The Princess Diaries

Today marks three weeks since my initial foray into a sugar free life, things always get worse before they get better right? Today’s update is short and sweet, I’m busy turning lemons to lemonade. Days 15-17: All was going well, no weird cravings, and I was completely on track. I was super focused with my eating because I had a big wrestling match on Saturday and I really wanted to look and feel my best. Day 18: Show day! My plan for the weekend was to thrown in a 48hr fast - I hadn’t done more than about 32 hours yet, but during my match I took a fall outside the ring and managed to concuss myself yet again. It’s only mild this time, but in my daze I headed to catering and grabbed all the vegan food I could find. Which ended up being Thai Chilli Doritos, half a bag of Farmbake Peanut Brownies and a couple apples. Fail. Day 19: I have very little recollection of what happened this day. I only remember eating a whole box of Fry’s Vegan Nuggets - which are sugar free! Day ...

Wow, already in week two of this Sugar Free Challenge, who is really surprised that I missed my first week update? But I'm back to fill you in. Sugar, we're going down. Day 1 & 2: I experienced intense stomach cramps around 7.30pm both nights and then around 12-1am found myself wide awake and unable to get back to sleep. Day 3: Today was great, nothing out of the ordinary and managed to get a normal amount of uninterrupted sleep Day 4: Here's where I made my first major mistake, because it turns out that Indian Tonic Water contains sweetener, and I ordered four G&T's thinking that I was doing the right thing. I had thought that because Tonic Water tastes so bad that it was safe. As it turns out, I am in fact an idiot. And I barely slept. Day 5: No energy or focus, didn't make it to the gym. From waking, I was just ravenous all day - direct result of the sweetener in the G&T's, but on the upside, I was also so exhausted I slept like...

Two weeks ago, I experimented with the Ketogenic diet, and whilst pretty difficult, it got me truly thinking about what I was eating on a daily basis. Since then, I've continued a lower carb diet (under 100g per day) and I've been seeing some great results, and have now managed to lose a total of 2 kilo's. Tomorrow is the 1st of August, and I have decided to challenge myself (for the next 31 days) to go sugar free, to see if it is actually as hard as all the articles I have read online say. My goal will be to eliminate all added sugar's from my diet, which includes artificial sweeteners - so no more Monster Ultra Zero's for a month! For the next 4 weeks, I will be documenting my progress and writing about it here, but to start myself off I thought I'd write up a little about what my health is currently like and make some predictions on how I think going sugar free will effect me. Body : I currently have a shoulder injury which impacts the nerves in my r...

Today I've compiled a few of my favorite apps that helped me with my health and fitness journey, all of the following apps are free to download and use (paid upgrades are available but you don't really need them). In my quest for health and fitness, these are some of the greatest tools I have come across. My Fitness Pal This is a great app to help you keep your diet on track, it has a huge database of foods, and allows you to scan bar codes of packaged food items to input into your daily diary. It also shows you macro/micronutrients and allows you to set your own targets, whether you are working towards weight loss, or weight/muscle gain. You can also record your daily exercise and it gives you an approximate number of calories burned for each exercise. This has been a great help to me over the years, and its one of the tools I used everyday last year when I lost 10kgs. I now use it to see the fibre content of foods as that is something not always listed on labels. ...

The Keto Diet seems to be be the new trend, everyone seems to know somebody who is doing it, or maybe you've even tried it yourself. If you aren't familiar, Keto is a modified style of a low carb, high fat (LCHF) diet in which you aim to consume around 20g of net carbohydrates (or 50g total) while increasing your healthy fat intake to induce Ketosis - a state where your body burns fat for energy instead of carbs. So I tried it. "But wait," I hear you say "aren't you vegan? Doesn't everyone who follows this diet just eat steak slathered in mayonaise??" Yup, I followed the Keto Diet and made it completely vegan. Let me tell you, it was one of the most time consuming things I've ever done. Oh, and I also follow a 16/8 split of intermittent fasting. Day 1 After a very expensive trip to the supermarket because everything in my cupboards were carbs, I started my meal prep. Every article I've read on Vegan/Keto diets recommended lots...

