Colour Control

I seem to be getting slowly but surely back on track. I'm steering my snack choices away from chocolate and flapjack, towards fruit and veg, and my drinks away from hot chocolate and wine towards camomile and fruit teas. I even managed to persuade myself to cycle into work yesterday for what seems like the first time in months, and my gym going is fitting back into more of a routine.

I've come up with a new little challenge for myself. I always respond far better to aiming to do good things, rather than aiming not to do bad ones. One thing I always make sure I do is get my 5 a day, the problem recently has been the other stuff I supplement them with, and the little cheats I use to get them. Simple solution - raise the target, meaning that there's less room in the eating plan for anything else. So I now have a little table to fill in every week with the days of the week in columns, and rows for eight different colours (red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, white, brown/black), and the aim is to fill as many of them with fruit and veg as I can without always having the same thing for each colour.

Which then leads to me pondering whether beetroot is red or purple, and what colour a pink lady apple is. Some colours are harder than others, and I appreciate that I can't always get them all, but at least I can identify gaps and try to fill them. It's not scientific, but I quite like the structure as a way of making sure that I don't eat the same five fruit and veg every day. It turns my post lunch snack attack into a treasure hunt for something that's a different colour, rather than a furtive trip to the vending machine.

I'm actually surprised by how much difference I'm noticing. My energy levels do seem much more steady, my snack cravings are fading, and my skin does seem to be improving. I'm not sure that my weight has moved very far (if at all), and my mood still goes up and down, but if I'm feeling even just a bit better about myself, which I am then that's a start.