Author: trulyraisa

Hello! My name is Raisa (ANutr) and I'm a foodie and a Registered Associate Nutritionist! It's nice to meet you! I hope you can enjoy my blog and learn lots from being here!

Life Update: Getting a new job + celebrating my 22nd birthday!

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Hello! It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted on here so I thought it would be best to give you all a life update! Shall we begin?

So I don’t know whether I’ve probably mentioned this to you before or maybe I just put it on my Instagram page but I got a job in the beginning of the year! I currently work as a Laboratory Assistant for a hospital. Because of this, I haven’t properly had the to sit down and write a blog post like this. It’s an amazing place to work and I’m really enjoying myself! But it’s been difficult to manage my time and that’s why I haven’t been able to write to you all 😦

I love my new job but it made me realise how much I sleep because even after sleeping 6 hours a day I always struggle to stay awake in the train. I work in a Clinical Research department and what our department does, is that it runs studies and Clinical Trials for new medicine or to compare medicines for people with various illnesses. The medicine could be for a patient with sickle cell disease or it could be testing treatment for people with cancer. So we use the patients in our hospital as participants in the trial and my job is to centrifuge and ship their blood samples off to a bigger laboratory that will analyse the samples. There are some nutrition-related studies but it is very rare but even just working in a laboratory and in a hospital is a great experience!

Also, last week I recently celebrated my 22nd birthday! It was probably the first time that I celebrated with my friends and had a day out! We went to an art gallery and then ate Korean food for my first time and then we just wondered around the city and took photos! I’ll insert some photos here:

It was so delicious to eat Korean food I ate bibimbap with glass noodles and tried Tteokbokki for the first time! I’ve always heard how delicious it is and now I finally got to taste it for myself! I want to eat it again 😂

It was such a fun day out and I wish I could do something like that again!

That’s all for my updates! I hope you enjoyed this blog post, please like and comment below.

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Nutritional advice for Ramadan.

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Hello and welcome back to my site! As all muslims know around the world that Ramadan is fast approaching and to welcome this beautiful month I’m writing a post about nutritional advice during Ramadan! Shall we begin?

For some of you who may not know Ramadan is a period of 30 days of fasting where muslims fast from sunrise to sunset without consuming any form of food or drink throughout the day. And yes, not even water! Sometimes it can be hard to keep up a certain diet or to eat healthy during this time and that’s why I am going to try and give some nutritional advice to keep healthy during this beautiful month!

First of all, it’s important to stay hydrated during the period of time that you’re not fasting. After sunset and before sunrise, there is a period of time in the night time after breaking your fast and if you’re a student or you like to stay up until sehri time then I strongly advise you to try and drink plenty of water during that time!

If you’re from an Indian, Pakistani or Asian family like me you’ll find that during ramadan you’ll be eating a lot of fried foods or a lot of chicken and it’s hard to eat more healthy meals. So another piece of advice would be to try and eat lesser portions or maybe to spread out your iftar meal over an hour or 2 hours and move around while in between eating so that you can digest your meal and won’t feel too full.

If you’re someone who likes to keep fit and likes to exercise, the best way to keep up with your exercise is to do a session after Iftar time, it doesn’t have to be your regular heavy workout at the gym it can be something as simple as going for a walk or a 20 minute workout at home!

Recipes!

In this section I’m going to recognise some recipes that I think will be perfect for Iftar! The first blog I’m going to share is another blog that shares a bunch of really delicious iftar ideas. https://savoryandsweetfood.com/2017/05/24/ramadan-recipes-round-2017-savory/ this blog is also really pretty and I’l be keeping my eye on this blog for more recipes soon!

Another recipe I found is chicken and cheese patties! Patties and pastries are very popular in iftar time in our family so this is something we’re trying out! https://www.chilitochoc.com/chicken-and-cheese-box-pattiessamosas/

They weren’t many recipes but I hoped they gave you a little bit of an idea of what to make for iftar! I’m going to be making a seperate post with all my recommended recipes for Iftar and Sehri in the next post!

I wish you all a very happy Ramadan Kareem and I hope we can all make the most of this blessed month!

Useful tips for university students and graduates!

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Hello and welcome back to another blog post! This week’s blog post was a suggestion from a fellow blogger https://maisjohnson.com/ and today I’ll be giving some (hopefully) useful tips for university students and graduates! Shall we begin?

