Eating Healthy - results so far,

It's been around a month and a half now since we started mostly eating healthy.  We haven't been quite as good as I had originally planned, but I knew it would be unrealistic to expect us to be healthy all the time.  It probably didn't help that I got my period and got ill at the same time, whilst trying to arrange other things.  Then Ed got ill and so all thoughts of healthy eating basically went out the window.

The reasons behind us slightly changing our diet weren't just about eating healthier and hopefully losing some unhealthy fat, but also to help us save some money by not buying lots of unnecessary, usually sugary, food or as much takeaway, to waste less food, and to eat a little more sustainably mostly by eating more seasonal food with less packaging.  

So the plan we've been following is to have seasonal food Monday to Thursday, which we steam and have with a homemade sauce of some kind (based on a video I watched by ?on YouTube.  We've kept Friday night as our usual be an idiot and eat pretty unhealthy things, but really enjoy it.  Then Saturday and Sunday go back to seasonal food, but this time we follow one of the recipes that we like.  This is actually working out quite well and has meant that I've been able to batch-prepare our weekday dinners along with my healthy lunches on Sunday night.  It makes it a lot less stressful during the week when I have less time to cook and means that we are much more likely to actually eat the healthy food we have.

I've also been concentrating on reducing my sugar intake throughout the week.  In the past, I was definitely eating much more sugar than I should have done but now, instead of having something daily, I have it a couple of times a week.  I can still feel the sugar cravings, but I've been doing my best to ignore them and most of the time I've been winning.  I have also reduced the amount I've been eating to a much healthier portion size for someone my height, which has suited me just fine and has actually meant that I've felt less sluggish.  This has all led to me losing some weight, but not a lot which I was expecting as I have gotten back to my physical job again where I'm building back up my muscles.  However, you can visually see that I have lost some fat so I just need to carry this on.

At the moment we're not actually getting bored of this meal plan despite it being pretty similar each week.  Due to that, we're going to keep doing this for a few more months to help us continue changing the way we react to food.  When we do start to get bored of it we'll go back to the recipes that we made before, but just make them a whole lot healthier.  I have to say though, this has been a whole lot more convenient than what we were doing before so I would be very happy to keep this going for a while.  And that means this will keep me eating much less sugar and us spending much less money.

Sustainable Diet

To cut right to the chase, I've put on weight.  Quite a bit of weight in fact, over the last two months.  It's not really much of a surprise to me as I have been unemployed for the last couple of months which means I haven't been doing the hard physical work I have to do on a daily basis to keep the fat off and I've been eating crap.  My diet hasn't been terrible, it's still mostly healthy, but I have been eating more processed food and sugar then I normally do and really I should have known better.  I have PCOS after all and I know how quickly I can pile on the pounds compared to a 'normal' person.

However, when I was thinking about my unhealthy food habits it occurred to me that it also meant I wasn't exactly doing my part for the environment either.  Now there is a bit of a debate about whether highly processed food is actually good or bad for the environment and I can understand the arguments for the good (seen as a way to reduce food waste, less energy used as the food is cooked together in a massive vate instead of separately by each person), but there are a few things that I find difficult to be okay with.  The first is the amount of packaging that comes with processed food a large proportion of which we can't reuse in any way, the use of palm oil in so many of the products most of which isn't taken from a sustainable source (it wouldn't be possible to supply for the demand that way anyway), and the fact that many of the companies just want very specific ingredients which means that farmers are forced to move away from crops that are more suited to their local area to grow other crops that usually need a lot of work and support (usually in the form of chemicals) to grow.  So basically my diet is not very good for me and not particularly great for the environment.

Back to my old PCOS diet it is then.  I'm still doing a big part of it, such as eating lots of vegetables, having only lean proteins (basically all vegetarian and vegan proteins are classed as lean), eating healthy fats, and having Omega 3 in my diet (plant based).  However, where I've slipped is eating a fair bit of processed sugar in the form of chocolates and cakes even if it's not daily, having fizzy juice (I might as well just have been eating a sugar cube), and having processed food with all that sugar, salt, and bad fats.  Some products that I've had that are processed can be perfectly healthy for most people, like bread, but unfortunately that's not the case when you have PCOS.

