A new beginning

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Ioana

The Healthy Series continues: dos and don’ts

Last week I decided to start this series about a subject that I believe to very important for a good quality of life and thus for contributing to our everyday happiness: healthy eating. In the first article we got to talk a bit about our shopping habits and showed you a video about the supermarket chains and how we ought to think a little bit further about how the products got on the shelf and the process that they go through until they reach our fridge/cupboard and ultimately our digestive system. 

Going further, the first and most important change is in the products that we bring home and stock our fridge with. What we have in the fridge is what we eat so ideally less processed food and more vegetables and fruit – I’m not the first nor the last one to say it yet I still see people eating processed food because it’s easier and more convenient. If possible, go as close to the source as you can. Most of the vegetables and fruit can look perfectly good and appealing but because of the chemical process of growth and the poor quality of the soil they lack the nutrients. It is easier to buy local in countries like my home country, Romania where you don’t have to do much effort to buy naturally grown vegetables, even from grandma’s garden. It’s one of the things I miss about Romania and I remember my grandfather used to have a garden full of home grown tomatoes that he would grow from nursery and at the end of the summer they’d be ripe and have this delicious smell and taste! Absolutely yummy!

In big cities like London is quite difficult to find something truely natural because everything is so automatised but try to look for the word ‘organic’ on the packaging, read the provenience (again, buying local when possible because the products take less time to get on the shelf therefore are more fresh) or shop from places like Wholefoods that are indeed a bit more pricey but really, I think no price is too high for preserving our health. Of course not to go to the other extreme of paying ridiculous amounts of money for something just because it has ‘organic’ on it. Overall I believe it’s worth it to allocate a bigger part of your budget for buying better food that keeps you energic and healthy but a sort of balance needs to be kept in mind.

Right, so more veggies and fruit. Next thing you need to know is that bread is not doing your body any favours. I’m sorry to break this news to you, don’t shoot the messenger. Wheat is just addictive and stimulates appetite, plus the gluten which is another thing you might want to steer clear of. So when I say wheat, I mean pasta as well (I know, this hurt me too). If you must and absolutely cannot live without them, try to get whole wheat pasta which contain the nutrient rich bran and germ out of the grain, not just the just the endosperm like the regular pasta. Even so, read the labels carefully for brown pasta that is masquerading as whole wheat. 

 I bet right about now you’re starting to think ‘oh man, there’s so much stuff that I can’t have’. Because everything happens so fast nowadays we think we don’t have time to prepare proper food but you’ll see that once you start making conciously choices, there are plenty of healthy alternatives and even more delicious ones. You don’t really have to give up the ‘bad’ stuff, just read the labels carefully, make sure you know where the food comes from, how the animals have been raised and fed, how the vegetables have been grown. Even if you do have some pasta or bread now and then, try to take the healthier alternative and ‘minimize the damage’. 

Our body is the only permanent home that we have and many people ruin their health in their younger years by having bad eating habits and try for years to recover it by paying huge amounts of money on treatment and medicine.

Like the Latins used to say ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ – a sound mind in a sound body. When we eat good, we feel good. When we feel good we can be at our highest standard – at work, in the relationship with the people that surround us, with family and friends, while practising our hobbies and well, all the time really. 

Next post will be about my favourite ingredients to use in cooking – cause I’ve been doing quite a bit of what not to do and it’s time for some advice on what to do do (see what I did there?).

Introduction to a healthier life

I’ve been meaning for a while to organise my thoughts around a subject that has become a good sized portion of my life: concious food shopping and healthy eating. I have to admit that here in London is more accesible to make healthy decisions than it probably is back in my home country Romania but nevertheless I am sure it’s possible (even if it involves making additional effort) to buy and eat healthy anywhere in the developed countries.

Let’s start with the begining, the chain starts in your shopping cart and in your cupboard – what you buy you eat. So it’s very clear to me that if you don’t want to eat junk, you shouldn’t buy it. Don’t even go in the crisps isle in the supermaket – there’s nothing healthy there. A couple of months ago, my very good friend sent me this video about the ‘behind the scenes’ of the process that brings the food you eat close and handy. I think it’s quite of a wake up call and although it’s not new (released in 2008-2009), I hadn’t heard about it untill 6 months ago and you probably haven’t either because that would mean more and more people finding out about the rotten base of the consumerist society. Have a look at it here: http://youtu.be/OyhPqrnm48o it’s not super long and it’ll make you think twice when you do your weekly shopping. Also, bear in mind that refusing to be aware of these things doesn’t mean they don’t happen. They do happen and the answer is not ignoring them but confronting them and finding alternatives because the more people change their ways, the better our lives will get.

