How I went from Self-Hating to Self-Loving

I get a lot of questions asking me what made me change my diet and lifestyle so I would like to share with you my journey in a bit more detail. 

​This picture on the right is a picture of me at about 19 years old. What you can't see in the picture is that I was dealing with acne, anxiety, chronic low self-esteem and undiagnosed wheat, dairy and refined sugar intolerances I smoke, I comfort ate, I craved sugar and I ate poorly. I was also desperately unhappy, insecure and very needy (but very kind!).

This is me at about 28 years old. Yes I am overweight but that's not really the main issue. Not much changed since I was 19, except that now I no longer smoke and I tried not to eat too much wheat since I knew it made my anxiety worse and caused me to bloat badly.

I used to be very sporty, on all the sports teams at school with loads of energy. But at 28 years old I had almost no energy, my get-up and-go had got up and gone. I had strong negative feelings towards myself and on occasion my skin was so bad that its turned cystic. I was about 2 stone/30lbs overweight.
I was still exceptionally unhappy and I had no idea what to do about it. I felt very lost.

This picture was taken not long after my daughters funeral. I am at almost 33. I am smiling but of course inside of me I am desperately unhappy.  (you can read about that more here).
I was still dealing with all the health issues that I had before, plus chronic anxiety, depression and no lust for life. The little spark I had inside my heart was extinguished.

I ate meat, dairy, sugar and many many processed foods every single day and I think this is normal as most of the people around me do too. My local Chinese takeaway knew me personally.
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At this point I had no idea how much my diet was affecting me, my mental, emotional and physical health... but all that is about to change.

I've written about how the birth of my son changed my diet (life) due to his eczema and how cutting out diary reversed his symptoms and mine too (you can read more about that here). 
What I haven't written much about is how it started my change towards feeling so much happier. 

After many months of chronic sleep deprivation in the early days of motherhood I was suffering with severe stress and adrenal fatigue. I didn't know it at the time but the food I was eating was hurting me. I had already cut out dairy completely but after reading a book by Rich Roll called Finding Ultra I decided to start adding in green smoothies to my diet. If he could run a ultra marathon purely fuelled by plants, then I knew what I had to do! Because lets face it, motherhood is like running a marathon every-single-day.

Little by little I started to notice that I was dealing with my day to day life with much more ease, my mood was level and I had loads of energy.
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I also started to lose my baby weight, my skin began to clear up and I literally couldn't believe the difference these foods I was adding in were making.

I now realise that my gut bacteria was healing and changing and I began to crave healthier foods. My poor food choices were dropping by the way. It definitely wasn't an overnight change, but instead a slow and steady process of trial and error. I noticed that the good food made me feel good and the bad food made me feel like shit.

This picture of me today. 

What you can't see is that all these little positive changes I made have created a snowball effect. That dreadful feeling of having no lust for life that I thought was just part of my character has now gone. GONE! Anxiety, gone! Acne, gone! 
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Then I started to delve more deeply into my mental and emotional health. I started to meditate and practice yoga every day. I started to question all those negative thoughts I had about myself and became no longer was a prisoner to them.

​I changed. 

The difference I felt in myself propelled me to retrain to be a yoga teacher and now I'm a qualified Clinical Nutritionist who specialises in Plant Based Nutrition. I love it!

I feel so empowered that I want to help you realise that you don't have to be locked in your mental and physical prison anymore, either. There is a way out! You don't have to feel like crap every day! 

There are 3 things I suggest you do:
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1 - Drink a green smoothie every single day. Please don't believe the fear about fruit and sugar. It's not true. It will not make you fat and it will not rot your teeth.
2 - Meditate and/or practice yoga and/or exercise. Ideally all 3 but start with one. The meditation will help you with those looping, self-hating thoughts.
3 - Find out what you love doing. If you don't know what that is, then try something new every month until you find something that you do love.

If you still want some more help, then I am running a series of workshops from January 2018 to help you on your journey to be the best version of you. If you'd like more info on them, please click here.

​Even in the moments when you doubt yourself, I do not for one moment doubt how magnificent and wonderful you are. The light inside of you shines strongly. 

Quote of the day: Start where you are, use what you've got and do what you can.

Namaste 

xx



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