Marching On

So, my first weigh in since really properly starting to get my head into the right space - and I was pleased to find I had lost 4 lbs - although perhaps a little surprised. Not because I have been cheating (I haven't!) or because I haven't been putting the effort in (I have!) but because my home scales haven't shown the same loss. I am going to try hard not to get too tied to the scales - after all, weight loss is meant to be a symptom of my new healthier habits more than anything else - but at the moment I find myself hopping on the scales each morning 'just to see'. I must work on cutting that out, I think. It makes sense to go by the scales I pay to be weighed on! I have found having the mason jars of roasted veggies in my fridge has really helped with eating healthfully, and have used them in salads, a frittata, pasta, and a curry. I will definitely be doing this again next week. It has been odd this week being off of work, and in a way, although it was nice to have the time out, it was hard finding my routine broken. So for the coming week, getting back into the routines I had started and maybe even building on them is going to be my goal. I really want to see a loss on the scales on Wednesday as well, although I am feeling less confident about that. Again, not because I have been cheating or not trying, but because I lost more than I was expecting last week, I wonder if it will 'even out' over this week. So, tomorrow I will be starting with my hot water and lemon juice, and following it up with a fresh made juice with wheatgrass. I think I will try something simple like apple, celery, carrot and ginger, but in the coming weeks I want to work my way through these, too: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7956/5-delicious-green-smoothies-for-beginners.html For breakfast I am going to have an overnight oat pot - I really love making these. They are super easy - in the bottom of a bowl you put half a banana, sliced, and a handful of raspberries. (You can vary the fruit as you wish, but these are my favourites). On top of these I add 1/4 cup of porridge oats, and 1/2 tbsp chia seeds. Then I stir in 1/2 cup milk, and leave in the fridge overnight. They set into something approaching cold trifle, and I like to drizzle a little honey over before eating. I am going to carry on the good work by taking my lunch to work (a pesto pasta salad, homemade) and dinner tomorrow night is going to be a butternut squash risotto, to use up the last of my mason jar veggies. Tomorrow evening I am going to take some time out to plan some dinners and lunches for the week ahead. The routines from last week are my hot water and lemon juice followed by fresh juice or smoothie with wheatgrass start to the day. My new routines are going to be taking lunch to work, and listening to my hypnosis track in the evenings.

One Thing At A Time

I am trying really hard to concentrate on one thing at a time. It is really tempting to make huge sweeping changes, but then I know that I am less likely to be able to sustain those long term, rather than bringing in one thing at a time. When I start to think about everything I want to do, I panic slightly, and then feel overwhelmed, and then start to think I can’t do this. But I can. So I keep trying to bring myself back to the small details. On one hand, I know that drinking hot water and lemon juice, drinking a smoothie or juice with wheatgrass and taking a multivitamin isn’t enough on their own to bring about all the changes I want to make. But it is a start. And I often find that having started well, it makes me want to continue well. And even though they might not be enough on their own, they aren’t a magic wand, they are positive steps, if baby steps in the right direction. I am trying really hard to focus on progress, not perfection! This morning, I was tired, really tired. I nearly couldn’t be bothered to make my hot water and lemon juice. You know those bone-tired days, where everything is just too much effort? Today was that day. But something made me grab the nearest cup, even though it wasn’t my pretty glass cup, empty the kettle into it, and squeeze in my lemon. After that, I had some boiled eggs for breakfast. But I really couldn’t face making a juice and cleaning the juicer. Then I thought about how the last few days I have felt full right up until lunch time, having had my morning juice or smoothie, and how pleased I was I had made the effort to have my lemon water. So I put a cup of cold water into my vitamix with a banana, a teaspoon of wheatgrass powder, and a handful of frozen strawberries, and whizzed it all up. Quick and simple, and a good boost to my morning. Little victories, the keeping on keeping on. I was really excited this morning – I hopped on the scales and it showed I am in the 13s of the next stone down rather than the 1s of the stone up. I got off and got on again, and it showed me bang on the 0. So I tried again at got the 1. Again and got the 13! Clearly my scales aren’t the most accurate in the world, but it does feel good to feel like I am making progress.

