Fit and Healthy

It's day 5 of the Blog Every Day in May challenge and today's subject is Fit and Healthy - What do you do to stay fit or be a healthy individual?

This is a good topic for me as being fit and healthy is never very far from my mind. I have a few health issues including Asthma and Psoriasis, which tend to get worse if I don't eat a healthy diet, and I'm Hypermotile, which amongst other things, means my joints become very painful if I allow my weight to creep up too high. I'm not a fitness freak or a health nut by any means but I do try and look after myself wherever I can. I do this in three main ways:

1. I'm vegetarian. Actually I'm very close to vegan, as dairy products trigger my asthma and I have to limit my consumption of milk based foods. It just so happens that I'm vegetarian primarily because I don't like the taste of meat, but to be honest I am glad I turned out this way. Vegetarians, on average, have a lower rate of heart disease, fewer cholesterol problems and lower blood pressure than people who eat meat. They also have a much lower chance of developing type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and various different types of cancer, and they're much less likely to be obese. Of course it is possible (and easy) to be vegetarian or vegan and still have a terrible diet - just like it's absolutely possible to eat meat and have a very healthy diet indeed. The two things are not mutually exclusive. However I have made a point of educating myself about proper nutrition and how to achieve it, and I try to keep an eye on what I'm eating and make sure it's high in the good stuff, with the right proportions - and low in junk food. I eat a lot of vegetables, fruit, pasta, potatoes, rice, lentils, beans and so on. My meals are usually low fat and I try to cook from scratch rather than living off processed food. Yes, I still eat cake, cookies, chocolate, veggie burgers and the like. I just eat them in moderation and if the scales are creeping up a bit higher than I'd like, I put the doughnut down and walk away!

2. I keep active wherever possible. I do find it hard sometimes, especially on weekdays when I've been at work all day and I'm tired. But at least a couple of times a week I will try and get on the treadmill and walk for a while. I also try to find ways of adding 'hidden' exercise to my daily routine. I deliberately park ten minutes' walk away from work, so that's 20 minutes of walking a day just going to and from my car. When I'm in the lab, I try to work standing up as much as possible. When I'm home, I get involved with my son's activities. It's amazing how much it adds up when you join in with kicking a ball, walking around the park, flying a kite, building a snowman, playing a bit of tennis etc. Kids have so much energy that just keeping up with them is exercise in its' own right. They are nature's way of keeping us mums fit and healthy!

3. I rarely drink alcohol. No, I'm not a righteous teetotaller, frowning in disapproval at anyone who likes the occasional glass of wine... if you like to drink, then more power to you. It just isn't for me. Once upon a time, I had the worst immune system ever. I kid you not, I used to catch a cold literally every two weeks, all year long. Most of the time, the colds would last a minimum of a week, if not longer, and as soon as I got over it, I'd catch another one within days. I'd have THE WORST symptoms, too. I've never been one to just curl up and die the instant I get sick, but honest to goodness I have lost count of the times I've had to phone in sick at work because my cold was just that bad that I couldn't even drive (or see, or talk). It got to the point when my doctor  began getting worried, and decided maybe he needed to send me for tests to see what could be wrong. At the time, I used to drink - not super heavy, but I'd have a glass of wine with dinner most evenings, occasionally a little more. But one day I read an article that said one unit of alcohol reduces your immune system by HALF, for a minimum of 8 hours. Plus, my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer of the rectum and the doctor had point blank told him, this type of cancer is almost always caused by consumption of too much alcohol over a long period of time. I was so desperate to stop being sick all the time, and so horrified by what happened to Dad, that I decided to quit, for six months, to see if it made a difference. By the end of the 6 months I couldn't believe the difference. I had almost completely stopped catching colds. The ones I did catch, were only mild, and only lasted a maximum of two days before disappearing as if by magic! Nowadays I only drink once in a blue moon, for special occasions. And I still hardly ever catch colds. I even managed to avoid catching the flu when everyone else in my house had it over Christmas last year. I have to say that giving up alcohol is probably the best thing I ever did for my health and I'm so glad I decided to give it a try!

So what else could I be doing to stay fit and healthy? Well, I could be sleeping more. I used to stay up until the early hours most nights... I lost count of the number of times I'd wake up on the couch having fallen asleep at my laptop at 3am. It just isn't good to do that sort of thing all the time, you know? In more recent times I have cut back on the late nights, but I still rarely crash before midnight, and since my husband gets up at 5.30am, in reality I get less than 6 hours sleep most nights. Not enough. I would like to start going to bed earlier on weekdays at least, so that's my next target. And although I am fairly active, I would like to build on that too. I have noticed that the more I exercise, the more energy I have - so that, combined with more sleep, can only be a good thing.

How about you? How do you stay fit and healthy? What sort of things do you do, or what are you planning to do in the future?

