In recent years I have grown to love all things exercise. I enjoy treadmills, bikes, dancing and most definitely weights. Ladies, lifting will not make you look like a man. However, no amount of exercise will make up for a bad diet, a healthy diet really is what makes or breaks your progress.
When I use the word diet I'm not talking of these fad diets, I mean a healthy lifestyle. A life where your diet fuels your body, gives you energy, clears your skin and makes you feel and look good, a diet filled with nutrients. Fruit, veg, protein, good fats, good carbs.. All things good! Not all carbs and fat are bad, in fact our body needs them in order to build muscle and burn fat.
Now I've never been what people would call fat, but I was what I call skinny fat. I was never bigger than a size 6-8 but I wasn't toned, I wasn't fit and I definitely wasn't healthy. I would skip breakfast and live on the same foods, sandwiches, crisps, chocolate, pizza, chips, macaroni cheese etc. I used to love these foods and now I don't even really like them. I never had any energy, my skin was bad and I was never full. Then I slowly introduced breakfast and starting eating a bigger variety of foods that were healthier during the week and going to the gym and doing cardio but I still loved chocolate and pizza at the weekends. Looking back I can't believe I ever lived like that! At the time I didn't hate how my body looked, but then I suddenly did and I also felt bad for what I was doing to it!
I decided to start eating clean. Clean eating is having natural foods that haven't been processed so you still eat food (not juices and shakes etc), you still eat fats, and carbs but just the good ones. This sort of eating is also known as the Caveman Diet. They lived without packaged food, think fresh meat, fish and poultry, fruit, veg, nuts, eggs, potatoes etc and so can we in theory, it's easier said than done. I also slowed down on the cardio and focused on toning up and building muscle which definitely made much bigger changes to my body than cardio ever could, I'm talking nice booty and toned legs!
Here's the part I'm going to struggle to tell you. I became obsessed with my routine (I'm kind of OCD about things) that if I even ate the tiniest bit of food that wasn't healthy or skipped a gym session, I would feel so angry with myself that I'd cry, and that's no way to live. It had stopped being about being healthy and had become about being thin for my holiday. I'd never been body confident and I thought being thin would help but it didn't, looking back now I most of all miss the way my body felt on the inside, how much energy and strength I had.
After my holiday, I stopped eating like this and slipped back into my old ways a bit. As you can imagine avoiding all treats is not easy. At first I was really angry with myself but at least now I know what I really want. Yes, I want to eat clean again and be healthy but I also want to enjoy my life and not miss out on things, like that delicious slice of birthday cake, so here is me making a declaration to start doing that and I hope that sharing my journey to health and happiness with you will help me turn my life around and along the way help some of you. Keep your eye out for the hashtag #JTH for blog posts relating to my Journey To Health.
I have no qualifications in nutrition or fitness so anything I share is purely personal research, however I will never encourage bag habits. We all deserve to feel good on this inside and outside and enjoy everything in moderation.
Who's joining me on this journey?
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