All posts filed under: Photography

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 18 – Car crash and pizza

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This was an eventful day I am glad to see the back of. After work I drove into an industrial estate in Belfast to pick a DHL package (with more healthy goodies!!) but on the way out got crashed into. I had Emma in the car on the side that was hit but thankfully she was sleeping and  never became aware of it even. It was a minor crash and no-one was injured but my passenger door is jammed now and opens with a painful crack and my bumper is askew. Bummer! So no healthy dinners tonight, hubby took us out for pizza at Pizza Express. I had their light version, Legerra with Pollo because it had only 500 calories but found it heavy after almost 3 weeks of eating only healthy food. This is day 18, there are 22 days left of this healthy living challenge and I hope tomorrow everybody who drives by will stick to their side of the road 🙂    

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 15 – Listen to your body

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No, my friends, I am not going all weird on you here, I am just saying many times our bodies will tell us what they need in the form of cravings. Ahem, nice try, justifying to yourself that muffin or chocolate bar tonight but no, I am not talking about cravings for sweets and wheat. I actually believe people like William MD Davis, the author of The Wheat Belly who proved scientifically  and through thorough research that wheat is addictive.  I believe that once you come off wheat completely for a good two weeks, as I have done, your body starts “speaking” to you again, communicating its real needs. This week I felt run down due to lady pains and discomforts(oh, yeah, I really did it, I’ve talked about two of the most embarrassing and personal things a human being can talk about in two subsequent posts!!) By Wednesday my body was quite depleted of energy and I was…full of cravings. I actually made some of my Facebook friends suspicious when I announced I had …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 14 – Alternative Eating

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I call it alternative because once you decide to eat healthily, you have to find replacements to the things you used to comfort eat. Like, did you use to fill up on bread and keep yourself awake with coffee, like me? Then you have to find things that keep you full and awake but don’t necessarily tip the scales the wrong way… To give you the motivation to change some of your habits, please take a moment and have a look at this chart I came across last week, while browsing Stumbleupon. Have you done it? What shocked you the most? For me, it was the fact that when hungry, most people would go for a 400-calorie burger while they could have 3 KILOS of celery for the same amount of calories. Okay, who could eat 3 kilos of celery, anyway but you get my point…you need to find alternatives to your go-to-snacks or meals if you want to lose the weight. So today I replaced what used to be my Saturday fry with a …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 12 – New Flavours

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I bought millet and aduki beans from the health store last Friday and today I decided to give them a go! I haven’t made millet before and I didn’t know what to expect. I like couscous and I sort of expected it to be similar in texture and taste. It sort of is and it isn’t, I found millet a bit coarser and drier than the couscous but I think the millet has the potential to retain more flavour if boiled with the right ingredients(I added chicken stock, a bay leaf and a whole onion plus a spice mix we bought in the Greek open market, called Arabiko) . I used this recipe I found online last night but I decided to replace the lentils with my aduki beans. It came out a bit too dry so next time I will not roast the millet and I will probably add 3 cups of water to one cup of millet. I served it with fish which I marinated, inspired by Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast on Channel 4, …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 9 – Nine wisdom nuggets

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Okay, so I was pondering today on what I have learnt(or have been reminded of) since I started this health challenge. 1. Whatever change you want to make in your life, start TODAY! For so long I used everything and everybody as an excuse for not eating healthily and for procrastinating . That bikini body I want, guess what? It will never happen unless I ditch the “ifs” and “buts” and “tomorrows”. 2. Start small. If you haven’t moved all winter(like moi!) then start taking short walks every day(weather permitting). If you have been eating double what your hubby ate(again, like moi…) then eat a bit less. Whatever you aim to achieve, achieve it with every meal, with every little change. 3. Congratulate yourself when you manage to stick to your resolutions, don’t beat yourself up when you stray from the plan. Okay, I had Chinese on Friday night( the most sensible Chinese I’ve ever had!), okay, I had a bit of apple pie and  crème brûlée ice cream today. As long as these incidents …