I Am Proud Of My Body

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of posts recently.

I have been extremely busy but will get back into the hang of things very soon!

I am a huge fan of Kate Winslet; always have been but since reading the quote in the above image about creating a positive body image for children, I love her even more.

I admire her talent but most of all I admire the way she treats her body with respect and doesn’t cave into the unhealthy celebrity habits.

It absolutely terrifies me to see young girls being diagnosed with eating disorders and having a negative body image. The age groups for children being affected are getting younger each year.

The days are gone when the only thing you had to worry about when you were eight years old was what Barbie you were going to bring to “show and tell”.

I was actually told last week that eight year olds don’t play with Barbies anymore, they are far too old for that. I am still in shock.

I can’t say I am all that surprised. Everywhere you look there are images of photo-shopped models.

Every second advert on TV is about a new diet or a diet product to try.

The majority of movies have a token fat person that everyone picks on.

Music videos are just soft porn.

And the one thing girls do best when we get together is talk about weight loss and diet.

These are just a few examples of what young children have around them on a daily basis.

I’m not a mother. I do however want to be a mother one day and it breaks my heart to think that my daughter (or son) will be around all of these unhealthy messages.

I understand that we can’t eliminate every negative image and message from kids these days, but I do know that parents have the biggest influence on kids.

I too, have never heard one woman say “I am proud of my body”. I have heard a million times what they hate about their body but never anything that they are proud of.

I don’t blame my mum for never saying that she is proud of her body. My history of my eating disorder didn’t evolve from her. She isn’t one who fixates on her body. In fact I admire the way she has never stressed too much about it.

But I never heard her (or anyone else) say that they were proud of what they had.

Perhaps because we all didn’t want to seem “full of ourselves”.

I once remember my brother saying how awesome his muscles were and we all laughed and told him he had a big head. I can now see why we never spoke about what we liked about ourselves.

Kids have forgotten how to be kids. I see toddlers wearing clothes just like mummy and demanding baby cinnos.

We all give complements to little girls about their appearance. A child shouldn’t care about their appearance! They shouldn’t worry about their figure because they don’t have a figure to watch.

At work, I am around young kids all the time. For a few months I have been mindful of what I say around little girls. I never comment or compliment them on their appearance. I have told them that they are very important and that they have a big heart. I have told them that they can achieve anything they want in life and you know what, their smile was larger than ever and their spirits were high without talking about body image.

I would love to know your thoughts on this.

Did your parent’s relationship with their bodies affect yours?

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x

Loveable Pumpkin Chickpea’s

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a tendency to over dose on pumpkin. I can’t help it, pumpkin seriously goes with everything.  From sweet to savoury, the good old pumpkin is a staple in my recipes.

You know how people cover their meals that they aren’t too sure of with sauce or cheese? I’m like this with pumpkin. If I add pumpkin into a meal, I’m never worried about not enjoying it (example: my pumpkin sushi recipe).

I am not 100% in love with raw cauliflower rice (yet!). I love cooked cauliflower rice but haven’t made the full transition to eating it raw.

So today I added all of my favourite ingredients into a mix to place on a bowl of raw cauliflower rice.

It worked, I completely loved every mouthful!

Loveable Pumpkin Chickpea’s

Ingredients:

1/3 cup cooked chickpeas

1/3 heaping cup pumpkin puree

¼ cup diced red capsicum

¼ cauliflower

½ pink lady apple

Flat leaf parsley to garnish

Sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

Instructions

(serves 1)

1. Boil pumpkin until soft
2. Dice apple and capsicum
3. Place cauliflower florets into the food processor and process until they become a rice-like texture. Transfer into a bowl
4. Once pumpkin is cooked, puree it and mix it with the diced apple, capsicum and cooked chickpeas.
5. Transfer the mixture onto the bowl of raw cauliflower rice, sprinkle with cinnamon and add parsley to garnish

I really enjoyed this meal (obviously, it had pumpkin in it!) and loved the colours of it!

Now it’s about time I give you an update on my wellness program!

It’s been a month since I started my affirmation program and I’m proud to say that I have kept my promise of sticking with it for an entire month (High Five)!

Thank gosh for mobile phone reminders, post it notes and my alarm, otherwise I may have forgotten about saying affirmations during the day.

Since starting the program of saying daily affirmations out loud, in the mirror and multiple times a day I have felt more self love and appreciation towards myself.

I will defiantly continue with saying daily affirmations but I will however make a change to what the original program entailed.

Daily affirmations have been known to work because when you say something repeatedly for a long period of time, you begin to believe it.

I was saying a different affirmation every day and although I said it multiple times during the day I felt I wasn’t 100% convinced by the time I got to sleep.