It’s never too early to start looking at career opportunities

If you’re someone who likes to plan ahead for the future then it’s never too early to start looking at career opportunities and what job role you might want to pursue. In fact even when you decide what you want to study, then start looking at what job roles are available from it. The last thing you want is to study a subject with a very small career field making it harder to find a job. If you’re someone who would like to make something yourselves and you see yourself as being your own boss then it’s also never to early to start researching about how to start up a business and then maybe start by creating a blog, or a website and social media accounts for your business? Gain an audience while you’re still studying and then focus on expanding your business more after you graduate!

Extra reading will help a lot!

If you are studying something at university that is new for you then extra reading is essential! I had never studied nutrition previously before and I often found myself feeling lost in the lectures. So I decided to do some extra reading in my first year and it helped me a lot! So I definitely recommend this! Even if you are very familiar with your major it’s still good to read and be well informed of maybe new studies or books out there that can help you!

Try to space out your assignments and prioritise them by deadline

Having more than one assignment due in the same month can be so frustrating and it’s so very common! So one thing that helped me a lot was spacing my assignments. For example if I had two assignments due in May, one in the beginning and during the end of May, I would probably start planning for the first assignment at the end of March and have the whole of April with a proper plan and writing out my assignment. While I am currently writing out my first assignment I would spend an hour on various days planning the next assignment so that once May comes around the first assignment it ready to be submitted and the second assignment is all planned out and all you need to do is write!

Why 'Study Girl,' Anime Star of an Infinitely Looping Video, Went Missing This Week | Muse by Clio

Sometimes your careers department help, sometimes they don’t

Every university has a careers department and every student has mixed feelings about them. Sometimes they are really useful for some people and for others they are no help. Regardless, you should definitely get to know your careers department better and they might not be able to help you secure a job but they can certainly help you fix your CV and job applications so that they’ll likely get picked for interviews! Remember, while you may think the careers department may be of no help, they are professionals in their job and probably know better than anyone else what an employer looks for so definitely send in your CV and job applications and let them help you with that!

For all new graduates don’t be disappointed in yourself if you’re not doing well with job hunting at the moment

2020 has been a very crappy year for all of us and this pandemic has been nothing short of frustration and disappointment. The job market now is in a very tough situation, there are many unemployed people and it’s become the hardest for graduates to find a job. If you’re someone who’s recently graduated and looking for a job don’t blame yourselves for the situation you’re in, it is not your fault there is no way you could have predicted or even prepared yourself for this. It took me about more than 10 months of proper full time job searching to get myself a full-time job and to be honest I was just lucky to have met my manager because I can tell you now I was absolutely crap at that interview! But your time will come and it will shock and you will feel so happy that you finally made it after such a long and hard journey , but it pays off in the end and it just ends up as just another bad memory. So don’t give up and don’t lose hope in yourself, someone will come to realise your potential and offer you an amazing career opportunity!

Use Linked In to connect with employers

For those of you who may not know LinkedIn is a social media platform for employers, businesses and employees to connect and is a useful tool to have! With LinkedIn you can connect with employers and they can learn a little more about you. Now this doesn’t alwasy guarantee a job, but if you keep your profile up to date and if you connect well you may see some career opportunities heading your way!

Take some time out to have a break!

This last piece of advice is for both university students and graduates. It’s essential to take some time out to have a break! It wil be good for your mental health and it will remind yourself that you’re doing so well already and that you deserve that break! So close your laptop every once in a while and go out for a walk or eat something delicious!

I hope those tips helped in some way and if you have any other tips for people than leave them in comment box below!

My favourite Islamic podcasts!

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Hello and asslamualaikum! Welcome back to my blog! Recently I’ve been following some certain bloggers that have inspired to talk more about Islam and being a Muslim and also how to embrace myself as a muslim hijabi on this blog! So, this week I decided to share with you some of my favourite podcasts. Shall we begin?

I have recently started to swap out listening to music with listening to podcasts and I didn’t want to listen to any podcasts that may not teach me anything, so I decided to search up some islamic podcasts! I specifically looked for podcasts that were hosted by muslim women as that appealed to me more being a muslim woman. The app I use to listen to podcasts is Apple Podcasts app but you can find all of these podcasts on Spotify as well.

The Aida Azlin Show.

