Onion goggles! Who knew...

31^st August 2018

Autumn, the season that teaches us, that change, can be beYOUtiful.

Straight out with Alfie this morning, it’s a lovely sunrise, there’s an autumnal nip in the air which starts tomorrow as a meteorological season you’ll have to wait till the 22nd astronomical calendar, personally I just go by the weather and this morning it feels like autumn although the weather man keeps promising the sunshine’s returning.

i has a what’s becoming typical night, woke at 3.04, then again at 4, just as I was going back to sleep mom started her coughing ritual, then around 5 as I’d finally dropped off mom shouted “are you okay, do you need me?” She’d been dreaming and at 6am as I’m doing my best to snooze she has words with Alfie as she goes to the toilet telling him not to come into my room. I gave up and got up, at least I got about four and a half hours beforehand. I have an appointment at the doctors today, I’d like some blood tests to check if I am peri-menopausal and my health in general.

On a positive my body doesn’t hurt anywhere this morning, how fab is that!

I did a bit of googling yesterday on foods and hormones etc so I’ll look a little more into that over the weekend. Edamame beans are recommended and I could eat those daily as a snack I love them. Hummus is another so I may need to master making my own!

Got me a massage to look forward to today, a little bit of me time, taking care of my own well-being which is important to all of us.

Going to spend an hour or two on my computer this morning before, get some work done, then after my massage and the doctors, I’ll have some time with mom, try and get her in the summerhouse maybe!

Oh I did have some giggles in my meetings yesterday, there’s nothing better than a good laugh and my members made sure I had plenty of them. Did you know you can get onion goggles? Oh yeah! They stop the tears, is there nothing they won’t invent!

Anyway, I’m back now, suns shining, moms sorted, mug of tea in hand sat at my desk and working in the praise of slow

Here’s to having a very great day, looking for the smile moments and focussing on creating those healthy habits for life, starting with a good breakfast. 

#mywwwellbeing

30^th August 2018

Take time to make your soul happy

What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours.  I feel 100% better than I did when I woke up on Tuesday morning and lots of things contributed to that, friends, family, my WW members and Weight Watchers as an employer.  See they care about our wellbeing too, to the point where they’ve actually introduced an annual Wellbeing Scheme for coaches as well as a Friends and Family programme.  Just knowing they care about my wellbeing makes me care about it even more. 

#mywwwellbeing

If you were given an envelope with a sum of money to spend on your wellbeing, say £75 what would you spend it on?  What does wellbeing include, what does it mean?  You could spend it on your physical, financial and emotional wellbeing?  What would be your first thought and would that be the one that really needs it most.  The first thing I did was went to look up what ‘wellbeing’ actually meant, I do like a definition, so according to the very excellent website www.mind.org.uk wellbeing describes your mental state - how you are feeling and how well you can cope with day-to-day life.  Our mental wellbeing is dynamic. It can change from moment to moment, day to day, month to month or year to year.

If you have good mental wellbeing you are able to:

• feel relatively confident in yourself and have positive self-esteem
• feel and express a range of emotions
• build and maintain good relationships with others
• feel engaged with the world around you
• live and work productively
• cope with the stresses of daily life
• adapt and manage in times of change and uncertainty

If you want to read more and I suggest you do, go to their website https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/wellbeing/#.W4ZUJ7gnaUk

Anyway if you read yesterday’s blog you know I’d felt overwhelmed Tuesday morning but after doing what I said I was going to do I felt 100% better by 9am yesterday, I’d emptied all my drawer in my bedroom out and worked my way through them, filling a couple of bin bags, then I cooked myself the most delicious breakfast.  

Seriously it was that good, having a new non-stick frying pan has changed my life – no I’m not being dramatic, it makes that much difference and if it only stays that way for a few months, I’ll buy another one!  Never will I live with a crappy frying pan ever again.

Back to what would you spend £75 on if someone gave it to you to spend on your wellbeing?  I put some thought into this and I have to say just thinking about it did my mental health and wellbeing the world of good because it made me think about me and what I need for a change.

Okay what did I come up with, physical for me would be a super indulgent massage and facial session.  Emotionally well thankfully I have great friends that listen, so I asked myself what do I enjoy doing that would recharge my emotional bank, because let’s be honest everything is easier to handle when you’ve had a good time or done something you enjoy.   I came to the conclusion, I haven’t got the inclination to cook from scratch too much at the moment, plus I’ve been doing online shopping for a good while now and one of the things I really enjoy doing is food shopping in Waitrose – posh food for the kid who’s family was skint always does it for me.  So a couple of hours out, browsing round Waitrose, spending money, buying some delicious ready meals and saving with a coupon they’ve sent me is one of my indulgent pleasures.  

What it also made me realise is financially I’m not in a bad place, I could afford to do both of those things anyway and I’m going to with my own money, I have a good job, my house is paid for thankfully, I’m very, very lucky, yes I'm a full time carer for my mom who has Alzheimers and Vascular Dementia but wow it could be a great deal more difficult!. So what I plan to do with my £75 is put it in an envelope and I’m going to use it to help someone else’s wellbeing, to give them something to look forward to or to help them with a debt they can’t afford.  That helps them and makes me feel good for doing a good dead.  We all need to take care of each other because we never know when our good fortune will change.

