Lifestyle Chocolates

Choosing your chocolate

Lifestyle choices and the big 3!

Diet, exercise (movement) and lifestyle balance

There are times in our lives when making choices requires a real balancing act.  This is certainly true is my major lifestyles choices relating to my health and wellbeing.  Areas around diet, exercise and lifestyle balances.  We all are forced to make choices in these areas I guess some of us are more deliberately in making those choices.

Like all choices what we eat, when we eat, and how we eat has conquences,  whether we choose to eat randomly what we feel like eating when we feel like eating or we chose to follow the latest fad diet.  “we are in the main what we eat and how much we eat of it.”

As a person living with major mobility challenges, what I choose to eat is central to my overall wellbeing.  In addition to my challenges with mobility and how those change as I age, I have a number of other chronic health issues to consider when deciding what my weekly food intake might look like.

Like many people approaching middle age my weight has become an issue and the battle of the bugle in earnest.  It just the size or appearance of the bugle that differs for each of us. So for me I have decided the appearance of my bugle, at my age, for me weight give my ongoing mobility issues and associated impact on my health is ‘of concern’.  Others in my position may not share this concern, but I have chosen it to be an issue.

Just as I shared a few days a go someone else around my age might chose to go to the gym everyday before or after work, in the main controlling my food intake is how I tackle my weight use.  For me this isn’t a magic number when I stand on the scales, but my waste line.  Exactly hard are my jeans becoming to do up in the morning.  Of course I could choose to keep buying a larger size.  However for every centimetre my wrist line grows the harder it is to tie-up my shoes,  (yes! Although it is a struggle it is still important to me). Walking, transferring and getting in and go out the car.

Even though I can still walk due to fatigue and pain levels in the main I choose to use my electric power wheelchair while carrying out my daily lifestyle activities. Although many disagree with my choice to use my chair at home, I believe the energy I save allows my to continue to live independently and work form home.

Just as some don’t agree with my mobility choice many can not understand my choice to work and interact in the community despite the many challenges my disability bring to my daily life.  My choices to choose to use a wheelchair even though with difficulty I can still walk, like any lifestyle choice comes with some risks and high emotional costs. 

A daily struggle is to find a balance in my activity level and many days, due to fatigue, pain levels and allergies I seem to get it wrong.  While I struggle to balance out my lifestyle and the activities Associated with those choice life never seems to pan out the way we planned or hope.

In achieving my lifestyle balance I choose to make deliberate choices to ‘move’  rather than a exercise routine such as going to the gym. My ‘movement’ philopchies may be the equalivant of someone without a disability choosing to take the stairs instead of the lift. So choosing tie my own shoe laces rather than asking my support worker is a deliberate choice in movement, umm! Now to convince them to let me dress myself.  That is not their job to dress me, but enable me to live an independent lifestyle.  Oh that would be dependant on them reading my individualised support plan wouldn’t it?

In the same way I can my TV channel the old fashion way.  Without the remote control that some people seem to have glued to there hands.  An able body person my chose a deliberate movement plan by making 10 000 steps a day.  I do not subscribe to any one size fits all approach to anything involving a healthily lifestyle balance. As we are all individuals we need to choose or not choose the right lifestyle choices for ourselves. Someone choosing only to eat Macers still involves choices, even though for most of us it seems to be a lazy choice.

In the same way to use my wheelchair at home will seem a lazy choice. In making my choice I am aware that that will result in muscle waste.  While you can see the impact on my arms and legs you can not see its impact on my heart, lung and bowel. The health of these organs more import to me than continuing to walk is pain.  To exercise these muscles I have a specialized program.  But because I not out power walking the streets at 5 am in the morning  some people will view me as lazy and that’s their choice too make.

To counteract my choice to mobilized in my wheelchair a diet high in fibre and low in fat is important to me.  So you won’t find to many packet of biscuit or cakes being baked in my house.  The chocolates I choose are full of Spanish, carrots, celery, bananas, and strawberry centres and probable made on carrtoine rather than coca. Just don’t deny me my cup of coffee!

So my guess is when you open the chocolate box your selections will look very differ to mine.  I just glad these lots of options in the box to chose from