Amazing reasons why journalling helps improve your mental health

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Jeannine

There’s much hype about journalling nowadays but do you know that you might be journalling way back without you knowing? Remember when you were little and were gifted a diary or urged your parents to buy you one? Yes! I’m talking about that notebook where you would write your crushes! Well, that’s basically journalling.

Journalling is simply a way of writing your thoughts. So whenever you find yourself writing around whatever you feel, no matter what paper that is, that’s journalling! People nowadays just want to call it a bit fancier, well, perhaps, journalling notebooks would exist?! They’re cute though, and I admit to having a couple for myself too! Why not, if it inspires you more to write your thoughts, right?!

With all the adulting responsibilities though, spending time to sit down and write our thoughts can sometimes feel like an added burden to many. That’s why it is important to know the benefits it can give you so you’ll know how much those few minutes you’re using (not wasting) can actually turn out to be an investment for your mental health and well-being in general.

Here are some ways that journaling can help:

Reduces stress: Journaling can help you release pent-up feelings and emotions, which can reduce stress and anxiety.
Helps you process your thoughts and emotions: Writing down your thoughts and emotions can help you understand them better and process them in a healthy way.
Provides perspective: Journaling can help you gain a new perspective on a situation or problem, which can lead to more effective problem-solving and decision-making.
Boosts creativity: Writing can be a creative outlet, and journaling can help you tap into your creative side and explore new ideas and thoughts.
Tracks progress: By keeping a journal, you can track your progress in different areas of your life, which can help you see how far you’ve come and motivate you to keep going.
Improves mood: Journaling can help you express gratitude, focus on positive experiences, and gain a sense of accomplishment, all of which can improve your overall mood.

Overall, journaling can be a helpful tool for managing stress, improving mood, and processing emotions in a healthy way.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla in collaboration with
Mads’ Cookhouse

Do you know much food impacts your well-being?

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Jeannine

Have you been feeling down lately? Not having your period but still overly moody? Then it might not be your hormones to blame but your food intake.

As you might already tell, it’s not only your body that gets affected by your food choices but also has a great impact on your mental health or what they call the “food-mood connection”.

Food can have a significant impact on your overall well-being. The food you eat can affect your physical health, mental health, and emotional well-being. Here are some ways that food can impact your well-being:

Physical health: Eating a balanced and nutritious diet can help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce your risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and improve your energy levels and immune system.
Mental health: Some research suggests that a healthy diet can improve mental health outcomes, such as reducing the risk of depression, anxiety, and stress. In contrast, consuming a diet high in processed and unhealthy foods has been linked to poorer mental health outcomes.
Emotional well-being: Eating certain foods can also affect your emotional well-being. For example, consuming foods high in sugar and fat can lead to a short-term mood boost, but can also lead to crashes and negative emotions. On the other hand, consuming foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, like fatty fish like salmon, may improve mood and reduce symptoms of depression.

It’s important to note that individual dietary needs and preferences may vary and that there is no one “perfect” diet for everyone. However, making healthy choices when it comes to food can have a positive impact on your overall well-being.

Here are some food ideas that are good for physical health and promote overall well-being:

Fruits and vegetables: Eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables can provide essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber that are important for overall health. Aim for at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
Whole grains: Whole grains like whole wheat, brown rice, and oats provide fiber and nutrients that can help promote digestion and reduce the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
Lean protein: Choose lean protein sources like chicken, fish, turkey, tofu, or legumes to provide the building blocks for muscle growth and repair.
Healthy fats: Include healthy fats in your diet, such as those found in nuts, seeds, avocados, and fatty fish. These healthy fats can help reduce inflammation and support brain health.
Water: Drinking enough water is important for overall health and well-being. Aim for at least 8 glasses (64 ounces) of water per day.

It’s also important to limit processed foods, sugary drinks, and foods high in saturated and trans fats. By incorporating these healthy foods into your diet, you can improve your physical health and overall well-being.

Interesting facts you need to know about your Gut

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Jeannine

I must be honest, I didn’t know I was this naive about what gut is all about 2 years ago. Ironic as the word “gut feeling” has been part of my usual vocabulary for so long. All along, I thought it was just one of those expressions people often use.

