Five ways to keep stress from sabotaging your good habits.

Whenever I get stressed, I get overwhelmed and something blows out.

I start eating more white foods. (Sugar and carbs)

My dishes pile up.

I grab caffeinated drinks instead of water.

All the new 'good' habits get replaced by old 'destructive' habits.

Why does this happen?

How can we take note of our stress indicators and avoid the landslide that follows?

Here are five ways you can get on top of bad habits that are triggered by stress.

1. Clear a space

My biggest stress indicator is when my 'dumping zones' get out of control. Places like the kitchen bench, the kitchen table or my dresser start to pile up with dishes, school notes, receipts and clothes.

Spending 10 minutes clearing off an area helps me to calm down and relax and start to feel in control again.

When the kitchen bench is clear, I seem to breathe easier.


2. Iron it out

Another effect of stress is paralysis. We can only see the mountain of things that we need to do, so we hide with a box of chocolates and do nothing.

I was feeling like this the other day but decided to do one task that needed to get done, the ironing.

As I started to press the wrinkles out of my husband's shirts, making them look crisp and clean, I began to feel better.

Something inside of me released, and I felt ... good.

Find one methodical task that needs doing it and do it.

Make the bed, clean the bathroom, sweep, etc.

Creative time spent painting, drawing and colouring can also be very therapeutic.  

Find what works for you.

Doing something is constructive, but sitting down and worrying with a bag of potato chips is not.


3. Do a meal plan 

I'm no good at just pulling meal ideas out of my 'hat'.

However, if I have a meal plan set up in advance and I have everything I need, it's easier for me to stick to cooking healthier meals.

I also look for things to snack on when I am stressed, so I fill up the fridge with fruit and veg so it's easy to grab. (Don't even buy that crappy food! It always gets eaten first.)


4. Forgive yourself

If you've fallen off the wagon in a big way, e.g. eaten the whole packet of cookies in one sitting...

Let it go.

It doesn't mean that you are going to do it again tomorrow!

My hubby and I have a saying when we know we've eaten too much, "We'll never speak of it again!"

If we hang on to the guilt, self loathing takes over and we just kind of give up.

If you have your coffee and cake or a packet of Tim Tams, enjoy and then go to the store and buy as many veggies as you can and gorge on them for the next day or so. It will be ok.


5. Zoom out a bit

There are 6 billion people on the planet.

Look at your life and then zoom out a bit. See your community.

Zoom out further and think about what is happening in your state, your country and then the world.

Where does your personal stress fit into these pictures?

Nothing stays the same. Good and bad times come and go.

Years ago, I heard some good advice. It went along the lines of , 'Will this matter in a week? Will this matter in a month? Will this matter in a year? Will this matter in 5 years?'

We get so wrapped up in our tiny little lives. There is a bigger picture. There is a point. The point is to see the bigger picture.



Please share your thoughts on what helps you to overcome stress.

Like and share this with your community!

See you soon,

Heather xoxo

Image from pexels.com

Banana Bread Supreme indeed!

I am more of a baker than a cook. This is the one thing I inherited from my mother, who was always baking things from scratch when we were growing up. (lucky me!)

If you are like me, you love a cup of tea and a little snack for morning tea. Just a little something to keep the 'think tank' going until lunch.

I'm a huge believer in home made food from scratch. You have control over every aspect of the ingredients and you know what's in your food!

In recent years with all the fuss about sugar and 'white foods' I've been trying to tweak a few recipes to add nutritional elements.

Two things that I've been changing with my baking is reducing or replacing sugar and seeing what I can substitute for anything that calls for vegetable oil.

This recipe calls for 1 c of sugar. I recently read that you can cut the sugar in any recipe and hardly notice the difference. So, I've changed that to 3/4 c of sugar and I use half rapadura sugar and half regular white sugar.

The rapadura sugar is an unrefined ingredient made from cane juice. It tastes more like molasses and gives the bread a lovely darker crust. (Using very ripe bananas will also add to the sweetness in this recipe.)

The other ingredient I add is greek yogurt. The original recipe called for sour cream.

I now use greek yogurt for EVERYTHING that originally calls for sour cream and that includes as a condiment for mexican food. Nobody in my family has ever noticed the difference and it works great in baking too! In fact if you have a muffin recipe that calls for oil you can replace it with the yogurt.

(Another little secret that my family don't know about is adding chia seeds. I grind a tablespoon in a coffee grinder and add to the batter. Chia seeds are packed with antioxidants, fibre, protein and Omega -3 fatty acids.)

So, here you go!

Banana Bread Supreme

1/2 C butter
3/4 C Sugar (1/2 rapadura, 1/2 white)
2 eggs
3 small mashed bananas (you can use defrosted bananas from your freezer)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C greek yogurt
2 C plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbs of white chia seeds ground (shhhhhhh!)
walnuts to stir in the at the end (do not use if putting in your child's lunchbox!)

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Beat in bananas. Slowly add in flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt mixture. Mix until moist. Stir in nuts with a wooden spoon, just before baking. Grease a loaf tin. (I usually make one standard size loaf with nuts and one small loaf or a few muffins with no nuts for the kids.)

