Calories: Finally, They’re Secret Revealed!!

How to make a Happy Mum The Recipe: Good Health. Part 1.

In the craziness of being a Mum, it’s all too easy to forget about looking after your own health and fitness. You may be wondering why I’m including this blog in ‘How to become a Happy Mum’ Recipe; it’s quite simply because numerous study over the years have clearly shown that when we have good health we are happier people, and after all the aim of this blog series is to make you a Happy Mum!

Believe it or not, but I started to take my own health and fitness much more seriously once I had my son. I guess it was because I wanted to be around for him in the best possible version of myself for as long as I possibly could. It was no longer a matter of doing it for me, which I regret to admit was never much of an ongoing motivator before having my son… Whoops!

Good health and fitness isn’t just necessarily about fitting back into your favorite pre-preggas jeans- it’s about providing your body with the right tools to maximize your energy levels and get those happy hormones pumping. I should clarify here that I’m just referring to endorphin hormones that occur naturally in the body!

Food and Eating.

 

While we’re on the topic, how are your food habits at the moment? Notice that I didn’t use the ‘D’ (diet) word here. For me, the whole mindset of a diet is that it is temporary and depressingly restrictive and so I refuse to refer to what we eat using that label! Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand- when you think of your food habits are you seeing a nice healthy well-rounded picture with the occasional well deserved treat? Or are we trending more towards sugar and/or fat becoming your major food groups?

Hey, you’ll get no judgment from me- that’s for sure! But if you are finding that you’re energy levels are so low that you’re literally dragging your feet throughout the day (granted, 2 hourly feeds overnight won’t help!), or you’re really not willing to accept your expanded waistline post baby- then why not give your food intake an overview.

Being a naturally slender person all my life, I used to make the joke that I was on the see-food diet. I’m sure you’ve heard of it- I see food and I eat it. Haa, haa… Sorry, bad joke! But since I had my son and found that my weight had plateau outside my healthy BMI range, I decided to change my saying to- I am following the less is more diet- the less I eat the more I lose.

Now don’t get me wrong, as a woman with an appetite to rival her husband’s- I’m not advocating starvation or any other kind of extremist action! I’m simply saying that I started to admit to myself that when the recipe says, “serves 4”, you really should have two serves for leftovers. In my case, there would usually be one serve (or none) left.

Overall, I was actually pretty happy with my eating habits. I was getting my fruit, veggies, dairy, protein and carbs- the problem was that I was just getting too much of them! And worse still, I can polish off an entire plate of food in under 10 minutes- I know- it’s a gift. The only problem is that I’d serve myself a massive plate of food, and then ate it so quickly that my stomach didn’t know what hit it. And inevitably, ten or so minutes after that- the uncomfortably full feeling would settle in.

So as you probably guessed, my goal at the moment is achieving sensible portion control. Notice that I say ‘my goal’, as it is a work in progress- I’ll let you know how I get on sometime in (hopefully) the not too distant future on my blog. But for now, I am happy to report that I’m 4kg down with another 5kg to go!

As always, I’d love to hear how you are travelling with this component of your life, so feel free to send through a comment!

Nicole