I’m eating better, and Im feeling healthier

November 1, 2014

Over the last 6 months I’ve made a conscious commitment to improve the food I eat. Its been a while now, and Im really starting to feel the results.

I hit a bit of a low spot, after my amazing honeymoon in the US, and a lot of old habits crept back in. Sneaky cans of cola at work, the occasional Red Bull on difficult days, and chocolate bars almost every day.

Im not confident linking any of these symptoms to any particular food consumption, but I constantly felt bloated, crashed at about 10am and again at 3pm each day.  Worst of all I would suffer ‘carb-comas’ – almost putting myself to sleep after lunch trailing a simple bread roll or burger. Overall my energy reserves and bright spark in the morning was completely depleted.

Some diet changes I’ve made are:

• Massively reduce the amount of cows milk I’m consuming. Im having a splash on my muesli, have the occasional full-cream cafe latte, and I use it to put the flames out when Im eating hot curry, but thats about it.
• Make my own muesli. This is a big one – I was eating high carbohydrate toast and cereals before.
• Eat less. This one focussed mostly around weight loss, but addressed the now apparently high portion sizes I was consuming.
• Morning vegetable juice. More than twice a week I’ve been juicing up carrots, ginger, celery, kale and lemon into a large glass of juice. I’ve chosen juice over blending to again limit the food content Im consuming.
• Less red meat, more fish. Through investigating vegetarianism and alternative cookbooks, Im often cooking and enjoying vegetable only meals more often during the week. They’re often way faster to cook too.
• Tea. And lots of water. Water intake I find is so important for keeping a level head.

This book ‘a modern way to eat’ by Anna Jones has been very inspiring and educational.

I’ve also committed to bringing regular exercise back into my life. Im running 2-4 times a week, and Im about to start biking to work most days over summer. I’ve found some fellow runners from across the globe to follow on social media, and this has really helped my motivation. They say ‘starting is easy, continuing is harder’, and I find this true.

Tea. Lots of tea. This is a home-harvested blend of mint and lemon verbena tea. Just the dried leaves and water.

Im continuing on and I’m feeling much better. I can clearly hear my body saying no to high-sugar foods and cheap, nasty food.  I think that by opening my eyes up to a new wave of modern products, to continuing to learn about the valuable nutrients in the food I eat, i can now ‘see’ the value in food, rather than just rely on the packet to tell me.  I’ve also noticed that wether intentional or not, barely anything I buy any more comes in a packet.