That means I need to either completely remove or greatly reduce a number of these not great food items from my day to day diet and keep them as just a treat now and then (at most once a week).  I also need to go back to replacing a number of my carbohydrates with low GI forms, like oats and quinoa.   I do feel like I need to do some in depth research into diet and PCOS again though as I've noticed that some of the information seems to have changed a little or is still being debated, like should you have carbohydrates at all and should you be able to eat things like tofu.

And that's it.  It should be a little easier once I start working again as I'll be back to doing all day physical exercise (I might also add some more exercise to do when I get home if I feel like I haven't done enough during the day) and I'll only be able to eat what I bring with me.  Hopefully it won't take me ten years to loss this again now that I have a much better idea as to what I actually need to do.  It'll also be interesting to see if being in my 40s has any affect on this as hormones don't normally follow the usual route when you have PCOS.  Regardless, for myself and a little bit for the environment it's time for me to eat more healthily.

Healthy Eating on a Budget (with requirements)

As you know I'm trying to become financially fit this year, and that means budgeting.  We're pretty good at not spending a whole lot of money on unnecessary items, but one of the biggest spends for us is food.   We don't really spend money on items like meat (what with having a mostly vegetarian/ vegan diet), but we do spend much more than we should on things like chocolate, crisps, and fizzy juice.  Which is not only bad for our budget, but not very good for our health either.

There is also the added issue of me needing slightly more specialised food as I'm supposed to be a dairy-free vegetarian (definitely vegetarian, not exactly dairy-free all the time) with as little gluten as possible.  I'm actually quite happy to mostly just have vegetables and naturally gluten-free products, but having dairy and gluten alternatives does allow for a bit more variety in the food we eat.  However, these products do add to the cost.

So, this is the plan for budgeting our whilst still trying to be healthy:

• Keeping to a budget of £50 per week (for 2 people) on groceries
• Use as much whole food as possible as it's cheaper and much healthier for us
• Make as much of our own food as is possible, for the same reason as above
• Shop mostly at shops like Aldi and Lidl as their products are generally cheaper (though I'll have to keep away from those middle aisles).  I am slightly in two minds about this one as they seem to have packaging on absolutely everything.  I will keep looking for alternatives, but I'll stick to this for now
• Only buy a few specialised items to fit my dietary requirements

The biggest issue I'll be facing on this is the little sugar addition I've been developing over the Christmas holidays - ops, and the fact that I've lost all motivation when it comes to cooking.  I'm just bored of most of my go-to recipes I make right now.  I'll be on the search for some new ones, which don't have about 20 ingredients as no one has time for that (or at least I don't), and hopefully, that'll help reset my cooking mojo.

Putting this on the internet also means I have a little accountability now, which should give me more of an incentive to actually stick to it and you'll be able to see if we do by the budget updates I'll be doing throughout the year.  The additional plus is that, as well as saving money, we should actually be a lot healthier as we stop buying so much sugar, processed food, and take aways.  Always good.

Eating from Redwall

 

When I was younger I absolutely loved the stories of Redwall, by Brian Jacques.  They fitted perfectly into my sense of adventure and my love of animals.  I found them again recently when I was doing some decluttering and introduced them to my partner.  Discussing them with him reminded me just how much food written about in these stories and I had a vague memory that there was a Redwall.  A little bit of research showed that this was true and was followed by a bit of searching to find somewhere that had it in stock, which was found and the book is now winging its way to me.

The recipes are separated into the seasons and it'll be interesting to see if the ingredients are seasonal too.  My plan is to cook at least one recipe a week from the season I'm in at that moment, and I'm hoping this will give me a bit more variety in my cooking which has become a little bit stuck in the rut of late.  As the food is mostly made by mice, moles, etc I think that most of the recipes will probably be vegetarian, which means I'm not going to have to make too many changes to them to make them me friendly - always good.