Something New

In a perfect world, I would have arrived at work today with a packed lunch – but as I did not, rather than just grab anything for lunch, I resolved to find something tasty and healthy. I was in Boots and spotted Jamie Oliver’s new range of sandwiches and salads, and was drawn to Hard to Beet – ‘Beautiful beet salad with roast butternut, feta, and a balsamic dressing’. For me that struck a happy medium – the best option, a pre-planned home-made lunch wasn’t available, so I looked for the second best option. The salad delivered 383 calories, 22g of sugar (25% - how?!), 21g of fat (30%) and I recognised all the ingredients – roast butternut, roast beetroot, bulgar wheat dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper, balsamic dressing, feta cheese, spinach, red chard and rocket, and roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted sunflower seeds, roasted fennel seeds, linseed and parsley. The thing I am really pleased about is that I have always thought I HATED beetroot – and they worked really, really well in this salad. I will definitely be trying them again! Also, I have always shied away from red chard, but I really liked that too. A good lesson in portion control – it was enough to feel like I had eaten something but not so much I felt stuffed. The small amount of really sharp feta worked too.

Starting

I have very recently read the most wonderful book by Tamer Adler – An Everlasting Meal. It is so much more than a recipe book, it is almost a recipe for a whole philosophy around cooking and eating. One of the key ideas in it is that life is so much easier when you don’t have to start from scratch. If you come home from work and have no idea what to cook, the thought of it can just be overwhelming. But if you have some prepared vegetables in the fridge – perhaps some roasted butternut squash, for example – you are never starting from the absolute beginning, so it is easier. And so it is here. I am starting over. Starting again. On one hand you could look at my previous attempts to permanently adopt a more healthy way of life as failed, as I haven’t kept them up. But on the other hand, I have learnt lessons every time, and will bring those with me now. There is that old story about Thomas Edison, saying that he had not failed 1,000 times at inventing the lightbulb – he had just found 1,000 ways not to do it. There is a line from a song I love that goes ‘Our dreams have travelled far, what we have been is what we are, all that we learn this time, is carried beyond this life..’ and so it is. You live, you learn. I have a very strong perfectionist streak in me that can be useful, but it can be really challenging at times, too. The perfectionist streak in me wants to wait until I have completely understood my own thoughts about exactly what my goals are and the details of my plan for getting there. But the realist in me says that if you wait for the perfect time for anything, it might never come. It is surely better to be making progress of any kind, rather than waiting, paralyzed, for the perfect opportunity. Clearly, that this blog is 3 years old shows that I have been thinking about this for a long time. Most recently, I have been thinking about it all for at least 6 months. I am maybe half a stone lighter now than I was then…but I can’t help but wonder, if I had just started, however small, and built upon it, where would I be now? Because although one of my goals is to lose some weight, I guess my overall goal really, is to be living healthily – because if you succeed at that, all the other things will follow in its wake. How many healthy changes would I have adopted into my life by now, that would already be second nature? And even more scary, if I had kept up with this when I started this blog three years ago, would I be living my best life, having achieved my goals already? One thing is absolutely certain, I don’t want to be coming back here in three years’ time, thinking the same things again. Instead, I want to be writing from a place of success and achievement, and although I think it will always be a journey, and there will always be more to learn, I want to be putting the icing on the cake, rather than still trying to get the ingredients for my cake together! And so at last, I come to this morning. Ideally I would have all my thoughts about health and nutrition mapped out, a menu plan in hand for the week, the shopping done, exercise appointments in my diary. But I don’t. But I have still started. I woke up this morning, and resolved to be kind to myself. To strive for progress rather than perfection. And to put into practise some advice about trying to make a new habit: start with the smallest goal possible. For example, to exercise 2 minutes a day. You do that several times, then you start to build on it. If possible, you link it to a trigger – so you might have your morning glass of water, do you 2 minutes, then have your shower. That way you build it into your day, and build it up until you reach your ultimate goal, say exercising 30 minutes each week day. Having sat in bed for a few moments, resolving to be kind to myself, to make progress, do the best I can, I got up and drank a cup of warm water with lemon juice in it. There is a good article on why this is a good idea, here: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4769/Why-You-Should-Drink-Warm-Water-Lemon.html I have a small glass cup with pretty flowers on it that I bought from Ikea for 69p last year, with the intention of making it my lemon water cup. It was quick and easy to do, and it felt good knowing that I had already done something positive for myself, just in the first five minutes of the day. I followed it with a teaspoon of wheatgrass powder mixed into some orange juice, in the same cup. Now I don’t think any potion or pill or food on its own can work miracles. You can’t have one drink of wheatgrass and expect it to somehow negate a whole day or week or lifetime of eating poorly. It doesn’t work like that. But I have been really inspired reading alsfoodandfitness.com and noticed how she experiments with foods and supplements to see what she can adopt into her routines to support her health and wellbeing. Wheatgrass has a great reputation in terms of benefits, but a bad reputation in terms of flavour, hence mixing it with orange juice. It turns the orange juice deep, deep green, and has a pronounced grassy flavour and almost savoury aftertaste. I have been having it for just under a week now, and I mind the flavour less. Again, it makes me feel good that the first two things I have put into my system are good for it and will support me in my healthy quest. I will report back on how I get on with it. The only minor thing is that it is good for so many things, and I am making so many changes right now, it might be hard to pinpoint exactly what I can attribute to the wheatgrass! For breakfast this morning I made ‘Miracle Breakfast Cream’ from French Women Don’t Get Fat. I find it really delicious and filling, and ticks the box of ‘good for you’ so it was a nice choice for my first day. It is essentially yoghurt (full of calcium and protein and good bacteria) mixed with some lemon juice and honey, a teaspoon of flax oil (full of omega 3s) with ground up walnuts and half a shredded wheat also ground up stirred in. Much tastier than it sounds! I sometimes add some raspberries or similar but didn’t have any on hand today. As I had had a some orange juice with my wheatgrass, I decided that could count as my portion of fruit – one of my mini-goals is to always eat some fruit or vegetables with each meal. I think I need another post about my mini-goals – this post has gone on long enough, I think. I hope very much that my posts get shorter with time. I have to confess, this is a selfish blog, I am writing it for me. It is always lovely to know that people read my writing, and if anyone was to read this and feel similarly inspired to make positive changes in their life, that would be the best feeling ever. But for now, it is for me. I need to work out my thoughts and feelings. As I work my way through those, I hope to develop my blogging here into lots of lovely recipes, quick progress updates, top tips, and general loveliness – and much shorter, and less selfish in the writing. But this is doing me so much good. Finally getting my thoughts out of my head and onto the page. Finally getting started, at last!

