1) Cut the Bread
Ok, so who the hell doesn't like bread right. Pizza has bread, Doughnuts have bread, baguettes have bread, kebabs have bread. Need I go on? I think you get the jist. Loads of those comfort foods that most of us like have bread or some sort of flour, yeast, salt and sugar concoction in them. It tastes nice, it satiates us and it fills us. It's also super convenient as there is no end to the sandwiches you can make.
You've got ham and cheese, turkey and stuffing, egg salad, Ok I'm going to go all Bubba Shrimp from Forest Gump on you with a more extensive list than that! You get the idea. Bread is handy for making sandwiches, bagels, baguettes and the like. Cut em, butter em and fill em up. Job done.
The first thing to note is that not all breads are made equally, and if you are to do anything at all, at least limit or better still cut out the white bread and replace with Gluten free or wholemeal or spelt bread. You see white bread is made from refined grain, which means that all the good stuff has been removed - the fiber, bran and germ are all taken out of white bread. This means that there is nothing of substance in white bread, and nothing to give benefit to our bodies. Food is fuel. Would you put Petrol in a Diesel car? No, of course not, so maybe try giving the white bread a miss, even if you start of by only eating it every second day, as a starting point and take it from there. Something else to note about white bread is they sometimes add a type of bleach, along with other chemicals to give it more longevity on supermarket shelves.
Another way to ditch the bread altogether, at least for a little while is to give salads a go. Ok, so get that rabbit food image out of your head. Salads don't have to be boring at all. Here is one that I had for my lunch the other day and if I may say so myself it was damn tasty and it's a good way to ensure that food in your fridge does not go to waste as almost anything can end up on my salad plate, as you can see from the photos below.
2) Embrace Cold Showers
This is a habit that I started back around March or April 2022. My employer had organised a Zoom call with someone around the are of wellness and looking after ourselves etc, and for once I had time to join it. It was on for an hour and I was not sure what to expect, sometimes these talks can be yawn-fests and not my cup of tea. It all depends on the presenter, their knowledge and how engaging they are.
Well this particular presenter was very engaging, interesting and had my attention from the start, so when he suggested that people give cold water immersion a go from the comfort of their own homes by utilising daily cold showers, my interest was peaked. I can give this a go I thought.
I already knew all about Wim Hoff and his methods and had close friends and family who plunge into the sea every day Monday to Friday at 6:30am and sometimes at the weekend too. I had read plenty about the benefits of this, but because I live around 15 minutes drive from where they swim in Salthill and because I rather like my bed at 6am, I never really joined that little club, but cold water showers in the morning at whatever time I wanted, that I could do and that I did do.
I started off with twenty seconds cold, then onto the hot shower, then thirty sweconds, then one minute, then two minutes, until eventually I just started having cold showers every morning. Now admittedly it gets quite difficult this time of year as the water at its coldest setting is pretty baltic, but there are some excellent benefits that has me coming back for more each morning.
It is the ultimate wake up. No matter how groggy or tired you feel, every single cobweb will be gone in 1 second flat after you get under. It clears the head. You might have been worrying about work or something else, well as soon as you get under the cold water, I guarantee that this thought will be gone at least for a short while. The cold water forces the blood to be pushed to your extremities which is good for circulation. Another advantage that I saw was my all around health, I got through most of 2022 without so much as a sniffle, but eventually fell just before Christmas to a viral infection, but I think the majority of the people on the island of Ireland got that this Christmas. I must admit I did park my cold showers for around one week while I was sick and recovering, but I am well and truly back on the cold water immersion horse now once again.
3) Intermittent Fasting
This is something I got into a few years ago, after reading about the benefits of giving your gut, stomach and all of that body plumbing a break for a while every now and again. The concept here is that you try to squeeze all of your meals into a smaller window during the day and fast for the rest of the time, so you may find yourself having all of your meals within seven hours and then fasting for the next seventeen hours.
The idea here is that you give your digestive system a prolonged break, where it is not working on overdrive to digest and breakdown your three square meals, along with all of the other little snacks, treats and bites that may come outside of meal times. This is probably not advisable to try every day, but I find doing it two, three, four times a week can be very beneficial to my gut health which has a significant impact on overall health and well being.
