Roxilla

Well it’s almost half-way into the month, and slowly my diet is starting to come right. With all the stress, deadlines and pure laziness of the past month or two I was slipping back into bad habits, not exercising much at all and was just starting to feel less than good. I began to be more careful about what I ate towards the end of December but then it was Christmas and the holidays, which was of course not the best time to consider a diet shift, but New Years (and the advent of my divine smoothie maker) was the ideal time to gear into action for real!

So, over the past two weeks I’ve been making a few adjustments to my diet…

1. I cut out coffee and started drinking more tea
2. I got myself back into the habit of having breakfast every day
3. I stopped buying lunch
4. I started having fruit, veggies, yoghurt and/or nuts for lunch
5. I started having smoothies every day, using whatever fruit I have
6. I cut out bread, pasta and junk as much as possible
7. I did however have one cheat day to trick my system into burning it off
8. I got myself some meal replacement shakes
9. I started eating apple and carrot every day
10. I cut down on my cheese intake

Ten fairly simple changes, some of which I’m still working on and most of which have been pretty easy to integrate. Things I don’t miss are coffee, pasta, cheese and chocolate (was going off sweet things anyway). Things I still find harder to resist are salty things though, and I find that the most dangerous time for me is the evenings when I get home. I’m going to start taking my shakes in to work I think, these are ideal for late afternoons to tide you over. I also think that it’s time to get some oats again; Pronutro doesn’t really cut it for sustained energy. Maybe will start making some soups or something for lunch, lentils are very good to keep you going.

The way I see it, it’s a work in progress. Slowly but surely does it, and practice makes perfect. They say that diet is 80% of fitness and weight management, and exercise is 20% and on a bigger scale I have always found that a very low-carb diet gives me the most energy.

I am finding that my awesome Joe’s Goals tool is excellent for diet tracking – I record what I eat each day so that I can be aware of my intake over each week. Each day I find it a bit easier to stay on track, which in turn motivates me to keep it up.

At the end of the day, diet shouldn’t be a scary word for not eating… it should be a lifetyle that you can keep up to stay happy and healthy. True story.