Aida Azlin is a writer and a blogger currently based in Morocco. She is an inspiration to many and I love her for her Tuesday Love Letters that she sends to hundreds of women, empowering them and inspiring them! She talks to many inspiring and interesting guests and listening to their stories just inspires me to reflect and strengthen my own imaan. You can find the link to her blog and more information about her here: https://www.aidaazlin.com/

Salaam Girl podcast!

The Salam Girl podcast is hosted by two amazing women, Nicole and Monica! Their podcast was probably the first ever podcast I listened to and I enjoyed so many of their episodes! They interviewed so many amazing women and also told us so many inspirational stories and every episode will touch your heart as well as have you wanting to listen to more! Their podcast is based in Texas in the US and honestly after listening to them and their guests I wish there was a similar podcast here in the UK! (If there is, please let me know in the comments below!)

Mindful Muslimah Speaks

I have to say I am fairly new to this podcast so I have only listened to one podcast but it was such an insightful podcast about Hazrat Asiya (Radiallahu’anha) who was the wife of the Pharoah. She spoke about her story in Episode 202 if anyone would also like to listen to it. It made me think there are a lot of inspirational women out there but the most inspirational women are the women of Islam who I would like to know more about in the future inshallah.

Islamic History Podcast

After I started to listen to more podcast episodes, I decided I wanted to learn more about the history of Islam so I found this podcast that talks a lot about the history of Islam that tells us all about the history of islam in different parts of the world. Currently I’m listening to the Pakistan series and learning more about the India and Pakistan Partition. I thought it’s very interesting to learn more things about the country and culture I’m from!

That’s all the podcasts I had to share with you! Do you have any good islamic podcasts that you’re particularly enjoying? Please let me know in the comments below!

Calorie Counting: Is it good for you?

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to my corner! Today I’m bringing you another nutrition-related post and this post is about calorie counting. Shall we begin?

What is Calorie counting? So just to summarise it it’s basically when you count the calories of everything you eat during the day. You can keep track of your calories just by looking at the nutritional labelling on the front of packaged foods, but these days technology has become more advanced and there are now apps that can help you do this! There is apps like MyFitnessPal and Lifesum which are really good to use!

Now I’m gonna start with the bad side of this, because I’ve heard that people who calorie count then end up having bad relationships with food, they may miss some meals or restrict their diet and eventually that leads to finally giving in and binge eating. That is mainly the case with calorie counting it can go a good way, where you don’t restrict what you eat but you learn to have a balanced diet while also eating within your calorie limit. These calorie counting apps allow you to set a certain limit and will give you a recommended number of calories to eat during the day. With technology and wearable devices such as Apple Watch and if you are an iPhone user like me you can connect Apple Health and track your steps. You can also search and add any exercise to your diary and count how many calories you lost!

I am currently using the LifeSum app and for me it is working great! I can scan the barcode of any food item and track what I eat througout the day, my steps for the day are automatically counted and I can see how much calories I have burned. The LifeSum app has an amazing range of foods that you can search and add to your food diary, this especially works if you’re from an ethnic minority like I am and you can search for your own culture’s foods I found many pakistani foods on here. I can set a personal goal in my profile if I want to lose weight or maintain weight or gain weight and Lifesum automatically gives me a recommended amount of calories I can eat daily.

It’s a very easy and user friendly app that helps you to manage your diet more effectively and to lead a healthier lifestyle. The best part is you can choose to pay for a premium account but there are a lot of accessible features on the app that are for free users too!

This is what your food diary page looks like. You can track your calories here!

I really enjoyed my experience with the app and I did reach out to the company by email in the hopes of maybe supporting them in the future or becoming a brand ambassador but sadly they have not yet replied to my emails, inshallah I hope one day in the future they will!

Overall, to summarise I don’t believe calorie counting is all bad as long as you can still manage to keep a healthy, balanced diet and not to restrict yourself too much then you will see the best results and also have a good relationship with food! I hope you enjoyed this very short blog post discussing about calorie counting and I’ll see you again next week inshallah!

Life update: Getting back to blogging!

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Hello! Welcome back it’s been a while. A lot happened since I was last writing here and I want to explain everything and also share with you some plans for this future with this blog! Shall we begin?

First of all I have some good news to share! After a good 10 months I think it is? Or maybe more, but anyway ever since summer 2020 I’ve been looking for a full time job and I finally got one!

