Elena’s take on fitness to travel.

It’s all started with Wayne’s employer rolling out “fit for life” motto which pretty much meant that employees need to look after their health (and mostly their backs being in the heavy lifting job). He went to a day course and got a cute red backpack that had (surprise!) words “fit for life” on it.

That backpack travelled with us to Germany, Russia, China, Singapore and Thailand. While our big wheelie bag got seriously lost in Russia our trusty “fit for life” stayed faithfully with us.
 Healthy-Foods1
The next step was Wayne getting a bike to ride to work. I honestly thought he would just buy another bike to sit around the back and slowly rust or maybe to be taken around the neighborhood once a month if it’s lucky. Well to my utter surprise he did ride it straight away and after a couple of days practice was riding 3.8 km to work and back over our hilly area.
While I admire his step and desperately want to get more fit it will take a lot more convincing to do something like that myself. I crashed friend’s (brand new!) bicycle in Germany which was very very awkward to say the least and living in a hilly area doesn’t give me much confidence to try again. However I started my own journey towards being healthier. Our recent trip to Thailand was mostly to get our dental work done and I was a tad embarrassed when Thai dentist asked me if I was a smoker? Since I am not, the stains on my teeth were attributed to my love of tea that I vowed to curb.
So far I feel that I am doing well.. I did boil the jug a few minutes ago but it will be my first cup of tea in a day so not bad considering it is 8pm now.
Another thing I hated to do was to floss and I have to publicly admit that I was never a good teeth brusher. Morning, YES! Night time.. nah. Too tired, too sleepy, already in bed reading, too cold in the bathroom.. so many excuses.
I’ve been to dentists many times, root canals, fillings, etc – I am no stranger to them all but what did change this time? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the “age” thing, I am getting older and wiser? They say it takes 21 days to form a habit and I am a firm believer of that. I also believe that humans can get used to many things, bad or good so any new/uncomfortable situations will be a second nature should we choose to stay on path through the initial phase of frustration.
My decision to floss and brush every night so far is 6 weeks old and I am going great and it is (slowly) becoming a second nature to me.
Recently I had a life changing experience with food. YES that’s exactly how I feel: life-altering.
It’s all started .. How did it start? A series of events lead me to it that I know is meant to be. At the time we had French girl staying with us and we were noticing that she was buying “expensive” organic brands while we were proud on spending minimum on groceries and buying cheap stuff.
One day a book, “ In defense of food” was recommended to me by my colleague. I started reading with great interest. I was always kind of quietly suspicious of the fact that all processed food we eat is not the right way to live.
 InDefenseOfFoodAd

Growing up in Russia while we certainly had our fair share of pollution and chemical fertilizers showed me that the link with nature still exists. When we went to the doctors with sore throat or skin condition they prescribed herbs that you would buy in a pharmacy. In fact our pharmacy had a lot of herbs, all pre-packed as well as all other modern medicine. Moving to New Zealand in my early 20’s made me wondering where all herbal medicine was? Well in the “West” it’s considered alternative and confined to health shops. So does that make our pharmacies “sick shops? Which is sadly true as here most medical care is orientated towards treating the condition, not preventing it. This is a topic for a whole new post though.

Back to “In defense of food”, book that I’ve read as fast as the most gripping thriller. It confirmed all these thoughts to me that were lurking in my head for the previous 10 years. I always secretly dreamed of having a piece of land to grow your own fruit and veges on it, have your own chickens, etc.
I also LOVE travelling. As you can see these two things.. mmm.. don’t go hand in hand… Besides most likely I’ll be too lazy to do all the work and would just dream of jetting off to other countries!
I hope in the future I can somehow combine them but for the time being it’s like someone removed the blindfold that was self imposed for many years.
I believed that natural food was expensive (and it is) but what is the price of your health? And why the food must be so cheap? Surely for farmers to produce it the correct way using the power of sun, wind and rain it must cost more than to engineer cheap processed food that has hardly any nutrients?
I am not a big fan of so called  “New Year resolutions”. When I decide to do something I do it straight away. I don’t wait to smoke the last cigarette and drink a last can of Coke. I just stop right there and then and start afresh. “Cold turkey” is the way for me, baby!
By the way I don’t even drink Coke!
So jumping feet first I ordered my first lot of groceries online through organic suppliers (they work with small family farms and you can read each family history and what they produce on their farm).