Hello there @teacher5aday community!
With all those pledges getting in, Martyn (@MartynReah ) has kindly allowed me to help out with #Teacher5aday this January by focusing on healthy living.
This is a subject very close to my heart. I am passionate about helping others to develop a critical understanding of what healthy living might mean in a broad sense. We hear a lot of hype in the media about healthy living, healthy foods, the “latest” research (in fact, more like research that has interesting soundbites to sell news), the newest diet, etc.
My role here as your #teacher5aday dungeon-master (kudos if you get the reference) is to guide you through this maze of misinformation and raise awareness about healthy living. Ultimately, this #Teacher5aday is about well-being and there are several strands that make up this incredible venture started off by Martyn.
During January we will go through the 5 strands. It is important that this time, this #teacher5aday is about you. It is about your wellbeing and you sharing your experiences with others.
#Connect: You will connect with a whole host of new people from the health community. People that will help you to challenge your views of nutrition. You will need to have a @netflix subscription. ! (if you don’t have one already, get one – it is free for a month – and stop watching Freeview TV!!). Download Netflix and BBCiplayer to your phone/tablet and buy a Chromecast. Trust me, it will change your life.
#Notice: the sooner you start changing your nutrition, the sooner you will notice the changes. As you will see in my vlog below, my changes happened quickly, and the results were surprisingly quick. This time, the ‘notice’ strands is about noticing changes in yourself.
#Be Active : You will do your best to keep your smart wearables going, counting up those steps, sharing your exercises and other activities you are involved in.
#learn : this is the main part of this challenge. You will need to be open to new and challenging information. You will need to spend time watching documentaries and critiquing the documentaries as well as seeking more information about this. But don’t worry, I will try to guide you through all sides of the arguments on nutrition.
#Give : Ha! I will twist this around and I will say that this time it is time to give it back to you. Give yourself the chance to try something new and share your experiences. Try new types of foods. Cook in a different way.
Our well being.
As teachers we need to be at the top of our game, pretty much all the time. In order to be able to be our best in the classroom, we need to be and feel our best outside as well. This is not easy. Life is complicated, full of ups and downs, we have our families and friends to both help and challenge us.
In the course of the month of January I will aim to guide you through the powerful argument that both our mental and physical well-being also have deep roots in our nutritional lifestyle. The choices we make with our nutrition tells us a lot about who we are as individuals but also as part of a multitude of different cultural ideas. This January I will aim to help you understand that we need to break with our traditions, reformulate our ideas of what it means to have a healthy nutritional lifestyle. All these arguments already exists. They are not mine. I will borrow them from those that have spent a lifetime developing them. More and more information about a ‘Whole-Foods, Plant-based’ nutritional lifestyle and Veganism (they are quite different) is getting to the people. But you need to open your minds and hearts about this. Place your assumptions in the bin.
The science already exists, but it wasn’t always easy to find. Buried by large coorporations and money (always follow the money trail), this information about food and the impact on our health has been masked for years. In fact, I will others to say that nutrition is the new ‘tabacco’ and soon people will change their habits just like they did with smoking. It only took about 40 years for people/governments/companies to accept the link between smoking and a multitude of diseases. So we must work hard to by-pass biased media outlets, vague health articles, and challenge orthodoxy and fundamentalist thinking about what health means, about what healthy eating means (i.e. forget about 5 a day fruit and veg and the old “food groups wheel”. Nothing is what you think it is).
Critically, this means you will challenge yourself. Challenge your own perception, your cultural backgrounds and your reality. You might even need to challenge your GP.
The stories are out there. The knowledge is out there. It is your choice to make. Get learning, you will be doing yourself, your family (and the planet) a huge difference.
Below is my short video-clip story on how I transitioned from a full-blown Brazilian carnivore to a whole-foods, plants-based (WFPB) lifestyle and later to a ‘healthy’ vegan. (yes, there are very unhealthy Vegans out there).
After you watch the video, your first task for the 1st of Jan . January is to watch a documentary ( on netflix) called ” Forks Over Knives “ . I will not say what it is about. Just watch it. After you do, leave a comment on the blog with your thoughts. Also, share your thoughts on twitter.
ps: If you have already watched ” Forks Over Knives” . Well done ! That is a great start. I will then recommend you watch either “Food, Inc” Or “Fed Up”. (you can watch both on netflix or on youtube )
Unself Me 
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