Choosing a Healthy Diet

So, in terms of what I want to try and achieve as goals, from the list of eight behaviours and twelve characteristics, I've chosen a healthy diet. I've already done the smoking cessation one that was some 16 years ago thank goodness. But a healthy diet is something I'm quite passionate about and because I had prostate cancer I was given some pretty clear advice about you know what's good and what's bad for you which most of which was a revelation. I was never somebody who always ate really bad food like crisps and hamburgers and things like that. I was very much a vegetable and fruit person all the time, but there were some revelations in terms of the fact that I didn't know that processed meats and so on like salamis and parma ham and that kind of thing, smoked foods, were generally not seen to be healthy in terms of, you know, cancer sufferers. I've had quite a bit of conflicting advice from medics about this. Some of whom say, well, you know, if you'd observed that when you were in your 20s, then maybe, but not really worth bothering too much about it in your 60s. But nonetheless, I still do my best to try and keep my body healthy. So I have definitely given up fruity, fizzy drinks. My only weakness being alcohol, which I restrict to one or two nights a week and within that category of alcohol I would add a mixer which is tonic water which in East Africa they're pretty sweet drinks so I have to watch out for that. But it's also not just the cancer because I technically have coronary heart disease and a very very slightly pre-diabetic I have to look out for foods which have added sugar such as you know baked beans which again was a bit of a revelation to me so I never basically I've changed my diet since my multitude of health issues to to really reflect my needs and I mostly drink water. I add lime or lemon to my bottle of water and you can see that's what it looks like and this was where I had my cancer treatment because it adds a bit of flavour to plain water and of course it's healthy to have lime and or lemon in your drinks as well. But it's really only water. I drink quite a bit of what they call chai dawa here, which is basically ginger and lemon tea, with a bit of honey added which is more or less allowable. It's the only thing I have honey with, but it also helps me to miss a meal or two if I want to, to keep my weight down. So that's really my behavior I'm seeking to stick to. We all have a relapse occasionally. I have a great weakness for bread and in particular white bread which is the worst source. But generally speaking I eat rye bread. There's a German baker here in Nairobi who which which produces rye bread which is probably the healthiest of them all. But yeah pursuing a healthy diet. But I also see from the other eight behaviours that I'm pretty much at risk of all of those. I also try and get sufficient sleep and I find that not taking alcohol really helps with getting sufficient sleep and I'll wake up in the night but as long as I go back to sleep reasonably quickly and I get about seven or eight hours a night that's good for me. So yeah, healthy diet, sufficient sleep, stress management, alcohol is a challenge but you know I mean so far as you know I try and restrict it to one or two nights a week and but it's most important to get a healthy diet and there's a lot of media attention given to this at the moment with obesity levels and so on. So yeah I'm trying.