Healthy Living in Singapore

A softer world, a softer me

A couple of days ago I went for my first reunion dinner.

Reunion dinners are funny things. They are supposed to be a time of gaiety aren’t they? A time when dear family members and not oft seen relatives gather around a bubbling hotpot and partake in communal joy.

I’m introverted by nature (which simply means I recharge my social energy by people alone and doing ‘me’ things) but I do like hanging out with people and I love hearing from people and their experiences. Family time means the world to me so every time there is an invitation I will ensure that I’m there. But oh man, such gatherings always take such an extreme toil on me. 🙁

I want to be brutally honest here- I know that it’s a chore not because of anything external but because of my own self consciousness. There is no one to blame, just my own insecurities which shouldn’t even be there. It amazes me to think how slow my mind has healed in relation to my body; how fast my mental health deteriorates in relation to my body.

Physiologically I would consider myself fully healed of my (self) abusive past. My knees no longer knock together when I sleep, my stomach no longer growls. My ribs can no longer been seen jutting out and nor does sitting for long hours hurt my tailbone. My hair is full and my face is gorgeously ruddy most days. When I physically exert myself, I feel my heart pumping strongly and I’m confident of my body’s ability to climb up flights of stairs and I can run, jump and skip to my heart’s content. I haven’t been sick in years and I know I’m really healthy.

Mentally, most days I do really well. Yet there are some days I yearn for my skinnier self. I yearn to fit into pieces of cloth sewn by societal standards. I yearn to be a certain number on the scales. I yearn to look not like me, but like somebody else. Fortunately I think I’ve reached a point where these feelings are few and far between but I wouldn’t deny that there are days where these thoughts still plague me.

And these thoughts plague me none more severely than days where I have to push myself out there and meet people I usually only meet once a year. Suddenly I forget that I’m beautiful and that I’m enough. Suddenly I see myself only through their eyes and even before they have judged me (if they even do), I’ve judged myself. I cringe at the thought that year on year I’ve only been getting bigger in their eyes.

I left that reunion dinner almost in tears once again. It’s not that the people were bad or malicious but good natured jokes are severe triggers on people vulnerable to such attacks. What may be a lighthearted jab at a person’s weight to some may be terrible stab to someone who not only spent years battling a secret eating disorder, but who just hours ago, had to muster up all sorts of mental motivation to even step foot into the house. It was exhausting even to get to the place, let’s not talk about even having any energy left over to deal with such teasing.

And after I left the dinner place, I felt my heart hardening with steely resolve. I wanted to lose the weight, I wanted to be skinny and beautiful. I will do whatever it takes. I will lose 10kg, 15, whatever. I will be a skinny minnie. I need to binge, to eat away this pain, no I can’t, I just need to be disciplined and motivated. I AM disciplined and motivated. I can do this. I just need a plan. I wouldn’t eat carbs. I will go on a juice fast… I will research it now…

With every thought that was going through my mind, my heart hardened in response and I allowed it. With every statement I felt the pain ebbing away only to be replaced with my determination to make things better. I was obsessively scrolling through Instagram and searching out #juicefast or #weightloss and all these while, my fiance’s well meaning words literally fell on deaf ears and a heart so steeled against the words of the world, it wouldn’t let the good ones through either.

Then suddenly things came to a hilt. Perhaps it was all those days of striving to treat my mind and body better. Perhaps it’s all those days of surrounding myself with positive thoughts and people but deep down I knew that this determination to make things better was self abuse. It was not self love and they were all lies. I’ve come too far, experienced too much to not recognize what true self love is now. And whatever I was intending to do was certainly not self love- only the clamour for external validation.

And the more I thought about it, the more my heart softened. And with the softening of my heart I allowed the words and memories of the people around me to flood its chambers. Memories of happy times with my family and friends, laughing over food, not worrying about calories thawed the edges before making its way to my core. Memories of my fiance cupping my face or interrupting me mid sentence to tell me that I’m beautiful warmed the icy core.

And my heart felt soft, full, warm and most importantly, alive.

I could see so clearly then the abyss I so nearly threw myself into. The lies I told myself and allowed myself to believe that so nearly caused my destruction. It had nothing to do with the people around me or the gathering or anything, it was all my disordered thinking. All my doing. All in my mind.

People often ask me how to deal with their eating disorders, how to recover, how to eat, what to do. And I’m going to tell you now that the answer is in a softer heart. 

