Vitality Show: Review

I arrived early so I could make the most of the day before things got too busy and managed to make it for a 10:30am Dynamic Hatha Yoga class.

I've never taken a proper yoga class before, although I did Body Balance for a while, and I really enjoyed myself! I've always found it hard to "let go" as my mind is so busy that I feel silly just laying there trying to relax, but with the dynamic moves of this class I also felt my body working too, so it was a good combination!

After yoga I headed over to the Health + Nutrition stage, where there were various speakers throughout the day. I caught the second half of a talk by Andrew Thomas, discussing the "Missing Nutrients of our Modern Lifestyles". It was a really interesting lecture about the lack of Vitamin D and Magnesium in our diets and lives, and how these have been proven to have significant health benefits. I was particularly interested in the links between Magnesium and Asthma so I'll try and do a post on that soon- I spoke to Andrew at his Better You stand after the talk, and he gave me a free Magnesium spray which you're supposed to rub on your skin. It basically alleviates inflammation so can assist with post-workout recovery too. I will give it a try and report back!

I then wandered around the stands, tasting lots of different samples and checking out the different products being promoted. I was mostly interested in the food (!) and sports clothing/equipment, and not really the beauty or "healing crystals and tarot cards" side of things, but still took lots of photos! The lighting was really yellow though, so things have come out looking a little weird...

Q-cumber fizzy water sample and a free apple

Testing out a hand scrub

Pulsin' bars- I tested a few different flavours!

The new Trek protein flapjacks- I've just received some of these and will review soon. They're yummy!

And the new Nakd crunch bars- I wasn't such a fan and preferred the original bars...

Dry roasted sweet chilli chickpeas from Garbanzo snacks

Yogi tea- I tried a couple and ended up buying some of the Choco Chilli flavour, it had a nice kick to it!

Sports bras...

...and massages

Propercorn popcorn in 4 delightful flavours- I'd already picked up a bag of this at Whole Foods and haven't eaten it yet, must get around to it! Great snack 🙂

Rachel's yoghurt- I tried a cherry sample but their stand had run out of a lot of flavours unfortunately.

Vita Coco coconut water- I loved this and will definitely be buying some soon!

Badminton and table tennis going on!

And some hula-hooping!

I also caught some of this "Tantrum Club" where you wrote all your angry thoughts on a balloon and then popped it- BANG!

After wandering around for a while I caught a demonstration of the Vitamix blender which was seriously impressive- if they weren't so expensive I would be straight out there buying one! I'm sure the guy was very good at portraying it, but he whipped up a smoothie, frappe coffee, a HOT soup, and ICE-CREAM! All with the same blender! And all without contamination- just a quick whizz of hot water in between each concoction to clean it, simple.

Colourful soaps from Bomb Cosmetics

More Bomb Cosmetics- it smelled like LUSH!

The hair styling salon

When my legs started getting tired, and my arms achey from carrying too many freebies and samples (lol) I went to listen to a talk by Amanda Hamilton. She was supposed to be speaking on the topic of Fasting and "Why it's time to change the way we eat". As this has been in the news a lot recently, and I know several people who have been trying various forms of fasting, I was curious to get some more information.

I ended up being a little disappointed however, as her talk lacked substance or any kind of scientific facts and was basically just a plug for her new book and her website "community". I went up and spoke to her afterwards as she didn't mention exercise and fasting at all during, so wanted to know what her take on it was. She stated that the original fasting technique was developed by bodybuilders and therefore it worked very well for strength training or even HIIT, but when I said I did running she advised not even to try it! To be honest I wasn't considering it anyway, as my logical brain told me that trying to do endurance cardio on an empty stomach wasn't really compatible. I would be interested in reading some more information on the principle though...

After the talk I went for a manicure at the Vitality Show nail bar- I'd booked this earlier in the day as it got busy really quickly! I fancied treating myself and chose some really bold colours to brighten things up 🙂

All in all a great day out! This is my haul- note some of these items were from the free Vitality Show goodie bag, some were freebies, some came from the Zest and Women's Fitness goody bags which cost £2 each and some I bought! A pretty good selection 🙂

Disappointed with the fizzy drinks in the goody bags, but the white tea with cherry was nice. I bought the Bounce balls and can't wait to try them!

No idea what most of this is! Will probably try a few of the samples...

I won a competition with Hay House Books when I bought my ticket to the show, hence the rather bizarre titles- not sure I'll read them! But the Zest and Women's Health magazines are always welcome 🙂

 Lots of new products to try, so will hopefully have a few reviews over the next week or so! Hope you all had a great weekend 🙂

Beki x