I did try and find a second-hand copy of this, but without much success.  However, I do expect to keep and use this book for many years to come and so I'm not feeling too guilty about the purchase.  I'm actually quite excited about its arrival and I'm hoping it'll help me get back to enjoying cooking a little bit more.  Searching for this book has also shown me just how many more books there are in the Redwall series now.  I see a lot of woodland adventures, with accompanying meals, in my future.

Cleaning Up My Diet.....again :)

 

I made the decision to 'go healthy' again after lock-down a little while ago.  In fact, I wrote about it on this blog last month, but, as usual, I dragged my feet because........well why won't you when you have this excuse for eating badly.  This will be a pretty quick blog as I don't want to be repeating what I've already written about here many times before, but trying to eat healthily is a constant effort for me (especially as I have to be so much more strict due to the PCOS) and I don't think it'll ever become just a habit.

I should probably start by saying that, at a general look, my diet looks pretty healthy with lots of vegetables.  It's just that the portions are definitely too big for my size and the additional food, normally known as snacks, are probably more of the problem.

Starting with the easiest bit, I need to reduce my portion sizes to the amount I should actually be eating for my size, and probably ignore the little bit of hunger I will be feeling at the beginning.  I now have more control over the food being made at the moment, so I also want to make fresher meals with one being a large mixed salad and the other full of fresh vegetables.  I'm also having gluten-free toast for my breakfast, but I'm finding I'm getting hungry pretty quickly in the mornings now so it would probably be a good idea to go back to overnight oats or porridge.

Now for the more difficult bit, snacking.  Like pretty much everyone else, I tend to snack on things I really shouldn't, like biscuits, crisps, chocolate, sugar, sugar, sugar.  It probably doesn't help that I used to get allergic reactions to pretty much every fruit out there, bar the fiddly oranges, making it difficult to choose that option.  However, that does seem to be reducing at the moment so maybe I should probably give them all another try.  Having to walk to the shops to get unhealthy food doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance to me either, so what I really need to do is make the healthy snacks much more accessible and easy.  The fruit should cover the sugar cravings and the nuts should add the crunch I like to have.  I'm still going to let myself have 'unhealthy' snacks now and then, probably once or twice a week, as going too extreme tends to lead to people falling off the bandwagon in a strong way.

Hopefully, if I can make these changes over the next few weeks my health should improve considerably, including the reduction in my allergies which usually gets worse when I have too much-processed sugar.  Which should then be enough of an incentive to keep going.  My arse might also stop expanding in the way it's doing right now as well. 😂

My Female Health

If the current pandemic has taught us anything, it's just how important our health is.  And if research into my the health of my own body has taught me anything, it's the surprising difference hormones have on the health of men and women.  The way to stay healthy may be pretty similar for both sexes (eat healthily, exercise regularly, don't drink excessively, and don't smoke), but there's no getting around the fact that the hormones we produce do have an impact and these differ for men and women.

Probably why this fact is so important to me is that I have PCOS and the effect this hormonal imbalance has had on my body has made itself pretty obviously, including being overweight on a healthy diet and hairy enough to probably be able to get an extras part as a werewolf.  I've already written a few posts on having PCOS so I won't go into too much detail here, but if you want to read more the posts are Beating PCOS: the start of my journey, initial treatment, diet, and still living with PCOS.  However, the changes I had made, and been quite good at keeping, have slid just a little bit during the lockdown and I have definitely noticed the difference in the layer of winter blubber I've been forming, the extra dryness in my skin, the quality of my periods (which amazingly I'm still having despite now being off hormonal contraception for a couple of months now), and energy level.  My moods have also been affected and, as someone with depression, it's especially important that I take care of my mental health.  The food might have been nice, but it's now playing with my overall health and well being.

Now, I haven't gone completely back to before 'Beating PCOS', as the regular periods and keeping within my BMI have shown, but if I carry on as I have been it will definitely become a problem again.  There's also the added fact that most of the food that tastes so good and is so tempting is also the food covered in packaging and produced in an environmentally unsustainable way, and that most of the activities I am now doing involve being stuck indoors watching screens and wasting more energy then I should be, which is not the route I want to be going down at all.  All in all, it seems a good idea all round to be getting back to my old ways.