Your days will always be a battle but don’t let the world and what (you think) it says harden you. On your good days, cherish every single moment and file it away in your mind and most importantly, your heart because when the bad days come and your mind deceives you and tells you that you are not good enough, not beautiful enough, not worthy enough, it’s these very memories that will tide you over and bring you back to the side of truth.

I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am alive, strong, enthusiastic, head over heels in love with life-

and so are you…

if you would only allow yourself to be. 

Go out there and be strong my lovelies. Everyone has a battle of their own to fight. Make sure yours isn’t against your beautiful self.

With all my love,

xx

Are you STARVING yourself?

When we think of starvation, images of sickly, frail, bony bodies come to mind. We see heartbreaking images on the internet of people in places with no access to food and water.

It’s no wonder that we glamourize abundant eating here in developed countries. An abundance of food everywhere is almost like a badge of honour to say that we’ve made it. Look at me indulging in my fried chicken and char kway teow and pizza and buritos! Check out my cosmopolitan diet, you guys!

Yet everywhere I look, I see people around me, right here in developed Singapore, starving, starving STARVING. And it’s killing me. It makes me so upset and angry at the same time. I want to shake my fist at the problem and childishly tell it to go away but of course it wouldn’t, certainly not just like that.

First off, let’s state that this has NOTHING to do with your body size. I DON’T CARE. You can be obese with a BMI of 50 or waif-like with a BMI of 10 or be perfectly defined as ‘healthy’ with regards to the BMI scale and you still could be starving. 

According the the Oxford English Dictionary, starvation is defined as:

suffering or death caused by the lack of food.

 And food:

any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.

which essentially, I would put starvation as suffering or death caused by the lack of nutrition to maintain life and growth.

I doubt anybody in Singapore is dying from starvation but are you suffering from a lack of nutrition today?

Are you suffering from or on the brink of suffering from diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis?  I found a really great article here (“Are you starving yourself into obesity”) that I feel is quite telling of the future of our nation if we don’t encourage greater mineral and vitamin intake (from real food sources! Not just supplementation!)

When I go overseas and I eat an abundance of food, I always crave to return back to normal eating because I know that much as I enjoy it, the abundance of food I’m eating is not meeting my nutritional requirements at all. On my recent Bangkok trip, we loaded up on Pad Thai and fried chicken wings, fantastic pork intestines and rice and an abundance of every rich and yummy food you could think of.  I was eating up to 8 meals a day yet I knew I was starving. I was eating a whole load of items but they weren’t hitting my micro-nutrient needs. The sense of fullness I felt was from a bloated stomach and overworked digestive system rather than true satiety.

It amazes me that I learnt how to felt to be truly satiated only in my mid 20s. Before, I would eat a whole lot but never truly feel full. Well, I would think I was full but now on a diet abundant in nutrients that my body needs, I’ve finally learnt the feeling of true satiety. It’s not a sense of bloatedness or lethargy and I no longer crave to eat more of the same.

Have you ever tried an amazing dish that you just wanted to eat more and more of it till you are totally stuffed? Chances are the item in question is a product cooked with a perfect blend of quick digesting carbohydrates and fat that altars your brain to crave more. It’s a double whammy as well because not only do you crave to eat more psychologically, physiologically, because your body is only receiving carbohydrates and fat, it will send signals to eat more in hopes you might give it the nutrients it needs. My acid test for natural, good food now is if I can stop eating it. People are often surprised when I bring them to ‘healthy’ cafe joints like Balanced Living Cafe and they are full and unwilling to eat anymore despite them over ordering intitally coz they feared the salad is ‘not filing enough’. (This is probably why ‘unhealthy food’ is yummy to you. It’s yummy / makes you crave more of it because your body isn’t getting any nutrients, it never gets full!)

Let’s pause for a moment here and take a look at a diet that I copied wholesale from what one of my students told me he eats daily. He is 12 by the way and is obese and suffering from pre- diabetes which is in my humble opinion, totally unnecessary. I’ve tried to sound it out to his parents but they sighed in despair and say they have no time to take care of him and his grandparents show love by showering him with food.

Breakfast: milo/ white bread/ kaya
Snack: (he brings a lunchbox to school in an attempt to get him to eat ‘healthier’!!!)
Chicken nuggets with cut up prata slices and chili sauce
Lunch: Macdonalds meal upsized
Snack: All the soda he wants and chips
Dinner: Normal Chinese dinner but usually has some kind of friend food and 3 portions of rice. He does eat some veggies here
Supper: Instant noodleswith canned sausages (his favourite!)

