The I Quit Blog Fiesta no. 11

 
I’ve made it to the 11th I Quit Blog Fiesta after a little bit of a wobble last month (read more here)! This month it is a party for 3, plus all you lovely readers out there.
Westywrites has set herself the challenge of preparing to go single use plastic free for Plastic Free July and her latest blog posts about how she is tackling this can be read here and here.  She is also planning on going Supermarket free for Lent  which you can read about here.  This is on top of her decision to buy no new clothes for a year plus a few other challenges she has set herself here! What an inspiration!  In fact the reason I started planning for plastic free July so many months in advance of it was because I saw Westywrites was doing it and thought what a good idea.  I’m really glad I did start so early as it is quite a massive task and there is very little chance I would have even vaguely achieved it if I had started at the beginning of July (and to be honest I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to achieve it totally, but I will give it a good try).
At the beginning of the year theFIREstarter set himself a Mega-Detox Challenge.  He set himself 5 challenges for the month which involved doing exercise and avoiding caffeine and alcohol (read more here).  He kept a challenge log to tell everyone how it was going along the way here and wrote up the final results of his challenge here.  He managed to complete 4 of the challenges and gave the 5th one a really good go, so well done to theFIREstarter! TheFIREstarter has also decided to buy no new clothes for 2 months to sponsor My Year of Eco Challenges (which you can read more about here) – thanks again theFIREstarter!
TheFIREstarters challenges got me thinking about tea as I have read a few articles saying that there is plastic in some teabags (see herehere and here).  If you can’t be bothered to read the articles basically there are two problems with using plastic in teabags – 1. the plastics can leach into the tea, which may potentially cause health problems and 2. they aren’t biodegradable.  Apparently there are health hazards with paper teabags as well and my advice would be to use loose leaf tea, or grow and dry your own herbal teas like chamomile (find out how here) or peppermint (can be dried in a similar way to camomile flowers) or even make your own real tea (did you know there is a tea plantation in Cornwall and alongside selling tea, they actually sell tea plants so you can grow your own – see here!)
Back onto the subject of quitting, I am still plodding on all with all my quitting challenges – 
  • It is now around 11 months since I went sugar free and although my weight loss is very slow at this point I am still gradually losing more.  I watched the interesting sugar vs fat programme which was on TV recently and I would like to stress that on my sugar free diet I eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates.  I just avoid refined added sugar and refined carbohydrates (In the programme two twins take on extreme diets for a month – one on a low fat diet, and one on a low sugar diet.  The one with no sugar doesn’t eat any fruit or vegetables or carbohydrates at all though and I would never recommend that).
  • I am still shampoo free and although I have definite hair envy going on when I look at other people’s freshly shampooed hair, my hair is improving and isn’t as greasy as it could be after weeks of not washing it with anything other than water (I last used soap in my hair 3 weeks ago) !  
  • I haven’t bought anything at all in a supermarket since I started that particular challenge (although I have been fairly close to a few when getting out cash, filling up with petrol, doing some recycling and loitering outside while my husband shops for things for him…) 
  • I haven’t bought anything new or secondhand for myself.  This challenge isn’t as straightforward as it first seemed though as my husband has bought a kitchen knife and some tea towels because he thought we needed them, but he bought them with our joint money.  So I decided not to use them until the challenge is over (unless all our tea towels end up on the compost heap before the year is out, which is a possibility as they are pretty worn).  Plus when I ordered too many photos for some photo calendars I made for gifts (read more here), I couldn’t think of anyone to give them to except to my husband.  He decided to put them up in a multi-frame photo frame on the wall, which technically I benefit from, but I didn’t ask him to do it, so I’m letting that one slide…
  • I am gradually going single use plastic free – In particular quitting cling film is one thing we have done well with.
  • We haven’t missed our microwave since it went.  I reheat things all the same ways I would cook them e.g. sauces get defrosted in a saucepan, fish or meat might get cooked in the oven from frozen, tortillas (not that I eat them) are heated up on a frying pan….
  • I am mostly wheat free, but will admit to having some homemade pizza and bread the other day (I didn’t want to waste food).  
  • I also have had a little bit of alcohol (about 5 glasses of wine – 3 on new years eve and 2 since then – hence why I looked so tired in my last I Quit Blog Fiesta) but I put on weight straight afterwards, which put me off having it… Although I don’t think I want to give up drinking alcohol entirely, just most of the time…
  • I know it was a long time ago now, but ever since I quit using lipsalve, I have never used it again (read more here)
I think that is it with the quitting stories for this Fiesta, but I would love to hear from you next month!
See you again next time!
If quitting has saved you money, was kinder to the environment and / or improved your health and you have written a recent blog post about it, then please send me the link in an email to ecothriftyliving@gmail.com by 25th February to be included in the next fiesta which will go live on the 1st March 2014 (ish).

Sustainable gift wrap course
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  2. Links don’t have to be recent, but will only be published once (i.e. please don’t send repeat links to future fiestas).
  3. Please link back to the fiesta in your featured blog post(s) either by text link or by adding the button below to the relevant blog post
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I look forward to reading all your ‘I quit’ stories! 

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

Comments

  1. Thanks again for the mention(s)!

    My friend told me about the Fat vs Sugar TV show last night and I was gutted I missed it! I was surprised at the results he was telling me on the show but didn't explain how extremely strict each diet was… so I guess what he said now makes sense. Glad you ended up writing about it! 🙂

  2. I was writing a comment, but it turned into a rather long one, so I made it into a blog post instead. In it I mention your site as one I find inspirational. The only thing I neglected to mention was the fact that having gone without sugar and white flour for a fortnight I am now beginning to lose weight and my energy levels have improved because they have evened out. So, thank you, I'm really pleased 🙂

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