MEDITATION AT MEAL TIMES

So at the moment I'm reading 'The Miracle of Mindfulness - the classic guide to meditation by the world's most revered master' / Thich Nhat Hanh and it has brought to light some wonderful things I'd like to share with you.

~ Mindfulness should not just be something practiced during 20 minutes of daily meditation. ~

It should be something you work on whenever you can. And one example of when we're very bad at living in the present moment and being self-aware is meal times/snack time/ tea time. We tend to prepare our next forkful before we've finished the present one, eager to get onto the next task of the day, or drink a cup of tea whilst watching the TV and barely even realise we've drank it. Or the worst... Read through your e-mails on your phone over breakfast. This is the opposite of being mindful - this is living in the future, moving from one activity to the next, constantly one step ahead.

Food and drink is one of the ways in which we nourish our bodies, and these should be times of calm, present thinking. You should take each forkful or each sip at a time and proceed only after that. Hanh teaches that meal time is one of the perfect times of the day when we can practice mindfulness in a meditative way, by concentrating and appreciating the food and drink we have and thinking about its flavours, being careful not to let your mind drift to the next task of the day.

I find this easier by planning my day. Making lists in the morning and evening - so that I allow myself time to be mindful and present without scurrying thoughts and mental lists that I'm trying to keep a hold of.

I propose you put down the electricals! NO phones or TV during meal time. Take meal times as an opportunity to meditate and be mindful.

Plus, if your goal is weight loss, taking time to concentrate on your food will subconsciously make you feel more full than if you eat your food and barely realise you have done so.

Have a beautiful day!

Courtney x

10 WAYS TO BEAT LATE NIGHT CRAVINGS!

So night time cravings are just one of those things... You're bored or watching TV and the only thing you really want is to tuck into a tube of pringles - right? BUT you know that as soon as you've finished those pringles you'll be angry that it's only Wednesday and you've already blown your new diet already (so you'll probably finish off with some ice cream to cheer yourself up because the damage is already done)! Sound familiar?

Yeah we've all had those nights... 

Nowadays I'm pretty good at overcoming late night hunger though, so here are some ways that I combat it, and I hope you find these usefull too!

The thing is, eating late at night can set you back days in achieving your weight loss goals (if you are trying to lose weight) and is just generally a bad thing in a healthy lifestyle because your body has no time to use the energy from what you eat and is already slowing down ready to sleep, so most of what you consume will just get stored and unfortunately you can't 'just burn it off tomorrow'.

1. Herbal tea

Herbal tea, preferably camomile, green roobios, fennel or a green tea with a little honey can often do the trick. I find that, especially with a teaspoon of honey, a nice herbal tea (which often actually speeds up your metabolism) is tasty enough to satisfy your taste buds, especially if you crave something sweet. Often as well, we think we're hungry when actually we just need water, so a mug of, essentially, infused water is perfect. Besides, herbal teas will help to calm you down and will perhaps stop this agitated desire to eat a bag of sweets! 

   2. Super light crunchy deliciousness

Cucumber and homemade hoisin sauce is a great one. Often, when tea or water just won't cut it, something crunchy will be able to satisfy your body's cravings. And this snack is delicious - even more so if it's a Chinese takeaway that you're craving at 11:30pm! The sauce is pretty low calorie, and the calories aren't really from fat or carbs, so there no risk of your body storing your snack! And cucumber has so few calories that they're not worth counting! (There's a recipe for hoisin sauce here and a delicious dish that goes with it).

   3. Mini frozen smoothies

Mini frozen smoothie pops (homemade and not full of sugary junk of course) are great because they last a while and will make you feel more full after than e.g a cereal bar (which if you're like me disappears in seconds). Make sure to use water instead of orange juice in your smoothies and avoid the sugariest fruits.

   4. Don't mope

Moping around and doing nothing with your evening will surely lead you walking to the fridge in search of 30 seconds of comfort from a chocolate bar! Be productive with your evenings; do some reading, watch a documentary, find some new hobbies like painting, etc! But whatever you do, don't mope! 

   5. Try to include protein and fiber in your dinner

It's shown that protein and fiber will help you to stay fuller for longer, so although veggies are great, include some protein and fiber otherwise you'll be hungry again within half an hour! Beans and healthy grains are a great way to bulk up your dinner and pack in lots of nutrients too!

   6. Go to sleep earlier

Going to sleep earlier sounds silly, but if you're used to staying up until 2am then you're bound to get hungry if you had dinner at 5pm and have now gone 7 hours without any food! Humans are naturally grazers, and going 7 hours without food is unhealthy. So get to sleep earlier. Besides, there's nothing wrong with a snack at e.g 7pm, you just want to avoid anything past about 8pm, based on a bedtime between 10-12, anything later and you're just going too long without food.

