2016 Update: My happiness project had to be put on hold for a few years as I couldn't take it on as all my focus was on getting our son better and I also had some health issues.
I will be resuming it in the near future as I still think it would be a great thing to do, so I'll keep ye posted :)
Yes, it's the beginning of April and I'm writing about my
I will be resuming it in the near future as I still think it would be a great thing to do, so I'll keep ye posted :)
Yes, it's the beginning of April and I'm writing about my
February happiness project. I guess my March mission of getting better at time management must have failed. Lol.
Anyway, for those of you that don't know, I have undertaken my own happiness project this year. Every month a new goal on the road to being a happier person. For more details click here.
In January my mission was to sleep more, the basics of any happy person I think. And then in February my goal was to be healthier. This had to start with a detox of course, there was no point in trying to build a healthier me on top of the built up toxic residue in my body I'd accumulated over the years. For more details on my detox click here.
So in the second week of February I did my detox and then I did up a new meal plan. We have a healthy enough diet anyway but I needed to make some changes. Less red meat and gluten, more salads and greens, and generally a more alkaline diet, paying attention to my 8pm treat cravings :) There is so much advice out there on what to eat, a lot of it contradictory, so I've just gone with common sense, and personalised preference. Some say red meat is bad, some say lamb is good, the men in our family say you need red meat for energy,....well, I've decided we're having beef, venison or rabbit once a month, and lamb and chicken once a week.
Fish is something we need to eat more of. With the seas and rivers as polluted as they are, and farmed fish fed on GM food a lot of the time it is difficult to get fresh, safe, fish. I've decided to not opt for cod and net caught tuna but instead mainly to go for my favourites; rainbow trout and mackerel. Not only are they healthier than white fish, but as far as I know they're not endangered. When we sometimes do have tinned fish with our lunch it's usually herring or line caught tuna.
I'm going to focus the vegetarian meals on being alkaline in particular, easy seeing as most leafy greens are alkaline.Salads will be more present at lunch time in particular to get the increased raw foods into our diet.
For the carbohydrates I'm going to try be a bit gentler on our stomachs and not fill them with plain old wheat. Instead of normal pasta I'm now going for spelt pasta or rice pasta (watch out for unnecessary chemical unpronounceable ingredients in gluten-free options :). Instead of normal bread I make my own spelt or rye bread thanks to my bread machine. Rye or rice crackers are also a good snack. We have been lucky enough to get all our potatoes since last summer out of our garden, so these are organic and pesticide free.
For breakfasts I'm going to have more juices and smoothies than before and also instead of toast and tea it's going to be cinnamon coconut & raisin porridge with a cup of green tea or roibos.
Water, water! Must drink more water! My poor kidneys are of the sensitive kind so I need to treat them better. Luckily we are connected to a well so good quality water is always at hand, so yes. I'm filling up an old 1l glass Schloer bottle twice every day so I can keep an eye on how much I drink, and it's also easier to glug when you're in a rush than politely drinking out of a glass.
I'm going to supplement my diet with spiralina, flax seed oil, evening primrose oil, kelp, lepicol, and wheatgrass. Kelp in the form of tablets every once in a while, lepicol whenever I feel my intestines need a helping hand, and the rest in my breakfast smoothies. Not altogether of course, I'll add them at random.
Now my only diet problem is my 8.30pm 'cuppa' time. Kids in bed, lights dim, brain fried, and after a few minor jobs it's finally adult time so on goes the kettle and out comes the roibos tea and biscuits or chocolate. Better still, Lindt chocolate! God damn you Swiss, how do you do it! Soooo divine. Well I'm going to limit myself to one bar of Lindt chocolate a week. Will it work? Hmmm. I wonder. If that's gone by evening number 3 I'll resort to rice cakes, melon, or Bombay mix. I'm going to try make some Mr.T friendly cereal bars too which will be handy. I think some magnesium supplement wouldn't go astray either as chocolate cravings is meant to be a sign of its deficiency. Fingers crossed. Time will tell. :)
Here's what I came up with anyway for my meal plan. I tried to make it as balanced as I could. It shows the general direction I'm going in for the month, with the dates, and then it leaves space to write in what exactly which recipe I have planned to cook. I'll fill those in when I'm making my shopping list for the week. There's also three boxes for home made dessert options in the month. I hope the quality of this is ok for other computer screens, I can't seem to upload it at a better quality. If someone would like a copy of it, just let me know and I'll email it to you.
