A lifestyle of healthy habits!

Something I always dreamed about was changing my lifestyle. The last few years has seen me live quite a sedentry life where I got to know my couch far too well. I would often choose not to go out, mainly because I was embarrassed but also because I was lazy and would prefer just to eat.

Well that has changed now and we are including the great outdoors, movement and healthy eating into everyday life.

Sunday saw our family take a trip to one of the world's most famous zoos.

Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia.

It is situated on the gorgeous Sydney Harbour with views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. These animals live at some of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Australia!

It was a stunningly warm Winter's day with the sun beaming down giving us a great day to let Miss Twinkle Toes explore the world of animals that she has seen in her books come to life at the zoo.

Let me tell you, exercise was not forgotten on this day. We covered a lot of kilometers walking around the zoo, lots of hills, often carrying a backpack or a child weighing 10kg. I even walked around with her on my shoulders just to get a bit more of a workout!

If I wasn't carrying something, I was chasing someone around who keeps me on my toes! We were at the zoo for about 6hours which I thought was a massive effort with an 18mth old!

We had a fantastic day.

I managed to stay healthy with my eating by being prepared and packed a picnic lunch for our family as well as some snacks I had made for us. Some fresh sandwiches of breast chicken and tomato on wholemeal bread and lots of fruit and plenty of water. Normally at places like this I would have bought hot chips and the like but not this time! :-)

I am looking forward to blogging more over the next few days. I have so much that I want to tell you all about but have not had the time with work being so busy.

Here is a photo of my gorgeous girl and I after a very long day!

Please excuse her messy shirt. this was after dinner (which always ends in a mess especially when dessert is juicy strawberries)!

I can now see how much weight I have lost off my arms, face and although its a bad photo of my legs as I am all scruched up, I have lost heaps of weight of them as well.

YAY!

Evening "snack attack" habit!

Habits are remarkable because they don't require thinking. You just "do it" for years until you find yourself changing the habit again.

One of the biggest reasons I put on weight was because I was in the habit of eating at night.

Okay, so eating at night is not that bad, but when you hardly eat anything during the day and then load up after dark on calories by consuming family sized bags of chips, a whole packet of chocolate biscuits and any high sugar, high fat foods you can get your litle hands on, well you are bound to end up with a bit a big weight problem.

I knew this was one of the biggest things that had to change if I was to start to lose weight. It wasn't as simple as saying no to these foods at night time or just not buying them on my way home from work. I had to put some strategies in place to help me break this habit.

I knew no matter what, I would still want to eat at night. Its just something that I was used to and going cold turkey would only result in some binge eating!

So I set myself up with some things I could eat in the evening.

One of my favourites still to this day is jelly!

Don't buy the high sugar one.

Weight Watchers do an awesome jelly and it is a point free snack with no sugar!

I would always make sure I had some made up in the fridge.



The next thing I did was buy a massive selection of teas.

Drinking tea would make me feel good. For a while it did wake me during the night as I was drinking quite a bit but now I am used to it.

I have found some yummy herbal teas but I am currently loving green tea. Great for your health and it would keep my hands something healthy to reach for. Awesome site on green tea if you are interested!

The next thing that helped can easily be found in any house (I hope)!

Toothpaste!

Food tastes strange after brushing teeth, so brushing my teeth when I felt the urge to eat helped get rid of any food craving I had.

I have heard that Pam Anderson uses this trick as well!

Mouthwash can have the same affect.

Chewing Gum...not so much. I find that I can still eat other foods after that.

So those 3 little things are what helped me break my evening snacking binges.

They say it takes 3 weeks to break a habit, To be honest I can't remeber how long it took but I can tell you that I have broken ths habit and it is part of the reason I have lost over 20 kilos. Yay!