If you’re your age today and like me 2 years ago, then lucky you because you’ll know everything you need about the gut, gut health, and what can you do to make your gut a healthy one all in this blog post! I hope you’re ready, cause I am!

What is the gut?

When you hear someone say “gut”, they usually refer to your gastrointestinal system. This system determines all the types of bacteria in your digestive and intestinal tract. And I guess, this is where I’ll connect that “gut feeling” expression I’ve been using since I don’t even know when.

Believe it or not, your feelings affect the bacteria in your body which makes you feel something “weird” than your normal ones. That’s why when someone tells you, “listen to your gut”, they actually meant trust your feelings. Why? Because it is through that that you can’t really hide what you feel. Remember those times when you sit beside someone you like and you feel butterflies in your stomach? Or that funny feeling in your tummy whenever you need to present in front of a crowd. That’s it!

Why is gut important?

As mentioned, all types of bacteria are dealt with within your gut. And like everything else, there’s the good and bad of it. If your gut is filled with bad bacteria, it can do harm to you.

Since your gut system deals with your digestive and intestinal tract, your gut health can be more crucial than your think. Having an unhealthy gut would mean your body may struggle to absorb some nutrients, store fat, or sometimes regulate blood sugar.

This may cause weight gain or loss and skin irritations such as acne, eczema, and psoriasis. Yikes!

If you find this disturbing, I’m sure you’re curious to know what affects your gut health. You might unknowingly be doing it and not have the slightest idea.

Lifestyle factors that affect gut health

Too much stress. Well, I guess this isn’t something new anymore as when stress is around, your whole body is affected. You’re most probably walking around like a living zombie when you let stress control your life.

And as we know, when we let stress control over us, harmful effects happen to our body. This causes the same with our gut. When we get stressed, our gut gets more sensitive than usual which causes reduction of blood flow and alter the gut bacteria.

Not having enough sleep. Rest is very essential to a human’s body which we often ignore. Believe it or not, sleep deprivation not only makes us restless but also leads to much more complicated diseases such as obesity and heart disease.

And what does this have to do with your gut? Well, our gut tends to be a systematic fellow and once things gets distrupted causing harmful effects to your gut bacteria, hence, leading to an unhealthy gut.

Lack of physical activity. Being a couch potato has never had a good effect on any human being. It’ affects a’s not surprising to know that even our gut gets affected with our lack of movement so that our body could burn energy.

When it comes to having a fit body, we usually link doing some kind of physical activity to make that happen. This burning of energy results to having higher levels of Akkermansia, a bacteria that is shown to play an important role in metabolic health. This also helps from being obese.

Taking too much antibiotics. We all know how important antibiotics are when it comes to medication we need for infections and other diseases caused by bacteria, hence, this might be one of the most taken medicine next to paracetamol.

Like anything too much though, antibiotics, though intentionally taken to heal us could cause harm instead if taken irresponsibly. I’m not going to flood you too much with medical terms as I, myself, isn’t an expert on this. So here I am trying to attempt to explain to you in lay mans term.

Basically, everytime you take antibiotics, it declines some beneficial bacteria and temporarily increase a harmful one. This is why long-term use of antibiotics can cause trouble in our gut. If this doesn’t make you think twice, you must know that there’s one study, that says that it takes up to 2 years for the effects of a single dose of antibiotics to remain in our system. And oh, I thought you must know that the bacteria it affects diversity is one of the most important bacteria.

It’s a big deal! This only means that being mindful on our food choices instead of relying on medicine afterwards could really pay-off not only for the short term but long term as well.

Meal diversity. And since we’re talking about healthy eating, I guess it’s important as well to highlight that making sure to eat a diverse range of food is important. Yes, that pie chart you’ve been thought when you’re young still exist and is very much important no matter how old you get.

In case you forget already what I’m talking about, check out image below. You’re very much welcome!😃

How to take care your your gut health

Know you have a deeper understanding of what gut is all about, why is it important, and what affects gut health. As they say, “precaoution is better than cure”. Here’s some ways to take care of your gut health so you don’t need to go into trouble with your health.

Taking Probiotics. Probiotics are the live microorganisms (good bacteria) that reside in the gut. Probiotics support our immune system, aid digestion and assist with nutrient absorption into our bloodstream. While fresh fruits and vegetable is the best source of probiotics, we must all agree with the kind of lifestyle we are living nowadays, it’s difficult to commit to our food needs.