   7. Have a bath

I've titled this 'have a bath', but do anything relaxing and tranquil really. A lot of us want to eat junk food out of stress and agitation and our hunger can often be cured by just winding down in the bath, with a good book or going for a walk. But not watching TV or playing on your phone - no electricals! Which brings me on to my next point...

   8. Put down the electricals

Spending all night on your iPad or phone is no good for your brain or your sleeping patters. The back-lit screens tell your brain that you should still be awake, so your body doesn't release (or releases less of) the hormones that are released at the end of the day to prepare you for sleep and making you feel tired - and certainly not feel hungry. So if you want to beat night time hunger, you can't watch Netflix until 1am.

   9. Do a mini workout/yoga

Doing a mini workout - perhaps just 15-20 minutes of stretches and exercises, or a short yoga routine will release endorphins, help you to feel more relaxed and make you feel a little more tired and ready for bed. Besides, after doing a workout, we're a lot less inclined to eat a chocolate bar as we feel like we wasted our time doing a workout.

   10. Structure your whole day

So what this all boils down to and the recurring theme here appears to be that late night hunger is a symptom of an imbalanced lifestyle. If you eat breakfast, a few healthy snacks, a good healthy lunch and dinner with plenty of protein and fiber and do some exercise before settling down to a good, productive and relaxing evening, the chances are you won't even feel this hunger and need to fight it! So think about reshaping your day! With more structure and earlier nights and there's sure to be a change!

Here's a challenge -

Set yourself the challenge to have NO night time binges for 21 days. Write out a list, and make it as pretty and fancy or as straight forward as you like, and write out

Day 1 
Day 2
Day 3...

And tick off each day as you successfully do it! If you cave in, you have to start again from day 1. Once you've made it 21 days it should be habit (and providing you're eating enough during the day) you should no longer feel cravings for junk food late at night!

Here are some BAD suggestions that I came across on the internet, some 'quick fix solutions'...

1. Eat dinner later
Um, no?! That completely defeats the point of trying NOT to eat late at night. Really, our biggest meal should be breakfast as the first meal of the day, then lunch, then a very small meal for dinner as there's little time to burn it off. Eating dinner later is a BAD move. If you're trying to move your health in the right direction, make dinner EARLIER and have a smaller portion and compensate with a bigger lunch!

2. Chew gum
Chewing gum on an empty stomach is bad for you. Your body thinks you're eating and your stomach produces acid to break down the 'food', which results in excess acid in the stomach which isn't being used up breaking down food. So instead it damages the lining of your stomach and can result in stomach ulcers (very bad news indeed). Besides, chewing gum can make you feel bloated or more hungry than before anyway.

3. 'Drink LOADS of water!'
Let's be honest, the taste of water isn't going to curb your cravings for something sweet or savoury. In fact it'll probably just make you feel bloated and ill (and still wanting something sweet). What you should do instead is stay hydrated during the day and make sure to drink water with meals, especially dinner in this case, so that they fill you up more.

But lastly, don't beat yourself up about it guys! We all have those days where we think 'I've had a bad day and I just don't care - I WILL devour a pack of cookies tonight whilst I watch Bridget Jones'. And that's fine! As long as you're not eating giant carby pasta bakes or fat filled burgers at midnight every night... But once in a while, don't worry about it! :)

And here's another idea - don't keep junk food in the house then you can't eat it! Or at least perhaps just some dark chocolate. But this isn't possible for me, and probably many of you, who live with others who keep all of the tempting junk food in the house!

Thanks for reading guys! Please comment and let me know what you think/ what you do at night - I'd love to hear your feedback! And share this post to help others with their late night cravings!

My New Year's Resolutions Explained!

(Just a picture of a tree I took last sunny Sunday on the way to London)

So it's that time of year again - New Year's Resolutions. It's a clean slate, a great opportunity to take on new challenges and it's the time of year that we all (not just the avid, daily goal-setters) take to setting goals and rules and new little tips to live our lives by in 2015...

Now, I wasn't going to write a post on this, as I'm quite unsure where this year will take me. But I thought that perhaps if I try and get things down on paper (or a page somewhere within the internet) then I might be clearer myself.

However... Firstly, I'd like to say that some of these aren't necessarily things that I've decided that I must start now and do every single day until the end of the year, but more where I'd like to be somewhere down the line of 2015. Part of setting goals I think, is being realistic and at least making these goals achievable within modern busy lives. There are two types of goals really; things we pledge to do, and things we pledge not to do. And as a rule of thumb, the things we pledge not to do, we should be stricter on, because these should in theory be easier. This is because obviously the things that we decide to do, there's always the problem of finding the time to do it. So that's why some of my New Year's Resolutions are slightly different.

