I binged (and I liked it!)… What’s next?

After a particularly full on couple of days I came home from work and went straight to the cupboard and fridge. A few rows of chocolate and a glass of coke later and the day’s worries were behind me. Soon after my fiancé arrived home and he had also had a pretty shitty day… so being the loving soon-to-be-wife I am, I loaded him up with chocolate and coke too. 

 

A nap on the couch and a few hours later talk turned to dinner. Still recovering from our sugar binge, neither one of us felt like cooking (and didn’t particularly feel like the meat and three veg that was planned for tonight’s dinner). So some genius decided we should get McDonalds. We deserved it after all… oh and McFlurrys too! Eating dinner was literally a blur… the food was gone just as fast as it was bought. Did we even chew?

My kitchen bench the morning after

 

Needless to say a few hours later we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves. We were bloated, gassy and asking “Why did we just do that?!”

The point of this blog isn’t to show the perfect wellness lifestyle (evidently I am far from that) but it is to show how to deal with the imperfections. We are newbies after all and let’s face it… this lifestyle isn’t easy to stick to after a lifetime of eating completely the opposite way! I have a picture on my vision board that says strive for progress, not perfection and I encourage you all to adopt a similar attitude to avoid a LOT of negativity.

 Here are some steps you can take after that inevitable slip from your wellness path:

Like My New Facebook Community Page

Head over to https://www.facebook.com/thenourishmentnewbie to join my new community page. Check out some other inspiring Facebook pages while you are there.

I try to fill my personal Facebook newsfeed with as much positivity, inspiration and love as possible. Facebook can sometimes be a negative place with everyone venting their worries and boasting their successes. Injecting the following pages into your newsfeed can help boost your mood and remind you of what you are working towards.

Here are 10 of my favourites!

Your Wild Life
Under My Bodhi Tree
Eat Clean Keep Lean
a life of perfect days
Jessica Sepel | Health & Lifestyle Advisor
MindBodyGreen
Earth Events
Learning to F.L.Y
Path To Wellness with Melissa Ambrosini
Jess Ainscough

Smart Substitutes: Pancakes

As a child, Sunday mornings was the day for cooked breakfasts. Usually it would be bacon and eggs but on special occasions my sister and I would often make pancakes for the family. These are a much healthier, cleaned up version of course!

Smart Substitutes: Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Last week I was set the challenge to find an alternative to ice cream. There are many raw, vegan recipes out there but most are basically frozen fruit chucked in a blender. I don't know about you but when I crave ice cream I don't want frozen fruit! I always end up buying chocolate... So that's what I set out to recreate.

I am so pleased with the end product... I will definitely be making this again soon. The only difference between this and normal ice cream is a slightly icier consistency... not in a bad way but it's definitely a point of difference. It is delicious!

Change your mindset!

I am reading a lot about manifestation lately and while I'm approaching a crossroads in my life I want to make sure that I don't recreate some of the less desirable things about my life now in my future. I am trying to practice acceptance of where I am right now and to do that, I have had to shift the way I am viewing my current situation.

Some words of advice from Connie Chapman on my desire to leave my current job...
If we are unhappy where we are, and we make our current situation wrong, we might manifest something new to fix it and as a result we just get more of the same...

This is the last thing I want... I want my future (and my present) to be one filled with love and passion so this week I set the intention to shift my mindset into a more positive space.

Smart Substitutes: Healthy Chippies

This is the first of a new blog segment in which I will show you healthy alternatives to some popular food cravings. These recipes are guilt free ways to indulge in your food favourites that are tasty and nutritious!

I definitely am more of a savoury food person and in the past my go to comfort foods were pasta, bread and hot chips. I used to work at KFC during my high school years where I think my hot chip obsession really began! The following recipe is definitely a favourite in our house and reminds us of the delicious chips from Grill'd. The pumpkin and sweet potato gives our Healthy Chippies a nutritional boost in comparison to regular potato chips and as we all know baking is much healthier than frying!

Nourishing Newbie Snacks

**Just before I start I would like to officially welcome all of my new followers! It is so exciting to have an audience and I look forward to more people interacting with my page. If you haven’t already, head over to https://www.facebook.com/nourishment.newbie for more Nourishment Newbie action, inspiration and for notifications of new blog posts.**

I LOVE to eat and having yummy and healthy snacks on hand is one of the easiest ways to stay on track in your health journey. At work I like to have easy to eat things to get me through the day. I usually use my Sundays to prep these snacks ready for the working week.

Newbie Tips: Getting back on the wagon

*Warning… clichés ahead!

