Health

The plan

I have about a month until classes start back at uni. Until then I am footloose and fancy free and able to spend as much time as I please getting into some good healthy habits. I want to make changes that I will be able to sustain once I go back, so they are still going to be on the small side.

As most plans for improving general health do, my plan focuses on diet and exercise.


Diet

As per my last post my main issues with diet is take-away food and sweets. I am also a bit of a comfort eater so if anything is a bit stressful or I'm not feeling great, I quick as a flash reach for a pack o' something.

So here my goals are:

1. To cook more healthy meals at home. I am aiming to allow myself three meals out per week.
2. To cut down on snack and packaged foods.
3. To reduce the portion size of my meals and ensure I eat the regularly.

Last week I hadn't put this plan into effect but was trying to watch what I ate. I had mixed results. When my mid was on the task I had some small healthy meals.

Here is one day in photos. There is no dinner because I went down for a nap at about 6pm and didn't wake up until the next morning. I'm guessing I was catching up on sleep I missed when I was flying home from holidays.

Breakfast: Muesli - about 40g, Yoghurt - a lot, pineapple, apricot, lychees, diluted orange juice, 'bojenmi' herbal tea. This was actually far too much for me to eat, gonna have to scale it down moving forward.


Snack: Corn thin, humus, cucumber, tomato, grated carrot. The corn thins and humus were both out of a packet but I might as well use up what I already have in the fridge right? Luckily my fridge doesn't contain ice-cream, chocolate or anything else likely to derail me too heavily.



Lunch: Bagel, tofu burger, tomato, lettuce.



Exercise

My plan for exercise could be boiled down to 'do some'. I currently do very little physical anything.

I have a gym, of which I am a member, 15 minutes walk from my house. Before last week I had gone maybe three times in the two months I have been a member. My goal; minimum three times a week. I'm going to give myself the added flexibility here that a very physical activity like rock climbing or kayaking can be substituted. Hey, it could happen...

Last week I met the goal. Tuesday morning I walked to the gym then did a Yoga class, then came to the realsation that I am very average at yoga.
Thursday I walked to the gym and did the 'fatburner' class ... which it turns out is a step class. I was red faced and panting by the end of it.
Saturday I walked to the gym (again) and did a personal training session. We wrote up a program and ran through about a third of it, one rep of each exercise rather than the three I should do. It was still a lot for me to do. Red face made another appearance.

Renovators dream

I lead a charmed life. I am incredibly lucky to have amazing friends and family, amazing individuals who are there for me. I was also lucky enough to be born in a wealthy country and have all of my needs met and then some.

The areas of my life that need a little tarting up are all areas where I have let the team down. Mainly due to my lack of motivation and inability to see anything through to completion some things have gotten out of hand. There are other things where I never developed the skills I needed and I am feeling it now.

So rather than do the sane thing and work on one thing to completion and move on to the next I am going to attempt to make incremental change to a variety of issues.

Health

My doctor informs me that at 28 I have the lungs of a 40 year old.
I am a vegetarian with high cholesterol.
I am made predominantly made of a marshmallow like substance commonly known as fat. It has collected in an oh so flattering belt around my mid section. I have a hunch that this is because I do no exercise and live on take out and sweets... I could be wrong...

Using the Body Mass Index (as a guide only, flawed as it is) I am on the cusp of normal and overweight. At around 173cm I currently weigh 76kg. I would like to get down to around 70kg which places me closer to the middle of normal.



Time

I can never find the time to do all the important things in my life because I'm too busy wasting it. I can't find the time to study (I'm a student) but somehow manage a disgusting amount of television and other various things that avoid actually doing anything.

I don't really have a routine.

I have piles of dreams and lists of things I need or want to do, but I lose them as quickly as I lose the motivation to start the first item on them.


Stuff

My belongings are a mess. Half in overflowing boxes, the other half bulging out of storage spaces that lack any semblance of order.

I have a lot of things, probably a lot of wonderful things, but I don't use them because I don't know what I have or where it is.