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.

Paperless Productivity - Microsoft To Do & OneNote

This month I decided to use another to do or task software that was connected to something  I was already using, in this case my Microsoft email account.  So I downloaded Microsoft To Do as my tasks manager and OneNote as my digital notebook.

Let's start with To Do.  This is meant to basically be Wunderlist, which Microsoft brought and which is now being shut down.  I only really used this on my mobile, I didn't really look at it through my laptop or tablet, and only a couple of times directly through my email account.  So my opinions here are only really going to be based on the mobile applications.

First off, though Google Task and Microsoft To Do are very similar to each other there is a bit more complexity to Microsoft To Do.  This includes the information you can add to the tasks themselves and the themes that you can pick as the back drops of your pages if you want it to be a little bit more personal. 

You can add tasks when you're in the Tasks, Planned, or My Day section of the software, and usually I just add it to the Tasks section by clicking on the green cross at the bottom.

Then it's as simple as just typing in the name you want to give the task, add in any due dates, if you want a reminder, and if this task will be a repeating one.

Then just click the blue arrow.  One thing this doesn't have at this point, and which I found quite useful in Google Tasks, is that you can't add sub title that might give you a little bit more information about the task itself.

You can, however, add more information and steps to the task later on by clicking on it once it's been set up.  Then you can add in steps, attach files, add additional notes, and star them if they are important.

The one feature I do particularly like is that you start each day with your My Day section completely blank, even if you had placed task in there the day before and hadn't completed them.  This allows you to start with a clean slate and allows you to put in the tasks that are most suitable for that day rather than just trying to get task done you hadn't completed.  

To add tasks you click on the Day button at the bottom of the screen and just add the tasks.  Once each task is complete you just press on it and it disappears with a slightly annoying ding that I know is meant to be satisfying but isn't to me.

Another good feature is that you can flag emails in your Outlook accout which you want to work on and they show up in this To Do software.  As with your normal tasks you can add information to the email to do and they can even be added to your My Day section later on.

I have to say that this is a pretty good piece of software which I found very easy to use and which has some really good features.  If you wanted just a little bit more complexity then you were getting from Google Tasks then this is definitely worth trying.  The only problem I had with this was very similar to the problem I had with Tasks and that's the fact that you can't really plan out your week in the same way you do when you're using a physical calendar.  For me I much prefer this as it allows me to spread out my tasks throughout the week and helps me ensure that I don't fill up one day with too many things.  Here I found the tasks just merged into one and it was too easy to fill up your day with too many tasks.

As for OneNote, this is a whole other kettle of fish and I really liked using this right from the start.  It's literally like having a notebook with tabs, but even more user friendly because even those tabs have easy to find other tabs.  I have this on both my mobile phone and on my laptop (you can also get it through your emails).

I've set it up so that I have a general notebook that contain notes that I like to keep for general life stuff and then a separate blog notebook.  These are then separated by different sections or subjects and each section has as many pages as you want.  

The best bit here is that, unlike a physical page that is limited, each page here is limitless in size.  You don't have to do that thing where you need to try and guestimate how many  pages you will need before you start a different subject, or have the subjects all mixed together that you need to search through.  As with actual paper you can add bullet points, tick boxes, and even highlight certain sections if you want to.  The highlighting feature isn't as good in the mobile app as it is on the laptop - but at the moment this doesn't bother me enough to make me not want to use it.

So far I've really liked using it and have actually stopped using my actual notebook all together, reaching for my phone when I want to make a note or do some research rather than the notebook.

As well as notebooks OneNote also has sticky notes.  I used to use actual sticky notes for things like shopping lists and quick notes I didn't need to / want to keep long term, but now that I've used them all up I'm going to start using these instead.  It makes far more sense and I can just delete them when I'm done with nothing to throw away.

You can also add pictures to these sticky notes (though I'm not entirely sure why you would) and change the colour of them either to one you like or, perhaps more usefully, to match the colour of one of your sections in your notebook.

All in all this is a good piece of software and I'm definitely going to keep it for now and maybe from now on, though we'll see how the other bits of software I'll be looking at work out first.  There may be one that works even better then OneNote, but the bars pretty high right not.

Next month I'll be looking at Todoist.

Reducing Waste - Library Audio Books

I love reading, thought I'd just start with that.  I really do. The feel, the smell, the snuggling into a bed or on a sofa with a good book.  And there's so many books that I want to read.  There's the books that I've collected over the years and am busy trying to read my way through, and there's the ever growing list of books that I want to read in the future.  However, the truth is I'm finding it difficult to find time to actually read at all.  I'm trying to make it a habit to read about 30 minutes every night before I go to sleep, but this doesn't always happen and usually I find myself just flopping into bed at the end of the day too tired to focus on the writing.  I'm also very aware that I don't really have the space to store all these books.  In fact, I'm very lucky that my parents are happy to store most of the books I do own in their attic or I'd be in real trouble.  I needed to find a solution. 

And then, when I was driving along listening to a podcast it occurred to me that I could do the same with books.  It's never really been something that I've thought about before as I do really like the whole reading myself set up, but I have definitely been enjoying getting information through podcasts a lot more than I thought I would.  So I decided there was only one way to see if it would be the same for books.

