January Baby
Ah January that month that comes around but once a year, where we all make resolutions and try to become healthier in our choices and ways of life.
I'm not sure if you've been following my January Beer Saturday posts, but they are all nostalgic, as I'm having a crack at Dry January again this year, which basically means no beer or vino or any other alcohol for the 31 days of January. This is my third year in a row doing it, and I'm really enjoying it, I must say.
It's not the only thing I've been working into my routine this January either. The others include 40 minute workouts first thing in the morning, occasion Wim Hoff breathing exercises, cold water immersion, intermittant fasting and healthier eating.
This post will concentrate on the healthier eating, but I may revisit some of the other topics in follow up posts.
Bread Bread Everywhere
Bagels, crackers, various breads. They are all here within arms reach to tempt me and tease me.
I remember reading something many years ago basically saying that there is no nutritional goodnessbor value in bread, especially modern hyper processed bread, with most of the goodness already gone from the wheat it coming from. Sourdough which I like to eat when I'm eating bread or Spelt bread is a little better, but to be honest, we could do without bread altogether.
On a normal day, one could easily end up eating 5 or slices of bread between breakfast and lunch and that's not good for anyone.
So every now and then, I cut out the bread, which I've been trying to do lately, and replaced it with salad.
Everything in the fridge salad
Plenty of cheeses, lettuce, tomato, scallions and the like in the fridge and certainly enough to make a salad.
Here is what I mustered together, plenty of different colours which they say is good, whoever 'they' are!
Something else that I've been trying to do is limit my sugar in take, so a few days a week, I have zero sugar. I don't include whole fruits in that, so for breakfast, some days I have chopped banana, pear, raspberries, strawberries, raisins, walnuts, almonds and chia seeds and have milk poured over. Some mornings I also eat 3 poached eggs. I must say that I feel much better without the sugar. When I break the cycle and have some sugar, I want loads of sugar, and it becomes very apparent to me just how addictive sugar is and it's added to so many of our foods spiking our insulin levels necessarily.
I've listened to some podcasts lately and they've described the dangers of sugar in modern diets and it is central to lots of modern ailments.
Intermittant Fasting
Something else that I've been doing is intermittant fasting a few days a week. I have dinner on say Monday evening and finish my last piece of healthy food and then nothing until 12pm the following day. Then around 12pm I have the chopped banana, pear, raspberries, strawberries, raisins, walnuts, almonds and chia seeds and milk mentioned above. Around 2.30pm I'll have my salad, usually with more meat than shown here and then at 6pm I'll have a normal dinner.
This gives my digestive system and body a full 17 hours with nonfood intake, which means the body is getting an overdue break.
These photos are all my own taken on my Samsung Smartphone.