So, the plan moving forward is:

- Finish reading Woman Code by Alisa Vitti.  A slightly strange one I know, but this book has come recommended by a number of women and I first heard about it from Victoria at Femme Head.  I started reading it before the pandemic but, for some reason, haven't gotten round to finishing it.  It has a lot of information in it, not only about understanding the signs your body is giving you and how each stage of your menstrual cycle has an effect on you, but also how you can change your diet to help with the hormonal imbalance you may be experiencing.  I have already done quite a bit of research on this, but I don't think I've come across something as in-depth as this book and so it would be good to start using the information it provides.

- Properly start tracking my cycle and using FAM.  This isn't just something I want to really learn how to do as an alternative to hormonal contraception, but I also want to use it as an indicator of how my overall health is doing.  If I am able to keep up regular, healthy periods and a 'normal' cycle then this will show me that I have been able to keep my hormones where they are meant to be for good overall body health.  Right now I'm using the free version of the Kindara app as it's much more convenient than paper tracking version, especially first thing in the morning.  Yet, despite this, I'm only really managing to get my temperature first thing in the morning (just), but I keep forgetting to measure the other two indicators, which are cervical fluid and cervical position.  Setting alarms don't seem to be working, so maybe I'll just have to write a note on my leg instead.

- Getting back to healthy eating.  This is actually a big one as it's so important on so many levels, but it's also actually quite hard to do as yummy, bad for you food also tends to be very addictive food.  I'm already pretty certain of what I should really be eating, and I will incorporate what I learn from Woman Code into that, but the main thing is just actually starting and saying no to all those tempting treats that float pass you on a daily basis.  The artificial sugar plays particular havoc with my already hormonally imbalanced body, and so that definitely needs to go.  I'll probably write more about this on a future post, but for now, I need to reduce my dairy (I've been good and have kept to not really having milk and cream, but I can't say the same for cheese) and gluten, which also worsens my allergies, and replace chocolate and unhealthy snacks for fruits and vegetables.  Oh, and this also includes drinking a good amount of water as well.

- Lastly, exercise, exercise, exercise.  To give myself credit, I have been doing some exercise it just hasn't been doing it to the same intensity as when I was working and this can be pretty difficult to replicate, but it's this intensity that really seems to work well with my body helping it thrive.  I hate to think about how my stamina and overall strength has declined since lockdown.  Whilst I do like to run on a relatively regular basis, a large amount will be yoga and mat work so I'm not too worried about things like damaging my joints.  However, I do want to add some extra strengthing training in as well and am looking at some callisthenics at the moment.  We'll see if that suits.

So, that is how I am planning on improving my health based on my specific hormone requirements.  I could have really gotten into this during the lockdown, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the excuse of letting these things slide and now I'm paying the price for it.  I could keep pretending that my levels of exercise and unhealthy diet are having no effect on my energy levels, fat gain, muscle loss, and mental health, but we all know that that's a big lie and I should just stop being a child about it.  What's that really annoying saying 'short term pain for long term gain'.  I guess I'm just going to have to get on with it. 😂

Goals for 2019 - Update #4

Okay, so my goal achieving this year has been a definite fail. Other than doing the drystone walling course I probably haven't achieved any of my aims for 2019. But then, it's just been one of those years where life happens and unfortunately the happens were rarely good. I also decided, pretty last minute, to travel to New Zealand for four months and most of this quarter has either been me here in New Zealand or getting myself ready to go. Here's how I did this quarter.

Healthy Eating

This one's been a little strange since I've moved to New Zealand as the heat here (especially after leaving Scotland mid-November) has been so hot I haven't been hungry. It fact I've been having to force myself to eat most of times and there have been many days were lunch hasn't even been a thing. This isn't great really, though I haven't actually been doing much strenuous activity to actually need all the energy I would get from recommended three meals and, on the plus, I have been drinking a lot more water. The main worry here is that I'm not getting enough of the nutrients I actually need from just the two meals and some snacks so I am going to really need to look at were I can improve just for my general health. I do take multivitamins (when I remember) but I really don't like relying on that for my nutritional intake. I'd much rather get it from my food and my main focus really is getting enough iron as that has always been a problem in the pass.