Right, now that we’ve got that straight let’s talk a bit about our eating habits. Couple of motnhs ago, I went to the pub and looking through the menu I chose to have a juiciy beef burger with a side of chips. It tasted absolutely delicious! You may wander what am I on about if this a healthy lifestyle post. This is exactly the point I am trying to make, that is the only thing that that burger did for me – it tasted good. It didn’t bring any nutrients to my body hence it didn’t help my body fight diseases, it didn’t make my body healthier or stronger, on the contrary, to be able to process it, my body lost important ressources that could have been put to a better use. 

So next time when you are planning a meal or looking through the menu at a restaurant, ask yourself ‘Is this good fuel to keep my body going? Or am I just thinking about what tastes good for the 15-30 minutes that the eating lasts?’. We need to learn and educate ourselves that our eating habits mean self respect. Is as simple as that – how much do I respect myself? Do I deserve only the best for my body? And the answer will always be YES! Cause if you eat junk, you become junk – our bodies are intelligently build machines but the power lays in our hands to provide them only the best fuel.

You make decisions every time you buy food – why not make an informed and concious decision? Why buy what the supermarket want to sell you? Take the power back, buy only what YOU want and need.

Hoping that you enjoyed this post, I’ll be back with more practical advice about what and where to buy, what you can include and substitute in your diet and how you can get the most out of every meal you have.

You’ve failed? Good!

That means you’ve actually tried something!

Generally, I want my blog to be a place where people find inspiration and hope that the sun is going to shine, even if things get hard. That is just who I am and I really don’t know (or want) to be different. But today I am going to tell you about something that is generally seen as negative: failure.

Usually, we don’t tend to be happy when we fail. But what is failure really and most importantly, is it as bad as we think it is?

As I see it, failure is first and foremost, the attempt in doing something. Be it an exam, a job interview, asking someone out, asking your boss for a raise, attempts bring us forward, even if things don’t go they way we hoped they will. What matters most is that tiny voice in your head that said ‘what if?’. That voice is ambition, that voice is growth and that voice is hope – don’t let failure silence it. Try harder next time, avoid making the same mistakes, learn from every experience because in the end, that is how all successful people started. What they all had in common is the willingness to say ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’ and that means never giving up on the things that you want.

Image from larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

I won’t tell you that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, of course it does. That’s why they are called ‘winners’ and not ‘participants’ but from my point of view, the only losers are the ones that give up and stop trying.

Even if you cry, even if you feel helpless or misunderstood, find that tiny voice inside of you and build it up – I strongly believe that everyone has it, all you need to do is listen to it. And when you do, you won’t need anything or anyone else to help you reach your goal – all you’ll ever need is yourself.

So… What is YOUR ‘what if’?

Choose to be free

In our everyday lives we are constantly facing situations where decisions have to be made: the black or the white shirt, tea or coffee, tube or bus. These are simple decisions that do not have serious consequences in the long term but how do we act when life throws difficult situations at us and challenges our decision making power?

In such cases I often find myself thinking about my life and my actions as if I was watching a movie – this eliminates some of the emotional attachment and somehow encourages doing the ‘right’ thing – this right thing is not what society considers to be right but the decision that feels good inside each of us, considering each person’s set of values and morality.

Someone once said (possibly just an online quote but still a good one), when faced with an impossible decision, toss a coin – not because of the random result of letting the universe decide your fate but because when the coin is in the air, you find out what the result you are hoping for is. When this happens, even if what you find that you are wishing for seems impossible – do it! It is what you want and what YOU consider to be right and you won’t be able to ‘get over it’ until you make it true.

Life is short and can end in a blink of an eye – this thought should make everything so clear for us. Be brave enough to leave a place or a situation that no longer grows you, be brave enough to finally start that project that you’ve been thinking about, be brave enough to find a new challenging job, be brave enough to tell that special someone how you feel about them and most important: be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. YOU are the only one in charge of designing your life – make it a good one!

