So I made it through the whole first week of my Whole30! Yay me!

And then day 8 happened.

Let me set the scene. Monday night, I sprain my ankle, so I can’t put any weight on that leg. Then remember that I have to get up three hours earlier than usual on Tuesday morning to take the cat for an eye operation.

Tuesday morning I get up, my son is super-helpful, we manage to catch the cat and put him in his cat box, leave the house (breakfastless, because too much to do and too slowly limping), head towards the vet, and I have to stop for fuel. And there’s my favourite gluten-free piri-piri chicken wrap right in front of me as I go to pay.

Oh well.

So, I’m back to Day 1 again, but to be honest, I’m not feeling too bad about it. This isn’t, as on previous occasions, a failure of my Whole30, it’s a learning experience that yes, I really *do* need to plan to succeed in healthy eating. Which I know that I can do. And also a reminder that hey, sometimes life happens and there’s no point blaming myself for that. No-one eats perfectly all the time.

Plus, despite my slip, I’m a lot better off for having spent a week eating healthily – one wrap doesn’t undo what I achieved already.

So yeah, back to the beginning of the count, but still moving onwards towards my goal of eating more healthily.

So I’m on day 2 of the Whole30, and so far not so bad. I mean, I’m tired and I want snacks, but I knew that was coming. No horrible migraines this time because I cut out Diet Coke a month back and also cut way back on coffee before I started.

I’m also still using the Fabulous app (see my last post) so that helps too – keeping hydrated and doing just a little exercise (but not too much). 

My son has also agreed that we’re going to do a Pokémon Go walk every single day, and we’re signed up to do Gung Ho! in July (5k with inflatable obstacles, we’re really looking forward to it). 

The other thing that’s helping me in 2017 is Daylio, a mood tracker app. It asks you each day to pick a smiley from 1 to 5, and you can optionally add what you were doing and some notes. It helps me because whenever I’m down I am totally convinced that I’m nearly always down. A quick look back through the app reminds me that I’m actually happy most of the time. I’m hoping that it will also show an improvement from cutting out sugar!

Well done to you if you’re also doing a Whole30 (or anything else) to improve your life and your health. Good luck, and leave a comment if you’re blogging through this too so that I can follow you!

New Year, New Me, right? Everyone’s saying it, as they always do at this time of year. Okay, it’s a bit phony to say that we should do “New Year’s Resolutions”, but if not now, then when?

I’m doing two things: firstly I’m doing a January Whole30, and secondly I’m trialling a new app called The Fabulous. It claims to be based on behavioural science from Duke University, and it works around setting up ‘rituals’ – habitual behaviours that you do every day – to gradually improve your life.

TL;DR: I really like it. Read on for more detail.

The app is bright, cheerful, colourful, and gives consistently positive, upbeat messages. I typically don’t like “motivate me” apps because I find them a bit patronising, but I’m enjoying this one. It helps, for me, that the app includes some fairly long (for an app) articles explaining what you’re doing and why, so that the advice doesn’t feel glib or superficial. I realise though that the idea of reading long articles explaining what to do will turn some people off. I hope they keep this; it would be a shame if it got dropped.

There’s a subscription element (isn’t there always?) called Sphere, which extends the coaching past the initial few habits. I think it’s pretty much essential: there wasn’t much content in the app until I subscribed. Having said that, you can easily try out the app and the way it works before you buy a subscription, so this seems like a reasonable compromise. I hate being forced to buy a subscription before I can even try an app; this didn’t have that problem. I felt like I understood how it was going to work before I decided to sign up.

The app itself has strengths and weaknesses. Caveat: it’s still under development – although it feels polished already – so new features are being added all the time and some of the weaknesses may be fixed by the time you read this. A major strength is the flexibility: you can set reminders, defer them, leave them open but not nagging – it’s been really well thought out. The weakness is the flexibility: sometimes there are lots of things open, and it’s hard to tell what to do next. The first couple of tries at setting up a ritual didn’t really work for me, and I had to do a ‘restart from scratch’ to figure it out totally. On the other hand, the key points are repeated several times in reminders, so it’s not such a big deal if you don’t quite get it first time.

Overall, it really shows that this app is based on science. Little tips and reminders make it much easier to actually do what you intend. They mean that you can change your life without it really seeming like too much effort.

Of course, it’s only Jan 3rd, so we’ll see whether this stands the test of time, but right now I would really recommend this app to anyone who wants to make some positive changes in their life for 2017.