The Plan!

I have finished my job delivering newspapers on decidedly bad terms, but now that I have my mornings back I can begin implementing a plan for a much healthier and indeed holistic life. I am now at a point in this lifetime where using the car is an option and not a necessity and it's an option I'd rather not exercise. What I do want to exercise is my body and my mind.
It is interesting just how cheap it is to live healthily in Australia, well at least in Melbourne it is.
The Farmers Markets sell fruit and vegetables that are fresher than those in the supermarkets, have lower food miles, are often of  varieties that aren't sold in the supermarkets, are an equivalent cost if not cheaper and frequently taste much, much better. The meat at the Farmers Markets is often similar. We know that at the Collingwood Childrens Farm Markets there is at least one seller of meat from a rare species of pig. Fernleigh from near Daylesford sell meat from Wessex Saddleback pigs which were at one point extinct in Britain and the meat from these pigs would have to be the best pork I've ever eaten.
As for exercise. Yesterday we visited an el cheapo shop and bought frisbee for $2. Mavis Hutter Park is about 1 1/2 km from my place. Today, weather permitting, we will walk  to the park and throw the frisbee around for half an hour...or until we are knackered, whichever comes first. Skipping ropes are about $10. 
Walking is free. Melbourne has 700 kms + of public walking trails and fully 90% of them are easily accessible by public transport. Buying a guide to these trails is at most $50 and there are maps on the Internet www.suburbguide.com.au/category/bush-walking-track/location/s-melbourne
Buy a bicycle. A lot of the bike paths in Melbourne are dual use. www.bikepaths.com.au
Even weights although initially expensive work out to be quite cheap in the long run. It's nigh on impossible to break 20 kg of steel and the dumbells last years.
Meditation is cheap. There are quite literally thousands of talks and free books on  meditation online. Websites like: Buddhanet.net, bswa.org. have links to quite literally terabytes of information on meditation and Buddhism. A quiet place, a comfortable cushion and away you go.
Pressure cookers are cheap. I bought mine during the Hindu festival of Holi when it had a 10% discount. My $ 70 pressure cooker turns raw chickpeas into hummus bi tahini inside an hour and a half. So today I'm having a wonderfully garlicky, lemony hummus bi tahini and a fresh French stick from the Vietnamese owned bakery around the corner for lunch. Chickpea have the same protein content as meat and last a damn sight longer out of the fridge.
Water is cheap and actually refreshes you. Beer and wine may initially and in small quantities make you feel good, but in the long run and or in large quantities they are every bit as bad for you as softdrinks. And the "diet" soft drinks are worse for you than the non-diet varieties. The low sugar drinks have Aspartamine in them as a sweetener and that stuff is plain toxic. If you want a caffeine hit try tea or coffee without sugar in them.
My plan is to meditate on average an hour a day. I intend to exercise more days a week than not and when I return to Uni next semester this will mean that I should be walking five days a week with a pack weighing no less than 5 kg and often pushing my son (who will never get lighter) in his pram for about half that distance. In the evenings I plan to do weights and skipping.
The mostly vegetarian diet is by nature a lean diet. I haven't touched junk food in the form of KFC or McDonalds in over a year and the last time I ate it I understood why it's called junk food...it tastes like garbage and is bad for you. 
I am extending my library with biographies, histories, poetry and novels. The body is in for an overhaul and so is the mind.
The intended outcomes are two:

1. I seriously  want Dishy Daddy  status and the accompanying health benefits within 6 months. Dishy Daddy status is having the only visible sign of my 46 years being the grey/white hair. Everything beneath that hairline is going to be lean and toned. I have absolutely no time at all for those men who make it to 40 and then drop the ball and rapidly become fat, boring wastes of space.
2. An extended lifespan. I am married to a certifiably gorgeous 22 year old. Any idiot, including this one would want to live into a happy old age with this girl.

The initial cause for this was a realisation that in order to conceive our son my wife and I had to become healthier. I've had kidney stones in the last year and a half and have the strong suspicion that I have stones now, the more I exercise, the greater care I take with my diet, the less pain in the long run.