Caroline Buchanan- Health Coach

14/02/2023

Today is a day of love. 💜

I was thinking about this as I walked my dogs this morning. My day today is filled with doing the things I love doing. We did a 3 mile walk this morning, the mist had just lifted and the sun was shining. I love walking in the Gloucestershire countryside.

My day then includes my second love and that is coaching amazing clients, this morning I am coaching one of my private clients. I love challenging people on how they see themselves and distrupt their thinking so they can see who they really are and what they are bringing to the world.

I start a new job this afternoon, I am excited and nervous at the same time, that tells me I am challenging myself. I am a volunteer receptionist at a local rehoming centre for cats and dogs one afternoon a week. This has been a few months in the making as I wanted to do something that is face to face that serves in my community.

My day finishes with me leading my local running group. We run 3/4 miles and this week we have a nice flat route on quiet roads. My group are amazing and I feel blessed they want to run with me on Valentines evening.

Is your day filled with all the things you love? It is all in the creation of the life you want to lead.

25/01/2023

Are you busy?

I was thinking about this as I am feeling busy at the moment but what I am grateful for I am busy doing the things I like doing.

Last week I pulled a muscle in my back as I was doing Pilates (another activity I like doing). I rested fully cancelling all my classes and running for a week. It has given me time to recover and yesterday I was able to run and walk 20 kms in total. I am back fully fit and busy doing the things I want to do. Now where are my running shoes? 😀😀

What are you busy doing? If it all feels a bit dull add an activity you love doing even if it’s for 5 minutes.

17/01/2023

Who listened to the podcast I recommended last week?

I decided to apply one of the things I learnt which made total sense to me. I knew this would have an impact on my health and my immunity so I decided to eat 30 plants in a week as per Tim Spector’s instructions. The reason this made total sense is we get different nutrients from eating different foods so eating variety of foods will super charge the nutrients in our body. I am a healthy eater but I can also be a creature of habit and eat the same thing for days Eating the 30 plants also saw me drop 3lbs in a week (this was not my goal) so my theory of counting veg not calorie’s definitely worked for me.

Here is the list of what I had in the photo below, sorry for the untidy hand writing. 🤣🤣

16/01/2023

Today is known as Blue Monday.

Please make sure you look after yourself and reach out to friends and family if today seems hard to deal with.

Today for me was a good day, the sun came out after weeks of rain. I went on a dog walk locally that I had never done. I discovered that there was a bridge over the Severn that had been demolished in 1960 when an oil tanker accidentally hit it. Not much of it is left this is the part over the canal just before the Severn.

Even if you are on your own you can find interesting things to do.

12/01/2023

This is an interesting study that they have been talking about today on the news which I thought I would share. Acts of kindness can be linked to reduce depression. I remember receiving some brownies left on my doorstep from a mystery neighbour. It certainly made me feel good so I can understand it felt even better for the giver.

What acts of kindness can you do it will help to keep the January Blues away?

People suffering from symptoms of depression or anxiety may help heal themselves by doing good deeds for others, new research shows. The study found that performing acts of kindness led to improvements not seen in two other therapeutic techniques used to treat depression or anxiety.

11/01/2023

What do you measure to know how healthy you are? Having a fitbit or an Apple watch or similar gives you access to more data about you than you have ever had access to. How accurate is this data? The devices claim to be accurate. One thing I noticed in December when I had my cold and cough and my exercise was put on hold, my resting heart rate went up by 13 BPM. Now that I am doing my regular exercise and I now feel better it has slowly come back down although it still has a couple of BPM to be back too where I was in November.

I think if you regularly look at your data then you can make sense of it.

So what data do you look at regularly to check your health?

09/01/2023

I love Mondays! When I left my corporate job I never wanted to experience those Monday morning blues again. When I started my coaching business I put a really strong boundary in place, I would never work on a Monday morning. Instead I make it a feel good time, I go to the gym to my pilates class at 8am followed by Body Combat at 9.15am. I am at the gym for 2 hours I am with like-minded people the endorfin's from the high cardio leaves me feeling great. Once I am home I go for a 90 minute dog walk. At 12.30am I take my first call of the day with my friend and fellow coach and my business day starts. We set the scene for the following week, we share any problems we need to overcome and we support each other in our goals.

What can you put in place to love Monday's?

07/01/2023

This week I have come across a great episode of a "Diary of a CEO" podcast. Steve Barlett's guest is Tim Spector and the title is "The Shocking New Truth About Weight Loss, Calories and Diets. I found it really interesting to listen to, I am not sure I buy into everything that is said but what I am going to take from it and try out this month is having 30 different plants in my diet each week, I am interested in any differences I feel. If you have a spare 90 minutes, have a listen and let me know what you take from it.

Here is a link to the episode, it is number 209 if you can't access the link:

‎Business · 2023

05/01/2023

I have been doing some more research on immunity and have found out there are 4 types of immunity and how we build up different types. At a high level here they are:

1) Active Immunity - antibodies we develop
2) Passive Immunity - antibodies from mum's milk
3) Natural Immunity - antibodies we build from living a healthy life
4) Artificial Immunity - antibodies received through artificial means

This has highlighted that what I really want to focus on for myself is number 3 - Natural Immunity for the month of January. However I am also about to receive a flu vaccine so I will will be artificially getting some immunity.

I do take the vaccines that are offered to me and this is a personal choice of mine. I have a number of friends that do not take the vaccinations offered to them and I see this as a personal choice for them. I have no judgement in the matter we are all individuals that are capable of making our own decisions.

If you are interested in building your natural immunity I will share what I am learning as I go along. I have stared to clear some clutter in the house that keeps looking at me saying "tidy me up". Just clearing surface clutter clears the minds and helps boost our mood. What clutter could you clear so you can give yourself a boost?

04/01/2023

Eating healthy is always going to boost your immune system, there is a big link between immunity and home cooking, this time of year is difficult as a lot of us have left overs from Christmas. One of my absolute hates is food waste. So today I made a soup with left over vegetables and also used up the last of the Stilton. It has 5 different vegetables in the soup. Here is my Broccoli and Stilton Soup. Stop counting calories and starting counting the amount of vegables you can get into your diet. The recipe is from BBC Good Food. Delicious.