Saturday 12 July 2014

Let's talk about being healthy

Since starting my 'journey' to being healthy I've spoken a fair bit on this (and my old) blog about my attempts to eat better, lose some weight and get fitter, so I won't bore you with the sorry tale again but I wanted to update you on where I am on this 'journey'. Recently I've been struggling with doing all the 'right' things. I say recently but I really mean the last six months or so. The problem is that my willpower seems to have wandered off and taken my self restraint with it and as a result I seem to be experiencing two unhelpful things. 

Firstly my attempts to eat better is massively failing. Evidence 1: I ate an entire pack of rice cakes (the big ones) in 36 hours. Oh, and each one was smothered in Nutella. Evidence 2: I can't say no to cheap junk food. Pringles on offer? Okay I'll have two tubes. £1 packs of peanut m&m's? Oh go on then I'll take three packs, they'll last the month week. Evidence 3: A trip to Pizza Express meant a trip to Starbucks for coffee before hand as I was early and then the world's biggest pizza instead of the 'sensible' salad. On top of that exercise seems to be almost non-existent. Last week started well with two days of early starts and the 30 Day Shred and then nothing. I had a busy week and the exercise stopped until the weekend when I did the world's most pathetic run: 17 minutes and 1.6 miles and THAT WAS IT for the entire weekend.


I need to eat less of these (or only one at a time)

I know from experience that I need both parts to be working for me to be a healthier person. I need to find willpower with food and also motivation on the exercise front or else I'll go back to the unhealthy and heavier person I was at the start of 2012. I know all this but for some reason it's not clicking in my head right now. I just can't seem to stick to the healthy habits. Don't get me wrong I know that I'm never going to be someone that just eats the things that are good for me, I know I'll always have days where a McDonald's happens as that's just not sustainable for me. It's about picking up more habits that are healthy, like reaching for the grapes and not the m&m's and reducing the bad ones - 4pm chocolate snack I'm looking at you!


I need to eat more of these yummy things.

So with the above rambles in mind I'm going to start doing the following things.

  • Exercising every day. Even if it's just a 15 minute run or twenty minutes of Jillian Michael's dreadful 30 Day Shred. I need to get back in the habit of doing something every day, if it's just something small and short.
  • Think less about the calories and more about what I'm eating. By this I mean not calorie counting which will often mean I'll steer clear of something that would fill me up (a banana) for something with fewer calories (a mini chocolate bar), just so I'm not 'over' my calorie intake for the day. I need to be thinking about what's going into my body rather than the calories as everyone knows fruit or avocado might be high in calories but they are better for me than other items.
  • I'm not going to drink my calories. Now I've discovered I like an americano coffee and I'm going to reduce my latte intake to just one a week. That will mean that I'm not drinking a really milky coffee every day that doesn't really fill me up.
  • Amend my food as little as possible. I watched an interesting show the other day all about the healthiest diets in the world and one of the comments struck a chord with me. The idea that when you eat food it should look as similar to its original form as possible as that means that the majority of the nutrients are still in it and very little bad stuff will have been added. That makes total sense when you think about it and I'm going to adhere to this idea as much as possible from now!
  • Reduce the number of treats I have! Treats are good and will always feature in my diet, I'm not stupid enough to think that will ever change. However I'm going to limit them, so I'll one biscuit and not six and have one helping of pudding and not two. That way I'm not restricting my diet and I get my sugar fix!
If I keep focused on these five things then hopefully I can feel better about myself and pick up the healthy habits again. Are there any top tips you can send to me? As I definitely need as much help as possible. I promise I'll keep you updated on this blog as often as possible - but don't worry it won't be a weekly update. I don't want to bore you all! 

No comments:

Post a Comment