Bake at 180/350 degrees for 45 min or 160/325 for 60 min. The loaf is ready when you can stick a knife in and it comes out clean. (Cool on a wire rack.)

You can enjoy this warm, cold or toasted with butter. I usually keep it in the fridge after it is cooled.

I hope you enjoy this. If you make any other 'tweaks' to the recipe or know how to make it gluten free, let me know.

See you soon,

Heather xoxo

PS If you like this blog, please like our Facebook page! Sending you lots of love today!

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

I'm sitting at the airport waiting for a flight that is eventually delayed. It's been a long day, waiting...

Whenever I'm stuck somewhere, I start watching people. (not in a creepy way)

Across the room is a woman sitting on a bench, her shoes are off and she is sitting yoga style with her legs crossed close to her body. She is reading a thick book intently and looks to be around 60 years old.

She is fit and I can tell by the 'yoga' style of sitting she is flexible and comfortable in her body.

I notice another woman. She is overweight and has a walking stick. When she gets up, it takes her some effort and she struggles to walk even a short distance. She also looks about 60.

I think about how I'm going to end up at the age of 60. I see two possibilities at either end of the spectrum before me.

I am currently skating on the coattails of my youthful health.

I've now stepped slightly into my forties.

Although not technically old, I'm at that point where youth will no longer be on my side to boost my metabolism and keep my cholesterol naturally low.

The choices I make now are more important for my health than the ones I made 20 years ago. If I don't take care of my body now, the down hill slide with gather momentum, and by the time I am 60 it will be a nearly impossible to change the tide.

Fast forward 6 months to this week.

I tentatively go to my first yoga lesson. I walk into the studio and meet my teacher. She is a small pixie like woman of about 65. She's been doing yoga for about 30 years. She's had her health issues, she told me, like a stroke, but yoga has helped her bounce back.

She puts me to shame with her flexibility and strength.

But now I know who I want to be when I grow up.

I've made the decision to act now.

It may not be easy, but there is so much to live for. I could be around for another 40 years. It's my choice now to make those years plentiful and healthy or the opposite.

When I grow up, I want to me the healthiest me, I can be.

See you soon,

Heather xoxo

P.S If you like this blog, please like our page! It would also mean so much if you shared this and other posts with your friends on Facebook. Let me know your thoughts about growing older.

How to know when it's time to stop and have a break

I could have named this post 'Why I hate Twitter' but that felt a little harsh.

I sat down last night for a little 'me' time. This meant that I finally had time to work on my website. 

The first thing I would get done would be to reinstate my Twitter account so that I could use it to post links to my blogs, etc.

A couple of years ago, when I first had this idea, I built my twitter account up to about 800 followers. 

As I logged on, I hit the first road block - someone had spammed my account. There were about 24 'tweets' advertising the best place to buy a ROLEX.

I took a deep breath and began deleting all of the posts one by one.

Then, with great excitement, I wrote a clever tweet with link to one of my favourite blog posts.

Second roadblock - A message popped up saying that I sounded like a spammer and the post could not be sent. 

So, I tried to write something else without a link, same result. 

I figured I'd do it another way. I went to my blog and tried to post a link to twitter by hitting the tweet button beneath the post. 

Third roadblock - 'Your tweet could not be accepted at this time.'

FINE!

I looked up the troubleshooting on Twitter. I learned that if your account has been hacked you need to change your password.

So, I login to change my password and it says it is sending a verification code to my selected email address. 

Fourth roadblock - It is an email address I no longer have!

I try to login the the old email. Wrong password, wrong password, WRONG PASSWORD!

So, I ask for help, nicely. 

Fifth roadblock - 'Safari no longer accepts this platform.'

By now, an hour has passed. My head was starting to hurt and felt like throwing myself on the floor.

So, I finally stop. 

I find my hubby and start to tell him what happened. He runs the other way.

I follow him and say, 'I have to tell you what happened or I'll explode!' I start to babble and then cry. 

Then he looks at me like, 'REALLY?' So then I start to giggle-cry. 

'This IS SERIOUS. I couldn't get into Twitter. You don't understand. This is important to me!!!!!'

The next day, it took me five minutes to fix the problem (no roadblocks) and now I can happily tweet away. (@potaotsackdiet if you want to find me.)

The moral is, when you are doing something and it gets to the point where you are actually 'shovelling potatoes into your sack', it's time to stop. Walk away. Find something else, anything else to do. 

Save your sanity, and that of the people around you. Life really isn't full of roadblocks. The timing is wrong. 

It doesn't hurt to have a sense of humour about these things. Relax, breathe, let it go. Come back to it later. It works every time.

See you soon,

Heather xoxo

Finding hope and a road map

I was going to begin this post by writing about my inability to do housework and tell you that I'm just not wired to do that kind of thing. 

I don't like mess, but I hate the 'drain' of cleaning it up more.

I was going to fill you in about creating a plan that I could stick to, how getting on top of the housework would help me to build good habits and clear my mental clutter.

