Hi Guys,

As part of my Lifestyle Overhaul series, I’m changing my relationship with food and turning my life around; highlighting some major key areas that need work and changing for the better. This post is all about my plan for food!

Firstly, I want to point out that I’m not exactly “going on a diet” and, although I am using My Fitness Pal to track my meals, I’m using it more as a tool to understand nutrition and what goes into my body.

I’m Learning!

While using MFP, I’ve found that some foods I thought would be nice and healthy are actually kinda rubbish, full of sugar or fat (oh, all the different types of fat!) and contain more calories than I would have expected. I have also been pleasantly surprised to find that some foods I thought would send me off the scale are, in fact, no where near as bad as I originally thought. Through all this additional information, I have concluded that one little Kinder milk chocolate bar contains the same amount of calories of an actual MEAL. Or close enough. I’m sad, in a small way, to part with my Kinder, which I actually buy for Luke but end up eating all myself, but at least I don’t have mummy guilt any more!

So, if I’m not religiously counting calories and I’m not on a strict diet – what’s the plan?

Counting calories just isn’t going to work for me, but trying my hardest to eat clean and keep up with my positive frame of mind hopefully will! I do NOT want to be hungry 24/7 – I went a few days on a very strict diet and I just turned into this raging hormonal, hungry, angry beast and my poor OH was too scared to open his mouth. He also got slightly deafened by my midnight screaming about how hungry I was.

“I’M HUNGRY!” “THEN EAT!” “I CAN’T!!!!”  Safe to say…it wasn’t working.

So clean eating, keeping track but NOT OBSESSING over calories is my first plan of action. I’ll be using MFP still because I love all the added info it gives me about food – and as my last post in the series said, I really need to learn to form a relationship with food and UNDERSTAND it.

One Small Change

Another friend of mine who’s a Juice Plus rep said that currently they’re doing a thing called “one small change”. You take a habit related to your diet/health that is bad, and you swap it out for something else, or you just stop it completely. I have cut down from about a million cups of coffee each day to just one. Out of those million cups of coffee, I used to drink about two LARGE iced coffees from Costa. So, one cup is a pretty good reduction, I think. I am a mum, I couldn’t go about my morning without my coffee!

Smoothies

I am a huge smoothie fan as some of you may know, so I’m sticking with them. I also have some Slim Fast shake powder – I am not doing any form of Slim Fast challenge or diet or anything (I know I said that already, but I really want people to understand I’m using things as aids rather than actual diets). Just having one for breakfast, or if I’m feeling cheeky and I don’t feel as though I’ve had a rubbish day, I may allow myself one for pudding! The caramel flavour is lovely, I make it with semi-skinned milk (another swap out, we used to just drink full fat milk because we went through it with Luke, but that definitely needed to stop!) and the strawberry one is really nice mixed up with some frozen berries from Morrison’s and LIDL.

Rice Milk?

I bought some rice milk to swap out from the semi skimmed for smoothies and shakes, but I have to say, I just don’t think it’s really going to work out for me. It tastes okay, I just can’t deal with drinking a pint of milkshake with just rice milk, there’s a tiny after-taste that I just cannot get used to. I was also surprised to find it contained more calories than semi skimmed milk – I haven’t gone into the different nutritional values yet though. I have to give myself credit for giving it a go though! I used the remainder of milk in porridge to disguise the taste and to make sure it wasn’t going to waste.

Bootea Teatox

Again, on the drinks part (there’s a lot of drink related stuff going on!), I bought the Bootea 14 day teatox. This was something I have been looking at for ages, since last summer I think. I must admit I am NOT a big green tea fan, but I have been on it for nearly the whole two weeks now and I’m really surprised to find that I kind of like it!

If you haven’t heard of Bootea or any other kind of Teatox then basically, there are two different teas: one for the morning and one for bed time. Green Oolong tea is to be consumed every morning and another blend of tea for bed time is to be taken every other night an hour before you go to bed – this tea is the one that flushes the system out (it contains Senna leaves). As far as detoxes go, this one doesn’t seems as horrific as others I have seen. Especially the juice ones where you do nothing but drink juice for three days – surely that’s not good for you?!

Like I have said, I’m nearly up on the 14 day Bootea Teatox but I will definitely be reviewing it once I’ve finished the course, so I don’t want to say too much here!

Healthy Snacking

Finally, I really need to “master the art of healthy snacking” as my friend has said. Honestly, I don’t know where to begin but she’s so right. Like I mentioned earlier, I cannot stand being hungry and I do turn into the she-devil. I ventured to Holland & Barrett and bought my first ever Nakd bar in Apple Pie flavour. These bars seem pretty small, yet still priced at 99p so I think, although I am sure they’re lovely and I have only ever heard amazing things about them, I will have to find different ways of making healthy snacks that are a bit more cost effective.

I need your help!

So that’s what I am putting out to you!

What kind of vegetarian healthy snacks are cheap to buy or easy to make that will actually keep? Please let me know in the comments and, if you want to chat to me about anything I have written, please feel free to tweet me at @gloryiscalling.

Thanks for reading!

My friend said to me on Instagram the other day, weight loss, dieting and working out is 80% motivation. So keep me motivated, people!