To welcome Amber back from her Hawaiian/LA holiday we headed to the Butcher's Son on Jervois Rd in Ponsonby, who are a fairly new fully plant based eatery. I tried the weekly special Buddha Bowl (Satay Kumara & Tempeh w/ Soba) and a Tropical green smoothie. I was really impressed, tried to make my own at home and it was nowhere near as good, sadly. I will definitely go back again! If you want to check them out you can find more info here: The Butcher's Son 204 Jervois Rd, Herne Bay, Auckland. Instagram: @thebutcherssonnz -Ash.

Some times I wear myself so thin. I feel like I'm being pulled in so many different directions, like one of those medieval torture racks. Between my 9-5, wrestling and live events, this blog, my podcast Beauty And The Brainbuster (shameless self promo, you can listen  here ,) and spending time with my family (read; boyfriend) I don't get much time to myself. I'm the type of person who has to be alone to relax, and so often this leaves me tense and highly stressed. If you follow me here, you would have noticed the radio silence for quite some time now. The last time I posted regularly was the first week of January. This weekend was Easter, which mean four consecutive days off. So I made a list of things I needed to get done each day, and do you think I got any of it done? Well I got three out of ten.   I listed all my unused things on  Trade Me , I worked with a new photographer and I wrote this post. Today is Monday and it’s looking like not a lot will be ...

As all of you are probably aware, I'm Vegan and have been for 2 years now.  Recently my boyfriend Keanu also made the switch over to a Vegan lifestyle (he's about 2 weeks in) so I thought now would be a really good time to try some Veganized versions of food that him and I had enjoyed prior to removing cruelty from our diets. Both of us have never tried these particular foods before. Beyond Meat Beast Burger & Green Vie Greek Style Cheese                Ashlee : I've had lots of different cheeses before, so by looking at this I can already tell it's going to be weird. It hasn't melted, just curled up at the sides like plastic wrap. But the patty smells so good. Keanu : It smells like Carl's Jr. A : The burger is well seasoned, but a bit on the dry side. I'm a sauce person, so I covered it in mustard after the first bite, and the flavors went really well together. It did taste like a chain style beef burger. K :...

Today I talk wrestling. (I'm not claiming to be right, as always the interpretation of professional wrestling is down to the viewer, so if your views differ to mine - that's ok!) One of the early wrestling psychology basics that I was taught was about the dynamics of Face Vs. Heel. Or in non wrestling terms - the Good Guy Vs. the Bad Guy. In wrestling, the face is the hero of the story, and the heel is the protagonist who provides hurdles that the face has to overcome. Generally speaking, the face is the better wrestler and when the heel realizes this they turn to cheating (or bending the rules) to gain leverage. So why then, have crowds begun to cheer for the bad guy? If you try google searching this topic, you'll probably find yourself just as confused as I am right now. Are the faces lacking in charisma? Are the heels just bad at their jobs? Are fans just really into seeing the Ref getting kicked in the balls? When I developed my character ...

So, the first ever WWE Woman's rumble just happened this past Monday, and as a female in the wrestling industry I feel like I have a lot to say about it. Firstly, I just want to say how grateful/excited/inspired I am by it. I didn't watch much wrestling growing up - it wasn't allowed in my home, so for me, my experience with woman's wrestling was led by Total Diva's. Yes, I'm a reality TV fan. Bite me. In fact, I only started watching wrestling in 2014 and that was largely due to John Cena's feud with Brock Lesnar. When Paige debuted on the WWE main roster at Raw in April 2014, that was really the first time I paid any attention to women's wrestling. It was also the first time I felt real passion stir in my heart for this business. Fast forward to today, with 4 years of love for wrestling and nearly 3 years of training as a wrestler, Paige is still my biggest inspiration as a wrestler. Of course I've gone back and con...

Happy 2018! Welcome to a New Year! It's still me, your favorite Princess, just slightly jazzed up. Last Saturday marked my first PWE Women's Championship Title defence of 2018, I had the pleasure of wrestling Grace Lightning.  Grace has been through some tough times in the last year, and I know that wrestling in front of a live audience is one of the things she's been itching to do the most, so I'm so happy I finally got to get in the ring with her and give her that experience. I've wrestled her once before at a secret student show back in October '17 and the change in her in ring work and presence has improved so much since, I'm really proud of how far she has come and cant wait to see her in more shows. It was also my boyfriend's first ever match outside of our home promotion and thanks to a Roaring Elbow that he took half way through the match, we are now nick named Concussion Couple (or CC for short), which is a vast improveme...