Remembering why I am here

At times I find myself getting very frustrated with being at home with a baby.

If I looked at myself as an outside observer I would be asking the following question: What happened to the career focused young woman who was constantly striving for something better? Now she's at home being a house wife while trying to look after a baby, keep the flat clean and write a best seller. Not to mention trying to stay abreast of what's happening in the world so conversation doesn't have to revolve just around babies. Then there are all the books she wants to read, clutter to clear, meals she wants to cook and friends to keep up with. Has she mentioned the new business she wants to start and the exercise she's not doing and what about spending time with her husband?

Reading this report back it's no wonder I am now feeling stressed. I suddenly have all this time and I feel like I'm wasting it and not achieving any goals like I should be. And there is the key word 'should' who is telling me I 'should' be doing things. No one.  It is just my own perception of what a successful person looks like or 'should' be doing.

Super mum syndrome popped into my head and then into my search engine. Sure enough it exists at least in America anyway with several women suffering from it. So I am not alone. Whole armies of women are out there trying to multitask until they drop to their still-jam-stained floors with exhaustion. Looks like I could be heading to supermums anonymous some time soon.

It all comes back to my current favourite word focus. The point of having a child in the first place is to enjoy the experience of having a baby. So why are we women running around trying to do everything but concentrate on the most wonderful thing in our lives  - our babies? So what if there's a bit of dust on the windowsill or I don't know whose written the latest best seller?
These things do not matter as much as the little baby over there trying to get mummy's attention.

So yes I do have all this time but this time is for Ava. It's important to identify a list of priorities. She is number one, husband is number 2 and writing/exploring creativity is number three. Yes I don't want to live in a pigsty, but there are steps I can do to reduce that, it's not the most import thing.

As I wrote in my previous post the key is cultivating good habits every day. Doing little things to keep life ticking over which allows more time to be spent on priorities. Well here goes...

Saying no to sugar

I am trying to give up sugar. After the elation of losing my baby weight I began to notice it creeping back on, pound by insidious pound. Hey, but breast feeding burns up to 500 calories right? Great in itself until you remember how many calories are in my new summer ice cream habit and my summer evening chocolate habit and all those ladies lunches....

Giving up sugar, you'd think would be relatively straightforward. I can recognise the obvious culprits in front of me - Biscuits, cakes, mini magnums - easy right? Wrong! A sift through my cupboard shows me that virtually every item of prepackaged food contains sugar! What the bleep is it doing in sausages? My bread is full of the stuff and don't get me started on yogurts, cereal all the so called healthy stuff - full of it.

And it's not just food. There are calls for coffee shops to modify their drinks after its found that a Costa Coffee drink the toffee creamy cooler contains 20 teaspoons of sugar the same as four doughnuts. In fact drinks are some of the worst culprits especially the fizzy ones as Dr Robert Lustig points out in his excellent lecture Sugar: the Bitter Truth. Watch this no frills lecture and you will think twice about sugar.

Giving up sugar was going to be hard, so I needed a plan. Here are the steps I am taking:

1. Cut out the sweet stuff.
This is straight forward but needs a lot of will power. Amazingly I find it easier after using a technique on http://zenhabits.net/floss/ to get flossing my teeth. Eg start small. Floss one tooth the first day and that's it. On day two I only had to floss two teeth then stop. Day three, only three teeth and so on. I also had to mark on a calendar each day flossed. Most days I manage to floss virtually the whole mouth and days when I was tempted to skip I get through it by thinking I've only got to do 7 teeth today as its day 7 or whatever.

By discovering I can do one challenge I was ready to take on another and suddenly my willpower emerged! I managed to say no to ice cream despite being a hot day. This gut was going to be busted!

2. Replace bad foods with good.
Fruit is good gives a sugar fix but contains fibre to combat the bad stuff.

3. Read the label and avoid anything labelled fructose, sucrose, dextrose and sugars.
Honey counts as sugar too unfortunately so there go my crumpets which of course contained sugar.

4. I decided to eat some processed food containing sugar provided it was a savoury food.
With a four month old baby at the moment it way too unrealistic to think I was going to cook everything from scratch. One step at a time.

5. When I avoided sugary food for the day I drew a smiley face on my calendar. : )
Call it simple but it motivated me.

6. I decide not to see the changes as a 'diet' rather I was making healthier choices.
This meant I could still indulge in occasional bad summer foods - sausage roll anyone? Strawberries and cream (without sugar yum!) I didn't feel guilty as I was bring good otherwise but at the same time I was conscious not to eat them everyday. 'Party foods should be for parties not everyday consumption' was a good adage I learnt recently.

7. Drink more water - we all know this one - more water less food. Especially as I was breast feeding.

8. Adopt the rule - Don't buy it, can't eat it!
Not having sweet stuff in the cupboard helped. So did shopping without the influence of Paul and the kids whose grocery shopping appeared to be sponsored by Willy Wonka!

A couple of days in I wasn't exactly craving sugar, more suffering from sugar withdrawal symptoms. I felt knackered and I had a headache. This disappeared after a few days and yet more water. I also noticed that when I had a slightly forbidden food like dried fruit it now tasted overly sweet and I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to. The biggest revelation was going without tomato sauce. I suddenly noticed how good the food tasted without a huge blob of it dominating all the flavours. Admittedly I had yet to try chips without it though.

A week in I was doing ok. Stomach still there it but at least I feel I am working on it.