All I see here is SO MUCH FOOD and the boy is starving away. He’s not getting anything! He’s constantly hungry and his parents just laugh it off and calls him a ‘growing boy’ with a ‘big appetite’. DOES THIS NOT UPSET YOU? Here we are living in such a developed, rich nation and we are starving our kids (and ourselves) out of LOVE? Oh the irony.

In other news, let’s move away to a typical office worker’s food intake:

Breakfast: Bread with egg and coffee
Lunch: Dabao-ed hawker centre Cai fan with rice and meat and veggie
Tea: Teh-O Siew Dai with a chicken pie
Dinner: Fishball noodles (soup- coz healthier option?)

Sounds pretty reasonable right? Is this office worker likely to be fat? I’d say no. OW here might be quite slim in fact, eats reasonably well and have no current health problems but a daily intake like that is almost devoid of fibre, minerals and vitamins that the body needs.

So if said OW here decides that he/ she needed to ‘detox’ (ugh, I hate this word) coz he/ she is feeling a little pudgy recently, he/she might decide to cut out carbs because that’s what everybody does when they go on a diet right?

So in an attempt to be ‘healthier’ and slim down, OW new daily intake might look like that:

Breakfast: scrambled egg and coffee
Lunch: Cai fan meat and veggies no rice
Tea: 1 slice of papaya
Dinner: Fish soup no noodles

Will he/ she lose weight? Of course! He/ She might even be the envy of all her colleagues who also strive to cut out carbs and whatnot because her/ his one week ‘detox’ was so successful! Will he/ she get healthier? NO. This ‘detox’ to get healthier is even more devoid of nutrients than her previous diet with the exception of the additional papaya. I see so many people around me on this kind of diets and it makes me want to wring my hands out in frustration. Yes you are eating, but you are still starving!

Getting healthier, guys, is not SUBTRACTION. It’s not eating less. It’s eating more! Eat more fibre, eat more calcium, magnesium, vitamins etc! Stop starving yourselves!

In another scenario, our dear friend OW here might be walking past her friend who is eating KFC for lunch. OW2’s daily intake might go somewhat like this:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with mushrooms and assorted veggies
Lunch: KFC chicken with a lunchbox of broccoli and brown rice
Tea: Fruit
Dinner: Homecooked white rice, veg and Fish

OW2 ate KFC for lunch- JENG JENG JENG! White rice! All these things people always say are ‘unhealthy’ and ‘bad’ But overall, her diet has more fibre, nutrients and vitamins than OW1. Do you see that it’s not about restriction but balance? That the more substances you eat that are devoid of nutrients, the more nutrition you need to eat? It’s not about the type of food you eat at all, it’s about supplying your body with nutrients such that it can work at its most optimal. If you eat a whole cake for Christmas, your next meal jolly well be a whole farm of broccoli. (Haha!)

So the next time you indulge in a feast (holiday season, guys!) or lots of cake and pastries and whatnot remember that you may not exactly be eating FOOD. You might just be stuffing yourself silly.

Which brings me to… the post holiday ‘detox’. 

 I’ve had so many email requests for a ‘detox’ plan. Readers send in their self crafted detox plan which consists of a few bunch of salad leaves and think they are going to attain nirvana and purity after that. Seriously, what is with this idea of perfection and internal cleanliness that people are so obsessed over?

If you over indulged on food one day, restricting your food intake the next day is not the way to help your body at all. You need to think of eating in terms of nutrients rather than calories! If on Day One you ate lots of Christmas cookies and treats and every thing, as a calorie counter, you might be tempted to eat nothing the next day and exercise intensively (exercising intensively also leeeches vitamins and minerals from your body so you MUST REFUEL!)  to return to a net zero. Don’t you see how unhealthy that is? If you do so, instead of your one day ‘detox’ effort to get healthier, you end up with TWO days devoid of nutrition or maybe even less nutrition than when you first started!

But if you look at your intake in terms of nutrition, you would realise that on Day One, you ate lots of sugar and fat with hardly any fibre or vitamins or minerals (no biggie, no need to beat yourself up over it) thus on Day Two, rather than completely restricting your food intake or eating the bare minimal, you might load up on lots of  (If you are eating ONE iceberg lettuce and dressing for lunch that is pure starvation. Don’t do it!) fruits and veggies and lean protein to balance the previous day and  re-nourish your body.

