So one of the reasons I'm re-starting this blog is to document the changes I'm making to my current diet, the effects and mainly, the food. The other, because I want more organisation in my life, to complete more goals and to do things I enjoy rather than writing lists of things I would like to do that never get completed. I feel like if it's all in writing, I have to do it, right? Hopefully this will give me the motivation I need to make some big changes and set me on the right path.
First things first, this is an introduction to my food and diet concerns.
I've got a scrappy little book that I've been jotting down recipes in and after adding ingredients, making changes and scribing down notes I can barely understand it myself, so I decided this would be a much better place to jot it all down.
Recipe Notebook by Papernotebook on Etsy
I think it was giving up smoking about a month ago (35 days ago to be exact) that kick started this diet overhaul and this is how that came about...
This year, over 6 incredibly stressful months, which included taking over a second business (on top of the one we run full time), closing and emptying a shop, gutting a house, moving house and working 16 hour days pretty much 7 days a week, cooking and diet just wasn't a priority. Some days we'd not have time to eat at all, some days it would be yesterdays pizza for breakfast and a kebab for dinner. Our diet was 95% takeaway food. The other 5% was microwave noodles..
It was only when things started to settle down that I started to realise how badly it had all effected my health. Smoking and drinking too much, eating very poorly, lack of sleep, huge amounts of stress, anxiety and sheer exhaustion had really taken it's toll. My body had well and truly had enough. I suffered (and am still suffering) the worst M.E relapse I've had in years and I (eventually) realised I had no choice but to slow down to pretty much a stop and let myself recover. Now this hasn't happened, life doesn't just stop because you have a chronic illness and businesses and households do not run themselves, but I have slowed down, the major stress of it all is over and I've been able to take some time to really think about the hell I've put my body through!
I've never been overly concerned about my weight or what I eat. I've slowly put on a bit of weight over the past year or two, nothing really noticeable and certainly not enough for me to watch what I ate. Basically I ate what I wanted, drank what I wanted and didn't think much of it. That's not to say it was all bad! We both enjoy cooking and made everything from scratch. It was more overindulgence that was the problem, going back for seconds, opening a second bottle of wine, eating a huge bag of sharing crisps on my own (I can't help myself).
Combining the overindulgence of the last couple of years, and the 6 months of living off crap, I've crept up to a weight I'm not really pleased with. I don't weigh myself often but have really noticed the clothes getting tighter (squeezing into size 10 jeans is now pretty much impossible), the uncomfortable bloated feeling and the frumpy sluggishness you feel when you know your slightly over your normal weight.
Giving up smoking was my first major step in trying to take control of my health. I didn't find it too painful but it did make me eat more and crave sweet food all the time!! I do not have a sweet tooth and it's rare to find a chocolate bar or cake in our house but the over last month I've eaten through tub after tub of ice cream, packets of chocolate bars and stuffed myself with sickly desserts.
I gave myself a month, a month to suffice my cravings with all the sugary goodness I could eat, then I said that would be enough.
So here we are now. I'm day 35 into giving up smoking, and day 6 into the new controlled, informed and hopefully more balanced diet.
No Smoking graphic by This Wall Your Wall on Etsy
Labels: Diet, Food, Health, M.E/CFS