I will now be sticking with the same affirmation for an entire week.

I feel this will allow the affirmation “soak” in more. I will be posting my weeks affirmation on twitter so make sure you are following me so you too can feel more love and appreciation towards yourself.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x

The Value In Vulnerability

Whoever said vulnerability showed weakness and powerlessness couldn’t have got it more wrong.

Being vulnerable takes courage and bravery to open up and be your own authentic self.

I have always felt a sense of embarrassment about my struggles with ED and depression.

I’d pushed people away and I wasn’t always truthful about my past and I continued to deny that I had/have struggles.

I used to feel that I shouldn’t talk about it to others and felt like my struggles would make people want to run and hide from me. I can now see that the only person running away was me.

Since moving from Sydney four months ago I have met a great group of friends and have also learnt that my fear of being vulnerable showed that I wouldn’t allow people to like me for who I really am. Instead of letting go and accepting my past and the person whom I am today, I was prepared to hold up a guard for my protection and for a decent amount of time.

Allowing myself to be completely vulnerable isn’t something I had thought of doing.

I saw the stigma behind it and wanted no part in it.

I would stick to the rules and ask for advice whenever possible to make sure I didn’t say anything inappropriate or put a foot in the wrong place.

As I have mentioned, this year is about finding my authentic self. Throughout this year I have made huge progress in finding and living in my serenity, but the fear of being vulnerable and being 100% honest in regard to my words is something I now see is what needs to be taken care of.

For the past fortnight I have been an open book. Vulnerable.

People have asked me questions and I haven’t sugar coated any answers.

I haven’t allowed myself to feel embarrassed or apologetic about my past or how I choose to live my life.

I have thrown out the book of rules that contain all the dos and don’ts in what you should do or say in certain situations and relationships. I have taken the time to dig deep and ask what I really want or think I should do, without any social pressure or other influences.

With this decision came a lot more self respect and love towards myself.

It feels as if a weight has come off my shoulders by saying to the universe “This is who I am and I’m not afraid to be me”.

This is the message I encourage all of you say to the universe from today onwards.

Vulnerability doesn’t deserve the stigma. It deserves the recognition of empowerment and self respect.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts in on this topic in the comments below 🙂

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x

Digestive Green Smoothie

Hi lovelies!

I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to be here for Finding Serenity in my Sunday. I had a busy day but I hope today I can make it up to you by sharing a delicious, ridiculously healthy recipe.

By now you all know about my past struggles with my eating. Because I have neglected my digestive health for many years, it is now suffering because of it.

Even though I have been eating and living a much healthier lifestyle for months now, my digestive system needs to be healed.

I can’t blame it, after all I treated it terribly and didn’t give it the tender, love and care that it deserved.

Now that I am thinking more clearly, I can see and feel just how important it is to look after your digestive system and how uncomfortable it can be when you don’t!

So this smoothie contains a beautiful cocktail of digestive loving ingredients to help reverse any damage and also heal your digestive system.

It tastes damn amazing too with great texture, so seriously you need to get involved right now!

Ingredients

1 big handful of baby spinach leaves

1 sml-med frozen banana

½ sml pink lady apple

1 tsp Bentonite Clay

1tsp spirulina

½  tsp Psyllium husk

20 ml Organic Aloe Vera Juice

8 drops liquid stevia (or to taste)

2 cups chilled water

Instructions

Blend and serve in a wine glass to make digestion sexy!

In other news..

Last week I bought the above vintage design travel mug.

I can now sip on my smoothie on the way to work and also drink hot cacao during the day (YAY).

It has two different designs on each side and most importantly it doesn’t spill!

Question: Do you drink your green smoothies straight away or do you make them and drink them later during the day?

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x

Would You Like Salad With That Oil?

 

My old house mate was visiting his family about 1 hr north of me, and said we should catch up for lunch.

For most people, catching up with a friend whom you haven’t seen in a long time would be exciting, but for me it’s so much more.

Yes it’s exciting, but it’s also a nerve racking, skin scratching, panic making event that makes me want to hide in my well known wardrobe.

What will he say when he finds out I’m vegan?
What will he think of me when I say I can’t have a drink?
What will I wear!?
Will I explain to him that I’m in recovery?
Oh bloody hell, look at the state of my nails!
What if I get lost and crash on the way there?

I needed to calm down and I was overdue for a mani and pedi. Because there isn’t a vegan & cruelty free salon that I have seen (oh that’s a great business idea!) I decided to do my own mani and pedi . I bought cuticle scissors seeing as I have watched it being done many times before and it doesn’t exactly look like rocket science.

