Being personally accountable means taking ownership of your actions and for the consequences of your actions, too. Responsibility and Accountability go hand in hand.

There is a universal nutrition principle that says ... "As food processing increases, nutrient density decreases".

So why do we care about that? Because minimally-processed whole foods (such as grains, nuts, eggs, and fish) contain a vast selection of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients (plant nutrients), and zoonutrients (animal nutrients). And processed foods, whilst sometimes convenient and cheaper, do not.

As New Zealand is now in what we affectionately term Lockdown 2.0 - whether you are at Level 2 or Level 3 - most of us have said or written the words ”this time it will be different”. I know I have!

We have possibly promised ourselves we would stop eating chippies, chocolate and ice-cream. Or drinking wine. Or ordering delivery eats most nights of the week.

We have said that this time around our willpower is strong and we can do this!

So how is that working out for you? Are you doing it? Can you do it?

This year we have talked about all manner of good things that you can do for yourself so I am back again this month with another - and this one is a doozy. So much so that it is a key part of my 12 Days of You Project.

So many times in a day, we admonish ourselves for what we don't do. I didn't work out, I didn't drink enough water or the other ones, I made dumb choices.

How about we flip it? How about we stop being "perfect" and be "good enough" instead. It's time to outswim the sharks. Here's one of my quick story - and today's Tara's Tip.

I was having a think about what to write about for this month’s blog and newsletter when I received, in very quick succession, no less than five “help me” messages from people battling the terrible COVID-3.

COVID-3 is that 2, 3, 4 kilograms that seem to have ‘snuck up’ on some of us during our last couple of months of lockdown. I’d previously talked about how we needed to physically distance from the fridge … how did that work out?

One of the great Lockdown of 2020 jokes is that some of us have said we should be practising physical distancing from the fridge. And I doubt there are very few people in the world who could honestly say that they haven’t had a few extra snacks (or done some extra baking) over the last few weeks.

It is 100% normal and okay to get frustrated (sometimes often) about where we are at in our health and fitness journeys. The question “am I doing enough?” is one that we ask ourselves a lot. It’s often combined with “am I exercising enough?”, “am I losing the correct amount of weight” and “am I doing this right?”.

So often we think of health, and getting healthy, as ‘things that I must do less of’.

When we have been through something as big as weight loss surgery and all that life after entails, it is very easy to get into a mindset of “I can’t have that” or “I am not allowed that”.