If You See Me Happy

My social worker visited me the other day. It was a good day and I was in high spirits. Yet, when he asked how I had been doing the last two weeks, I felt the need to emphasise that I hadn't been doing too good, despite my appearance of being quite well. I was worried that he would think I was doing much better overall than I had been.

Change Is The Only Constant

Everything has changed, is changing and will change. Change brings us summer, flowers, mountains, hunger, maturity.

Existing inherently from inside this skin, personal change can be difficult to notice. Travel on your own to another place for a month, and you may return feeling like you've changed very little, save for a boat-load of new memories. To others, however, you've become much more assertive, independent and self-confident. You've changed.

Eat Vegan - The Interview aka The Inside Scoop ("Scoop"! Get it? Scoop? Food? Ice cream SCOOP? Food? Vegan? Food? Scoop?? Oh, forget it. Don't worry...)

A big thank you to Tilly, Megan, Abbie, Jess and Andrew for the questions.

What was the hardest thing about going vegan?
I found social occasions the hardest thing to deal with. By nature, I don't like to feel others are going out of their way on my account. If you look back to my post here, you'll see that I struggled with this in the second week of the month.

Eat Vegan - Moving On Up

Well this week has been much better than the last. I'm actually quite pleased with myself. You see, usually after such an epic mess-up such as last week, I'd beat myself up and go on a binge of whatever I wasn't supposed to be eating. It's a huge change in me to have got back on the wagon so easily.

Eat Vegan - Omnivorous slips

So after the success of my first week being vegan, I have largely failed this week. No, I haven't been eating meat in a milk, cheese and egg sauce for every meal this week. I've used excuses as to why I ate what I did. On closer inspection, these excuses are nothing more than feeble words with no substance behind them, so I'm not going to try and justify it to you.

Socialise with me

To keep up to date with all my challenges, join my Facebook page or my Twitter. I post to there whenever I put a new post here. Also, you can ask me questions about the challenges or share things you think I may find interesting.

Joel x

Eat Vegan - Like A Mouse With Cheese

^{Courtesy of shewearsmanyhats.com}

Well this first week of vegan eating has been fun! I've genuinely enjoyed it. I've had few moments when I've almost had some thing to eat that I'm not meant to. I'll tell you about that in a little bit.

February Challenge - Eat Vegan

So this months challenge is about changing my body through the things I eat. There seems to be so much controversy in the media about the use of animal products in the human diet. Cancer risks, diabetes risk, fertility, obesity, gastrointestinal diseases, heart disease to just mention a few. The food sources that get the least amount of flack seem to be those that are from plants: fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes and seeds.

Stop Smoking - Post-match Analysis

How did you get started on the road to stopping?
I really wanted to turn my life around. Stopping smoking is one of the things I knew would have the biggest impact on improving my self-esteem. It would make the later challenges easier to do, such as running and losing weight.

Stop Smoking - It's behind you!

Well, this week has gone by without a hitch. I haven't really thought about smoking.

A couple of times over the last week, while we've been doing the pantomime, I've been chatting with some other pantomimers, and I've been thinking "Am I only talking to them as an excuse to breathe in their smoke?"

Stop Smoking - Panic at the Bus Stop

Hello again.

Well, being a non-smoker is going real swell!

I've had a couple of times where I've had a really strong desire to light up a cigarette this week.

The first was when I went back to college after the Christmas break. I was off from college for three weeks before Christmas due to my depression.

Stop Smoking - The Start

Well, one week of being a non-smoker has passed! Yay!

I've found it mostly quite easy. On 1st Jan I read Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking. I have found this an excellent book. You don't stop smoking until the end of the book.

January Challenge - Stop Smoking

This is something I've done before in the past with limited success. I want to stop smoking for several reasons:

Hello

Hello.

My name's Joel.

I suffer quite badly with depression. This eventually led to two overdoses in April and May of 2013. So after different treatments and being on a hospital mental health ward, I've had chance to read about different therapies. One in particular Ive read about is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT).

After doing CBT exercises for a few months, one thing has arisen is feelings and thoughts of being valueless, that I can't achieve anything. So really these challenges that I've set myself for this year, 2014, are a way for me to prove to myself that I can achieve things. Also, I hope that it can serve as an example to others that whatever state of depression they're in, you can work yourself out of it, you can achieve things.