Anyway, as it turns out, it’s harder than rocket science and when performing such drastic measures, make sure tissues and band aids are on hand (no pun intended).

So after being reassured that I won’t die on the drive there and that I won’t be forced to eat meat, I said my dramatic goodbyes to my dog and hit the road.

I made it there safe and sound. I sometimes get in the habit of judging my thighs when I sit down so today I made sure I didn’t (you’re welcome, fellow drivers).

You see, although I am proud of being vegan, I do still stress over what people will think of me. So today I just tried to make my eating, not such a big deal. The game plan was to just shrug it off.

So when ordering lunch today, I asked him to order me a salad. When I did this I was thinking, god does he think I ordered this because of my ED?  Does ordering just a garden salad look typical?

I didn’t want any dressing on my salad, but I didn’t ask him to tell the waiter when he ordered because I didn’t want to seem fussy and a pain.

And this my friends is where I learnt my lesson.

So my salad was vegan – score. It was fresh -score. But it was smothered and swimming in oil.

A little bit of oil on my salad is okay but it was swimming and I am not comfortable with this.

I didn’t want to seem like a bother or be a pain so I put a confident smile on my face and acted like nothing was wrong and ate it.

When I got into my car and on the drive home, my heart was pumping pretty damn fast.

I know oil is good for you and I eat oily foods all day, every day, but I wasn’t ready for this..yet!

So although I didn’t cry, kick or scream at the restaurant (you’re welcome everyone) I did, however, feel crap all afternoon.

When I really think about it, I felt mostly crap because I didn’t speak up about what I wanted. I didn’t want to be an inconvenience, and I didn’t want to seem fussy. I felt embarrassed about asking for no dressing!

I realise now that the message I send to the universe is that I’m not worthy of what I want. This has to stop.

I shouldn’t have to apologise for being vegan and asking to leave out the cheese and if they could have the dressing on the side (please).

I need to work on being confident when asking for what I want. But geez it would be so much easier if everyone somehow knew what and when I wanted something!

 

As always your comments make me smile 🙂

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x

Serenity In My Sunday: 5 Things I’m Loving Right Now

Happy Sunday lovelies,

Tonight I thought I’d list my top 5 things I’m loving digging at the moment.

I have benefited from all of these and I hope you can too!

 

Bentonite Healing Clay:

 

How did I not know about this years ago?!

When I first researched it, I scrunched my nose up at the thought of drinking clay. This is why I assume so many people don’t know just how beneficial clay is.

A few of the health benefits include:
cleansing the liver, colon and skin.
strengthening the immune system.
balancing bacteria in the digestive tract and it can eliminate parasites, viral infections and more.

The particles in Bentonite clay contain a negative charge that attracts all types of harmful toxins, bacteria, metals and pesticides so they can be eliminated from the body.

I mix 1 tsp into my daily “green” smoothie. You seriously can’t even taste it, so there is no excuse for you not to get involved in this amazing superfood!

 

The China Study:

 

I truly believe that The China Study is the one book that everyone needs to read.
The studies that were performed are so incredibly interesting and shocking all at the same time.

While reading the China Study my inner goddess was smiling on her perch, waving to everyone who has ever told me that I need to eat meat in order to get enough protein and to be healthy.

 

Coconut oil:

 

I have been using coconut oil as a body moisturizer for over a month now and I will never go back!

I was first worried that my skin would feel oily all day but it absorbs so easily and keeps my skin soft and smooth.

Interesting fact about this delicious scented oil is that it contains fatty acids that help prevent fungal and bacterial infection in and on the skin, also decongesting pores.

 

Eliminate Drama:

 

It’s been a year now since I have given up drama. This means drama television, gossiping, reading magazines or even listening to someone who is bitching about someone else.

This has made such a positive difference in my life, but recently I realised that I can created drama towards myself.
I do this by assuming things.

I assume someone is annoyed at me or doesn’t like me. I assume I’m going to fail and I create scenarios in my head that leave me feeling anxious and exhausted by all of the drama I have just created in my head.

This week I stood back and reminded myself that if for some reason someone doesn’t like me, that’s okay. Not everyone is going to like every single person they meet.

I also stoped myself for over-thinking things. It’s important to be in the now!

 

Mamma Mia Body Image Articles:

 

I can’t get enough of the articles that are posted on Mamma Mia in regard to body image and photo shopping.

Mia Freedman was the former editor for Cleo Magazine in Australia but now actively promotes having a healthy body imagine and to ban photo shopping.

I love her support and her dedication to these topics!

 

By Including all of these into one Sunday, made my day pretty damn Serine 🙂

 

I’d LOVE to know what your loving at the moment?

Have you eaten or drank clay before?

Be kind to yourself,

Lisa x