Healthy Girl Project: Check It Out!

Have you got a niggling issue that you keep meaning to get checked, but just never get around to it? Maybe you have a sore tooth, or a bad knee, or a weird bump that you're monitoring but not committing to seeking medical advice for yet? Oh, my friend, you are in fine company. This is a thing. People just don't make the time to check things out. Here's my story. Two and a half years ago, while doing data entry at work, I started noticing that I needed to squint my left eye every now and then. A few months later, I was needing to close my left eye when reading small writing below me on the desk. Not longer after that, I realised that anything that wasn't a few feet in front of me was blurry because my left eye just couldn't focus on it. My once-perfect vision was no more. But do you think I did anything about it? Nope. I battled on through the data entry, squinted at the screens at Church when I sang, and kept telling myself "next week I'll book that eye test". I can't even use money as an excuse because we have health insurance, and I knew that I was entitled to a free pair of glasses every year.

Well, finally, as you can see in my stylish photo above, I did it. I booked a test at my local spec savers (bulk-billed, FYI) and within minutes I was told I have an astigmatism and... what do you know... I needed glasses! A couple of weeks later my glasses arrived, and my life changed for the better. Just like that. Because I took 20 minutes out of my life and finally got an eye test.

The moral of the story is - go to the doctor/dentist/optometrist/allergist. My tale is fairly harmless, but there are some pretty devastating stories out there of people with serious illnesses who put off going to the doctor until it was too late. This one caught my attention just this evening, and after a quick Google search there are too many accounts just like it.

Healthy Girl Project: Keeping It Clean

Well, today I accepted the fact that I am not going to keep counting Weight Watchers points. Before the Weight Watchers haters out there roll their eyes and say "Took you long enough to work that out" I want you to know that I believe in Weight Watchers as a program. It is sustainable to people who are disciplined enough to keep counting their points, and it's an amazing program which allows you to eat anything without 'breaking the rules' provided you track it - to me, that's a healthy outlook on living a healthy life-style, because it's realistic. Even the healthiest, fittest people I know want to have a piece of cake every now and then, and Weight Watchers says "That's totes fine!"

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to talk about Weight Watchers, but rather to let you know what I'm trying next - Clean Eating! Like Weight Watchers, Clean Eating is a lifestyle rather than a diet/strict program. Without going into too much detail (my knowledge is a bit limited at the moment), Clean Eating embraces whole, non-processed foods, lean meats, less dairy, etc - basically eating foods that are as close as possible to their natural state.

I've been following the Clean Eating Recipes page on Facebook for ages now, and decided to download their app this morning. The app offers recipes, helps you understand the concept of clean eating, and provides a list of suggested things to keep in your pantry to get you started. As I was planning a shopping trip today, I decided to check this list first so I could start stocking up. Scrolling through, overwhelmed-ness hit me. Items like spelt flour, quinoa flakes, almond milk, grape seed oil, cauliflower rice and coconut sugar smacked me in the face as I scrolled through, and I decided right then to give up because there was no way I would be able to find all this stuff at the store and make all these crazy substitutions! So I promptly closed the app and made my usual weekly meal plan.

Going through the recipes for my meal plan, I realised something. Most things that I was planning on cooking with were actually already clean - things like chicken breast, chick peas, fresh vegetables and greek yoghurt. Curious, I re-opened the app and realised I would only need a couple of extra things to keep my already-planned meals completely clean. Hallelujah! Of course, I wasn't necessarily sure I would find those things, but I noted them on my list anyway. And you know what? My shopping trip went better than I expected! I'm so used to picking up the products that I am familiar with, that I haven't even noticed the clean/healthier alternatives sitting right there next to them! Things like wholemeal cous cous, spelt pasta, grape seed oil, buckwheat - right there on the same shelves I've been shopping from for years!

So as you can see in the photo above, today I bought some clean things. I have to issue a disclaimer right now and let you know that I'm not completely 100% eating clean yet - there are some products that I won't be able to get without visiting a health food store, and I still need to put in some solid research before I know enough to do it completely. But I'm happy to do it a few small changes at a time.

Amazingly, this blog post isn't intended to pull you onto the Clean Eating band wagon with me! But if what you're doing right now isn't working, I do want you to broaden your scope and try something new. It might be something small, like a new exercise DVD, or like me it might be something big like a complete overhaul of your eating. But don't stay stuck in a rut! There's just no reason to be unhappy with yourself in an area that you have the complete power to change.

If you are interested in checking out Clean Eating, these are some resources that I'm going to be burying myself in over the next few days:
- The Complete Idiot's Guide To Clean Eating
- Clean Eating Magazine
- Ashy Bines (if you haven't seen her ads pop up on Facebook, you're living under a rock)