Health & Fitness – Page 2 – Life is a Journey

Foodie Saturday ??

Posted on March 16, 2013March 16, 2013 by Libby Withnall

Yep, missed Friday again. This week I blame it on having 2 videos plus the photos to upload. Plus I’ve been busy trying and reorganising my kitchen.

Anyway, on with the show.

This week started with the weekend of Amy’s party. We all know that involved pizza and ice cream cake. Sunday I ate the last of my indulgences. Then on Monday it was the start of an elimination diet. This is mainly for my inflammation/arthritis pain, but also for weight loss (since they are both highly related).

This means

No Gluten

No Dairy

No Soy

No Sugar

No corn

I’ve also been having no eggs this week. Basically I’ve been eating a whole foods diet with LOTS of veggies. Here’s a look at my grocery shop this week.

Breakfast has been a ~~green~~ brown smoothie made with frozen berries, homemade almond milk, ground flax seeds, chia seeds and slippery elm bark. Looks disgusting but tastes delicious.

Lunch was a salad with added seeds, hummus and something extra like chick peas, veggie bites or falafel (all gluten free, of course)

Dinners were pretty simple and straightforward as it’s been a bit of strange week. Next week I hope/plan to be more adventurous (esp, as my energy levels are already increasing and pain levels decreasing).

I didn’t do a lot of snacking but if I was hungry mid-afternoon I’d have some lentil soup, fruit or rice thins with hummus.

So how’s it all going?

I had my first challenge last at the basketball but I passed by having my dinner early (at 5pm) before we left and had a handful of nuts at half time. I did envy everyone eating popcorn and ice cream but just focussed on how good I’m going to feel :-). The diet isn’t the most family friendly so I’ve had to make seperate meals for the others, which I don’t really like. But if I succeed in achieving good health it will well be worth it. And as I said, I’m going to get more creative in the kitchen and hopefully come up with some family friendly meals. The goal at this stage is to eat this way for 3 weeks but we’ll see how I go.

Foodie Friday

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Libby Withnall

I’ve been really working on having healthy, low-processed and fairly clean foods the last few weeks. Partly for weight loss, partly to help with my arthritis and partly to give me more energy. It’s been working well for the last two and slow for the first! Anyway, I thought I’d share with you some of my meals from the last few weeks.

Breakfast – Veggie scramble

Wholegrain English muffin with tomato sauce (ketchup) and grated cheese

Tone It Up Protein Pancakes

Lunch – falafel salad

Mexe-Bean Salad

Dinner Hawaiian Sweet Potato (basically a baked sweet pot, scoop out flesh, mash, add pineapple pieces and mozerella cheese – so yummy) and brussel sprouts

Chickpea Ketchup Curry

Do you have any current favourite meals to share?

Clean eating and organic food

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Libby Withnall

For a few weeks now I’ve been trying to get my head into gear and back on track with my eating. After a few months of eating really well (little additives and preservatives and watching my snacking) I got very frustrated with my VERY slow weight loss and started to rebel. I learned last week that the pain meds I take for arthritis can cause weight gain. I’m pretty sure this is what happened to me. Now that I know this I can hopefully accept a slow weight loss as being a good thing.

I’ve been trying to work out the best form of attack – Weight Watchers, Tone It Up, etc but I keep coming back to eating clean organic foods and limiting snacking. My meals are pretty good overall, just need to tighten up those snacks.

As you can see I have lots of books to reference, plus Heather’s Whole Foods class that I took a while back, and some other online resources and magazines. There is certainly no lack of inspiration out there but I need to make this my journey and not compare myself to others.

Our home is chock full of good nutritious foods and we still get an organic delivery each week do it really should be easy for me to do. Not to mention that I LOVE healthy foods.

We all know that we need to approach a new eating plan as a way of life and I really am going to focus on this. From now on I’m going to eat the way I intent to eat forever. There will be times when I enjoy a yummy treat, but most of the time I will eat small amounts of clean, organic foods. This will be good for my arthitis and for my weight.

And I’ll just have to prove that the pain meds don’t mean I can’t lose weight. Picturing a “new” photo at Disneyworld is a BIG motivator.

Living with Arthritis – Update

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Libby Withnall

Thankfully, things have improved since my last post on living with arthritis.

As you might know a month ago I saw a dietician and started to cut down and dramatically decrease the amount of nasty additives and preservatives in my diet. Almost immediately there was a tremendous improvement with my arthritis. My pains levels went from 5-7 to 2-3 on a daily basis. It has meant reading food labels, making more things at home (which has been possible due to reduced pain levels) and eliminating some foods from my diet – at least on a daily basis. Hence I have not had one iced chocolate or packet biscuit in a month. It’s really not been too hard and it’s a bit scary to think that these food additives have contributed to cause me so much pain.

I started walking my dogs again, alternating with riding my bike so my heal spur doesn’t get too sore.

I half felt unwell (upset tummy) a few times after I had eaten out – I assume due to consuming more preservatives and additives than I’m used to. Other than that it had been a really great 4 weeks. So much so I went to my doc to decrease my meds. But, of course, the day after I had a bit of a flair. I saw the dietician again last week and she assured me this might happen from time to time.

Unfortunately I’m in the middle of another flair – this one lasting a few days. Not sure if it’s because of the hot, humid weather or that I’ve been overdoing things or just one of those things. I’m not happy though. We are headed to the Easter show tomorrow and I don’t know how I’m going to manage. I really feel uncomfortable about using the wheelchair that Kevin got for me when things were really bad, but I don’t know how I”m going to manage otherwise. Still so much to understand and learn about this disease.

On the positive side I’ve gotten back into almost daily exercise and I’ve lost 3.5kgs :-).