My mum is always telling me that I'm too hard on myself and that I'm my own worst enemy. Perhaps I am putting too much pressure on myself to succeed. Changing my life in one massive swoop rather than doing it bit by bit and making it stick.
As with any end, I went out in style. And when I say style, I mean an absolutely disgusting binge that made me feel equal measures of shame and nausea.
I know that with my bowel disease, I need to make sure that I am eating good and nutritious foods. Yet I seem to be making poor choices more and more often. I'll be honest and say that my bad diet is also risking my healthy weight that took me a long while to get down to. I definitely don't want to go backwards. Or upwards as the case may be.
Not only that but my sister sent me this link that shows the relationship between anxiety/depression and your gut health. You can read it here if you're interested.
The long and the short of it is that if I improve my diet - every single part of me will benefit. When you think about it, that's not a lot of outlay for some major enhancements in my life. Especially when the enhancements are on things that are causing me some major stresses in my life.
The next thing that happened is that my mum emailed me with a link to a book.
Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, Meghan Telpner's 'Undiet: Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health'.
Almost from the first I fell in love with this book and with Meghan. Her whole philosophy is one that I can really get behind.
She's not about counting calories or monitoring what you eat - she just wants you to eat cleanly. One of the best parts of this book is, for me, not actually the bits about eating. The bits about how happiness and health go hand in hand have really spoken to me. I'd be the first to admit that I'm not doing a job that I love. In fact, if I had to point out one of the major stress points in my life - my job wins hand down. It's well paid and while I like the income, it really isn't worth all the drama and ill-health that it causes me. I think that I'm just not cut out to be in the corporate world.
But more about that another day.
This book is definitely not a diet.
Basically, if I was looking for a sign, this is it. All these things - the universe must be telling me to get off my behind and get things done. And if it's not the universe that's telling me - I should still really get up and gain control. I'm such a control freak in every other aspect of my life - why not the one that matters most?
My first week's challenge is to drink at least 8-10 glasses of water a day. A lot of people suggest this as a healthy way to, ahem, flush your system and I certainly don't get enough to do so despite practically living in the toilet. (Sorry, bowel disease definitely leads to over sharing when it comes to toilet talk!) So, rather than just get started, I had to make it fun! So I bought myself this:
How lovely! Keeps all my water in an easy to measure container while also reminding me to SMILE! Plus it's made of something other than plastic which is apparently bad news for bowel watchers like me!
Mr Happy - makes flushing fun!
Anyway, I've still to finish the book but already I hope to make some big changes on the back of it.
This time I mean it and this time I plan to follow through.
Which, in view of the recent content of this post, is a little gross.
Oh well!
Mr Happy should help you get through this first challenge. Good luck! :o)
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