Improving our wellbeing doesn’t always have to involve money, cleaning my closets out yesterday really helped me, cooking a delicious breakfast reminded me I can do that and it’s not that difficult either.  Writing it out helps me daily, some days I have nothing to say, others I don’t know when to shut up.  Catching up with my bestie and having a giggle is the best medicine in the world.  Getting closer to my sister is helping my wellbeing, we’ve never been the kind of family that live in each others pockets so this is new to us both, we’re new partners in crime.  I need to get my crochet back out, I’ve avoiding the last few squares because they’re the difficult ones then I’ve got to sew it up but the sense of achievement when it’s finished will be worth it.

Yeah being kind to myself, accepting it’s okay not to be okay, appreciating that my life has its difficulties, noticing the smile moments, these things all help me have good mental wellbeing. 

Here’s to having a very great day, looking for the smile moments and focussing on creating those healthy habits for life. 

It's okay not to be okay!

29^th August 2018

Be kind to your mind.

I know it’s usually guided by my hormones as I have times when I feel it and times when I don’t, I’m also affected by the weather as I believe quite a few of us are, not to mention how much sleep I’ve had, I’m massively affected by lack of sleep and tiredness.  Then of course there are our circumstances, this world can be a difficult place to live sometimes.  I witnessed that with just a handful of my members yesterday and of course myself.  I started my day feeling overwhelmed, that’s the only world I can think of to describe, and it felt like simple things were difficult.  The fact the weather has changed meant I needed different clothes for work and of course I hadn’t sorted any out the day before, I stood there looking in my wardrobe at clothes I wore last Autumn thinking, “that won’t fit, it didn’t fit last year!”’ “Seriously did I wear that last year, why did no one tell me not too!” “I can’t wear that, it needs ironing, I can iron now”.  Something as simple as finding something to wear was way too difficult for a Tuesday morning, add to the fact most of my clothes were in a pile on the floor and that wasn’t helping.  Cooking dinner seemed complicated, I had a fridge full of veggies that needed using but I didn’t know what to cook or what I wanted to it.  I felt ‘MEH’. 

I sat with mom for a couple of hours because I could tell she was going to slip into a bad place and I didn’t want that to happen, one for her because it’s not easy being my mom right now, I can’t even imagine how scared she must feel knowing she’s losing her mind a little at a time.  She’s lost her mobility, her independence, so much has changed over the last year or so and that has to be so hard for her.  But also for me, I wasn’t in a great place myself without adding mom in a bad place to the equations.

How do I deal with days like this?  What do I do when I feel overwhelmed?

I start by reminding myself, I didn’t feel this way the day before or the week before if I’ve had more than one day of it.  If like yesterday my mind was telling me how much stuff I have to do, “sort my bedroom”, “clean the house”, “tidy the kitchen cupboards/drawers” I remind myself of the things I have got done lately that were worthwhile, such as clearing out my sheds and putting up shelving to get some organisation out there and putting together my kitchen trolley.

Next I ask myself “what is most important, right now?”  Then I start by doing what I can to get through my day.  I talk it out too, to anyone who’ll listen, I don’t pretend all is okay, that my world is tickety boo, when it isn’t. 

Then I wake up the next day (this morning) feeling better, knowing I made it through that day and I’ve made it through every bad day I’ve ever had before.  This morning I feel much better, I decided yesterday that what was important, right now was the clothing situation, this morning I’m going to have a sort out, anything I haven’t worn for a year, anything I don’t love, anything that doesn’t fit – whether too big or too small is going to the charity shop.  Less clothes means less choice and less chance of feeling overwhelmed.  That can be today’s task.  There are other things I want to get done, my office for example needs a major sort out, it’ll go on the to do list when I have the energy, because I need to remember I don’t have to do it all at once, it’s important to find time to rest and do nothing. 

I won’t always be able to spend 2 hours with my mom watching some rubbish on tele and grabbing a giggle when the opportunity arises.  There’s a chance one day she might not even recognise me – that breaks my heart right now, no wonder I have days where I wake up feeling overwhelmed.

It was suggested yesterday by someone who cares that I was a little depressed, I’m not, I have days when I’m tired, days when my body aches, days when I’m sad and I find it hard to smile, days when I’m angry, but I also have days when I’m full of energy, days when I don’t notice my aches so much, days when I’m happy and I laugh a lot, days when I’m calm.  I’m a human being who had different moods behaviours and emotions and I’m one that isn’t afraid to go with those emotions and feel them rather than trying to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.

More importantly what did I wear and eat yesterday!  Well I ended up in a pair of crop trousers that are a little too big round the waist for me but I love them so might need to get them altered and a black shirt which I like but the buttons have a habit of popping open which isn’t good.  Foodwise, I had delicious breakfast rolls, used a lo-dough, made a very thin omelette with one egg, added spinach and protein cheese and I’ll make them again.  For dinner I ended up making roasted vegetables, chicken and chorizo lasagne, I ate it, I wouldn’t make it again, too tomatoey for me but I think my helpers enjoyed.  Then for tea last night I had a Weight Watcher spag bol ready meal quick and easy.  check out my instagram for pics https://www.instagram.com/bev_ww/

I think that’s the solution for me this week, less time in the kitchen, focus on convenience foods, so I can use some of that time to sort my surroundings because I know that’s more important to me right now, tidy house – tidy mind and all that.

If you can relate to any of this, ask yourself “what is most important, right now?” 

Here’s to having a very great day, looking for the smile moments and focussing on creating those healthy habits for life. 

Oh and I did have lots of smile moments yesterday in amongst those other feelings!  It’s all about looking for them…