hackett.life
I’ve been wondering how easy it would be to live permanently in a motorhome, here in Europe. This requires further research. Van life is appealing, especially if I could support myself and my family along the way.
A slow start to my weight-loss journey. My biggest vice is eating food late at night. If I can force myself to break that habit, the weight should fall off of me. So, from today, I am only going to eat between the hours of 2 pm and 7pm – although I will continue to have my morning coffee with milk and sugar!
Here are the stats for today.
The NHS website says that I should be aiming for a target weight of 85KG and a BMI of 25. I have a long way to go, but by my calculations, if I stick to my plan I should hit those goals in just over a year.
On Monday the 6th of January 2020, we sent a letter to Karta’s school asking them to remove him from the register.
We are now providing Karta with a full-time education at home. Our focus is on the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic.
Karta will also be allowed to follow his passion for videography and ecology. For the next six months, Karta will be going back to basics with KS2 and KS3 maths, English and science. He will also continue with KS3 Spanish.
We are busy deciding on the possibility of homeschooling our son. If we decide to go down that road, I will be putting most of my projects on hold, and will only work on those when I have time.
Home education will take up a considerable amount of time but will give me plenty to write about.
That is all.
I woke up this morning and realised that I need to start doing yoga.
Life is moving along at a reasonably rapid pace these days.
I’m only weeks away from turning 50. Will I make it to 100, not unless I make some changes?!
So, nothing too fancy. Put good things into my body in moderation, convert some of that energy into movement and hopefully, I’ll be on my way to another fifty years on this planet.
Taking this approach to my health feels like the start of something sustainable.
A friend took a photo of me yesterday; when she showed it to me, I nearly fell off the chair. It is strange how reality can do that sometimes. Seeing an image of myself in profile made me realise just how bad things have become.
If I don’t make the changes that I need to make to my lifestyle, right now, I doubt I’ll have much more than twenty years left.
Living a modest life, free from stress, is all that I need.
I’ll meditate daily, open my heart and go with my gut feeling to guide me. If something doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.
September is about my son, my wife and myself. The three things that I need to put all of my energy into now.
That is all.
Wanting to be less involved in the world is not a bad thing, surely?
Lately, I have been making more time for myself and my family. I want to remove myself from all of the distractions that “being social” brings with it.
Why do I have to be social? Let me rephrase that, why do people expect me to be social. My circle of friends is very, very small. I have two people (other than my wife) that I can genuinely call my good friends.
I think that that is more than enough. Although I write here in what is quite obviously a public forum, I don’t want the world hearing and seeing everything that I am doing from one day to the next.
With this in mind, I have quit almost all social media. I still need to button up a few errant accounts, but generally speaking, I am making progress.
The next phase of my plan is to slowly withdraw from all of the voluntary work that I have been doing over the last year. I won’t leave people in the lurch, but at the same time I will not be taking on anything else. I will also quit all of my freelance work and instead move all of my attention to raising my son and keeping our home.
This isn’t a new thing for me, in fact, I have dabbled with the idea of doing this sort of thing in the past, you can read about that here.
Anyhoo, that’s it for now.
Over and out.
April has been an exciting month for me, so far!
Being nonline (except for minimal Instagram use) has been refreshing. I have more time to concentrate on doing the things that add value to my life.
One of those things is finally making a lifestyle change with regards to what I put in my mouth. Rhona and I have both been very successful in controlling our weight by following a low-carb diet. When we first met, some 13 years ago, we were both following the Atkins Diet Plan. We were both slim, fit and healthy.
After we got married and Karta came along, things changed. Rhona had to ditch the low-carb lifestyle during her pregnancy, and I followed suit. Within a year we were both heavy again, although Rhona had an excuse, she had just been carrying and then given birth to our son. I didn’t want to complicate things, and so I ate the same food.
Ever since then we have both struggled to keep out weight under control. The solution seemed simple enough, go back to a way of eating that enabled us to control our weight easily.
So, after years of trying every diet plan under the sun, we have committed ourselves to following a Ketogenic way of eating. Low-carb, high fat & high protein.
The simplest way to describe it this, we will not eat bread, starchy vegetables such as potatoes and other root vegs, anything sold as low fat, pasta, rice and beans.We will increase the amount of animal protein and fat that we eat, but not have to count calories.
We have spoken to Karta about it, and he feels like he could do it with us. We’ve warned him to stay away from sweets and crisps and to try and choose things like berries, Babybel cheese and Peperami style sausage etc.
As always, my aim here is to lose the excess weight and improve my fitness. However, I won’t be doing any more exercise than the walking that I do at the moment. By writing about it here, I am also holding myself to account, not that anyone is listening!
JP