Berry Nice

This morning I started the day with my hot-water-and-lemon and multivitamin, but decided to mix things up a little bit with my wheatgrass. Rather than just stirring it into orange juice, I decided to add it to a smoothie, which I have christened Berry Nice Put 2 cups of cold water into your blender (I use a Vitamix) and throw in a peeled banana, 2 big handfuls of frozen blackberries, a small handful of cashew nuts, and a pinch of cinnamon. Finish with a slice of peeled ginger, about the size of a 50p coin, and 2 teaspoons of wheatgrass powder, and blend. This was the most beautiful deep purple colour, and I really liked the flavour. I can't help but think that perhaps I needed to blend it a little bit more, as the seed fragments from the blackberries kept catching on my tongue which wasn't the nicest sensation in the world. However, after a glass of that (the smoothie serves 2) and 2 scrambled eggs on toast, I found myself full right up until lunch time. I need to work on not letting myself get too hungry. I had a KitKat on the way home because I could have almost bitten the person next to me! If I had had a banana or similar in my handbag I could have had that instead. Tomorrow I must remember to pack one! Tomorrow I think I will try carrot, apple and wheatgrass juice. I really like making a conscious effort to start the day with something healthy.

Hard To Beet!

In a perfect world, I would have arrived at work today with a packed lunch – but as I did not, rather than just grab anything for lunch, I resolved to find something tasty and healthy. I was in Boots and spotted Jamie Oliver’s new range of sandwiches and salads, and was drawn to Hard to Beet – ‘Beautiful beet salad with roast butternut, feta, and a balsamic dressing’. For me that struck a happy medium – the best option, a pre-planned home-made lunch wasn’t available, so I looked for the second best option. The salad delivered 383 calories, 22g of sugar (25% - how?!), 21g of fat (30%) and I recognised all the ingredients – roast butternut, roast beetroot, bulgar wheat dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper, balsamic dressing, feta cheese, spinach, red chard and rocket, and roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted sunflower seeds, roasted fennel seeds, linseed and parsley. The thing I am really pleased about is that I have always thought I HATED beetroot – and they worked really, really well in this salad. I will definitely be trying them again! Also, I have always shied away from red chard, but I really liked that too. A good lesson in portion control – it was enough to feel like I had eaten something but not so much I felt stuffed. The small amount of really sharp feta worked too.

