“No medicine can compensate for un-healthy living.” ― Renu Chaudhary
Hey beautiful people,
My blog just hit the 400 followers mark on WordPress! I’m very happy to have achieved this mile before going back home and I want to celebrate it with you here, so… I’m hosting a book giveaway!
Now, before I go into the book giveaway, I would like to thank you all for your support and time. I started blogging when I was 12, but this blog is the first one to last so many days and months: it will be 2 years old in early 2019!
Continue reading “Book Giveaway + 400 Readers”
When I started my weight loss journey at the age of 15 (I think I haven’t shared the story here yet, but I was a morbid obese teen back then – and yes, I’m not kidding), the very first thing I started doing was to walk at least 60 minutes every day. That was the only thing my body could handle at that time and with a simple daily walk I immediately dropped a few pounds and inches even long before I started to follow a balanced meal plan.
At that time, it worked and it made wonders for me because I transformed walking into a ritual. There were no excuses. It could be sunny or raining, it didn’t really matter: I would be there walking those damn 60 minutes. When you have reduced mobility because you are too heavy (like I am now, but more about that after we finish the challenge), walking is probably the safest kind of exercise you can do. Combined with a few minutes of stretching, you will soon notice the difference. That’s why I highly recommend everyone to start walking first, even before any further changes to diet and physical activity.
I do know however that walking can become boring after a while. I especially recognise that right now because I moved back to Canterbury and I already know this city like the back of my hands… there are, nonetheless, a few tricks to reset our mood and motivation to walk. In this post I will share 3 of my favourite tricks to walk more.
Walking the same streets, alleys and paths, all the time becomes boring, right? Lack of novelty can crush our motivation to walk. One way to avoid this is to practise mindfulness while walking. This means that when you go for a walk, you will do your best to pay attention to your surroundings and to what is going on inside of yourself. Mindful walking is a good exercise not only to develop your attention skills but also to discover new details and ideas that make walking fun and which otherwise you would miss. Most of the time we walk in a very mindless way and we often miss small and big treasures on our way. I will give you one personal example: I passed by a certain tree at least three times this week and I had never noticed there was a carved figure inside the tree until today. You would say it was rather easy to spot such a beautiful detail but I have been walking so mindlessly that only today, when I finally paid attention, I then noticed the beautiful work you can see in the picture below:
There is nothing worse than walking in uncomfortable shoes – well maybe there are other similar or equally uncomfortable things but you get what I mean. You may not even notice it – I sometimes don’t – but finishing a walk and having foot pain is another motivation killer. Who wants to suffer, right? Make sure you invest in a pair of sneakers or shoes that are comfortable to your feet. They don’t have to be expensive, they just need to be the right fit for your feet. Believe it or not, there are many different models and kinds of sneakers. Some pairs are more suitable for running, while others are more suitable for walking. Even within each category you will find different models according to the type of path you will be walking on. Ok, I didn’t want you to panic or make your life more difficult: next time you decide to buy a pair of walking shoes, just ask for help in the store, explain them what’s your walking goal, and they will show you the best options.
There is one app called Charity Miles, which I shared here in the blog around this same time last year. This is one of the many beautiful ways how technology can improve our lifestyle and make a difference in the world at the same time. Charity Miles is an app that counts the amount of miles you make and then transforms it into a monetary contribution to an organisation of your choice. Last year I was walking to support Operation Smile. You can read more about it here. I’m thinking of getting back to it as a way to motivate myself to go out more and walk – might even try to challenge a friend to come with me and even consider using it to plan a more lengthy walking adventure in the future.
Getting to sleep at a reasonable time (and actually rest) has been really difficult. The crazy anxiety and excitement of moving back to Lisbon for a while and do my own thing, while stop worrying about my PhD right now, have kept me awake and binging both on Netflix and on food.
For the past few weeks, I have fallen asleep only when my eyes no longer can keep up and that is usually around… 5 or 6 am. After waking up 3 days in a row with a huge headache I finally became more active on addressing my problem with sleeping and that’s what I want to share with you in this post.
I am a messy person (I’m always honest, you know it!) so the room I live in is more often than not a reminder that chaos and war exist. I live in a mansion and unfortunately I can’t use any other room to store anything or even work from – how sad is that? My room gets to be my office, my bedroom, my crafts room, my lounging room, my reading room… Therefore you can find all sorts of different things in here, from colouring bottles to a pile of dusty shoes, you pick it and I am sure I will have it. If you live in a similar situation, or you simply have a messy room too, it’s really important to tidy it up as much as possible. Besides tidying up, opening the windows for a long bit can do wonders, since it renews the air in the room. These two things together will send a different subliminal message to your mind – instead of chaos and war, you will have more order and peace, which are much needed for a good night rest.
As I confessed earlier, I have been binging on Netflix and in two weeks I finished Girl Boss, The Haunting of Hill House, and followed the latest episodes of The Good Place. One episode was never just only one episode and my brain would be so engaged with the stories that I would obviously not fall asleep. Why do we keep doing stuff like this, when we know the situation is already bad enough, right? Oh well, the answer is that we are always looking for an easy route to confirm our own very dear sense of failure. So if you do need some minor stimulation before bed, don’t choose anything that will keep your mind wired. Grab that old novel that has been lingering on the back of your drawer instead.