As for when I have been actually eating the meals have been pretty healthy and basically made from scratch. They've mostly been overnight oats for breakfast, nuts and corn gluten-free crackers with Marmite for snacks, and a big rainbow salad for dinner. Even before I travelled to New Zealand and was still working in the Scottish Highlands my meals were healthy and mostly made from scratch. I am, however, eating a lot less chocolate and weirdly less ice cream since moving to New Zealand. So that's been a plus a least and I am, of course, completely ignoring the blip of the couple of weeks we used to see family in the UK before heading south of the equator. There definitely wasn't a lot of healthy eating there and even some sneaking in of fast foods. Though my Mum's home cooked meals tend to be on the healthy side, we'll just ignore all the cream teas we had as we were in Devon......so it doesn't count.

The one very large polka dot elephant in the room is of course my consumption to the black, fizzy stuff. I would even call it an addiction. I'm not even sure I enjoy it when I do have it, but there it is calling to me. I think 2020 should be the year I just stop with it all together. Using it as a 'treat' just isn't working and I probably won't miss it when it's gone.

Having written this out I have to admit I am probably doing a little bit better than I initially thought. My diet is relatively healthy on the whole and I have gotten rid of most unhealthy snacking and eating habits. Treats now and then are not something I'm going to hold against myself or are something that are particularly bad for me when done in moderation. I just need to keep an eye on it so they don't sneak back in and I definitely need to break the lure of the black juice.

Reducing Waste

I had already managed to get my waste levels pretty low in the UK before travelling out to New Zealand, but with the life style we're living here at the moment (which is basically living in Airbnbs, camping, and house-sitting) we've managed to reduce the waste even more as we're basically living out of our car and don't really want to buy any more stuff than we really need. Every purchase has been really intentional, and that has led to much less waste. There is one thing I do really need to remember to do though, and that is to carry my usable mug with me everywhere as I have been caught out a couple of times now and, as I have the thing, I have no excuses for that.

As for Christmas presents, I did my best to reduce the packaging in this area as much as possible by buying items together buying from actual shops, and selecting as ethical products as I possible could. And when it came to wrapping the presents I used recycled brown paper which were then stamped with snow flakes stamps I had brought a few years ago, and finished with re-usable gardeners twine. I also made all my own Christmas cards this year using cross-stitch patterns, but this is an area I think I can improve on waste wise next year.

The one area where I am still struggling with waste reduction is groceries and the plastic they have wrapped around so many of the vegetables. I really don't understand it and I've found that even the grocers here still wrap things unnecessarily in the shiny stuff. It annoys me and I do try and make decisions on the food I buy based on whether or not the plant has plastic around it, but it's not possible to do all the time. I definitely don't bother putting multiples of the same loss item into a plastic bag myself. I really don't see the point in that. They'll find each other in the cooking pot.

As with healthy eating, I'm going to keep trying to reduce my waste and I think this is something that is never going to stop for me.

Learning Skills

Work

Since travelling over to New Zealand I have done a fair amount of walking, but in all these walks I haven't actually needed a map or a compass as all the paths are well marked and each junction is signed. This has meant that the opportunity to practise any orienteering skills hasn't really been there. I have, however, noticed that there are some orienteering groups in the area of New Zealand where I am based and I think I'm going to research what they are actually doing and whether or not it's worth me getting involved in the time I have left here.

Home

This is probably the area where I have failed the most this quarter. Since the beginning of November I haven't done any more of my British Sign Language lessons at all. Which is a real 'shame on me' and I'm a little worried that I've forgotten some of the signs I've already learnt. I have done four lessons out of the seven this year and I still have some time next year before my year's pass has run out. This gives me time to actually get the course finished and properly practise the signs until they become a little more instinctive.