S0, I put a little teaser out on my The Potato Sack Diet Facebook page and I got a response from a friend that changed my thinking... and this post. 

She told me to look up The Fly Lady. 

So I did.

Here's what I found... hope and a road map.

This woman (who was also hopeless at keeping house) figured out a way to make it happen, to organise herself and then she wrote a book about it and then created a HUGE online following.

It all starts with cleaning out your kitchen sink, and I mean until it gleams. Then it follows with basically getting up and dressed in the mornings and doing a little each day. 

She talks about 'hot spots' those terrible places where junk continually accumulates in your house. We all have them, and I probably have about 5!

She is calm, she is in charge and she cares. 

So, I'm not going to pontificate about how to clean your house. I'm just about those potatoes, but if cleaning your house is going to help you let go of those potatoes, I suggest you check her out too.

I will let you know how it goes. This is a high wall for me to scale. It's been a life long struggle. I want to beat this thing. I'm going to ditch the CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome) and embrace pride in my home.

Thanks to Shannon for the suggestion! This is why I'm doing this, to build a community that cares and shares its collective resources.

I've thought about starting one of those Facebook groups where different people can chime in with goals, progress and tips but I'm still not sure about that. If you have an opinion, please let me know. 

In the meantime, I am here to grow and I hope you are too. 

My goal is to one day provide 'hope and a roadmap' to others.

If you are enjoying this website, please comment, like and share!

I'd also love to hear the little things you are doing to let those potatoes go!

See you soon,

Heather xoxox
(With a gleaming sink and husband who thinks she is mad!)

photo credit: After this, I give up. Probably. via photopin (license)

Welcome to the first Potato Sack Challenge!

It’s been exciting to finally launch this website and begin sharing my journey with you of letting go of all those potatoes that are weighing me down.

But the reason it is most important to me is because I feel it is through support, community and connection that we are able to change.

I’m creating a community of ideas and encouragement so that people know they are not alone, so that we can work on our potatoes aka ‘issues’ together.

So, I was overwhelmed when my friend and work colleague came up to me the other day and said she wanted to share and idea with me. Her eyes were sparkling and full of enthusiasm.

She said, “Let’s talk about it over a walk!” So we did. It turns out she is going to have to have surgery in 120 days. One of the things a surgeon will always tell you as you are preparing for an operation is ‘you need to lose weight.’ Excess weight can be dangerous when you are ‘under the knife.’

She admitted she finally had the motivation to make some serious changes.

Then she read my blog… She got excited and knew that if I was on the same journey, she would have someone to challenge her and keep her accountable too.

My friend decided that each day she is going to add a healthy thing into her life. She said,  “It’s going to be 120 days of losing potoates! And each day when I do my healthy thing, I will say, That’s another potato out of my sack!”

So we decided that this would be the first Potato Sack Challenge.

Everyone has his or her own reasons for wanting to change something. And it doesn’t have to be anything to do with weight loss.

You may want to:

• ·      Declutter your home
• ·      Find time for creative pursuits
• ·      Drink more water
• ·      Spend less time watching TV
• ·      Save money or get out of debt
• ·      Get up earlier in the morning

You decide what small thing will make a big difference in your life.

Choose your goal, decide on what kind of daily changes that goal is going to take and give yourself a timeline.

Right now, my biggest potato is feeling out of control with my messy house. We simply have too much stuff. It is ‘weighing  me down’ too.

My commitment for the next 30 days is to put at least 5 things each day into a ‘give away’ box. (Yes, we have that much excess stuff!)

I don’t want to sell it, I really don’t have time, I just want to let it go.

My friend pulled out her dusty ‘ol juicer and is going to make some lovely apple and kale juice this weekend. She is also replacing unhealthy carbs in her lunch with a scrummy hard-boiled eggs and she’s even going to try her hand at growing wheat grass.  

It’s not easy to make changes. But I encourage you to think of something you could do. It will be a small daily investment that will pay big dividends in terms of your well-being.

Let me know what you decide. Put a comment below or comment in the Facebook link. I’d love the opportunity to offer support and be your cheerleader.

See you soon,

Heather xoxox

Why its never easy starting something new

Have you ever noticed that when you make a commitment to something new it seems like life throws every possible obstacle in your way.

You decide to eat healthier and your work colleague brings cake to celebrate her birthday.

You try to get to the gym and you pull a muscle.

You will definitely put money into the savings account this week and the car breaks down.

Life never fails!

Tonight, after a long hectic week of work, all I wanted to do was sit down and write.

I promise you the second I sat down, my daughter was next to me... I thought, 'great, I'll just focus on getting her to bed, get my chores done, and I'll be back in a jiffey!'

Two hours later, she's still not asleep. I snuck out to send you this message.

I recently read another writer who said he had to get up at 5am every morning to find the time to write each day.

HELP!

I will find a way.

In the meantime, I better sneak back into reality.

I so badly want to share the great things that happened today. The inspiring chat with a friend...

But promise me, you'll come tomorrow and I'll tell you all about it.

I'll probably be sneaking the time again, but I'll do whatever it takes.

See you soon,

Heather xoxo