Starting. I have very recently read the most wonderful book by Tamer Adler – An Everlasting Meal. It is so much more than a recipe book, it is almost a recipe for a whole philosophy around cooking and eating. One of the key ideas in it is that life is so much easier when you don’t have to start from scratch. If you come home from work and have no idea what to cook, the thought of it can just be overwhelming. But if you have some prepared vegetables in the fridge – perhaps some roasted butternut squash, for example – you are never starting from the absolute beginning, so it is easier. And so it is here. I am starting over. Starting again. On one hand you could look at my previous attempts to permanently adopt a more healthy way of life as failed, as I haven’t kept them up. But on the other hand, I have learnt lessons every time, and will bring those with me now. There is that old story about Thomas Edison, saying that he had not failed 1,000 times at inventing the lightbulb – he had just found 1,000 ways not to do it. There is a line from a song I love that goes ‘Our dreams have travelled far, what we have been is what we are, all that we learn this time, is carried beyond this life..’ and so it is. You live, you learn. I have a very strong perfectionist streak in me that can be useful, but it can be really challenging at times, too. The perfectionist streak in me wants to wait until I have completely understood my own thoughts about exactly what my goals are and the details of my plan for getting there. But the realist in me says that if you wait for the perfect time for anything, it might never come. It is surely better to be making progress of any kind, rather than waiting, paralyzed, for the perfect opportunity. Clearly, that this blog is 3 years old shows that I have been thinking about this for a long time. Most recently, I have been thinking about it all for at least 6 months. I am maybe half a stone lighter now than I was then…but I can’t help but wonder, if I had just started, however small, and built upon it, where would I be now? Because although one of my goals is to lose some weight, I guess my overall goal really, is to be living healthily – because if you succeed at that, all the other things will follow in its wake. How many healthy changes would I have adopted into my life by now, that would already be second nature? And even more scary, if I had kept up with this when I started this blog three years ago, would I be living my best life, having achieved my goals already? One thing is absolutely certain, I don’t want to be coming back here in three years’ time, thinking the same things again. Instead, I want to be writing from a place of success and achievement, and although I think it will always be a journey, and there will always be more to learn, I want to be putting the icing on the cake, rather than still trying to get the ingredients for my cake together! And so at last, I come to this morning. Ideally I would have all my thoughts about health and nutrition mapped out, a menu plan in hand for the week, the shopping done, exercise appointments in my diary. But I don’t. But I have still started. I woke up this morning, and resolved to be kind to myself. To strive for progress rather than perfection. And to put into practise some advice about trying to make a new habit: start with the smallest goal possible. For example, to exercise 2 minutes a day. You do that several times, then you start to build on it. If possible, you link it to a trigger – so you might have your morning glass of water, do you 2 minutes, then have your shower. That way you build it into your day, and build it up until you reach your ultimate goal, say exercising 30 minutes each week day. Having sat in bed for a few moments, resolving to be kind to myself, to make progress, do the best I can, I got up and drank a cup of warm water with lemon juice in it. There is a good article on why this is a good idea, here: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4769/Why-You-Should-Drink-Warm-Water-Lemon.html I have a small glass cup with pretty flowers on it that I bought from Ikea for 69p last year, with the intention of making it my lemon water cup. It was quick and easy to do, and it felt good knowing that I had already done something positive for myself, just in the first five minutes of the day. I followed it with a teaspoon of wheatgrass powder mixed into some orange juice, in the same cup. Now I don’t think any potion or pill or food on its own can work miracles. You can’t have one drink of wheatgrass and expect it to somehow negate a whole day or week or lifetime of eating poorly. It doesn’t work like that. But I have been really inspired reading alsfoodandfitness.com and noticed how she experiments with foods and supplements to see what she can adopt into her routines to support her health and wellbeing. Wheatgrass has a great reputation in terms of benefits, but a bad reputation in terms of flavour, hence mixing it with orange juice. It turns the orange juice deep, deep green, and has a pronounced grassy flavour and almost savoury aftertaste. I have been having it for just under a week now, and I mind the flavour less. Again, it makes me feel good that the first two things I have put into my system are good for it and will support me in my healthy quest. I will report back on how I get on with it. The only minor thing is that it is good for so many things, and I am making so many changes right now, it might be hard to pinpoint exactly what I can attribute to the wheatgrass! For breakfast this morning I made ‘Miracle Breakfast Cream’ from French Women Don’t Get Fat. I find it really delicious and filling, and ticks the box of ‘good for you’ so it was a nice choice for my first day. It is essentially yoghurt (full of calcium and protein and good bacteria) mixed with some lemon juice and honey, a teaspoon of flax oil (full of omega 3s) with ground up walnuts and half a shredded wheat also ground up stirred in. Much tastier than it sounds! I sometimes add some raspberries or similar but didn’t have any on hand today. As I had had a some orange juice with my wheatgrass, I decided that could count as my portion of fruit – one of my mini-goals is to always eat some fruit or vegetables with each meal. I think I need another post about my mini-goals – this post has gone on long enough, I think. I hope very much that my posts get shorter with time. I have to confess, this is a selfish blog, I am writing it for me. It is always lovely to know that people read my writing, and if anyone was to read this and feel similarly inspired to make positive changes in their life, that would be the best feeling ever. But for now, it is for me. I need to work out my thoughts and feelings. As I work my way through those, I hope to develop my blogging here into lots of lovely recipes, quick progress updates, top tips, and general loveliness – and much shorter, and less selfish in the writing. But this is doing me so much good. Finally getting my thoughts out of my head and onto the page. Finally getting started, at last!