The only real issue for me at the moment is not being able to practise signing with someone else as this is a really important part of learning a new language. One option would be to practise here in New Zealand as I've read that their sign language actually stems from the British sign language, so there is bound to be some real overlap. I think this one is definitely going to be a roll over goal for 2020. I want to get it done before my holiday ends in March.

As I said earlier, this year has been a bit of disaster when it comes to achieving my goals. But you know what that's fine. It happens sometimes and this year is coming to a close with a new one about to begin. I just need to look at where this year went wrong, learn, draw and nice line under it and move onto the next. I have an idea of what I want my goals to be for next year but I want to really flesh them out and make sure that they're what I want for myself moving forward as I think one of the problems for 2019 was I didn't really see how the goals fitted into my long term plans. So bring on 2020, I'm going to work on making it a much better year than 2019.

Goals for 2019 - Update #3

 
I wish that I could say that I completely turned around my goal achievements this quarter and am now on the road to completing all my goals by the end of 2019.  This is, of course, completely untrue. 😂 To say that I've been a little preoccupied would be an understatement and some of the goals I had set for myself have drifted off to do their own thing.  Needless to say, the outcome hasn't been particularly healthy or good for me and I now have one more quarter to finally get them on track.

Healthy Eating

On the whole my eating has gotten healthier this quarter, with me putting even more vegetable into my diet and, overall, reducing the amount of gluten I've been consuming.  I've actually lost a little bit more fat and, more importantly, my body feels much stronger than it did before.  This is most definitely helped by the work I do, but a good diet is really important to keeping your body healthy when working it hard.

Where I've fallen down on the healthy eating is with my usual nemesis, sugar.  I haven't really been paying attention, but when I actually started keeping an eye on what I was eating this last month I realised that I had definitely fallen back onto having quite a few sugary treats.  Not just that but it was happening more often and the amount of sugar each time was increasing.  You might think that, with the very physical job I do, this extra sugar wouldn't really matter too much, especially as I'm still losing fat.  But sugar does more bad things than just help you put on weight and I know how important reducing my sugar is to increase my bodies general well-being.  So, I'm going to give reducing it yet another go again this quarter (if at first you don't succeed and all that), but might need to bring in some helpers again in the form of fizzy water (totally ridiculous I know) and crunchy snacks. 

I'm going to let myself be a little bit more relaxed about it over the weekend, but I don't want to slip too far the other way and just binge on sugar for two days a week.  Time to start showing some real restraint.  I know I can, I've just been being lazy and let the little sugar monsters reign in my brain.

So, I failed on my mini goal for this quarter, but I'm going to roll it on to the next.  Sugary treats only on two occasions a week.

Reducing Waste

On the whole I have managed to reduce my waste quite a bit these last few months, and that's predominantly due to me doing even less shopping than before (if that's actually possible).  The one place in which I am still struggling, which surprises me a little, is food shopping.  My diet is predominantly plant based and you would have thought that that would have meant that there would be almost no packaging at all in my basket.  However, in a number of shops I've been to there is plastic wrapped around every vegetable.  I don't really understand why this has now become the case and I really don't understand the hygiene argument a lot of shops give seeing as you wash your veg before you eat them anyway.  

Co Op seems to be the worst offenders of this at the moment, which is frustrating as it's one of the shops I end up having to go to most often.  I have been keeping an eye out for farm shops as I travel around, but these mainly seem to only sell meat and eggs with not a lot of vegetables, so they haven't been the help I was hoping they were going to be.  

Whilst I did try to carry out my mini goal for this quarter there is definitely more work needed as it didn't exactly work out.  I'm going to keep looking for other options and possible solutions to help reduce the amount of waste I produce, but if you have any suggestions please let me know.  They would be greatly appreciated.

Learning New Skills

Work

I took the dry stone walling course in July and have already written a post about it, which you can find here.  It was really interesting and gave me a good insight into a different way of using stones to build structures.  It is definitely a future job I would like to look more into, but as it requires a lot more training than I have time for at the moment it'll probably be something I come back to later on.  

As before, trying to learn the names of different flowers is something I keep coming back to whilst at work.  This is a slow process, especially as it can only take place during breaks or the walks to and from the work sites, and will probably take a while before I feel really confident about it.

