Hi Everyone!
Welcome to my new blog.
I have recently decided to extend my writing prowess to my other areas of interest (beauty, health & fitness and occasionally the odd opinion piece on current news and ideas).
At the age of 24, I am only starting to become comfortable with myself and how I am... and even as I type this, i realise I am not entirely telling the truth, (especially this morning when i jumped on the scale and cringed) but I AM making progress.
When I turned 19, I weighed just over 80kg (I'm only 158cm tall), and was incredibly unhappy about it. I was lucky enough to have an incredible support system, especially my mum who continually encouraged me to eat healthy and exercise.
 |
| Out with friends in 2007 |
 |
| On my Wedding Day 2013 |
I went through some exceptionally hard periods of my life, which i will go into further detail about in later blog posts.
I tried a number of different diets, including Sure Slim (sureslim.com.au), Slim Fast (slim-fast.com) and Body Trim (bodytrim.com.au). While i picked up some good lifestyle tips from each, i just couldn't keep the weight off, and would revert back to horrible old habits.
Until i discovered exercise.
I was one of those people that would go through stages of exercising and then as soon as a rainy day came along, i would make an excuse, and get into a rut, giving up for weeks/months at a time. It is scientifically proven that exercise improves health and well-being to "borrow" a quote from legally blonde.
"Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands."
One day, something clicked in my head. I started running, and literally never looked back and the weight and the centimetres did drop off (I'm not blessed with good genes or a good metabolism - it wasn't through luck but hard work). My health & fitness routine has changed considerably since that time incorporating a huge range of different exercise options (although I'm still a cardio girl at heart and could run on a treadmill for days). I am also hoping to complete my Cert III & IV in Fitness next year to continue learning about something i love, and hopefully help others too.
But for those of you reading this and rolling your eyes, thinking "ugh, i HATE exercise - I can't relate to this at all" I really felt that way too. It was a means to an end, something i had to do to get by and not continue piling on weight. As i started to experiment with different exercise and find something i enjoyed doing, it became easy and second nature to me. It no longer became a chore, rather a highlight of my day and a great "guilt free" stress release (as opposed to turning to greasy food, or my addiction, chocolate).
Since signing up to do the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation last year (www.12wbt.com), I have also completely changed the way that i eat, dropping a lot of simple carbohydrates from my diet and trying to concentrate on wellness and eating nutritious filling food that helps sustain me over the day. Although i only lasted 3 weeks on the program (Sorry Michelle!), this more than anything contributed to the way i eat and look at food now.
I'm like any impressionable young lady and believe that the beautiful, dare i say perfect women I see on television and magazines were exactly how I was supposed to look and how I wanted to look. Today, I know and am friends with some exceptionally beautiful women who for some reason idolise what other women look like, and I begin to wonder, why not just accept any small flaws/defects that we may have and the wonderful special qualities that we also share. Appreciating how exceptionally hard other people work and how fabulous they look is a great... but not at the expense of loving yourself, and looking and feeling the best you possibly can. We all have our "fitspiration", and I would love to have Candice Swanepoel's fit, toned legs, but we're not all built like Victoria's Secret's models and should embrace that we are all different, and someone is probably admiring something about you right now.
A big part of me working to feel good about myself is also picking the right clothes and makeup. While I am as comfortable as anything in my own home or ducking down the street to pick up bread and milk in trackies with a bare face, i often feel at my absolute best when i have put in some effort to how i look and am offered compliments - I am definitely a little bit vain :)
One of my favourite things to do is to pick up new makeup products (all in the low-mid price range and try them out), which i hope to share with you on here also - maybe you can save a little bit of the money that i waste on things that definitely don't do all of the things that they promise to do.
So anyway - that is me in a nutshell. I hope to let my walls down a little bit along the way, so you can get to know me, trust me, and hopefully I can help you.
xxx
