accurately track everything instead of just calories! Brilliant feature. It also works with your iPhones pedometer adjusting calorie allowance accordingly.

So far I'm still having trouble meeting my ideal calorie intake, and still dislike any form of treat because of how it makes me feel guilty - but using the app seems to have made my diet at least more varied, which I feel is helping me feel better as a result. I'll keep tracking away and go back to see the doc in a week or so just to see what he says. 

I have found I eat mainly carbs and a lot of sugar, but most of this comes from the sheer volume of fruit and veg I eat, so I wasn't too concerned about this yet. I'm just glad I'm feeling better! 

I'll check in again after another week or so of logging in with MFP and another catch up with the doctor. Thanks for reading again, any thoughts or what have you, feel free to share ☺️

Normal breakfast these days - grapes and blueberries are hidden under bananas, chocolate protein porridge and a fat free yoghurt. 

Just to add I've recently done some more clothes shopping - now a 34" waist after being something like a 54" at my biggest. Win!