That’s why, taking probiotics instead is one of the most effective ways to make sure you get all the nutrients you need in a day. That’s exactly what Wellzyme does. With 6 key enzymes your body need specially designed into one, you’ll pretty much headed for a healthy gut in not time!

Drinking tea. Tea drinkers must attest to having good digestion because of their habit of drinking tea. This Tumeric Chamomile Vahdam Tea is one of my go-to to make sure my digestion is on tip-top!

I hope you find this article informative!

Never Do’s to Save Money on Groceries

Posted on October 5, 2022 by Jeannine

Food is a basic necessity. Unfortunately, because of this, it’s usually being used as an excuse to spend more on it or let’s just way, go way over budget. We got the money, then why do we need to go hungry and die?! Sounds familiar?

Don’t let your budgeting efforts go to waste just because you can’t control yourself from eating. There’s a reason why I’ve always been highlighting the need to have a good mindset first if you want to change your lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if you’re focusing on finances any kind lifestyle change. If all comes together anyways at the end.

When eating habit changes, it comes with your finances, which affects all over wellness. Get it?! Everything comes hand-in-hand.

As a mom, we usually are the ones in-charge of buying groceries. If you’re blessed with a hubby like me, you’ll have another watchful eye on those food meals you cook, food you buy, and expenses you pay.

Here are 5 Grocery Shopping Tips you’d need to make sure you spend your money wisely:

Never go to the Grocery Store without checking your refrigerator and pantry

The last thing we want to find out when we arrive back from the grocery store is to find out that you still have a lot of chicken in your freezer that you forgot to cook the other day because your friend invited you to have dinner at their place for her son’s birthday party.

Checking these two places can help you with your meal planning, making sure that first stocks gets cooked first before the new ones. This way, you avoid spoilage and make sure you get fresh food to eat always.

Never go to the Grocery Store without Meal Planning

Meal planning is the the foundation to make your meals stress-free, easy, budget friendly, and intentionally made. Planning your meals lessens food waste, saves you from cramming what meal to cook for dinner, and keeps your budget intact as you can allocate properly your money per meal.

You can spend more on your other days of the week and prepare a meal with cheaper ingredients on others. This way, you don’t feel like being deprived from eating your favourite meals nor sticking only budget friendly meals.

Never go to the Grocery Store without checking seasonal fruits and vegetables

Being an avid blog reader, I’m so much aware on how much information there is about seasonal fruits and vegetables around the net. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information that is relatable to the 2 seasons (sunny and rainy) we have here in Singapore. This is the best that I can find which hopes help you decide which fruits and vegetables could be on a lower price range (or on sale)when you visit the grocery store.

Let’s not fool ourselves though, we all know that Singapore imports 90% of its food from 170 countries all over the world. So my frustration on not having much data online available may seem useless after all. haha

This only means, despite not having 4 seasons, it’s still important for us to consider the seasonal fruits of countries where we import our food for us to gauge the price of food we will buy.

Never go to the Grocery Store without a List

We’re half-way till the end and you’ll notice that it’s really a step by step process. By now, you’ll for sure be able to create a “correct” list of food you need for your meals. This is where you get to play around with your budget and see if you can add some of those “wants” you might see in the grocery store. The struggle is real and I know it! Add to that those stores with free tasting which it seems impossible not to resist.

Never go to the Grocery Store without a Budget

All of those written above is useless if you don’t have a budget on hand. Sure, having the money at hand is great when you go shopping but note that you’re going through some financial habit changes right now.

And with this, having a budget means you get to use the other part of your money for more important matters that matters most to you, like an investment or your future or creating an emergency fund.

Never buy Online Groceries if your budget doesn’t reach their minimum FREE DELIVERY

This additional tip is for families like ours who got the hang of online deliveries. We first started using online grocery when our 2nd daughter was born. Going for a trip to the grocery to buy diaper, water, and formula milk can be tedious and be a work-out! haha.. To solve this problem, my wise hubby suggested we just do all of it online.

We’re paying for the items anyways, so why not use our time on other stuff to do and simply wait at home for our goods to come. This habit of ours carried on as we noticed that we’re able to utilise our budget more by doing this as we can see already the price we need to pay already.

