The Orion Diet Plan

It's a huge lifestyle change moving here. People pay a lot of money to go to spa and fitness retreats so they can lost weight, get fit and relax, but here that just happens by the by.

I'm pretty sure I'm already losing weight here. While I was home for the summer there were the constant temptations of biscuits and chocolate and puddings, plus my parents' bizarre ideas of reasonable portion size and constant offers of seconds. Pudding isn't a thing here - occasionally we're lucky and Galina the cook makes sweet pastries with fruit or curd cheese, but generally dinner is just a savoury main with bread and fruit. Yeah, I've got a stash of treats under my bed, but the 'dark' chocolate I bought at the corner shop is horridly sweet, and my gingerbread stash is basically gone. I'm keeping the smarties for a special celebration or something. I've got another 6 yummy and filling 'Nakd cocoa delight' bars (highly recommend), but they need to be kept for the days when it's omlette for breakfast (bleurgh). Seconds don't really exist - leftovers might be eaten at another meal time, or a hungry and deserving child will snap them up. People pay a lot of money for people to cook them balanced meals with the right amount of calories and to be denied unhealthy and overzealous quantities of food, but this all comes included in the (incredibly reasonable) amount we paid for accomodation and food.

I'm definitely doing way more excerise here - moving logs and jars, doing housework like cleaning, washing up and ironing. Housework may not sound very energetic, but a couple of hours a day and it's a radical calorie-burner. It's funny to think that although one can walk across the whole village in about a 2 minutes (I'm not exaggerating), one can still get such a work-out.

At home I tend to stay up until 2am, but here we get a solid 9-10 hours sleep depending on when we go to bed - we don't have to get up until 9.15 am which is pretty sweet. I've taken up being an evening showerer so there's no rush in the morning, and it's something to do in the evening. Though days are busy, we get a couple hours' free time in the day to relax, read, write, listen to music or whatever takes our fancy. There's even creative opportunities like today's tote bag painting session which was super fun.

Maybe it's just the multivitamins I've been taking, or something in the water, but I'm feeling very healthy and happy at the moment :)