New Year's Resolutions: Update 1

So as part of my new year's resolutions this year, I resolved to try and lose somewhere between a stone and a stone and a half. So far I have been doing pretty well!

I've been eating 1200 calories a day (and recording it with the aid of myfitnesspal.com's fantastic online calorie counter (and the equally brilliant phone app, which even has a barcode scanner so you can just zap whatever you're about to eat and up pops all the nutritional info you'll ever need).

I also took up jogging; I have a treadmill at home and, instead of hanging clothes on it, I've actually been using the thing. I've done half an hour a day of fast walking - and some jogging, a little more each day as I get used to it - most days since the 2nd January. This has been a mixed blessing, since I am definitely getting fitter - I can now jog for 15 minutes; when I started I couldn't even manage 5 - but it has also slowed my weight loss. I'm told that this is because I'm building muscle, and also because muscles that aren't used to regular exercise will try and hold on to glycogen and water (so I'm retaining water now?? OH JOY). So every day that I exercise, the scales creep up a bit, and every day that I don't, they go back down. I've been reassured that this is just temporary, though, and that it will stabilise after a bit; plus since I am definitely burning more calories than I am eating, there is no way it's fat, so I'm persevering.

When I weighed in on Sunday I'd lost about 3 pounds, which is an average of 1.5 per week and apparently this is a healthy rate at which to lose. I forgot to take starting measurements, but the podgy bits around my belly and hips already feel smaller - I suspect I've actually lost more than 3 pounds in fat, and the muscle-y -water-y thing is just hiding the rest :-p

Monday night was where it all started to go a bit wrong, though. I came down with the stomach flu!! Norovirus has been going round the area and I guess it was my turn. Between Monday night and Friday morning I ate hardly anything at all. This morning I weighed myself and I'd lost another 5 pounds in only 3 days: rather an extreme way to diet!!! I expect most of it was dehydration so probably a lot of it will come back soon, but hopefully a bit of it will stay away!

How are you doing with your new year's resolutions, if you've made any?

Happy New Year!

So it's a new year and I thought I'd start off with one of those new year's resolution type posts that people seem to do about this time. Let's see what 2013 brings!

1. Blogging

I've been a bad blogger in recent times. Life just got in the way, plus lack of equipment, time, motivation and all that blah. But I got some awesome new lighting for Christmas, which fixes the equipment problem (yay) and that in turn helps my motivation since the main reason I never felt like blogging was because my pictures always needed so much work to make them even halfway useful. So I can finally get back to blogging and I am excited!!
Things are going to be a little different around here. My main focus will still be on nails but there are going to be more non-nail related posts too. Most of them will still be beauty-focused, but there might just be the occasional other subject popping up here and there (like this one!)

2. Health and fitness/weight loss

Like a zillion other people, it's no surprise that one of my resolutions is to lose a few pounds this year. While I am no means a heffalump, I have recently become dissatisfied with my body for the simple fact I haven't been looking after it the right way. I am still within what the GP would say is a healthy weight range for my age and height, but only just. I weigh at least a stone more than my 'comfortable weight', more like a stone and a half, and my clothes don't fit so nicely as they used to. This year I'm going to focus on taking care of myself better. No, I won't look like the girl in the picture above (miracles take longer) but hopefully this time next year I will have lost the extra pounds I've packed on over the last 12 months or so!

3. Food

Closely linked to health and fitness, but important enough in its own right to deserve a separate mention on the list, is my diet. Due in part to stress and a busy lifestyle, I have slipped into appalling habits with food. Chocolate bars, crisps, and other convenient junk food have been WAY too high on the list, while anything that takes more than about 5 seconds to prepare has fallen by the wayside. And what happens when I eat rubbish? I feel like rubbish. And I look like rubbish. I can't be healthy on a diet like this. This has to stop. There will be vegetables!!

4. FLYing.

I've always been a terrible hoarder, clutter magnet and generally fail at being neat and tidy. I've tried again and again to do something about this and the only thing that has ever really helped was the FLYLady program. You can learn all about it at www.flylady.net , but in brief, FLY stands for 'Finally Loving Yourself'. The program (which is aimed at Americans, but can be easily adapted for us non US types) is about learning to get rid of all the clutter and junk that you don't need, but not beating yourself up or getting overwhelmed along the way. I've been FLYing on and off for years now and it's made an amazing difference to my life, but sadly since having my son I have mostly fallen off the FLYing wagon and gone back to my old habits. Earlier this year I started FLYing again and it has already started to make a difference, so my fourth resolution this year is to continue FLYing!

So there you are, my four main resolutions for 2013. There's a few more minor ones, like making more effort with my skincare routine, and making more effort with my clothes instead of living in the same few old uninspiring outfits again and again, but that'll do for now... don't want to have a list so long it's impossible to achieve!

What are your resolutions for 2013? Will you be making any changes this year?