So the next time you see a friend eating a salad, don’t be too quick to judge and dismiss said friend as starving him/ herself. For all you know, the one starving here might just be… you 😉

My Story/ New Beginnings

Today I want to share with you what’s on my heart and a little of my journey to health.

For ease of understanding, I’ve made a really crude bar chart. There will be no fancy pictures tonight, no hyperboles, extravagant recipes. Just a very honest, heavy heart and words from a very flawed person.

From ages 0-16 I lived as normal a life as could be. I always thought I was average in everything. Average in height, average in weight, average, average, average. It didn’t matter much to me though. I liked being average. It meant like baby bear’s porridge, I was neither too hot nor too cold and I was just right. Besides, I had more important things to do in life like playing shadows with my brothers, protecting my oreos from them and collecting fanciful stationery pads from the school bookshop that I hid at the bottom of my drawer in hopes that my mother would never find out (didn’t work). Save for a couple of comments at Chinese New Year or other family gatherings where the proverbial aunt with her ample bossom would always pinch my cheek and exclaim “AIYO! What happened to you! Why you put on so much weight!” I never really gave much thought to my size or any physical part of me. I had hands and I had legs and every part of me worked perfectly fine except for my traitorous lungs that always gave out on me on my dreaded NAPFA tests. But wheezing and panting and swearing that I was going to die helped me to eek out a pass anyway so even though I knew I wasn’t very fit, I felt that I was okay because, well, I passed right? And I wouldn’t ever have to run for another year so meh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I was doing well in school and had even gotten attached to my primary school sweetheart (haha, how young and foolish we all were last time) and life was going pretty well.

Life changed drastically when I was 17 though. I left the protective arms of my secondary school and was thrust into a whole new environment in JC. Perhaps it was the ‘communist’ nature of my secondary school but for the first time in my life, I realised what it meant to be in a ‘dog eat dog world’. Don’t get me wrong, none of the people I met in JC were bad just that we were so different and it didn’t helped that we were all vying to succeed in a pressure cooker environment. I remember being totally gobsmacked when in the first week of school I’d printed notes for everyone in class-because well, if you are printing 1 copy, you might as well print 25 right?- and a senior stopped me and said “huh. why did you do that. xiao. you are just wasting your time. Nobody will ever do that for you also. ” I didn’t know if that was more painful or the fact that in the 2 years of my time in JC, that would turn out to be true.

For the first time ever as well, everyone suddenly seemed almost perfect to the point of being painful. (Although of course, on hindsight now I knew everybody also felt almost the same and it was my insecurity talking to me and nothing was really true). They were all so effortlessly good looking, so smart, so athletic, so cool I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. How did they even know to tailor their skirts like that? Where did they get such short socks from and oh lord, their hair- so gorgeous it made my flowing locks look like a haystack. It probably also didn’t help that my skirt was knee length and my hair neatly pulled back from my chubby face like what my secondary school DM would approve of. It was easy to strike up a conversation but terribly difficult to sustain it because I didn’t have any common topics to discuss with anyone. Till that first day in school, I’d never even stepped foot into Holland Village- how was I to answer if I had ‘heard of the new ice cream place that just opened’? I was ranked as one of the top 20 speakers in the nationwide debating championships in secondary school but for my entire time in JC I ironically had no ability to speak. There was just nothing to say. Everyone else was smarter, more exposed to the world, prettier, better, more outgoing. Everyday in JC was just the suckiest time ever and while everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives I often hid in the toilet to cry after failing yet another exam paper (seriously, I don’t think I passed a single one), hating myself and believing that I was an absolute failure.

Then the bingeing came.

I wouldn’t go into details but one particular incident stands out the most. Stress levels were at an all time high and it had been yet another sucky day at school. The moment the dismissal bell rang, I stuffed (yet another failed) exam paper into my bag and dashed out of the school gates almost trembling with need like a drug addict. I went to the nearby macdonalds and bought a large McSpicy meal, with 20 nuggets and alacarte mcwings, to KFC for another set meal, to the hawker centre of meepok (don’t ask) and to 7-11 for bags of chips then I took a cab home, praying no one would be in and inhaled everything. For that few moments when I was stuffing and stuffing and my stomach expanding to the point of hurting, the hurt, the pain the anguish, all diminished with each mouthful I shovelled into my system. It was only when everything was gone, when the last morsel had made it’s way into my tummy that I finally recovered my senses and the sense of guilt would start creeping in.

