In a Nutshell

Oh, my dear blog friends, it seems I have been absent for a while again!

 

Life happens and takes over and before I know it, I have so much to catch up on!

So much has happened this last month or so and I want to catch you up on most of it. It may have to be in the “in a nutshell” kind of summary fashion, just so this post won’t be endlessly long!

 

In Sickness and in health

First of all - we were sick again! Yes, just after getting the family and myself over the flu earlier this year and still dealing with the hanging on coughs and minor relapses, we caught another bug. Somehow the viruses this year have been particularly nasty!

Anyway, this time it was vomiting and diarrhea, with many a changed bed and midnight bath for the kiddos. Then it hit the adults.

And we just got over it all, when we all suffered a relapse the following weekend! *sigh*

 

Break a leg

All of this took place during tech and performance week of my daughter Anna’s first small singing and acting role in the local youth theatre (translates into many late nights and some high strung emotions, as well as being on stage even though she wasn’t feeling very well!) But like a pro she worked through it all! And the performances were wonderful! And Anna is definitely in her element on stage!

Even though, she is only seven years old, and prolonged late nights, hours of rehearsals and performances, not a weekend to ourselves since February - it all takes it’s toll!

Needless to say, I am also behind on Project Life - not only showing you my latest pages, but I’m also about a month behind now on even making them! I have kept up with notes and photos however, so I am confident that once things calm down a little bit again, I can catch up relatively quickly!

 

Dairy, Weight and Eating

The other major thing that happened in my life relates to food and eating. In the last 6 months or so I have really changed my approach to food, eating, weight loss, body image and all that.

All of the above is a huge issue for me that stems from ways back in my childhood and beyond (generational issues.) I have been letting got of a lot of beliefs and judgments, about myself, my body, food and eating and it has aided me greatly. It however didn’t really bring about the desired changes for me and I felt very much that it had to do with me being incapable of “hearing” my body.

I was still making decisions about my body in my head first, not actually hearing and honoring my body. This is a really hard one for me. I didn’t even know what it “felt” like to hear the body ... what that even was, and even less so when it came to food and eating. When it comes to nutrition, foods, specialty foods and anything surrounding it, there isn’t much I don’t know. All the years of obsessing over it have taught me a lot.

Let’s face it, I got that with the mother’s milk, and I never knew any different. The only thing my childhood or anything since hasn’t taught me is how to listen and trust - myself, my intuition, my knowing ... and my body.

I don’t think I was an overweight child to begin with. But I had a mother who was VERY afraid that I might become an overweight child. It was a great concern of hers and as she yo-yo-dieted and closet-food-addicted herself through her own life, she took me along for her ride from a VERY young age.

I was on my first no-food fasting diet before I was even 5 years old, complete with salt induced cleanses and other madnesses. But that and many other things in regards to my childhood, are a whole different story and a different post.

The main focus of my eating these days is 1.) what my body requires/wants, 2.) my health rather than the weight (which means clean, wholesome, organic-when-possible and unprocessed eating), and 3.) pleasure, utter yumminess and the sheer enjoyment of food.

Saying the above, as somebody who is very overweight, the first and the last statement may raise some eyebrows.

But that is just it! How many of us that have fought the weight battle or have been at outright war with our bodies over the weight (man, that already sounds so not happy and terribly heavy!!) can remember the last time we have enjoyed the food we wanted? I mean, really enjoyed? Not the guilty pleasure kind of enjoyment! Or the between diets kind of enjoyment. No, the pure, unadulterated, just because it is such a pleasure kind of enjoyment of food?

Yeah, I know. Up until fairly recently when I changed my attitude to food and to myself, I couldn’t remember either! In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never really had that!

 

In the same stroke, when was the last time you actually let your body decide what it wanted or needed?

 

Anyway, the last few weeks I have really been focusing on allowing and receiving - not controlling, especially when it comes to myself and my body. And systematically letting go of anything and everything that might be getting in my way, which were mostly judgments, beliefs and decisions that came from habit, other people or my mind.

 

As a result, I have been able to hear my body a little more and am able to go with the flow. And I’ve been allowing my body to make the decisions about the food it needs and wants.

Surprisingly, to me, my body led me in directions I might have never guessed. One of them is to let go of all dairy.

DIARY! People, dairy was the only thing I was SURE I had no issue with. Not even a potential issue! Dairy was my crack, my comfort, my one and only food group I could always rely on ...

Or was it? The above alone should have given me a clue, probably.

Anyway, so yes, one of the major changes I have made recently is cutting out ALL dairy.

 

This last Thursday was my 1 month “anniversary” of being dairy-free (other than a couple of accidental exposures, which had some terrible reactions!) and upon reflection, the list of things that have changed for me and my body in this last month is surprisingly long!

My detox was not pleasant and it is somewhat ongoing, but the benefits seem to outweigh everything else at the moment!

Since I’m only a month into it, it is early days on what will be a long-term benefit, but I am excited to see what happens!

So, somebody as obsessed with dairy as me, I must be missing it terribly, right? Oh the restrictions! It’s got to be really hard giving up most of your favorite foods.

 

Actually, surprisingly, NO. That is the benefit of being in tune with your body, I think. I haven’t been tempted at all. I haven’t bemoaned all I’m “giving up” - not even a little bit and haven’t been temped even once. To be honest, the rational, intellectual and “based-on-experience” part of me would have never thought this possible, even 5 weeks ago, but there it is!

I have found though, that when you go with what your body is really asking for, everything tastes amazingly delicious and beyond satisfying! How cool is that!? I’ll  have more of that, please!

 

Of course, me being me, I also instantly went into experimentation mode and tried to play with many a thing to create some dairy substitutes. So be prepared to find some diary-free recipes spring up on here!

 

Faces

And now to the other thing that I’ve been focusing on the last little while: Faces. Yes, drawing, painting, shadowing faces. Faces have always been a dreaded thing in my art and it’s a lucky thing that the kind of mixed media art I do rarely needs a “proper” face (or hands for that matter, another area I struggle with!) However, for some reason I’ve been obsessed with getting faces right recently and I’ve been working my way through many a YouTube video, online course, book, online examples and downright copies, as well as other instructions.

I wish I could say I know how to do faces now, but I still don’t. But I’m getting better. And every once in a while I have a lucky hit and turn out a pretty good, real looking face while at other times it’s just not going right, but I take any improvement. The interesting thing about faces, for me, is that I never quite know how they turn out, especially the kind of faces I do in my art journal. It’s an interesting journey though!

I will collect some of my practice runs and share them with you in a separate post!

 

So, what major changes have you made in your life recently and how is it going?

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