1) Get to sleep earlier

Now this is one of those difficult ones, where I'd love to set myself a bed time of e.g 11pm, but that's simply unrealistic (especially considering I don't finish work until 00:00 on one night of the week). But, it's also one where I feel like I need structure or clear aim. So I've decided to set myself a 'bed time' of 11:45 (most of the time) which doesn't include reading time. I think that's more achievable. I know that this is something that I need to do in 2015, so that I can wake up early and make the most of the days. I hate sleeping in! I absolutely detest it, and it almost ruins my day where I'm so annoyed that I've wasted a great deal of it. Besides, everything is better after a good night's sleep. As well as this, in the summer, when the sun rises very early, unfortunately I naturally awake with it, meaning that if I sleep at 2am (which isn't unusual at the moment) I'll end up with only a few hours sleep which just isn't good enough!

2) Read. Every single day.

I love reading and recently I've read some really wonderfully posts which I mentioned in a post a few days ago. But when life get busy and I'm short of time, and don't get home and into bed until 1/2am, the tendency is to skip the reading. Which really is silly, because reading a chapter from an inspiring book for half an hour always helps me to have a much better quality night's sleep, free of REM sleep, in which case I probably wake up better rested, despite having 30 minutes less. So this is something I need to make time for. I'm a firm believer in this little motto that 'if you don't have time, make time'. Whether it's getting up 30 minutes earlier, spending 30 minutes less 'doodling' or killing two birds with one stone and for example reading on the train or over breakfast. When I'm in a good pattern of sleeping at a reasonable time and waking up early, I'll read over my coffee in the morning, sometimes for half an hour spare during the day, and then for about half an hour before bed, with a cup of camomile tea. But I wish to get to a place where I do this every single day without being 'too busy'.

3) Meditate and/or practice yoga every day

This one is very similar to that above. Taking the time to be in the present moment and be at peace, is worth every minute that you spend doing it and the benefits are simply indisputable. As Robin Sharma wrote in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, saying that you're too busy to spend time improving yourself and your life, is as silly as saying 'you're too busy driving to stop and get gas'.

4) Food - Fight the impulse to finish everything on my plate, avoid refined sugars and no sweets whatsoever

This sounds like a bit of a silly one... But a lot of the time, I find myself trying really hard to finish what's on my plate, in somewhat of an obsessive compulsive way, when I don't want to finish it and certainly am not enjoying doing so. And I suppose what I mean by this, is I should 'listen to my body'. If I've had enough of a nice meal, I should stop. But similarly, if I'm really, really hungry one day, I should eat (healthy snacks at that) but I shouldn't feel compelled to 'wait until lunch' and so forth. I want to avoid refined sugars in things where I can as they're not at all needed in our diets, and only act as toxins which damage my teeth and hair, etc. So it goes without saying that I certainly shouldn't eat sweets, considering they're made up of mostly sugar, plus other completely unnatural nasties!

5) NO alcohol

Last, but certainly not least... The question of alcohol. This is one that I'm really stuck on (and would really love your opinions)! I would love to be completely t-total, I feel like it would be totally liberating to be able to say 'no thank you, I don't drink'. It would be wonderful to go to a party, or a night out and know that I can have a really great time without the need for any alcohol. And I could completely rid myself of the horrible hangovers, the negative health effects and everything else that comes with alcohol consumption. And as part of becoming Buddhist - and not seeking pleasure from external things, never mind the likes of drugs, alcohol, money, etc - it would be a big step in my self-discipline and in being more mindful. But then I think, a glass of wine with a meal is not only not bad for you, but can have positive health effects, so is it extreme and unnecessary to be completely t-total? At the moment, I've decided to do it, because in being completely t-total there's no room for loop holes and saying 'a few glasses is fine', etc. I'm just slightly undecided about whether or not being completely t-total is necessary.

P.S And please don't get the wrong idea - I rarely drink anyway, perhaps about 2-3 times a month!

Thank you for reading my New Year's Resolutions! And Happy New Year! I'd love to here what yours are, so leave them in the comments below, or leave a link if you've written your own post! Courtney :)

New reads // for positive thinking, happiness and mindfulness

Hello peoples! These are some of the wonderful new books I received for Christmas that I absolutely cannot wait to read, having just finished some other similar and wonderful books!