I have also found someone who may be able to help me with having a refresher on my navigation skills, and I'm going to contact them and see what they say.  I figured this was a much better option than just winging it on my own in case I'm making some very serious mistakes that might need rectifying.

Mini goals is definitely a tick for this quarter and I'm planning on getting the navigation skills sorted for the next.  Then this goal at least will have been a success.

Home

I now have a new, well second hand, laptop which means that I now have the software I need to carry on doing my BSL learning.  It's been great getting back to learning this again and I've been enjoying it, despite the fact that we've now moved onto more complex, scary stuff like stringing a sentence together.  This does mean that I am having to learn a new form of grammar, which I have to admit is freaking my brain out a little.  But it's all part of keeping your brain active and healthy.

My mini goal here was to try and do one BSL learning section a week, but I've actually managed do more than that and have noticed a difference in the amount I've managed to take in.  My mini goal for the upcoming quarter is to finish this course and I've put a timetable in place, as if I was back at school, which makes it pretty likely I will achieve that my the end of the year.

So, the learning new skills goal has gone pretty well so far, but the other two not so much.  I'm trying not to be negative about this as it won't help and I still have three more months to ensure that I get back on track.  Whilst the sugar goal is probably going to be the most difficult personally, the reducing packaging goal is probably going to be the most frustrating as it is the one least under my control.  However, my aim is to end this year on a high note and I'm now more determined than before to do that.  Onwards and upwards.

Goals for 2019 - Update #2

So there goes June whizzing past us and that's half the year gone already.  Here's how my goals went in the second quarter.

Healthy Eating

I have found that I don't find eating healthy particularly difficult when I'm at work. Mainly because I'm stuck up a mountain away from the temptations of the shops and can only eat the food I've taken with me.  All I have to do is make sure it's healthy.  Also, when I'm at the hostel I tend to only eat the food I've brought along as well, which is made up of mostly fruit and vegetables and only one 'bad' item.

At home I've been good at making large, mixed salads which I can munch my way through throughout the weekend.  This is because it occurred to me that salads are pretty easy to make, healthy and tasty (and yes I do mean that), and really not much more work than getting a ready meal from the shop.  There is also a lot less waste when you make it yourself.

I am definitely still eating a lot more high sugar food than I should be, even for the little treat you should really allow yourself now and then.  It's not necessarily a problem with the work that I do as I burn so much energy, but I still want to work on reducing this to just a treat once or twice week.  Regardless of how much physical activity you do processed sugar really is something you can do without.

Next quarter's mini goal is to get my sugery treats down to two occasions a week.

Reducing Waste

I think it's safe to say that I've been pretty good at reducing my waste in almost every aspect of my life bar food.  And it's not just the snacks I've been buying. It has been unbelievably difficult to get vegetables without a whole lot of packaging wrapped around them.  Fruit has been a lot easier to deal with, but vegetables seem to require it for reasons I don't really understand.

I have been looking into this and have found a few online stores that sell dry food in bulk and plastic free packaging.  So that will be my first port of call when I next need some dry goods.  For fresh food I think it's going to have to be farmers markets and stores.  At the moment I have quite a long drive from home to work and I have noticed a couple of places on route that I think will definitely be worth having a look at.  I'm not sure if they'll have all the food I need with my dietary requirements but it's definitely worth a look.

Next quarter's mini goal is to buy food either in bulk or from a farmer's market wherever possible.

Learning New Skills

Work

As I put in the last goals post I have a drystone walling course booked for July and I'll write more about that then.  The walking that I do during my work day has increased quite dramatically since I started work at Glencoe and that means that walking and practising navigation during my time off is much less likely, just to give my legs a rest.  However, I have been given a few chances to go off route a bit when at work and this has been helping me get to know more about the terrain in the area and what challenges there are when navigating through it.

My current boss is also big on identifying mountain fauna and often shows me the vegetation we pass as we are doing our work so that has turned out to be a great unexpected opportunity as well.  If only I was better at learning names.

My mini goal for the next quarter is just to get the most out of the drystone walling course that I can.