So in the second week of February I did my detox and then I did up a new meal plan. We have a healthy enough diet anyway but I needed to make some changes. Less red meat and gluten, more salads and greens, and generally a more alkaline diet, paying attention to my 8pm treat cravings :) There is so much advice out there on what to eat, a lot of it contradictory, so I've just gone with common sense, and personalised preference. Some say red meat is bad, some say lamb is good, the men in our family say you need red meat for energy,....well, I've decided we're having beef, venison or rabbit once a month, and lamb and chicken once a week.
Fish is something we need to eat more of. With the seas and rivers as polluted as they are, and farmed fish fed on GM food a lot of the time it is difficult to get fresh, safe, fish. I've decided to not opt for cod and net caught tuna but instead mainly to go for my favourites; rainbow trout and mackerel. Not only are they healthier than white fish, but as far as I know they're not endangered. When we sometimes do have tinned fish with our lunch it's usually herring or line caught tuna.
I'm going to focus the vegetarian meals on being alkaline in particular, easy seeing as most leafy greens are alkaline.Salads will be more present at lunch time in particular to get the increased raw foods into our diet.
For the carbohydrates I'm going to try be a bit gentler on our stomachs and not fill them with plain old wheat. Instead of normal pasta I'm now going for spelt pasta or rice pasta (watch out for unnecessary chemical unpronounceable ingredients in gluten-free options :). Instead of normal bread I make my own spelt or rye bread thanks to my bread machine. Rye or rice crackers are also a good snack. We have been lucky enough to get all our potatoes since last summer out of our garden, so these are organic and pesticide free.
For breakfasts I'm going to have more juices and smoothies than before and also instead of toast and tea it's going to be cinnamon coconut & raisin porridge with a cup of green tea or roibos.
Water, water! Must drink more water! My poor kidneys are of the sensitive kind so I need to treat them better. Luckily we are connected to a well so good quality water is always at hand, so yes. I'm filling up an old 1l glass Schloer bottle twice every day so I can keep an eye on how much I drink, and it's also easier to glug when you're in a rush than politely drinking out of a glass.
I'm going to supplement my diet with spiralina, flax seed oil, evening primrose oil, kelp, lepicol, and wheatgrass. Kelp in the form of tablets every once in a while, lepicol whenever I feel my intestines need a helping hand, and the rest in my breakfast smoothies. Not altogether of course, I'll add them at random.
Now my only diet problem is my 8.30pm 'cuppa' time. Kids in bed, lights dim, brain fried, and after a few minor jobs it's finally adult time so on goes the kettle and out comes the roibos tea and biscuits or chocolate. Better still, Lindt chocolate! God damn you Swiss, how do you do it! Soooo divine. Well I'm going to limit myself to one bar of Lindt chocolate a week. Will it work? Hmmm. I wonder. If that's gone by evening number 3 I'll resort to rice cakes, melon, or Bombay mix. I'm going to try make some Mr.T friendly cereal bars too which will be handy. I think some magnesium supplement wouldn't go astray either as chocolate cravings is meant to be a sign of its deficiency. Fingers crossed. Time will tell. :)
Here's what I came up with anyway for my meal plan. I tried to make it as balanced as I could. It shows the general direction I'm going in for the month, with the dates, and then it leaves space to write in what exactly which recipe I have planned to cook. I'll fill those in when I'm making my shopping list for the week. There's also three boxes for home made dessert options in the month. I hope the quality of this is ok for other computer screens, I can't seem to upload it at a better quality. If someone would like a copy of it, just let me know and I'll email it to you.
As well as food there's also a few more things I'm going to try change for the positive. Doing workouts again, and oil pulling. But I'll leave that for another blog post, hopefully in the next fortnight. :)
Well, if any of my readers want to live a little more healthy maybe this gave you some ideas. I know it seems as if I am incredibly organised, but believe me, life gets in the way of any schedule at the best of times. So even if my meal plan doesn't go according to plan, it doesn't matter, no sweat. It can be a rough guide, and the next week will probably be calmer and more focused. If anyone else has ideas how to make a busy mums life healthier please share them! Let's get cracking! :)
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