Health/fitness blogger meme

I got tagged for this by Fitarella ... I'm posting here rather than on The Office Diet as I don't tend to do memes there (I think it's a bit too personal for The Office Diet's readers!)

Here goes...

4 Jobs I’ve Had
Babysitter
Occasional office admin work for my dad
Data Entry Associate (that was a really thrilling summer)
User Support, Testing & Documentation

What are 4 ways you know you are living your life’s purpose?
I’m pretty involved with my Church (Sunday School, helping at Café Church…)
I’m writing every day. And my writing is helping people.
In September, I’m starting a post-graduate degree in creative writing J
I’m always learning, growing, improving and pushing myself further.

What are 4 things you do to take really good care of yourself?
Get some exercise every day (and gym three times a week)
Write in a journal, more sporadically than I should.
Eat plenty of fruit and veggies.
Indulge in really good ice-cream. (I’ve just discovered Sainsbury’s TTD toffee/caramel ice-cream. If you’re in the UK, and you’ve never tried it, go out and buy a tub today. You’ll thank me…)

What are the 4 events that have most formed how you live your life today?
Losing weight in my late teens after being chubby for years
Going to Fitzwilliam college, Cambridge university and finally “fitting in”! And especially the Springboard (women's self-development) course I took there.
This one is very geeky but I’m including it for the sake of honesty! Playing a very small online text-based roleplaying game for about six years (aged 16-22). A wonderful experience resulting in lasting friendships … and my boyfriend.
Taking a proper hard look at my Christian faith whilst at Uni – and deciding I could believe it all, for myself.

What are 4 things you do to keep your motivation up to work out and eat healthy every day?
Remember how much I hated being chubby.
Remember how I worked hard to lose weight and keep it off.
Work out at lunch time so I look forward to it (getting away from the office = good!)
Buy healthy, quality foods that I really like.

Name 4 people who have been the most influential in motivating you to change your eating and exercise habits.
Me, first and foremost!
My mum, who was incredibly supportive of me when I went on a diet aged 17, and when I was at uni, always got in the healthy foods I liked when I went home in the hols.
My boyfriend, who loves me whatever I look like and encourages me to relax about food.
“The bully” (sadly, not one individual but several) at school who picked on me for years about my weight.

What are your top 4 reasons for staying off of refined sugar and white flour?
I don’t, really. I go with wholegrains for bread but not pasta, and I’ll have sugar but I do limit how much sugar I eat (I realised that meringues, ice-cream, chocolate buttons, chocolate sauce was leaving me feeling predictably awful after the “crash"...).

List 4 ways that blogging has helped you either attain or maintain a higher level of health and fitness.
Keeps my hands busy so I’m less likely to snack
Running a blog called “The Office Diet” has made me more conscious of my food choices at work.
I’ve been reading a lot of other blogs on health/fitness/dieting – and getting some very useful tips.
I’ve been encouraged and inspired by some of the amazing weight-loss stories out there!



Sadly, I think all the health & fitness bloggers I know have already been tagged ... but if you want to have a go at this meme, go ahead!

Writing on, and on, and on...

I am neglecting this blog horrifically at the moment (partly because I plan on closing it within a month or two, and launching something new ... more on that later!)

The Office Diet is going strong, especially with my good friend Lorna providing guest posts (a real blessing when I'm running short on ideas.) I'm now on 110 subscribers ... quite an increase on the 67 three weeks ago :-) Helped in part by yesterday's guest post on http://www.crankyfitness.com/ which brought in quite a few readers.

In other writing news:

• I've completed all three of the feature articles for Daily Writing Tips and the first has been published, "Creative Writing 101". It's met with a good reception in the comments, and quite a few links from other sites.
• I wrote a guest post for Freelance Switch after they opened up for submissions a week or so ago; they asked me to revise it a bit, so I did, and they're going to publish it :-) And pay $60 which is none too shabby. I'll pop the link here once it goes up ...
• Mum and I have sent in our bookings for Winchester; I've got appointments with two agent/editor types and need to organise some material to send in advance. Going to pitch The Office Diet to one and another non-fiction thing I've been working (sloooowly) on to another.

Other stuff which has been going on:

• I've finally finished my "Bible in a Year" book. I started it in September 2005... which may give some indication of how good (or otherwise) I am at doing Bible reading daily.
• The St Nicholas Church Holiday Club website I've created is up, though it needs a bit more work.
• I'm learning CSS/PHP to make my own Wordpress template for my next blog ... it's going to be a combination of a relaunch of this one, a site to promote my writing & freelancing, and some long articles (even maybe e-books) on stuff I want to write but don't currently have much outlet for. More on that once I get a bit further with it. I strongly recomment http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/ if you want to have a go at doing your own wordpress them, it starts VERY basic and goes slowly. I managed to complete the whole tutorial from ... about 5pm yesterday to 11am this morning.
• I've started leading Junior Church, had them last week (lovely bunch of kiddies) and leading again tomorrow. Great to be getting back into youth work again!

That's pretty much it for now... and I'm starting to realise why the last few weeks have felt busy!