That old cliché ‘’If it was easy then everyone would be doing it!’’ is so true when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. It takes perseverance and the ability to pick yourself up and get back on the horse when you slip back into old habits. Falling off the wagon and finding my way back on seems to be something I have perfected throughout this journey. I have had more slip ups than I can count and at one stage it was happening weekly! I fell into the pattern of … okay well starting Monday I will get back into it!

Newbie Tips: Healthy Habits for Energy

After babysitting my four month old niece for the last few days I have had a bit of a wakeup call. I have always thought I would struggle with the lack of sleep having a baby brings but didn’t realise how quickly the lack of sleep would affect me. By only the third morning I was a wreck! I was tired, grumpy, reaching for all the wrong foods and could feel myself starting to get sick. As much as I loved having some quality time with my little niece it was a relief knowing I could hand her back that afternoon. How on earth am I going to cope when I can’t hand the baby back? When I can’t rely on my partner to look after her while I have a nap? When I actually have to do some housework and cook proper dinners? Or worse… have the energy to go to work!?

Crowding out

I have learnt something about myself since I started on this wellness journey. I want the things I can’t have. I have slowly been making improvements on reducing the not so healthy things from my diet without too much drama. However whenever I make the conscious decision not to have a certain type of food or drink ever again… I NEED IT! The cravings become so intense that I think about it and want it every day.

 

Why isn’t it working?!

As I have previously posted about, I have been on this journey for almost two years. I have gone from a pasta loving, cokeaholic (the soft drink  variety!), binge drinking, self-hating twenty something to a vegie juicing, meditating, whole foods chef. I have fallen off the wagon more times than I can count and I am now in this in between state where I usually start the week off as a wellness warrior but end it in a messed up I-don’t-care-anymore binge fest! And I think I have figured out why!

I have no friends!

I have taken the plunge and made a Facebook account for The Nourishment Newbie but so far... not one single friend! At this stage I am hesitant to link this to my personal Facebook page and friends (still working through some fears) but if there is anyone out there?? Please feel free to add me :)

Find me at:
https://www.facebook.com/nourishment.newbie

Also it would be great to see some comments on my posts :) Just so I know I am not speaking to myself ;)

Compare No More!

After listening to the audio from the Self Love and Sisterhood Earth Event yesterday I am finding things about comparison popping up everywhere! Not only did the girls discuss it in length on the audio recording but I found the above picture from a site I am new to, abundance affirmations in the 90 Day Transformation Project, even Facebook had an amazing quote which I quickly shared (also posted below).

The 90 Day Transformation Project

It has begun! But I am off to a bad start...
It all started well, I went out and bought matching stationary, new pens, colourful post it notes. I was all pumped for my new beginning, but then things got busy. Really busy! April was full of hens weekends, travelling for my fiancé's rugby games, weddings, professional development and meetings after school, visiting family, stress and generally just business. The first thing to slip was my healthy diet. First it was a few extra take away nights here and there, then I stopped juicing and then it was a full on blow out on junk food!

It didn't take long for this to affect my health, mood and energy levels. Naps on the couch and unusually early nights became an every day occurrence. More grumpiness, lack of patience and feelings of stress and anxiety started to pop up again. Ugh when will I ever learn?? It's all connected and I need to stay on top of my diet in order to feel the way I want to feel.

It is very frustrating knowing that I know the way I need to live to feel my best but for some reason I am sabotaging this. But why?

A Change is in the Air!

In my life there has recently been a shift. Things haven't  felt overly wrong, yet things haven't felt overly right either. Having just moved four hours away from family and friends I put it down to being homesick or that I was just taking time to settle in to my new life but I am beginning t think it's more than that.
After years of picking up every cold, flu and numerous bouts of tonsillitis and sinusitis I decided enough was enough! I was sick of being sick! After numerous blood tests the doctors came back with nothing. They told me to stop burning the candle at both ends... It's normal for people in your field of work... You are still recovering from gladular fever so there's not much we can do about it. This was not the answer I was looking for. So I decided to check out the natural side of things. My sister had been studying naturopathy and friends had suggested acupuncture so off I went in hopes of some answers.
And I fell in love! Not only could I sense their empathy and understanding of how I was feeling (they had seen my symptoms in many frustrated patients before!) but they had solutions and reasoning as to why I was feeling this way. A few sessions and a bunch of herbal remedies later I was seeing the progress my body was making.

Just Do It!

After months of thinking about it and weeks of "maybe one day I will..." I have decided to bite the bullet and just get started! I am trying not to over think how I will use this blog. Instead this will be my space to diarize my journey. I am putting fear aside and just doing it!