A Healthy Adventure

Not every adventure involves travelling the world and exploring new places. Sometimes adventures can happen right in your own home. These can be adventures of self-reflection, growth, and personal development. Recently, I've been in a bit of a poor health funk. I was eating poorly, I wasn't exercising, and it was starting to seem like my body was morphing into the couch (it happens to the best of us from time to time). My body and my health were definitely paying the price for my poor decisions. I knew that something needed to change. I was hated feeling sluggish and exhausted all of the time. With my busy schedule, I was worried that any attempt I made would quickly stop. I often become overwhelmed by too much change. This causes me to fail quickly. I did not want that to be the case this time. I needed this change to become a habit.

Join the adventure, pin this post!

I'm hoping that by writing this post, others will help either join me on this adventure and we can help hold each other accountable. Eating healthy can seem difficult (and hella expensive!), so I immediately scoured Pinterest to help aid in my healthy eating adventure. I quickly found a lot of posts with great advice on how to eat clean and weekly meal plans. Through my research, here are a few tips I have found incredibly helpful and have helped keep me on track:

Meal Calendars
Pinterest truly is a wonderful invention. You can find almost anything and everything you didn't know you needed. I've found when I write things down; there is a greater chance I will follow through with them. Posting my daily meal plan on the fridge has helped hold me even more accountable (that and if I skip a meal, it's staring me right in the face and guilt ensues). I found this amazing calendar from healthandhappyhour.com. It's a great calendar where you write out your meals for the week. It also has boxes for exercise and the amount of water you drink throughout the day.

Weekly Meal Plans 
I'm not sure about you, but with a massively busy schedule, I always start with the best intentions to eat properly throughout the week. Then Tuesday rolls around, and I've overslept, forgotten to pack a lunch, and I'm driving through Macca's in between clients. Planning my meals in advance not only helps me make sure I am eating healthy throughout the week but also helps me avoid food waste. Before I started planning out my meals, I would frequently buy too much food or food that I could not incorporate into other recipes. By planning out my meals in advance, I'm able to really be conscious about my food decisions and make sure I waste as little as possible. In the long run, it's saved me a ton of money!

Meal Prepping and Simple Breakfast Foods
If you're anything like me, then you're definitely not a morning person. I can set multiple alarms, write motivational quotes, and have every intention to wake up early to walk the dog and have a good, healthy breakfast. By the time the morning rolls around, I'm hitting snooze and running the maths in my head as to how long I can afford to stay in bed and not be late to work. Taking an hour or two out of my Sunday to prep my first few days of meals is incredibly helpful, especially for brekkies. I generally don't spend much time cooking meat dish (as I'm really weird about eating reheated foods) but I will chop up all the fruit and veggies, separate ingredients for each meal, and put together some simple breakfast foods. Recently, cottage cheese with fruit or a smoothy has been easy go-to meals for the morning.

**I understand that drinking smoothies in the morning may not be the healthiest as it strips away a lot of the fibre in the fruits and basically just leaves a sugar drink, HOWEVER, with my autoimmune disorder sometimes all I can keep down is liquids, so I figure something is better than nothing.**

Small Goals
One of the easiest ways to fail at something is by taking on too much at once. I'm am definitely guilty of trying to change too many things at once, getting overwhelmed, and then completely giving up altogether. A simple way to stop this cycle...Introduce small goals. Set a timeline for how long you need to master this goal before adding another one in. If you want to cut out soda, all sugars, and completely change your eating habits, start with one and work your way up to having your diet encompass all of these goals. When I'm trying to change my diet, I normally try to eat healthy four out seven days during the week. I try to gradually increase this number up to the whole week. Often, with the meal calendars and meal preps, it becomes incredibly easy for me to eat healthy the entire week. Then I feel even more accomplished with my goal!

There's only one way to make a change, and that's actually to start. I know I'm not going to be perfect in this endeavour, but I know eventually I will make healthy eating into a permanent lifestyle choice. If you're looking for ideas on where to start, I will be posting great meal plans and other healthy recipes I find on my Pinterest.

And until next time...

Stay Curious!