April, May and an Egg Issue

Well April has been a lovely month! I’ve achieved all of the goals I set for myself at the start of the month which is awesome!

Just a few of my instagrams from April!

I started delivering my first healthy eating workshops with young people and I’m booked on my Food Hygiene training course to renew my certificate in a couple of weeks time:

I also met with a business advisor who really helped me get more focused!

I did lots of cooking and baking, including experimenting with yeast in my bread and hot cross bun recipes:

I have also increased my running distance to 10k in preparation to start training for the Great North Run and did ok managing my grocery budget, although all the cooking and baking did tip me over slightly! Plus I also spent more time with family and friends which was lovely :-)

Aims for May

Let’s hope so! (source)

• Get glowing – overhaul my skin care routine, start dry skin brushing again, painting my nails on a regular basis and get my hair cut and coloured
• Make more of an effort when getting dressed and choosing outfits and start posting more OOTD’s
• Start running outside (weather permitting) twice a week and reintroduce using my Garmin to track my distance and pace without having a freak out
• Continue to maintain my weight eating adequately and healthily without either restricting or over eating
• Get back to eating more raw foods
• Make an effort to increase my iron intake
• Keep the momentum going with developing my business – next step market research!

At the end of the month I have a family party and I’d really like to look and feel my best, hence the dry skin brushing, hair cut and colour etc. I’ve also started thinking that now I’m almost 30 I should really start and take better care of my skin. It must have been fate, but last week I was contacted by a representative of skincare brand Yves Rocher to see if I wanted to sample some of their products. I’ll be testing them out this month!

I’d also like to start making a bit more of an effort when I get dressed and post more Outfit of the Day’s (OOTD). I know I’m not a fashion blogger by any means but this is Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish after all, and I do love fashion! I have to admit I’ve had a couple of OOTD’s ready to post and haven’t posted them because I felt I looked too ‘fat’. Well enough of that bollocks, I know I look fine and I need to address those negative thoughts, and what better way than by posting pictures of myself on the internet ;-)

I’m happy to start running a little more often as I ramp things up in training for the Great North Run Half Marathon. I’m taking a very laid back approach to training in comparison to previous years. I don’t want to get injured again and I just want to run and enjoy the whole experience!

I really feel like I’m finding a fantastic balance with my eating at the moment. Calorie counting has helped me to see where I was under eating and then over eating in response to that. I’d like to continue eating this way with lots of my usual healthy meals and snacks and a few treats thrown in for good measure. As the weather improves (please let it improve!) then I’d like to eat more raw foods too which should also help with my first aim!

Enjoying my favourite raw green juice!

I posted a question as part of AXA’s Live web chat last week and the nutritionist advised me to take a look at my iron levels. When I’ve looked into the symptoms of anaemia I think I could be a touch low on iron, despite making sure my mostly vegan diet is balanced and taking supplements. I’m going to take an additional iron supplement and just pay a bit more attention to eating lots of iron rich vegan foods.

As for the community healthy eating coaching, the next steps for me are doing some market research. I know I need to keep the momentum going, even when I keep getting negative thoughts that tell me I’m not good enough to do this. Finger’s crossed my research will show that there’s a market out there for what I want to offer :-)

source

One final thing, I’ve been starting to crave eggs. I haven’t eaten eggs in well over a year while I’ve been happily eating a mostly vegan diet. I’ve always maintained that I would eat this way as long as I felt good, but over the last few weeks I’ve started to really crave eggs. Its very strange for me and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t think that eggs are particularly unhealthy, my main reason for avoiding them has been the ethical issues. I am starting to consider trying eggs again as I know I can get eggs from my local farm where I know the chickens are looked after. I don’t think I’ll suddenly start eating eggs every day, but I do think I might try them out and see how my body reacts. I’ve always said I’m ‘mostly vegan’ and I have been getting progressively more relaxed about it. I do think I will always eat a plant based diet, but as they say, labels are for tin cans, I just want to eat in a way that makes me felt at my best.

What have you achieved in April and do you have any aims for May? Any thoughts on the egg issue?