A Typical Day For Me

I feel as though I've been slightly vague about my diet so far, so I think it would be nice to write a post about what I typically eat, to give you a bit of insight as to what my diet looks like.

Breakfast- Breakfast almost always includes some sort of juice (which is made up of a mixture of vegetables such as spinach, lettuce and carrots, and fruits such as...well I've used most fruits in these juices! I want to do a more detailed post about my favourite juice recipes sometime in the future. I also try and include something solid, to help my digestion (I'm not sure if it actually does, but I feel safer including it). At the moment, this is in the form of cereal, because I'm lazy and it only involves pouring, though it can also include anything such as porridge (plus topping(s)) or Weetabix.

Lunch- Lunch on a weekday typically consists of either soup, baked potato and tuna, or tuna and wholemeal pitta (or wholemeal toast...I've recently discovered that this is a delicious combination!). Alongside this I often, though not always, have some satsumas, and most times a granola bar and/or a healthy treat I've made myself, such as a muffin or biscuit. These treats, I must emphasise, are different to the other treats I allow myself- they're home made and probably healthier.

Dinner- Dinner varies quite wildly, so it's less easy to state the meals I typically eat. It depends on who's cooking, whether anyone is cooking, the ingredients we have at home, how much planning has gone into the dinner. Some of the dinners I've enjoyed include stir frys, turkey meat kebabs, falafel, pitta pizzas, chicken fajitas, beans burgers, regular burgers...there's so much more, I've probably forgotten loads!

On top of this I try to exercise regularly, I do Wii Zumba (as I've stated in a previous post) which I really do love. I hope to keep Zumba as a part of my exercise routine for as long as I can, whether it's on the Wii or an actual Zumba class (which would be so awesome to take part in, I've love to if I had the opportunity). I've recently been doing a one hour class three times a week, but I have done it more frequently in the past (and will do it more frequently in the future) when I do shorter workouts. I typically do my workouts across the weekend, including Friday and/or Monday, though this definitely does vary depending on my mood.

I also drink almost two litres of water a day. I had been drinking two litres, but then I decided what to work out was a healthy amount to consume for my size and it turns out that it's just under two litres, so I now drink that. I have a 600ml bottle of water that I refill three times a day- once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening.

I hope this gives you more of an insight into what I eat. I'm pretty happy with my diet- it feels realistic and is easy to maintain, plus it allows me to enjoy eating. I'll probably do a post outlining what I've eaten on a specific day in more detail. In fact, I might do these quite regularly, to show you changes in my diet and give you an in depth look into what my diet and lifestyle is like in a variety of ways.

Changes I Still Need To Make

This post is basically a follow up of my previous one where I outlined all the changes I have made to my diet and lifestyle so far. While I feel like I have made lots of great changes so far, there is still a lot more I feel I could do. These are a few changes I've failed to make, but still want to work on:

• Eat more vegetables. I don't particularly like vegetables that much, which makes it difficult. The NutriBullet has helped me get in a few more vegetables than I would have, and sometimes I cook them into meals, but I would like to get to the point where I'm having at least one portion of vegetables with my dinner.
• Develop a more regular sleep pattern. I often sleep late, which means I wake up late, and sometimes I barely sleep at all. This is definitely something I need to work on to help boost my health (and to also help me make the most out of my days).
• Eat treats in moderation. I mean, I mostly do this, but I do this by avoiding eating treats on most normal days. However, I do find that on quite a few (though not all) of the occasions that I have allowed myself to have treats I struggle to have them in moderation, consuming more than I should. I really need to learn to let treats be treats. 
• Work on dealing with my stress more effectively. I actually want to discuss this in a bit more detail, which I plan on doing a bit later on. I am prone to stressing very easily, and this has such a bad effect on me. Stress can be terrible for your health, so I think it's hugely important that I find ways to deal with this effectively. 
• Lessening the amount of fat in my diet. I have lessened the amount of fat in my diet, but I'm still too partial to having a bit too much butter and mozzarella on my food.

There are probably even more that I could add, but these are the biggest ones and the ones that stand out to me as needing to be changed. I'll post updates if I achieve (or at least try to achieve) any of these things.

My Progress So Far

I decided to start gradually, making a few small changes that would be easier to sustain. I didn't what to change my diet and lifestyle drastically straight away- I honestly think this would have made it more difficult for me to maintain and I most likely would not have kept it up for as long as I have. These are the changes I've made so far:

• Exercise. I feel like this one is probably the place most people would start, as I did. I decided to start slowly and gradually build up, but this didn't last long. I did (and am still doing) Wii Zumba, and I love it. The Wii appears to be dying out, and this is the only thing we really use ours for now, but it's helped me so much on the exercise front. Though I'd planned on doing only 20 minutes of Zumba three times a week, I promptly increased this. How often I Exercise a week varies. If I'm doing an hour I exercise around three times a week, but if I'm doing less than an hour I'll exercise more frequently. I thoroughly recommend Zumba, whether it's a class at the gym, videos on YouTube or on the Wii if you still happen to own one- it really is great fun and provides an excellent work out!
• Drinking more water. I didn't start with this straight away (I think I only began drinking water when not exercising about two months in!) but it was surprisingly more easy than I thought it would be. Again, I started slowly and gradually increased my intake, which helped get used to taking in a huge amount of water. The only downside is needing the toilet all the time- if it weren't for that I would have borderline drowned myself in water.
• Buying a NutriBullet. I didn't actually buy it myself, but I certainly make good use of it! It's been great as it's allowed me to get in lots more fruit and vegetables, and it makes them taste so good too! I'm having great fun experimenting and coming up with new juice flavours.
• Cutting out junk food (mostly). This one has been incredibly difficult, but I think I'm doing pretty well! At the moment my cravings have died down, but they're quite often all over the place, which makes it difficult to cut down completely. I never actually planned to cut out unhealthy food altogether- I believe that part of leading a healthy lifestyle is allowing yourself foods you enjoy that are not as healthy as forbidding yourself from eating these foods can very well lead to you binging on them later on as cravings spiral out of control- but I do think I've indulged more than I should have. Still, I've been doing a lot better than I have done, so that's a start!
• Learning to cook. I've only started cooking very recently, but I feel like I've been pretty successful so far. I'd always told myself I was a terrible cook, but it turns out that this isn't really the case! Cooking puts you in control- you get to eat what you want, how you like it, and you know exactly what's gone into your meal. It's also far healthier than eating processed food that's full of additives and other crap.
• Cutting down on diet Coke. Diet Coke (and Coke Zero, Pepsi Max, Diet Pepsi- I don't discriminate!) is truly my vice. I can drink tons of it, I really do love it. Considering this, it was incredibly difficult to cut down on, and I was very reluctant to do so (only managing to cut it out about two months in). I feel like the reasons one is not supposed to drink diet fizzy drinks is a bit vague, but thinking about all the chemicals in diet Coke makes me feel a bit queasy, and I don't like to think about what it could do to my body.