Home

Lastly is my attempted to learn BSL at home.  It started off well and I had gone through the alphabet and numbers, and had begun to look at the signs for different colours when I got into some technically difficulties.  Neither my phone nor my tablet have the software needed to view the video footage showing you the signs.  However my laptop did until it stopped working.  At the moment I am laptop less, and probably will be for a while, whilst I work out exactly what I want to get and can afford.  I did manage to use my local library's computers a couple of times to do the classes but I haven't been able to get there as much as I would like.  That is still an option though and is probably just something I need to block in on a weekly basis.

Next quarter's mini goal will be to get in at least one section of BSL learning a week.

This year has definitely been a less successful year then last when it comes to achieving my goals.  But it's alright to have off years and as long as I keep moving forward I will be happy with what I've achieved.  I may not be as far as I would like but it's still better than where I was at the start of the year.

I hope all your goals are going well.  And, if like me, they're not quite working that your still moving forward the best that you can.

Goals for 2019 - Update #1

I can't believe that the first quarter of the year is over already.  Where did the time go?  It hasn't been the best start of the year with a little bit more emotional stuff happening then I was expecting (like we can ever expect that), but I'm trying to see it as a positive.  After all, if the year has a bad start it can only really go up.  So here we go.

Healthy Eating

I'm just going to put it out there - I comfort eat.  In fact it's my main way of dealing with unpleasant emotions and stress.  I can even use it as a warning light that something might be bothering me more than I realise at the time and will probably be rearing it's ugly head in the near future.  So my attempt to healthy eat didn't set of to a good start.

However, I didn't want to let this put my whole year out so I drew a line under it in March and crawled back onto that wagon.  Since then I have made almost all my breakfast, lunch, and dinners from scratch (including sort of making my own gluten free bread) and doing my best to only snack on fruit, nuts, and pop corn.  

I still have my little sugar addition, mainly Coke Cola and ice cream (which has the added minus of containing dairy), but I'm working on that and this will probably be my focus for the next quarter.

I also found out during this time that I was iron deficient.  This is definitely an issue that can happen when you are a vegetarian (or vegan) but the symptoms I've been having started long before I started that journey so there is clearly something very lacking in my diet.  I had thought I was getting all the iron I needed, but I have obviously miscalculated somewhere. I am now off the tablets I was given and have started taking a good hard look at my diet to see where I can make the improvement I need.  This is another good incentive to make my diet as healthy as possible.

Reducing Waste

As I said at the start, reducing my waste is closely connected to eating healthier as my groceries are where most of my waste comes from.  I have noticed this especially when it comes to the unhealthy snacks and ready meals that I have brought when not making my own food.  I have also noticed, in this last month, that as I've improved the health of my food the amount of waste I have produced has reduced dramatically. 

There is still a major issue with plastic being on a lot of the vegetables that I buy, especially as there's not always an option of picking up plastic free fruit and vegetables.  However, I'm going to carry on looking into this so that I can keep improving as the year goes on.  I will also continue to look at other areas of my life to see where I can make improvements there too.

Learning New Skills
Work

I decided at the start of the year that the first thing I wanted to look into was learning drystone walling and, after being in contact with the Drystone Walling Society, I found some training in my area.  I unfortunately missed the training at the beginning of this year (my fault entirely, things got very busy and I let it slip by), but have booked myself on a course in July.  I really can't wait for that to happen.  

I have also been starting to practise my very rusty navigation skills when out on the mountains and this I want to keep developing until I feel very confident out in the wild.  This is definitely a good skill to have based in the amount of time I spend outside.

Home

The British Sign Language (BSL) cause has been brought for a mere £19.99 and I've already started the first few lessons.  It has been as challenging as I was expecting it to be, but I am really enjoying learning this new skill and have been practising whenever I can, even when just pottering around my home.  Hopefully I will start to get the hang of it very soon.

So it has been a little bit of a bumpy start, but it's a start at least and I'm still happy that I managed to get done the amount that I did.  I now have another three month to keep improving.

I hope your goals are going well too.