I've heard lots of people talk about (and seen lots of adverts about) Audible, so I gave that a go (thank you Audible for the free months trial and one free book).  I did really enjoy it and they seem to have a absolutely huge selection of books, but I really wasn't sure about the cost of it.  It wasn't really something that I could justify putting into my monthly budget,  at least not for now, and especially as some of the books I was intending on listening to I already owned a hard copy of.  Then it occurred to me that I was being a bit of an idiot as I'm a member of my local library which offer audio books for free.  

So one RB Digital app download, account registered through my library, and seven books listened to later (they were all Harry Potter - it's a long story) and I've actually been quite enjoying ing it.  It turns out there's something very soothing about listening to someone read to you when you're having to do some task or when you're lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and it has meant that I've been able to fit in more reading then I would have managed before.

Don't get me wrong, it will never replace the enjoyment I get of actually reading myself.  That feeling of doing absolutely nothing else but immersing yourself in a book for a time is not to be beaten.  There's also the one con in using library audio books and that is the selection is much smaller that Audible, especially of the types of books I usually go for.  However, so far this has been a great experience for me and it's definitely something I'll be carry on in the future.  I've also noticed that they do e books on the same app so that's definitely something I'm going to look into once I've finished all the hard copy of books that I own right now.

It really is a shame that more people don't actually use their library.  Registering with a library is one of the first things I do when I move to a new location (I still have all the cards for them) so I can use all the services, and now they've given me a chance to listen to books completely free, getting through them despite my long to-do lists.  Best of all, it's completely waste free as well.  A win all round really.

App of the Moment: Love Food Hate Waste

The app we'll be looking at this time is the Love Food Hate Waste app.  This was developed by WRAP (a British charity) and was designed to help us reduce food waste.  This is a particular problem as we throw away around 10 million tonnes of food and drink every year, more than half of which we could have actually eaten.  70% of this waste occurs in our homes.  Not only is this bad for the environment producing roughly 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is costing families between £470 a year for the average family to £700 for family with children.  All this information can be found on the WRAP and Love Food Hate Waste websites.

When you first open the app you can choose how you would like to log onto the app.  You can skip this part if you are just wanting to look at the recipes and portion sizes, but if you're looking to use the app to its full capacity then you will need to log in.

The app is pretty easy to use and self-explanatory and the first page takes you to the main menu page.

The first link takes you to all the recipes that are stored in this app.  If you are looking for a recipe for a particular item you can just put this in the search engine and it will bring up all the recipes that contain this ingredient.

The first page of the recipe give you basic information about the recipe and the ingredients.  The best bit is that is shows you who has actually added the recipe showing that is has actually been used by everyday people rather than recipes put together by a chef.  You can then slide along the screen to find out more.

The first swipe takes you to the hints and tips page giving advise on simple ways to reduce waste.

A second swipe allows you to change the number of people this recipe has to feed and changes here will change the ingredients list to ensure you only make enough to feed the family and reduce waste.

The last swipe takes you to the share section of the recipe, allowing you to share it with whoever you feel would benefit.

The next section on the main menu is the Portion Planner, which ensures that you are buying and cooking the right amount of food for each meal.

First you can select the category of the food from the top row and then something more specific in the bottom.  Once you have selected the product you would like you can change the exact number of adults and children the ingredient will have to feed and then click on Go.

This will then give you the exact weight you will need to buy which can be added to your shopping list on the app.

The third section is the Planner.  Meal planning is something that I already do, but at the moment I just use the good old fashioned monthly calendar to do this.  I am interested in using this section of the app as it would allow me to reduce using as much paper as I do now.  It would also make it much easier to base my recipes on what I already have, reducing the amount of food I could end up wasting, and also include my breakfast and lunch.  To add a meal just click plus sign.

You can then add a recipe already on the app or make up a new one of your own.

The fourth section is My Kitchen.  I haven't added any information to this section yet and I believe that, initially, this will be part of the app that requires the most amount of work as you will need to add all the ingredients you already have in your kitchen.  If you're anything like me you will already have quite a few items put away here and there, so it should be quite an interesting rummage around the kitchen.  As you use the app to meal plan and go shopping you won't need to keep adding these, unless you buy items not actually on the list.  You will also be able to use this list to work out what recipes you can already produce with what you have by clicking on Find A New Recipe.  To add an item click on the cross.

You can then add the items and, most importantly, the use by date.  This will help you ensure that you are using products up before they have to get thrown away.  It is important to remember at this point that for some products, like vegetables, don't need to be thrown out by the use by date put on my our shops, but can be kept for longer as long as they are still fresh.  To me this part is only important for canned and frozen products, and meat.

Next on the menu is the Shopping List.  If you have been picking recipes or determining portion sizes etc you will already have items on this shopping list.  But you can add more by clicking on the plus.

Then add the ingredient and the portion size.  It will let you know if you already have duplicates in your kitchen and, once you have been shopping, you can add the ingredients to your kitchen list.

The last section in the menu is the profile.  This not only give you information about the app but is also where you can update your personal details, the numbers of members in the household, and have a look at your achievements so far.

To me this is a good app to not only save on food waste but to also help you be more healthy by helping you actually cook the amount of food you should be eating instead of making, and then eating, too much.  When I first started concentrating on the size of the portions I was eating I was amazed at much over the right amount I was actually consuming.  It might not help you pick more sustainable food, but with the readily available recipes on the app it can help you cook more from fresh and this does make it easier for your to pick the healthier, more sustainable, option.

The app is free from the Love Food Hate Waste for both the iPhone and Android phone so it's definitely worth having a look at.