The Handy Diet and Exercise Plan

It's September, the kids are going back to school and life is calming down after a phrenetic summer of travel and adventure, this means it's time to get back to healthy so along with my lovely friend Harriet we are commencing the Handy Diet and Exercise Plan, called Handy because I came up with the idea after chatting with aforementioned friend and put our two names together, haha!

Here's the good news, there is no plan, there is no "diet" it's simply about eating better food, cutting out the super tasty but calorie laden cakes and treats we've snuck in over the summer and it's about getting back on a path to walking or running every day.  You spend all year working up to summer and having that bikini body or in my case legs for shorts but then it all goes astray once you are travelling, or again in my case, the first time some one offers me an ice-cream!

September is always a time for fresh starts, the start of a new school year and it's always felt to me like the best time to start again, to start from scratch, a new year where there's still a chance of sunshine and warm temperatures and where running and walking are still pleasant, unlike January, no one ever had a lovely walk in lashing rain when its minus 3c!

This plan is not about getting super skinny with thigh gaps or restricting our diets so much that we want to eat our own ankles, and it's definitely not about doing so much exercise that we go cross eyed and fall over, it's simply about regaining the balance, recovering some self control and watching the excess melt away.

I know how to do this because I've done it before, it's about good fats and fresh food lovingly prepared from scratch, with the hectic living of summer I've turned too often to a quick takeaway even though I know that they're not good for me.  I also know that I've eaten way too much bread, not enough fresh fruit and vegetables and let us not dwell upon the cake consumption, enough is enough, you can't change the past, Monday is a new start, a path back to my happy healthy wellness, it's not that I feel particularly bad about myself currently but I know I felt better, happier, healthier, stronger, and fitter when I was at my thinnest.  Last time I got there by completely cutting out sugar but I've learnt that life isn't about extremes, if you do anything to extremes one day you'll find yourself falling off the wagon and probably with your head inside a jar of Nutella.

This plan is all about balance and being sensible but it's not about completely closing off the things that you love either, I can't promise to make it to Christmas without ever eating cake, it's more likely that I would become the next president than it is that I would make it for 3 and a half months without cakes but I can at least try to cut down my cake consumption to a once a month afternoon tea rather than having cake every afternoon with tea!

So if you have had a summer like me, a summer of glorious fun and delicious treats and memories which have lingered on the tummy as much as they have on the tongue then why not join in with my plan, lets all cook more fresh food, eat less crap, get out there and exercise more and we'll be back to our best, happiest, healthiest sizes before even the mention of winter rears it's ugly head and chin up, It'll soon be Christmas when it's perfectly acceptable to eat cake for breakfast (I am joking about that, no really I am).  Life, wellness and health, although serious are not to be taken too seriously I feel so without  further ado lets get out there, spring clean our fridges and lets skip to the beat of a new healthier tune.