From that moment life became a rollercoaster of comfort eating and guilt. Every time something happened and I had no words for it I would eat my feelings. Bad grades?  3 fast food set meals would cure it. No friends? Hey, nuggets would never let you down. I ate my way through the next few years of my life ballooning to 15kg over my ‘happy weight’.

All these happened while everything was crumbling around me- my grades in university, my love life, my relationships with the people around me yet I think on the outside I was still quite happy, bubbly and functional? Inside though, I felt like I was drowning and desperately trying to keep my head afloat in water. I swung from binging, to restricting and back again and was in general just always filled with despair.

At 22, everything came to a hilt. To cut the long story short, my boyfriend of 8 years found some other girl more attractive than I was and left (in the most heartrendingly horrible way ever). My professor threatened to fail me if I skipped anymore classes and I was slapped with a $30,000+ debt (Inclusive of my undergrad fees but I was also young and frivolous and stupid about money).

I wish I could say more (and maybe someday I would) but if you look at the bar, 23-24 was really a period of discovery for me. For the first time in 8 years I decided to stop being a door mat and LOVE MYSELF. I stopped defining myself by societal standards, stopped depending on others to validate my self worth, stop spending money frivolously, restricting/ bingeing/purging whatever.

I was desperate to learn about health and not some bikini body diet so I scoured the internet and the library for cancer prevention books, food nutrition books and the like. I figured that if I really wanted to be healthy FOR LIFE and love myself, not just to look good then I would need to learn from people whose diets truly meant the difference between life and death. 23-24 was truly, truly a learning experience for me. I got out of all my crappy relationships, built new, true real ones, rediscovered God (seriously, He is my everything now), lost 15kg, learnt to live healthy on a shoestring budget, drank green smoothies everyday, counted nutrients in my food instead of calories, threw my weighing scale away, completed my Honours year, wrote my thesis on societal standards and the female body (Ii am hellbent on this topic haha), made so many mistakes and learnt from them and really learnt the true meaning of living a happy healthy life.

Age 25 I coloured in green because this was the year I can frankly say I was the healthiest and happiest. This was the age I could truly look you in the eye and tell you that I feel beautiful not because I was perfect but because I’d achieved balance in life. The day I knew I truly loved myself was when I was looking over at my boyfriend (yes, I got attached again after agonising for months to make sure I wasn’t rebounding and questioning if I could really ‘trust’ again) and thinking to myself ‘wow, I love myself so much now that even if I had to get married tmr I wouldn’t even have to despair over losing weight because being married is about LOVE and HAPPINESS not how I look or what I weigh!’

That year, I gained a few kg and learnt that I had a range of weight that I considered my ‘happy size/ place’ where I felt confident and happy about myself. It meant no restriction yet no excessive binges either. Even if I ate out of line a few days in a row, my weight would stabilise and it would cause me no worry. I learnt that TRUE HEALTH is in THE MIND and characterised by the fact that I didn’t have to think about food (too much or the lack thereof) all the time. I indulged in a wide variety of Real Food and everything was so yummy and so satisfying! For the first time in my life as well, my constipation was cured and I was going EVERYDAY and I finally could understand when people say it is possible to go in just under 5 min! (TMI, but big deal to me. I used to spend HOURS in the toilet). I was literally glowing and I just felt so healthy, so happy, so empowered. I chose to eschew the typical 9-5 career path and it really helped opened me to new experiences in life, to learn to empathize with people, to be less judgmental and to just be more loving and gracious because the world is beautiful and there is so much to celebrate about it. I learnt the we truly are the culmination of all our experiences and I cherish each moment of crying in the school toilet, each ounce of self hate and self doubt and even (or especially) my failed broken relationship that consumed so much of my youth because every of those moments fueled my journey into becoming the person I truly am happy being. I felt so good about food and life that I started this blog because I wanted to let others the amazing healing properties of food as well as all the beauty the world had to offer.