I’m actually very lucky to have this job because the job market in London during this pandemic has been nothing short of chaos. People have been losing jobs, graduates are struggling to find jobs because of lack of experience. There are more experienced people now who are applying for entry level jobs aimed at graduates and leaving university graduates without any experience or a chance at a job. It’s been a month since I got a new job and to this day I still find it unbelievable that my manager picked me out of other candidates to give me a job offer. From my point of view, I felt like that wasn’t my best interview but I feel like the fact that I asked questions to the empoyer really impressed them!

So to introduce my new job, I actually work as a laboratory assistant for a clinical research team in a hospital! I’m loving it so far and although it’s not directly related to nutrition I still can work in a healthcare setting. It’s a really successful hospital that also has it’s own nutrition and dietetics department so if I wanted to shadow a nutritionist and gain some experience there is a lot of opportunities for me to develop my career! I’ve loved working there for the past month, I’ve learnt so much about working in a clinical environment as well as meeting some really nice colleagues and enjoying everyday there!

Although, I am loving my new job and learning a lot, I have been very very busy and I just can never seem to find the time to sit down and produce any content. So now, that I’ve actually settled into a routine, I decided to make some time (and sacrifice some sleep) to writing more blog posts and creating more content! I feel like I always write posts like this, explaining how I’m going to blog regularly and then I just stop but this time I am going to actually try and commit to it! I’m going to designate a day in the week where I plan what blog post I’m going to write, and one day will be kind of like a “marketing” day where I’ll create some instagram stories and work on promoting my blog. And one or two days actually writing out a blog post and then scheduling it to publish! So that’s how I’m going to plan out my week and hopefully inshallah it will work and I can finally reveal something that I’ve been contemplating about this blog on for some time! Until then, I’ll leave you with some photos that I’ve taken while exploring London!

Let’s take a break together

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Hello! I’m back again with another blog post. This week I just wanted to take a step back and instead of writing out my usual posts I just wanted to share some of my favourite quotes with you all so you can feel inspired or motivated. Let’s take a break together.

To be very honest with you I just spent the past 15 minutes thinking about what kind of blog post to write for this week. Then I thought to myself why not take a break? I really didn’t want to end the week without a blog post but I thought of the idea of taking a break together.

So, I decided to just share some of quotes with you all that can help you relax or motivate you this week.

Food in quarantine that are good for your health.

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Hello everyone! I’m back with another blog post. Recently I watched a webinar on nutritional advice to give to people in quarantine and so I wanted to share that with you all. Shall we begin?

A while ago I watched a webinar about nutritional advice that we can give to the public while there is a lockdown and people are staying at home. There were some important pieces of advice that I would like to talk about in this blog post.

First of all, eating a balanced diet and getting all of your vitamins and minerals in your diet is more important now than ever. As we are spending more time indoors, our lifestyles may not be as physically active as they were before and our diets also may have changed. It is important to consume all of your vitamins whether it is through supplementation or if it is through the food sources that we eat.

Although there is no food or nutrient that helps prevent COVID-19 there is new research to suggest that Vitamin D improves the immune system in our bodies making us more healtier. In the UK, there is a nationwide deficiency of vitamin D because of having lack of sunlight source and therefore, it is recommended for people to eat 10mg supplement of vitamin D if they do not have a good source of it in their diet. Therefore, it is at least recommended to meet that recommendation.

People may think that frozen fruits and vegetables or canned fruit or vegetables may not be as nutritious or healthy but it’s actually false. Frozen fruits and vegetables are high in nutrients as much as organic fruits and vegetables are. This is because as the food is frozen or stored in cans the nutrients are more preserved and last longer than organic foods that have been out and could lose nutrients quickly. So this advice is for people who may live alone or they work a lot but frozen fruit and veg are definitely a part of your five a day too!

I know that there are many FAD diets and specific diets that people like to follow but now staying at home may not be the best time to follow such diets. It’s more important to have a balanced diet and meals because we at home we are living a less physically active lifestyle and will have an affect in diet and health. Therefore, it is recommended that you should try to refrain from following specific diets and have a balanced diet overall.

For people who struggle financially or would like to save money during lockdown there are some money-saving tips you could use! One of them would be to grow your own fruit or vegetables in your back garden or indoors as well. This can save some money on having to buy fruit or vegetables from the supermarkets. Another money saving tips could be substituting meat with beans and veggies as meat can sometimes be costly.