The changes I've made haven't been perfect but I've managed to integrate them into my lifestyle with great ease, and I've found that they've really suited me so far. I hope to further improve my diet and lifestyle in order to become healthier. I also hope that reading this might help someone to take the steps to improve their own lifestyles and become healthier. I know that I all of this has been reiterated time and time again. It really isn't as difficult as it might seem (though it's not as easy as others might make it out to be)- the best thing I've found is to make changes gradually and to be patient and not put pressure on yourself. You know you best!

About Me

Now I've welcomed you to my blog and you have a bit of an idea of what it's about, I'll tell you a bit about myself and give you a bit of background information that will hopefully put a lot of what I write about into context. I'm nineteen years old and am currently living at home with my family, though I'm planning on going to university to study English in September.

At the moment, I'm pretty much in limbo. I started university in September 2015, but absolutely hated the university I was at. A short while later, I decided to leave and start again at a new university a bit closer to home. I've written about the experience in a lot more detail on my other blog, which I started around the time I left university so that I would have something to focus on as I adjusted back to being at home (and the fact that I now, for the first time in my life, had nothing to do). I'll link the post to this one as I really don't want to write about the experience much more. I was the left with an abundance of time that I had to fill. Naturally, the first thing I turned my attention to was applying for jobs. However, job hunting only leaves you occupied for a somewhat small period, especially when there are only a few jobs available, which meant that I still had a lot of time to fill. I've been planning to get healthy for a long time, but something has always acted as a barrier, or my motivation crumbled almost immediately after beginning. However, this time I had all the time in the world to dedicate now, and little to distract me or tear my motivation down, so I decided that this time period would be the best time to make a start. December was looming, and since the festive season is one of great indulgence I allowed myself to let go, to eat in a completely unrestricted fashion, as I would only ever do it again very rarely. 

 As December melted into January I began, though my start was very shaky. I might have been eating slightly better, but I still had a few too many treats. However, by mid January I managed to put a stop to that and sorted out my diet a bit more. I've pretty much kept it up, though I'd be lying if I said I was completely healthy all the time. It's been incredibly difficult, and I've almost fallen off multiple times, but I'm determined not to give up. I don't think I've ever kept up any lifestyle change as long as I have this one, so I'm certainly proud of that. I don't push myself  very hard and I make sure I still enjoy my food, and less healthy foods are not forbidden either. I feel like these were major mistakes I made in the past and contributed greatly to me not being able to sustain my diet effectively. I hope to get even healthier, but I think it's important to take small steps and make small changes that are easy to take on board and incorporate into your daily life.

I've been unlucky on the job front (I don't know if the job market is tough or if I'm doing something wrong), but it ended up causing me a lot of stress, so I've decided the focus on other things as the high levels of stress were not doing pleasant things to my body! This blog is one of the biggest things I want to focus on (as well as my health), as I feel it will help me with the stress and give me something else to think about (other than what an awful mess this year has been). I'm really looking forward to getting it started.

My University Experience: http://deeperthanthestars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-mess-that-was-my-month-at-university.html

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog

A few months ago I decided that, since I had a lot of time to kill I should take the opportunity to improve my diet and lifestyle. It's something I'd always told myself I'd do, but had kind of ended up putting off. I'm pleased to say, about four moths later I haven't given up, which is honestly a bit of a shock. Having said that, I still constantly need motivation, and I guess that's the main reason I've created this blog. I'm hoping it'll serve as  reminder of what I've achieved and help me keep going, because it's something I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. I'm also hoping that it will help motivate and/or inspire anyone else who is in the process of changing their lifestyle, or wants to change their lifestyle (especially if they're like me and have always struggled to make/maintain these changes).

I want to be completely honest and frank about my diet and lifestyle. I'll share lots of the good but I'll also share the not so good, the slip ups, the off days, the days I just feel like shit. I don't want this my whole lifestyle to revolve around losing weight, but I have to be honest, weight loss is a large part of what has motivated me and what continues to motivate me. I'll also post about things related to my lifestyle, such as physical and mental health, fashion and beauty.

I would like to emphasise that I am certainly not an expert in any way shape or form. I probably don't know what I'm talking about at all (though I will try and do as much research as I can), and my posts will be largely based on my own subjective experiences, which are completely relative to myself. I am learning, and this blog is a tool aiding this process.

This is the first of a few warm up pieces I'm posting as a bit of an introduction to my blog, my lifestyle and what I've achieved so far. This one is short and sweet, I really just wanted to say hi and welcome.