Category: Wellness

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My 30 Day Vegetarian Experiment

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I am eating and what the food I eat is doing to my body.

In a previous post I talked about Paul McKenna’s weight loss system and how my weight has fluctuated over the years. (You can find out how it has been for me so far here.) But now I am thinking about more than just losing weight. I am looking for a way to increase my energy levels and reduce the fatigue and stodgy feelings I get inside my body, and although I don’t eat masses of meat, I am keen to see what difference this makes (if any) to how I feel. I will also monitor the effect it has on my Psoriatic Arthritis (if any). I also have some other some bad habits which I am going to work on too!

So for the next month I am going to eat vegetarian food only – all manner of vegetables, pulses, grains and fruit. As well as this I am going to try to:

 

  • cut my intake of tea from 6 cups per day to 3 cups, plus herbal tea at night
  • I am going to increase my intake of water gradually over the month from 0.5 litres to 2 litres 
  • I am going to attempt to avoid processed foods as much as possible

 

I will post as often as I can on my progress and upload photos of the new delights and recipes I discover! 

To whet your appetite, here is an example of the lunch I ate on day 1 of the vegetarian experiment:

Avocado, tomato and pepper and chick pea and beetroot dips with pitta breadFollowed by mint tea!

I would love to hear from anyone who is trying a vegetarian experiment at the moment or has tried this before. Please share your experiences or comment below. If you have enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe so you can keep up with my progress. Thanks!

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Women’s Networking Meeting and Goal Setting

As you may know, I am a member of the Wonderful Women’s networking group run by the fabulous ReeRee Rockette. We meet once a month for full meetings, and are invited to smaller meetings depending on our particular needs. The meetings usually have a theme and so far we have discussed topics like using social media, branding, marketing, webdesign and copyright. Today’s theme was about setting goals, which is the sort of thing that I know works, given my NLP background!

Each of the women articulated in words one goal for their business in the next 5 years, 3 years, coming year and 6 months. Many of us were saying it was difficult to start with, but by the end we had lots! We also tweeted our goals so that we weren’t just saying them to each other, but were putting them out there to the world (or at least our followers). As we all agreed, how can you know if you’re there if you don’t know where you’re going? We also tried to have measureable and specific goals. Needless to say I came back very excited and fired up about the goals I had set for myself this afternoon. I was even more excited to see that a few Twitter followers said that my goals summed up what they wanted to do and gave them some clarity and support. That made it even more worthwhile!

We met at the delightful vintage cafe Drink Shop and Do on Caledonian Road.

Picture: ReeRee Rockette

Picture: ReeRee RocketteAmongst our group of women this month we had our host, ReeRee Rockette, owner of Rockalily London Make-up, photographer Tigz Rice, Editor of New Empress Magazine Helen Cox, The Thrify Stitcher Claire-Louise, and sound engineer at Sounds Wilde Kirsty Gillmore. We also had the owner of Wonderland Wigs Sam, milliner LittleMissB, hair and make-up artist Miss Honey-Bare, Lizzie of Betty Blues Loungerie and burlesque performer Duchess Divine as well as new member Rosie who is considering her business options! We are quite a diverse bunch, but inspite of this and being at different stages of running our own businesses, we all contribute and gain so much from our meetings. 

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Work-life balance, self employment and illness

I recently wrote a blog post about balancing one’s work-life commitments and living in harmony, particularly in relation to managing an illness. Here’s a taster:

Being a Wonderful Woman while certain bits of you aren’t always so wonderful

‘As someone who loves to be creative and keep my brain busy, I have realised after many years that for me, working part time and being self employed the rest of the time is a winning combination…’

For me, self employment means the freedom to choose

You can read the full post here on the Wonderful Women: Minding our own Business blog, hosted by ReeRee Rockette.

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Decluttering

I have been putting off various decluttering projects for most of the summer and as it is officially September (I can hardly believe it!) I have decided that today is the day… I am about to tackle my wardrobe. It is in need of some tender-loving-care. I intend to create more space for my clothes to be able to breathe and move more freely, and hopefully I won’t have to have a fight every morning to find something to wear!

To get me started, I looked at Zen Habits. Look here for more.

This picture is the ‘after’.