Low Carbs; it works.......by Heather

First off - we as a family have all taken to the no/low sugar diet positively and successfully.

It doesn't mean that we don't cheat a bit - I went to Costa's yesterday and my husband succumbed to a raspberry and almond slice with his cortado! But its rare - very rare these days. And we all feel very much better for it.

I have had less success with consistantly reducing the carbs, primarily because the rest of the family are resistant to it, and in honesty I can understand why. None of them are fat or worried about weight gain, so giving up those things that are universally enjoyable is difficult.

My husband agreed and applauded the sugar reduction - but with the carbs, at best he was happy to move from white to brown - but not give them up. So if busy, stressed, tired or cold (snow at Easter here!!) - carbs are easy to turn to -

 - and that's where I have slipped; and where I slipped there has been weight gain. Not huge but trackable.

Carbs = fat around my middle.

The fact it is so obvious to me means I feel very much more in control.

A Life More Happy...by Heather

At the beginning of the year, apart from falling in to the usual trap of wanting to overhaul my body and lose excess weight - I also thought about getting a traditional diary.

I have a number of diaries in my wardrobe collected over the years, all begin with the usual lack of anything interesting to say on Jan 1st - and despite the torrent of thoughts pouring forth in the weeks to come, by March, I'm down to a little dribble of quick scribblings and by April - well I've fizzled in to nothingness, fed up with it.

I cannot commit to a diary it would seem.

The other thing I notice when I look back over the first quarter of a plethora of years hidden behind my shoe boxes, is that I am negative - I dwell on the rotten, the misjudged, the irritating and the just plain annoying. I can actually feel myself festering anew if I re-read events from 7 years ago!!

I mentioned to Katy that in our spirit of trying to make improvements; our outlook and how we feel not just about ourselves, but our lives and those in it too - I might attempt to keep a photo journal.
We both agreed it might be a nice thing to do. And that was it - a scattered thought.

Until last month that is, when I found quite by accident an App for my iPhone - its called "My 365" and it is a little calendar where you post a photo a day - it seems to be Japanese or Chinese from the users on the App - because the App lets you look and link to others who are doing the same thing.

And it was free!

So I started keeping the photo journal on my phone.

Looking back over the month I realise that each day, the one picture and the very brief description brings to mind the whole day, it reminds me with little effort why I chose the picture, what I felt and what it meant to me at the time -  I recall the day, often dreary days that would be often forgotten amongst the whole collection of them.

What is more important however, because its a photo and its shared - I now find myself looking for my daily photo opportunity more carefully, and instead of dwelling on the cruddy happenings or irritating persons fleetingly gone - I am concentrating on finding something beautiful and positive to reflect my day. And that has had a very therapeutic effect on how I feel about my life generally.

Today, driving in to work I looked at the landscape and realised that there was something of a blue sky and without fog or snow, everything looked lovely -  I took a cute photo of a little village I drive through every day without even looking at it - but for once I  looked at it with new eyes - and my photo reflects back something cute and charming.

Of itself, the photo is innocuous and hardly something to rave about - but its the fact that I looked at the everyday and dull in a new light and liked what I saw - and that I have been doing this religiously each day -and I've even started to look forward to doing it.

I would never have believed that it was possible, but I heartily recommend it.

On being greatly cultivated - by Heather

We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.

That accumulated wisdom around my middle, is particularly annoying, and gets in the way of my yoga practice - I find myself breathing badly and feeling squished inside.  And the fact that when inverted, I find it impossible to hold both the pose and suck the flab up!!

I don't look much like a yogic goddess that is for sure!