Hibernating, Germinating

I have been thinking a lot over the past few weeks, or perhaps months, really. I have had so many evenings where I have just wanted time to think, and barely found any. I have so many thoughts swirling around, which are half formed, and I need time to ruminate on them, develop them, pin them down. Then I realised that for me, sometimes the best way to think is to write, and so here I am.

When I first met Carl, way back when we were 19, he told me he was a social smoker only, just at parties or the pub. It emerged soon after that if that was the case, he was a very social person! It really upset me, and he tried to give up. He tried and he tried. Relapsed several times. And then, he did it. And he has been smoke free, save the very, very occasional New Year's cigarette, or a very, very occasional cigar at a wedding. When he did give up, it wasn't easy, but the reason he succeeded was because something had clicked, something had changed. He was ready and he wasn't doing it for me or anyone else, just for him.

If anybody can ever figure out what it is that makes the click happen, what it is that tips the scales, that person will be rich indeed. It is more than will power or want power, it is more than knowing what is the right thing to do - it is somehow making that leap into doing and being.

I like to think that everything happens to us for a reason, even if we don't understand it at the time. So maybe, the times I have tried to become healthier and fitter before, and quietly fell off the wagon have been for a reason. Maybe the lessons are so big sometimes, you can't learn them all in one go. Maybe you have to learn a bit at a time. Maybe it isn't meant to be easy, all the time. Maybe it is only by failing and getting up that you really learn. I hope so.

Since I first set up this blog, maybe to look at me, nothing has changed. But in three years I have read a lot, seen a lot, done a lot. Joined Weightwatchers a couple of times. Lost some weight, put it back on again. Had a very, very dark period where I was terribly unhappy and ate horribly badly, a cup-a-soup a day and little more. Further back in time, before I set up this blog, in the run up to my wedding, I did Slimming World with my Mother-In-Law-To-Be. It was so complicated I was often in tears just trying to understand it. I flirted with low-carbing. One New Year, it was the leek diet from French Women Don't Get Fat. I have joined the local council-run gym. I have been a member of the lovely Virgin gym. I have salsa-sized to Rosemary Conley dvds and swam my way through one of the most stressful periods of my life.

All that and nothing has changed, to look at. But I am trying to see all of that as hibernating and germinating. Over the weeks and weeks of winter, the flower beds in the park have just been the same brown earth, occasionally dusted with frost or snow. And yet, this weekend, the earth is pricked with the gold of the first crocuses. Snowdrops have thrust their delicate little heads through the icy ground. For so long it has looked like nothing was changing, but under the ground, a lot was going on.

And so it has been with me. I have been reading so much recently that has been inspiring me. But it has been almost a tidal wave, and I have so many different thoughts to process and pin down, to sift through and try to put together into something I can use. Because that's the thing. I don't think there is one plan out there that is right for me, one path, one set of rules. I really think there is a lot of good information and a lot of good ideas, and somehow, I have to find what works for me, and put together my own plan. I have to find my own way.
There will be more posts like this, I think. Kind of streams of consciousness, me trying to write it out on the page and get my thoughts in order. And then, hopefully, I can start to make it happen.

