Tag Archives: Healthy snack

Hard lessons learnt from running the Eiger Ultra Trail

Have you ever bitten off more than you can chew but knew there was no going back? If you are a runner then you may be more than familiar with this feeling of dread mixed with inevitability that can hit you even when you are doing something you actually enjoy. You might feel this way when a little bad weather is dialled up to biblical while you are still mid-run. Or maybe you face this whenever you step up to a new starting line for the first time. Even runners who appear fearless will experience this same feeling when they attempt to do something that is just a little outside their comfort zone. Fortunately, one of the universal truths of running also happens to be the well-known saying, that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. In other words, having the resilience to overcome whatever challenge is in front of you can be immensely rewarding.

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Let them eat cake?

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When it comes to foods that people hold dear to them, it doesn’t take much more than an imagined threat to strike a media storm. Which is why the recent comments made by Food Standards Agency chairwoman Prof Susan Jebb comparing the harm of having cake in the office to that of passive smoking could only be interpreted as a full-scale attack on cake. The fact that she made clear that her comments were made in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the FSA doesn’t seem to have carried any weight with the public. Neither did it matter that she was simply illustrating how an obesogenic environment directly influences our behaviour including her own. It’s no secret that the UK has a very high rate of obesity and overweight. But it’s too late. She has already been found guilty of the grievous crime of attempting to ban cake at work. It doesn’t matter that she never actually proposed a ban despite the false accusations being spread widely in the media. It’s already case closed. But should it be?

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#BreakTheBias to give our girls a sporting chance

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As I sat down to work the other week on an ordinary Tuesday morning, the small print in my diary announced that it was International Women’s Day. This year’s theme was #BreakTheBias which focuses on not just acknowledging gender bias, discrimination and stereotyping but advocates actively calling it out every time we see it. I couldn’t help thinking that this year’s theme couldn’t be more apt as it is simply not enough to only think about these issues on a dedicated day. In fact, after reading the results of a recent survey by the charity, Women in Sport, it left me in no doubt that our girls and young women need our support to excel every day.

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Is lockdown making you eat like a bird?

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I was reminded the other day of a time when I was 12, when a good friend said something to me that has since stuck in my head. She said that if she ever picked at her food at the dinner table because she didn’t have much of an appetite, then her mother always told her that she ‘ate like a bird’. For some reason I couldn’t get my head around what it had to do with birds because my friend didn’t look the least bit avian. In fact, I knew all too well that she had become a frequent visitor to a new takeaway that she passed daily on her way home from school. Her weakness was their specialty of deep fried sweet and sour pork which came swimming in a sticky sauce. She told me conspiringly that she was never hungry for dinner if she stopped for an afterschool snack but what her mother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. But as I was reminiscing past times while looking out the window at the birds feeding in our garden, I also thought that maybe her mother wasn’t too far off the mark.

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3 things for World Mental Health Day

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It was World Mental Health Day recently and I couldn’t help thinking that there has never been a more apt time to be reminded of its importance. Here in the UK, it is difficult to describe what it has been like living through the past seven months of the Coronavirus pandemic and its effects without resorting to using too many swears. But it has been said more than once by far too many politicians that these times are ‘unprecedented’. Certainly, the stress of living through the Covid pandemic has been felt by most. Whether you are a healthcare worker caring for Covid patients while trying not to bring it home; a student returning to uni who is facing virtual classes and lockdown measures while taking the blame for Covid outbreaks; a worker who is trying to keep their job or their business afloat or still adjusting to months of isolation while working from home; or like most people, just trying to navigate themselves and their families through these strange times when changing government strategies seem to fail and only delay the return to normal life even further; it would be fair to say that most people’s mental health has been tested in some way.