Unfortunately, that time has some how slipped away and I have to admit that I’ve tumbled off the bandwagon. The stress of life has gotten to me again and while life is certainly not as bad as before, I’ve had recurring episodes of bingeing and comfort eating. At first they started out inncuosuly enough. Just a slightly larger meal than usual, than more and more till I was mindlessly shoveiling porportions of yesteryears. If you noticed, I haven’t even bothered making lunchboxes the whole of the past month because I was just so busy and unbalanced. I possibly ate more junk this few months than the past 3 months put together. I grew heavier and heavier but I guess I love myself so much now that I am all LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOL what is a little weight gain etc :/ I’ve read so much about different diets that I experimented with paleo, dukan, veganism, vegetarianism, even fruitarianism etc and all of that has taken a toll on my poor body ( I hope I haven’t damaged it beyond repair).  All these little bits and pieces culminated into a massive meltdown and I have to be honest with myself now that I’ve once again reached the pit and I need to rebalance my life. I am almost 8kg away from my happy place (too much for my frame) and I’m almost slipping into the diet mentality game once again and thinking about my body in terms of numbers. (NO. I NEVER EVER WANT TO GO BACK THERE AGAIN). I want to go back to the green zone once again when I didn’t worry whether dairy was leeching calcium out from my bones or if rice was still inherently processed (since in came in a package -.-. FYI- Being obsessive about health is also an eating disorder called orthorexia) Following and experimenting with ‘healthy’ diets has really taken such a toll on my body and mental state that I am also desperate to go back to just normal, varied eating.

Also, I hope that for those of you struggling to follow a diet or wondering which diet is best for you (Vegan-ism is so healthy and compassionate! The dairy industry is LYING to us. Meat has hormones and bacteria! Fish has metals! Bread is processed! Carbs make you fat!) and you just end up undereating and avoiding food options because ‘it’s not part of your diet plan’ (only to end up BINGEING from hunger and hating yourself after) then may I please welcome you back to balanced eating. 😀

So bear with me my dear readers, as I make the tedious climb back to my
happy place and a more balanced life. I took a long time to decide
whether or not to share this information with you all because I felt
like such a hypocrite- but for what it’s worth, I really want to stress
that a journey to health is not in the least bit simple or linear. It
has to be worked for (some harder than others. sigh) and there will be
times when we slip or even come full circle (sigh x2) but more important
is the hope that there will always be a better tomorrow 🙂

For the time being though, I will unlikely be updating my facebook page that much but will be updating more frequently over on this space/ instagram just like how I did when I first started out. It’s back to the basics for me once again, and I’ve always wanted this space to be a small, intimate place where we can talk without fear of judgement or persecution. I will also be updating this space on my journey back to more balanced living and my Real Food meal plans and ideas geared towards weight loss (portion controlled vs. abundant unrestricted eating until I recalibrate my tastebuds and reset my hunger signals) which I think might be helpful for some of you as well. I don’t recommend calorie counting but my meal plans for weight loss are not ‘detoxes’ or starvation diets. Instead, they incporporate a wide range of food designed to bring balance back to the body and are perfect for long term sustainable eating. There will be no veganism, vegetarianism, cutting out carbs, cutting out foodgroups or whatnot here, I’m afraid. I find it makes me too finnicky and unbalanced and it has (evidently!) caused me to undereat and binge and harm my body even more. I’m going back to the basics- wholegrain carbs, small amounts of dairy, lean meats and an abundance of fruits and vegetables. Since I’m a quest to love myself right once again, that includes lots of massages and happy, positive moments as well 😀 I wouldn’t be weighing myself to chart my progress but I will know when I reach my happy place because I’ve been there before and wow, I look forward to once again leaping out of bed refreshed and happy with myself and raring to take on life!

I understand that there are many here as well who are recovering from anorexia and are looking to gain weight. I’m not sure if what I’m doing is triggering but I really hope that it isn’t and if you do feel like it’s triggering I really want to encourage you to view both you and I as on the journey to reaching our happy place where we can live our most balanced, confident lives where food is just food and a tool to fuel our body and mind. I doubt a weight where you constantly worry about your health or food is a happy weight so if you need to gain, please continue and keep at it! If you need to lose, tone up or reach your happy weight, I hope this helps you as well.

I have no greater wish than to see all of you be happy, healthy and confident at your most happy place where you fear no food and you live balanced, inspiring, lives.

Let’s be like baby bear’s porridge- not too hot, not too cold, just right.

See you at our happy weight my beautifuls 🙂

With all my love and determination,
xxx