With this, we can assess more if we need to remove some items and trace back to our meal plan to change it all together for our budget to be right. And of course, when the Pandemic struck and we can’t go out. This has been the safest way for us to buy our food.

It’s time to stop drinking your calories

Posted on September 22, 2022 by Jeannine

Have you been trying to lose weight and starting to get frustrated not seeing the results you’ve been working hard for? There might be some loop holes that you aren’t being mindful of.

When it comes to losing weight, we usually focus more on the food intake. Some do calorie counting, others even deprive themselves from eating and starve themselves just to say that they’re trying their best to make some action. As they say, “a goal without action is just a dream”.

Well, partly true, the problem is, when the action made is just part of a whole. That’s why, I’d always love to add another mantra with the one I’ve mentioned earlier with, “don’t work hard, work smart”.

When you work towards a goal, it’s important to look at the whole picture. In this case, if you want to lose weight, make sure to not only to be mindful of what you eat but also what you drink.

The marketing industry of companies of today have invested tons and tons of money just to make sure consumers bite to their trap. We already know how bad sodas are and I think it’s been the most exposed high-sugary drink, that’s why I won’t dwell on that anymore. This article is to pin-point more of those kind of drinks which aren’t that much exposed yet we usually drink on a daily basis. Yikes!

Popular drinks which disguises itself:

Fruit juice. We all know that fruits are rich in vitamins and minerals. Little do we know that those labeled 100% fruit juice boxes we buy from stores are contain more sugar-sweetened versions can come with a large dose of sugar and very little fiber.The next time you want to drink some fruit juice, make sure to have them freshly squeezed.

Sports drinks. This drink has been more popular nowadays as more people get into fitness. Linking itself to be a go-to drink to keep you hydrated and fuelled to prolong strength for intense periods of exercise. FYI, it’s the high amounts of added sugars that can be quickly absorbed and used for energy that’s being consumed.

This is quite alarming actually if you come to think of it. A 32-ounce sports drink contains between 56 and 76 grams of sugar – equal to about 14 to19 teaspoons – and four to six times the recommended daily amount for kids and teenagers according to this article from UICH.

Into fitness? Know that it’s still the old and simple water that you can rely on to keep you hydrated.

Chocolate milk. Milk itself is a nutritious drink filled with calcium to keep our bones healthy. Adding chocolate though which is composed of cocoa and mostly sweetened sugar, it surely defeat the purpose of drinking milk. To highlight, 1 cup of chocolate milk comes with almost 3 teaspoons of sugar. Try eating 3 teaspoons of sugar and see for yourself if you’ll still enjoy it.

Flavoured coffees. This one could be the culprit for many for sure. Sadly, with the help of Social Media, it’s been made into a status-symbol, hence, everyone want to have our hands on it. This is one of the trends where not only does it affects your finances (those drinks aren’t cheap!) but also puts your health into jeopardy.

A large flavoured coffee usually have 45 grams of sugar, if not much more. That’s equivalent to about 11 teaspoons of added sugar per serving. WOAH! Don’t worry coffee addicts, there’s some healthier ways for you to have your caffeine-fix. Check out this article.

Iced tea. I must confess, this is where the loop-hole is in our family. Not being a soda fan, we end up with Iced teas. Surprise, surprise!!! It’s another drink full of sweetened sugar in it! Worst is, the usual iced teas sold contains around 35 grams of sugar per 12-ounce (340-mL) serving. That’s almost the same as a bottle of Coke. 🤨 Guess where drinking sodas without the fizz!

Pre-made smoothies. If you look at any healthy eating blog, you’ll probably see a smoothie as one of their recommended breakfast recipe. Truly, homemade smoothies that’s you usually make out of blended fruits and milk is a healthy morning drink. Those you buy though and are commercially produced are full of sweeteners and even have ice cream or syrup on it.

This makes a “supposedly” healthy drink contain a ridiculously high amount of sugar, with over 13 teaspoons of sugar!

It’s not only drinks that disguise themselves, in today’s world where everyone wants to somehow trick the other, it’s good to always be mindful about everything. Check out the list of food that disguise themselves as healthy.

I hope you find these tips helpful. For daily inspiring Self-Care tips, you can follow me here. I’d also love to see you on my Mindfulness Course and be with your journey to a better you. Sign-up now to be included on my VIP list!