Paris through the eyes of a Londoner

The beginning of the year was quite busy for me, among other things I have been learning French for our office challenge – cause we’re fun like that. I am using our amazing looking app (hope the developers read this ;-)) called uTalk (read more about it here) because I recently went on a trip to Paris for a few days around New Year’s Eve and I knew that French people tend to expect everyone to speak French so I wanted to do my homework and at least learn how to ask for a coffee and a croissant.

I had high expectations about Paris, the city of love.

Is Optimism the younger brother of Denial?

Usually, most of us try to see the ‘full half of the glass’ and whenever we find ourselves in challenging situations we say that everything is going to be alright, things will work out for the best and that it’s not a big deal. I recently found myself in such a situation and I remembered it’s not the first time I’ve noticed this so I started wondering if maybe this thing that we call Optimism isn’t just Denial in disguise.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m a very big fan of the silver lining and you can definitely count on me to see the good in everything but how do we know to differentiate the situations when we are just making a big deal of something small (we have a saying in Romanian that goes: making a horse from a mosquito. Don’t ask.) from the ones when we really need to stop saying that it’s going to be OK and realise that it’s NOT going to be and we need to take active actions towards the result we want?

What helped me was zooming out. Try seeing your life like reading a book or seeing a movie and try to see people and actions objectively, as things that do not affect you. Reading this book, what would you want to discover between the pages? If you were seeing you life at a cinema, would you go ‘Nooo, don’t do that!’? You are the director in your life’s movie – the decisions you make are yours and only yours because at the end of the day YOU are the one that has to live with them and YOUR wellbeing should be your priority.

Sometimes we get absorbed in life’s carrousel or get too busy with our daily routine and we just go with the flow. Personally, I think only dead fish go with the flow. I believe life should be embraced and that we should make each day matter, even if all we did is learning that there are no penguins at the North Pole, only South and some other isolated regions (really, I’m not joking).

From time to time, when we feel overwhelmed or when we realise we have been frustrated with something for longer that we should have, it’s good to take a break, take a step back and ask ourselves if we are actively pursuing our life goals, what we are doing wrong, what are we really good at and then re-evaluate our priorities, give up the things that don’t help us grow and decide to take on more things that do.

As one Pinterest inspirational quote said, you are the CEO of your own life and it is only up to you to achieve success. Don’t hang around waiting for the days to pass by, our time is limited. Make it count.

Happy New Year!

The story of a winter sunrise in London

I was feeling adventurous and inspired this week so I decided to put an effort into my photography passion and go shoot the sunrise on Saturday. My goal was not necessarily the sun itself, but a certain landmark in the mellow light of the morning sun. I chose St. Paul’s Cathedral which I consider to be one of the most beautiful landmarks of London and decided to shoot it from The Millennium Bridge which is also another great piece of architecture that you should definitely see if you’re around.
With all that in mind, there was one more factor that needed to be settled and that is: the weather. I know you’re probably thinking ‘oh well that’s easy, just check the forecast’. I wish it was true, but the only way to find out how the weather in London is going to be, is to wait until that moment comes and go outside. Really, the forecast can’t be trusted here because there can always be a light rain happening out of nowhere or a shy ray of sun through the thick clouds (more often the first one rather than the second). Nevertheless, the forecast said it wasn’t going to rain so I decided it’s worth to take the risk.

How to be a happy Londoner

So apparently the lovely Blog of Sunshine has become quite popular. I’m happy to share with you another guest-post from one of my close friends, Alex. She the odd one out happy ‘Hammersmithian’ and she’s sharing some tips&tricks of living a happy Londoner (and not only) life. I absolutely loved reading it, the English humour just cracks me up. Enjoy!

PS: Alex has her own blog about languages, translation and other cool stuff if you want to check it out: http://robinandthemachine.wordpress.com.

According to this latest piece of research, happiness and life satisfaction levels vary quite a bit across London. Whilst I wasn’t too surprised to see that people living in the super-wealthy borough of Kensington and Chelsea seem pretty happy with their lives, I was a bit surprised that people in my area, Hammersmith and Fulham, seem like a pretty dissatisfied bunch. Obviously there could be 100s of different reasons why people are unhappy with their life, but I thought I’d share a few of my ‘secrets’ to being one of the happy people in Hammersmith!

Exciting London

Hello boys and girls! As you know, I am always on the lookout for new and exciting activities to do in this amazing city where you would have to try really really hard to get bored. So I discovered that the Tower Bridge opened this new exhibition – got on their website (https://www.gammabookings.com/TowerBridgeBookings/), booked tickets and went for an adventure!