So, things that have worked for me, things that haven't; things that I want to try, things that I don't. Slimming World was just too complicated. Red day? Green day? I HATED that they had things called 'syns'. Too close to 'sin'. I HATE 'good food' 'bad food' 'I've been naughty/bad' 'I've been good'. Horrible thinking. Dangerous, too. Weightwatchers I have a kind of love-hate relationship with. I have lost weight with it several times but never really managed to adopt it as a way of life forever. I think the essentials of it are good, the planning ahead, the portion control, the regular weigh-ins. I find myself buying the magazine even when I am not following the plan, so clearly something in it calls to me. But I don't like the huge amount of branded products they sell. One of the big things I am sure about is that food should be food, and the more you make it low-fat, 'lite', etc, the more chemicals and so on that has to be put into it. Their ready-meals may be convenient, but I fear they can make you lazy. Real food, fresh food, cooked simply. Food that is in season. That is how I want to try and live and eat.

I do want to lose some weight, but I also want to be healthy, so no Atkins for me. I have low-carbed before and it was effective short-term, but surely I should have been alarmed by the list of supplements you had to buy at the beginning, to keep healthy? No Dukan or anything that is overly complicated. Things that are good for me, instead. After all, I could lose weight by eating nothing but 3 Mars Bars a day and nothing else- but it would hardly be healthy.

And then there is of course, that eternal question - what is healthy? In the eighties fat was bad, fibre was good. In the nineties there was the Zone and cabbage soup. Protein has been our saviour, carbs our enemy. Butter was out, margarine was in. But then we realised margarine wasn't really so good for us after all. You can eat according to your blood type, food combine, count calories, points, starve for two days then eat 'normally' for five. Diet pills come and go and you can replace your meals with a shake or a bar or a powder, should you want to.

My hope is that deep down inside we, by which I mean me know what to do. It is just a case of somehow finding the way from knowing to doing and being. I read an article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recently, in which he said

..."I'm not a serial dieter, or any kind of dieter, but I am interested in what we eat, how we eat, and how it affects our health. Sometimes I think, with mounting impatience, that it's all so bloody obvious. Michael Pollen has it pretty much right in his book In Defence of Food: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

He has pinned down exactly how I feel. It is all so bloody obvious. And yet somehow, paradoxically, because it is so obvious, it makes it hard. If someone told us that if we ate two fruits from a particular kind of tree exactly two hours before every meal, and we would lose weight, we would be clamouring to buy them. But the advice you hear time and time again, because there is no mystery, no magic, no famous actress spokesperson, it is too easy to ignore.

Future posts will be shorter, I promise. Selfish as it sounds, this particular post is for me more than anyone else. I am just trying to pour all my thoughts out onto the page, so I can make sense of them. Bare with me, please.

I think I need a separate post, a fresh sheet of paper, as it were, to decide on my what I want to achieve. Much of what I wrote three years ago stands. A more scrumptious me, a healthier me. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, what I need to focus on here is the how.

I want to eat seasonally. Other people have written reams on this, more eloquently than I ever can. It just makes sense. Strawberries in December? No thanks! The first blood oranges of the season, arriving just in time for the dull days of winter when we need a citrus hit and all the vitamin C we can get? Yes please! Think River Cottage. I want to eat real food cooked from scratch as far as possible. No sugar and chemical laden lite yogurt or the like. Nigel Slater and his 'quick cook' series are my inspiration here. Portion control sounds deathly dull, but Nigella writes beautifully about it, and hopefully it will become second nature before long. Hypnotherapy is not something that I think will magically make everything happen, but harnessing the power of your mind has to be a good thing. I have a really good hypnotherapy track I listened to that really encourages you to think about the hows and whys of your life. I think I need to find a way to incorporate listening to it into my daily round. Exercise is such a curious thing. Can't stand the thought of it. Hate being red in the face and sweaty, ugh, ugh, ugh. But love the way I feel after aqua-aerobics or burlesque. Those endorphins are amazing! I think perhaps I need to find a way to do it more often, to get hooked on those things!

Reading through that list and breaking it down, I am basically saying I am going to eat real food, in season, not too much. Thinking positively about it. Exercise. Hardly ground breaking. But if I can go from thinking and knowing I need to do those things to doing those things, then hopefully, it will be life changing for me.

Ok, I think that is enough for now, for tonight. I feel like I have got started. I have been thinking about this post, returning to this blog, for a long time now. It feels good to have stopped thinking about it, and actually haven written it. Now I just have to keep on keeping on.