To mark the first day of spring, my best friend, Justine and I have decided to embark upon a 6 week quest to a healthier life. Justine turns 25 on June 13 which is why we picked the 6 week mark to really challenge ourselves. Yes, we want to shed some pounds, tone some muscle and probably try and tan some skin while we are at it but, we also want to break unhealthy eating habits and form better ones.
As I have heard many times before, diets do NOT work. I completely agree, diets usually fail because the best way to get in shape and stay in shape is to change your lifestyle. Justine and I are really trying form some healthy habits. While neither of us are complete junkies (although I have been called a garborater more than once) we both know there are areas we can improve upon.
Personally, I know that the biggest ways I sabotage my healthy eating habits are:
1) late night snacking
2)eating foods that I know I am sensitive to
3)succumbing to laziness and relying on fast food
I have a huge late night snacking addiction and I can ruin an entire day of making good food choices in just 15 minutes. Not only do I tend to binge eat at night, I know that consuming that many calories before I head to bed is just a set up for failure. To conquer this, I have decided to go cold turkey and set the rule of:
No eating after 9pm!
About a year ago I visited a naturopath in hopes of conquering a pretty bad case of eczema. I had allergy testing done and came up as sensitive to: all cow and goat dairy products, gluten and peanuts. She told me to cut all of these things out of my diet for at least 3 months with the hopes of it alleviating my eczema and a million other symptoms I didn't realize were the cause of a food allergy. I successfully did so with peanuts but had a couldn't forfeit dairy or gluten. Luckily, forgoing peanuts was enough to clear up my eczema. However, its been made pretty clear to me that dairy wrecks havoc on my digestion. I don't need to go into detail here but for the next six weeks I've decided to
limit dairy to just milk in my morning coffee.
Justine and I both struggle with fast food. Neither of us are very domestic and to be frank, we both hate cooking. It can be easy to trick oneself into thinking you are making a healthy choice for fast food by going to Subway or Extreme Pita but there's no replacing home cooked food. Therefore, we have decided to be strict:
No Fast Food!!
Other than that, we are challenging ourselves to be more active by working out for 1 hour for at least 4 days a week. We are limiting our alcohol intake to 4 times in a 6 week period and we are trying to focus on eating more complex carbs and restricting our intake of simple carbs. Finally, we want to encorporate freshly squeezed juice into one meal per day.
This will be a challenge. But that's what life is about. Wish us luck!!
Also, check out our weekly diet v-log here!
Ash
