The Health Project

- Health Survival Guide for Christmas
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Dec 27th
  
  It’s finally here and it seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year but it is the time of year where most of us put on some padding! On average most people put on between 7 and 14 lbs of extra padding at Christmas time and last year I was no exception. I finished the marathon at the end of October and just stopped running, crazy I know but I had had enough at that point! Anyway, what ensued through November and December was a lot of nights out, drinking, hangovers, a lot of evening eating (the biggest culprit) and a real lack of weekly health planning. The result was about a stone of extra weight.
  
  So here are my best tips for surviving this Christmas with your health intact.
  
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  Posted in Food
- Can Facebook Make You Sick?
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Dec 20th
  
  I’m not a huge user of Facebook or social media in general but recently I happened to be part of a thread on Facebook where the topic being discussed became very heated, a bit personalized and aggressive.
  
  The conversation started out quite innocently and cleanly but some of the contributors disagreed with each other and the conversation descended into personal attacks and name-calling. I was part of the conversation and to be honest, the whole experience just left me really frustrated, angry, annoyed and stressed as a result.
  
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  Posted in Stress
- How Do You Get Yourself out of a Funk?
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Dec 13th
  
  How do you deal with periods of very low motivation?
  
  Right now, for reasons unknown to myself, I am in a state of Funk. This is my word for a feeling of no motivation, fatigue, tiredness, lack of engagement or interest with things on a daily basis. It’s a bit like an out of body experience in one sense as I do not feel like my usual self. I don’t feel like doing anything and am lacking my usual get up and go and proactivity. I find myself thinking about alternate careers and paying little or no attention to my current one.
  
  I’m sure lots of people experience times like this so I’m curious how do you pull yourself out of this state of being?
  
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  Posted in Stress
- Deep Green Sea Smoothie
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Dec 6th
  
  I am loving smoothies for breakfast right now. They are so simple to throw together and are a super easy way to get nutrient-rich foods into your body from the start of the day.
  
  I recently fell in love with Spirulina and am using it everywhere I can right now. These packs of milled superfoods tend to be quite expensive here in Ireland but recently Lidl has been doing a line of them which are good value so they are accessible to all kinds of budgets.
  
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  Posted in Food
- Simple Chocolate Banana Smoothie
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Nov 29th
  
  Ah ha chocolate I hear you shout – yes indeed it is chocolate but it is real chocolate in the form of cacao powder.
  
  So this Sunday morning, I really wanted to get the kids off to a good start. Smoothies are my secret back door into my kid’s nutrition so whenever I feel they may be lacking in something, smoothies are my go-to as they are kid friendly and they all think the NutriBullet is the coolest thing we own. They are nearly right, the juicer is number one 🙂
  
  You can use any blender or mixer to whizz this together so don’t let the lack of a fancy machine stop you making this.
  
  Add the below to your blender and whizz until smooth.
  
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  Posted in Food
- Paring Down Your Life
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Nov 22nd
  Our lives are overfull.
  
  There’s not a single one of us who is free of that trap, in my experience. We say yes to invitations and commitments, we answer as many emails and messages as we can, we join courses and groups, buy books and take on new hobbies, get involved in new relationships and buy more stuff.
  
  The result of this tendency to overfill is predictable:
  - We spend too much money and get into too much debt, and then have too much clutter.
  - We are always busy and always feel like we’re behind on everything.
  - We don’t have time for what’s really important — relationships, meaningful work, solitude and silence, taking care of ourselves.
  - We can’t really fulfill all of our commitments because we have too much going on.
  - We use full lives to distract ourselves from being fully present.
  It’s understandable that we overfill our lives — we are usually acting on desires, and not giving full contemplation to what we want in our lives and what we don’t want.
  
  ‘You can’t act on your desires alone. You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated.’ ~Chogyam Trungpa
  
  So how do we change that? I’d like to propose paring down your life.
  
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  Posted in Stress
- Vegetarian Mushroom Carbonara
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Nov 15th
  
  This is a really cool, quick and tasty healthy veggie based version of the creamy bacon carbonara classic. If you are watching the weight or the calories then try this one without the oil for even better health benefits. Get a decent pan on a high heat. If you are not using oil, keeping the pan super hot is key to releasing the flavour of the onions and mushrooms. There is about 120 calories in a tablespoon of oil so pause before you mindlessly add it to the pan, you don’t need it to cook this.
  
  So let’s get cooking!
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  Posted in Food
- It’s Just One Bite of Food
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Nov 8th
  
  There are so many things going on in these miracle bodies of ours even just to process one bite of food, that it amazes me how we are still alive at all! As well as so many processes going on in parallel, there are so many things that can and do go wrong in this digestion process, it’s no wonder the pharma companies are making a fortune from all our foodborne diseases. Taking a pill for every ill is far easier for most people than doing the hard yards of working out what it is that you are doing or eating that is not serving you well. Well, that’s where Nutritional Therapy comes in.
  
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  Posted in Nutritional Therapy
- My Experience of: Dublin Marathon 2018
  
  Posted at 1:00 pm by JP
  
  Nov 1st
  
  3 years. 3 marathons.
  
  As someone who was never that sporty as a kid and who never ever thought he could do even one of these, I’m super proud of these medals.
  
  I decided to run a marathon in 2016 after getting a redundancy from a company and deciding that, for the first time in 17 years of working, I would take the opportunity afforded to me and take an extended break from the corporate world. I soon discovered that without some kind of structure to your day, life can become pretty unproductive very quickly. Running and training for a marathon gave me the structure that I needed. It gave me a personal purpose to get up in the morning which is vital to a fulfilled life.
  
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  Posted in Fitness, Reviews
- Marathon Time
  
  Posted at 12:00 pm by JP
  
  Oct 25th
  
  It takes about 16 weeks of training and about 500 miles to train well for a marathon. Depending on your goals, this could be a lot more or slightly less but this is an average of what it takes to run a marathon and run it well and even, dare I say it, enjoy it.
  
  This weekend I am tackling my third marathon in Dublin, Ireland. My training for this one has been less than perfect with lots of life getting in the way of the perfectly written training plan but it was a great reminder to me that the plan is just that – it’s a written down target of things that you want to make happen.
  
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  Posted in Fitness
- The Big M: Momentum
  
  Posted at 12:00 pm by JP
  
  Oct 18th
  
  As most of you know, I am getting ready to take on the Dublin Marathon at the end of this month. This will be my 3rd marathon in 3 years. This will also be my last marathon for a while but I’ll leave that to another post. In terms of training, I am at the peak point in the running schedule now, and yesterday myself and my training partner completed the mighty 21-mile run. In terms of my training plan, this is the tip of how far I run in training. The morning yesterday was awful, hard rain from the very start at 9am and it never stopped. We trained in Kilbogget park if anyone knows it, in south Dublin. It is a luxury to have this park on my doorstep as it’s circumference is 3 miles long so yesterday, we lapped this park 7 times to give us the 21 miles.
  
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  Posted in Fitness
- Breaking the Fast
  
  Posted at 12:00 pm by JP
  
  Oct 11th
  
  Breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen and dinner like a pauper. Not quite right but you get the drift. How many of us actually live by this principle? I was thinking about this recently when I decided to mix it up from my usual staple of porridge oats and various toppings. I got this bee pollen from WholeFoods in a recent trip stateside, it’s a really good quality one.
  
  My morning routine now looks like this…
  
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  Posted in Food
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