This next piece of advice can shock you a little and I’m not saying that you should do this every day but on a particular day where you feel like you are not doing well mentally or you have had a rough day, eating small amounts of chocolate a few times that day can help boost your mood may leave you feeling the slightest bit better.

A last piece of advice I would add from my own knowledge would be to try and do some exercises in your home. It can be some stretches or some exercise positions that you like, or if you have an hour free search for a workout video on Youtube and take a break and exercise for a little while. It can help relax your mind and body as well as keeping fit.

I hope those pieces of advice helped make your time staying at home a little better and be sure to leave a comment if your have any nutritional advice too!

Has Blogging died?

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to my site. Today I’m going to be presenting a lifestyle post and will be talking about blogging over the years. Shall we begin?

In this day and age there are many different forms of blogs. They come in the forms of “vlogs” or social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. But the first form of a blog was a website such as the one you are reading now. The first ever blog was created in 1994 by someone named Justin Hall.

Now everyone can be a blogger with an Instagram account and photos to upload! The thing is, photos and videos gain more attention than written words do, in fact most people don’t like to read many long passages such as this one. So that had me wondering if the traditional form of blogging had died? It’s easy to take a photo and write a short caption but what about spending time on someone’s website and reading the words that they have written out with care.

The problem is that no one has any time anymore, we are a generation who works and works and has no time to spend reading a good book or stopping to looking at the world we are living in and the time we are living in. Instead we’re all running in such a fast pace for our own personal goals without stopping to admire the view.

I started a blog back when I was in high school, I’m not sure what year it was but maybe 2012 or 2013? I didn’t have a WordPress blog at first and no goal or vision for my blog I just loved to write and wanted to write. Back then in high school I like to think I had so much time that I used to blog at least once a day. Now, as an adult I barely have the time to write one post a week let alone read anyone else’s blog.

Going back to the topic of this post I believe that the original form of blogging is slowly dying, however there are a great many people who still read blogs like this one. But the definition of blogging has changed and shaped into many different forms of social media and instead of bloggers we now have “influencers”. Let’s all hope that the future form of blogging will be one that we can all enjoy.

I would like to set myself some of my own personal goals with my blog and how I connect with other bloggers here on WordPress. I will try to create a blogging routine and work on some blog post drafts during the weekend and from there I will also try to set one day where I publish my posts however, from this moment it would just be once a week without a fixed date. I also have the WordPress app and will try to utilise it more by using it to read other blogs and interact with other blogs and bloggers. I hope that we can create a small community here on “TrulyRaisa”

I will see you next week with a new post!

Mental Health Awareness

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Today I’m going to be talking about a topic that is not my area of expertise as of yet but something I want to keep an open mind about and learn more about it. This week, we’re going to be talking about Mental Health Awareness. Shall we begin?

Keeping physically fit and nutrition has become a big industry with a lot of trends. People are starting to take care of their body and becoming more aware of physical health. What we don’t realise is that mental health is also really important too. Having a bad mindset and bad mental health can really affect your physical health a as well.

What is mental health? “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being. Many factors contribute to mental health problems including: biological factors (such as genes), life experiences (such as trauma or abuse) and family history of mental health problems.” – https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/what-is-mental-health

Mental health problems don’t have to be big problems such as trauma and abuse they can be as simple as school work stress and work stress. Being a workaholic and not knowing when to stop can also be a big problem, it can lead to the person not eating or sleeping well and this can cause nutritional deficiencies as well as their overall health. These small mental health problems matter a lot too and that’s something that we always overlook and we need to also raise awareness about.

In my previous posts I also mentioned eating disorders and how body image representation is a major contribution to it. Mental health is also a contributor as one individual may see this body image representation in the media and feel inferior which can cause certain disorders such as anorexia or bulimia just because the individual may want to reach that body image representation. This is just one example of how mental health can relate to eating disorders, there a some more examples that I will give in detail in another blog post.

Mental Health Awareness Week is a national week in the UK that is dedicated to raising awareness, organising events and raising money for mental health charities. This is all to raise awareness and educate people about mental health and the gravity of the situation. How can we deal with mental health problems and help our loved ones?

Physical fitness and mental fitness both come hand in hand and mental health is something we need to take into consideration and start raising awareness about. Especially for nutritionists who are giving their clients and patients advice, we should also be taking their mental health into account and giving our advice based on both of those factors.