• The Miracle of Mindfullness, The Classic Guide to Meditation by the World's Most Revered Master // Thich Nhat Hanh
• How to Practice the Way to a Meaningful Life // HH Dalai Lama*
• The Art of Thinkng Clearly // Rolf Dobelli
• Discover Your Destiny with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari // Robin Sharma

I have recently finished the two of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari books by Robin Sharma, including the first (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari) and the second, The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari) which were absolutely fabulous and I kind of feel as though I should write a separate post about them... I also read the famous Alchemist by Brazillian author Paulo Coelho which was so fabulous and unique!

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari tells the tale of a hot shot lawyer who was making a fortune and spending his earnings on his expensive party life style when he made it out of the office late at night, much to the detriment of his relationships, health and inner happiness. Consequently, during a stressful court case, the lawyer, Julian Mantle suffered a heart attack in the middle of the court room and had the realisation that he was running himself and his life into the ground. Following this he embarks on a journey and upon his return visits a friend of his from his law days to share everything he has discovered and how he made a miraculous turn around of his life from what it was before. The entire book is based around this discussion with his friend and is totally gripping. The most wonderful thing about this book, is that it doesn't merely say 'mind over matter' like many books of this kind but it gives you ways, in every chapter, of turning your own life around, or simply making the most of life and everything it has to offer. It realises that people have busy lives and cannot dedicate 12 hours a day to self-improvement, so it gives you ways around that. 

The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is similar but equally as captivating having read the first. In fact, I think I even preferred this one. In this novel, the book actually documents the travels of Jonathan Landry, a lost relative of Julian Mantle who is going through a similar crisis within his own life being stuck in a job he dislikes which causes him great stress and having ruined his marriage and put a strain on his relationship with his son. Much to his initial distress, Jonathan is sent around the world by Julian, collecting life-saving letters for a reason that he does not know. Throughout the book, you see Jonathan meet extraordinary and inspiring people and see and experience wonderful things - you see his character grow and develop on the journey and eventually discover if he can turn his life around. It's a heart warming story that leaves you inspired.

Now, neither of these books are particularly profound, and I do not claim they will change your life, but they are heart warming and inspiring and will hopefully give you your daily dose of inspiration to pursue a happy life.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is incredible! It almost feels silly to review this book, as there must be tens of thousands of reviews out there. The book is so unique that it's impossible describe without just urging you to read it yourself. Similarly to the above mentioned, The Alchemist is a fable, following the journey of a young man on his attempt to follow his destiny and how the the universe as one, described in this book as 'the soul of the world', works and conspires to help those seeking their destiny. It shows how the boy comes to understand the soul of the world, and his place within it. One of my favourite quotes from the book (though there are many) is 'the boy remembered... that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn' as the young man found the strength to continue through tough times knowing that he will eventually find what he needs. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is so unique and wonderful that no review will ever do justice the magic encapsulated within this masterpiece. If you read one book this year - make it this one.  

* I have begun with this book as after reading several stories, I'm after some simple teachings from none other than HH Dalai Lama himself.

Dog walks at sunset!

I realised yesterday that I live in a really lovely area when I took our little Bichon Frisé for a walk at sunset. You can see her, Pippa-Anne, in the top left.

It's the perfect time of day; it's quiet, not too hot for Pippa and the scenery is actually rather beautiful. You should be able to see the picture of the giant, wooden apple chair and on the right, an apple tree - there's a small community orchard there with fruits to pick for yourself!

The walk we do is about 1.5 miles and takes about half an hour. It's really great evening exercise for me and for the dog and is a good way to wind down and enjoy the scenery before the evening dusks.

I'd really recommend a 30 minute walk at sunset to get some exercise and wind down for the evening! :-)

Camomile tea and honey!

I'm a big fan of herbal and fruit teas and this is my current favourite! 

• As a caffeine-free tea, with natural relaxing properties, it's a great drink to have to help you to wind down before bed and sleep well - especially for those of you who struggle to fall asleep quickly at night as camomile is known to ease insomnia.
• The added honey (around a teaspoon) gives it a lovely sweet flavour and also makes the drink perfect if you're suffering with a cold and/or have a sore throat or cough. It helps to soothe your throat and reduce any swelling!
• Camomile is often regarded as an 'alternative medicine' for its ability to help people to manage their stresses and anxiety and unwind. 
• Studies have shown that camomile itself can help to boost your immune system, making a cup of camomile and honey tea the perfect brew if you have a cold.
• If you're enduring stomach pains or menstrual cramps, camomile tea, much like many herbal teas, can help to relax your stomach muscles and ease the pain.
• And finally, camomile is rich is antioxidants, providing you with many health benefits!