Yesterday I followed the intermittent eating, by waiting until 11am to have my breakfast. I got up as usual and had two pints of water between 7am and 11am, then at 11am I had a cup of tea and my breakfast. Later on at 2:30pm, I had a salad for my lunch similar to the one below. At 6pm I had my dinner, followed by a cup of tea and a few biscuits.
You see I still allow myself to have treats like biscuits and the like, but I have them with my meal, which is much better for you. My father is a big believer in this and always has three square meals a day only and you will never see him snacking outside of those allotted meals. When it comes to meals he will put away more food than anyone I know and there is not an ounce of fat on him and he is very healthy for his age.
4) Positivity
If you know me at all, you'll know that I like my golf and I have improved quite a bit in recent years and I must admit a large part of the reason for the improvement was changing the way that I think on the golf course. Now I did not have a Eureka moment one day on the tee of a par 5 or anything. Rather I was told about a book that I should read.
Well read it I did a few years ago. It is a book by renowned Sport Phycologist Bob Rotella. It breaks down the mental side of the game and is so good and so simple that I am reading it again at the moment and that will be my third time reading it since I bought it a few short years ago. I have also bought other great books from Bob such as Putting Out of Your Mind, but the book I want to tell you about is Golf is not a game of perfect
In this book Bob says the following, and for me it applies not just to golf, but life in general, we must be positive and pursue our dreams. The only sure thing is that life is finite and it will most certainly end one day for every single one of us, so make sure to give it a good go and back yourself to be the best version of yourself.
Freud believed dreams were a window into the subconscious mind. From them, he spun a web of theory that, too often, boils down to a belief that people are the victims of circumstances beyond their control -- of childhood traumas, parental mistakes, and instinctive impulses.
But the dreams I ask about are not the ones that crept from the unconscious the night before. They are the goals and aspirations a golfer has been carrying around in his or her conscious mind. `
The dreams I want to hear of excite some fortunate people from the time they wake up each morning until they fall asleep at night. They are the stuff of passion and tenacity. They might be defined as goals, but goals so bright that no one need write them down to remember them. In fact, the hard task for the professionals I work with is not recalling their dreams, but occasionally putting them out of their minds and taking some time off from their pursuit of them. The dreams I want to hear about are the emotional fuel that helps people take control of their lives and be what they want to be. Time and again, I have heard stories of dreams that are intimately connected to the ability to play great golf. In fact, this is the first mental principle a golfer must learn: A person with great dreams can achieve great things. A person with small dreams, or a person without the confidence to pursue his or her dreams, has consigned himself or herself to a life of frustration and mediocrity.
5) Spend More Time in Nature
The one that I will leave you with is to spend more time in nature. This modern life is full of screens, scrolling and scare-mongering. It is far from all of these things that we were reared and certainly it's far from these things our parents were reared. The world was still spinning ten years ago, one hundred years ago, one thousand years ago.
Never before though has the human mind and brain been bombarded so much with constant information and advertising.
So, my advise to you is this. Whenever you can, try to switch off for twenty minutes, an hour, a day. I promise you it will do you good. If you are fortunate enough to live close to nature like me, then try to immerse yourself in this rather than the Twitter scroll, the Instagram selfie or the TikTok laugh, the latter three are all shallow and in the end pointless.
Instead why not jump in a lake for a swim, get lost in a forest, climb a mountain, immerse yourself in nature. Now I realise I am fortunate enough to live beside lots of natural landscapes which fit this bill and of course everyone does not, but I am sure there are trees somewhere near your home or flowers or a stream or a waterfall. Alas, maybe there is not, and in that case close your eyese and listen to a meditation that takes you to one of these places - there are loads of these on Insight timer (free app), Calm (Paid app), Spotify, Youtube etc.
Here are a few photos of recent visits to nature that I enjoyed.
That last photo sums it all up very well let nature "Hand You Worries Away" and isn't that as simple and as real as it gets. The hands here are those of my two eldest sons and thanks be to God they have few worries now and long may that continue into the future. Thanks a million for reading, mind yourselves.
I am posting this to the new community #Reflections which I urge you to check out and follow - it has been set up by my Australian friend who lives in Finland 
These photos are all my own taken on my Samsung Smartphone