I think what really worked best for me was to wake up to the idea of pursuing what makes me professionally (and personally) happy. This week I started working with my very first international client. Actually that’s not entirely true, I worked with someone from Taiwan before Summer, but it was the traditional face-to-face meeting. Having my first international client through the phone, however, gave me a lot of stamina and made me remember of my purpose. Most times, we struggle to sleep because we forget about our purpose, our life’s vision. I realise now that it was not enough to simply decide to go back to Lisbon, in order to improve my quality of life. I also needed to get back to my purpose and vision which is to go back to my career as a coach and venture myself internationally (meaning… not only having Portuguese-speaking clients).
We were all taught in school that our body is made of 70% water, and that it is important to stay hydrated. However, many of us dismiss this healthy habit blatantly. My father usually jokes and calls me a camel, because I never drink much water or can spend a long time without a sip.
To be totally honest with you, that joke is still applicable, except when I get focused – really, really focused – on taking care of myself. I believe this can be your case too, so between you and me we have to admit that we do need to take better care of ourselves on a daily basis, not just when things start going wrong.
I have three favourite tricks to get more water into my body, so I thought it could be useful to share them with you here. I’m sure you’re going to laugh about the first one, but I promise you… it works!
Some people will probably find inappropriate to talk about pee, but it’s a very human activity, and I prefer to go literal here instead of using “restroom break” – sorry not sorry. I started to do this unconsciously, so I can’t really tell you when or how this habit kicked-in. All I know is that every time I pee, I now drink at least a glass of water afterwards. If you don’t do this already, give it a try – after a while the body will ask you to do it in an automatic way.
Whenever I do this one, I can assure you I drink more water. The bigger the bottle, the better, because that way we can be sure we won’t miss it. Also take it with you wherever you go and always place it near you. If you work at a desk, make sure it stands right under your nose! Even if you’re not thirsty, seeing the bottle there will remind you of your goal and make you drink more often.
Many people have told me that one of the biggest barriers to drink more water is the way it tastes. We can work around this by adding some nice flavours to it. You can add fruits, mint, or even tea. One of my favourite ways of doing flavoured water at home is mixing green tea with lemon and ginger. You can be as much creative as you want and explore different options – I am sure you will find your own favourite mix and start increasing your water intake.
We all know what to do in order to live the best version of our life. The problem is that we are human beings and sometimes we get lost due to the overwhelming load of information that surrounds us.
Continue reading “10-Day Wellbeing Challenge”In this blog post you will learn about three important steps to make your meditation at home work for you.
Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.
Thich Nhat Hanh
From time to time I get some messages in my inbox about practising meditation and the first steps to integrate meditation as a daily habit. Most of the messages I get are from people who are not sure about whether they are doing the “right” or “wrong” thing so, with that in mind, I recently recorded two Youtube videos in order to provide (hopefully) some answers:
Continue reading “3 Important Steps When Meditating at Home”I’m in the aftermath of some terrible months which have essentially been marked by overwhelming feelings and a deep frustration because most things in my life seem to be stuck and unchangeable. And even though this seems very familiar when thinking about the past few years (to the point that it even became the ‘new normal’), it is certainly not the best way to live for me. So last week I sat down with my laptop and I started typing in a blank page under the title:
“Put Your Life Together”
Even though I’m no longer finishing my PhD in September (had a review meeting last week…), I decided that I can’t keep delaying the changes that I need for myself right now. I have been trying to focus on getting things done as much as I humanly can but the pressure has been so much that I found myself sacrificing my wellbeing again. That in turn makes me feel incredibly miserable and unhappy.
If you follow me on instagram, you might know that I that I have a tattoo on my back which says:
Love yourself. Love your day. Love your life.
And being fuelled by several cups of coffee during the day, working non-stop in front of a computer, and having no sort of positive human interactions are totally incompatible with those three sentences whose purpose was in the first place to remind me of how I should actually live! Instead I have been leading such a terrible lifestyle that I am even ashamed of saying out loud my blog’s URL.
I miss my yoga in the morning, my warm water with lemon, my smoothies and juices, my healthy food, and most of all I miss the overall feeling of being fit (I haven’t done any workout besides walking… and I’m now three sizes bigger because I keep eating to numb my feelings and thoughts!). And it’s because I miss all these good things that I decided it is time to stop letting my current situation (being stuck in this PhD process) overdrive my mood and my wellbeing goals. So while listening to one of D. Carnegie’s audiobooks (“How To Stop Worrying and Start Living”), I decided to put a four-step approach to change in practise on my Google Drive’s blank page:
It wasn’t long until I a list of 12 items emerged. From finding a new house and applying for a different job in the local area to buying a gym membership and creating a saving account, the list revealed itself to be quite diverse. Under each item I then started to write a couple of actions that could contribute to the achievement of my overarching goals. I’m not going to share my detailed list, but here are my 12 items:
Put Your Life Together: #TheList
I can tell you that I already started to take action on some of these items. I showed interest in a house back in town, I applied for two jobs that I would sincerely love having, I have been writing up a lot in the last few days, and I also decided to only enjoy my friend’s love-life stories and stop thinking about mine. And… I also got a Thai massage taster today from my friend: actually I spent most of the time laughing because I realised that I’m really in a big physical trouble!
