My project plan for recovery came to me on Instagram. At the end of 2015 I was feeling sorry for myself. I was still suffering poor mental health, I was still scared about trying to get back into all the things I was once able to do pre-vasculitis, I’d put on a lot of weight with the steroid-rituximab treatment I was on and I was missing the lifestyle of working of university or just having something to do each day.
I came across this post one day while skimming through the new years posts on my Instagram feed. I was kind of interested and so I followed the link back through the person who posted it until I found the source. It turned out to be a local online health collaborative called The Green Goodness CompanyPlanner. Their ‘mission’ was to connect local Perth citizens and greater Western Australia, to a point, with a variety of quality health information, services, products and concepts. They work in three main areas with many offshoots: Nourish, Nurture, Move.
Nourish relates to eating healthy and nourishing the body with nutrients and just generally putting all things good back into the body.
Nurture is the care and maintenance of the body, mind and spirit. It is mental health, positive thinking mantras, healing oneself and taking time to relax and ‘just be’.
Move of course, considers how to bring more activity and energy back into your life. Different ways of being mobile, bringing your adrenaline up and get your heart pumping more.
Some of the wonderful things you see through this collective is that there is no limit or criteria for what is expected. It was hard for me at first to reconcile my desires for a healthy improvement as compared to others on their site. Many of the other ‘health challengers’ were Crossfit competitors, Paleo chefs and high intensity skin cleansing. There were obese people making genuine efforts to regain their fitness and active levels and mothers trying to burn off baby weight. Then there was me with a scar on my head, a little bit klutzy and too afraid to go to the beach by herself for fear of getting confused in the waves. Whilst I felt like I may be out of place I also saw great potential for my growth and rehabilitation. I thought it looked okay and like a great place to start getting back to myself. I looked a little closer at this ‘100 days of healthy’ challenge they were promoting and this is what I found.
Before you look closer please consider that I have included information from another site. If this seems interesting to you, refer to them, promote them and include their hashtags #100daysofhealthy #greengoodnessco and add them on Facebook and Messenger @greengoodnessco. You can also add me @thislupuslife and we can support each other!
What For 100 days you must make changes to your life to try to live healthier. You set the goals and you are the one in charge.
How Follow the template. (I’ve added one for you!)
Each week you must set a goal for Nourish, Nurture, Move. There is also a Remember for comments you may want to make. At the end of the week you complete the reflection.
Why To make yourself healthier. But to take more control of your life and to place more accountability in your choices and actions. To give yourself something to work towards and to achieve goals you have wanted to at a pace that is realistic for yourself. It is broken down weekly, I presume and found out quickly, because we all want to start at the halfway mark and it is unrealistic. 100 days is a third of a year and it may seem like an awfully long time but after a few weeks you learn how to pace yourself and where your limit is. If you are like me you also need to take a pause at the end of four weeks or 30 days to gather yourself and just maintain what progress you have made. It isn’t always about moving forward but also keeping the ground you’ve moved across.
When Start whenever you like. I started second week of January.
My first goals began with walking around the block, waking up at 9am and having an apple in the afternoon. I built these up slowly. It took a month to get to a point where I was okay to wake at 7:30am each day for a week. I would have eggs and spinach for breakfast and an apple for morning tea, salad for lunch and steamed vegetables for dinner. I would walk to the shops or ride to work. Some days I could manage a 30 minute yoga class online but that is still a bit tricky for me. I have dropped from 64.3kg to 58.9kg and lost over 9 centimetres off my hips and waist each (not collectively!)
My journey: My 100 day goal were to regain the weight of post August 2015 (56kg). I want to have salad lunches each day. I want a ketogenic diet of 60g carbohydrates ave daily with carbohydrate loading once a month. I want more berries in my diet, plus magnesium and potassium supplements. I don’t want to drink milk, not more than 2 coffees a day. I want to be on a maximum of two medications, neither of which is an antidepressant. I want to sleep without sleeping pills and I don’t want mouth ulcers anymore. I want to resolve my irritable bowel and mental health issues.
My year goals are: I want to be ok with the girl I see in the mirror. I want to skateboard, speak German, play the ukulele and spend more time with my friends. I want to go home (Lake Grace) twice this year and get a volunteer job in a school. I want to type up the first draft of my chronic illness book.
You know I have tried the skateboard for the first time. I kind of know the basics of the uke. I am 30% fluent in German and moving on to books.
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