Heal Your Gut Heal Your Life

I would be arrogant and ignorant to think I had all the answers when it comes to health. To be honest what I think is best for our health as human beings in any moment is constantly changing due to the wealth of information available to us and our vast difference in needs. The challenge is deciding what is right for your health when sifting through the ever changing and conflicting data that is available. Not only through our trusted health professional, but also the highly accessible and dense sea of the world wide web.

I talk briefly about deciding how to take on all the new ideas you are bombarded with every day here, but today I would like to offer you my opinion on what I believe is right for my health today (it may change tomorrow ;p).

The Story of the Butterfly

The Butterfly has been a beautiful, strong and elegant symbol of my coaching for a little while now with the purple signifying good judgement, spiritual fulfillment and peace. I have been asked why the Butterfly so I thought I would share with you the beautiful story that has been a source of strength in my health journey.

The Butterfly's Struggle

Author Unknown
 

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!

I asked for Strength.........And God gave me Difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for Wisdom.........And God gave me Problems to solve.

I asked for Prosperity.........And God gave me brain and brawn to work.

I asked for Courage.........And God gave me Danger to overcome.

I asked for Love.........And God gave me Troubled people to help.

I asked for Favors.........And God gave me Opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted........I received everything I needed!

I hope you can take a little something away as I have done and find strength in your weakness xo

Apple vs Coke?

So my dietitian says I can have margarine but not avocado and I can have diet coke but not an apple. Tell me where did we go so wrong?

Now I don't consider myself as the general public when it comes to diet knowledge, I am a qualified Personal Trainer and avid researcher of all things health, I like to meet new ideas with an open mind so that I can continue to learn. But something about this advice doesn't sit right and it concerns me this is the advice given to the general public. So it got me thinking, how do we know what information is truth and was is not. I talked about truth earlier so for now I want to touch on knowledge of health.

When you come down with some abnormal sign or symptom in your body or even your child's, what is the first thing you do? Do you wait until you can get an appointment to see your doctor? Of course not, don't get me wrong this is a step in the process but not usually the first. The first is usually Doctor Google PhD of 'I know everything there is to know about everything'. When you cipher through that sea of information, do you go, ooo yes I have that symptom, and yes now you mention it I do feel that way. OMG I have cancer, schizophrenia, and I am a fish. Hmmmm, really? I bet in most cases your doc says otherwise.

So how do I know what to believe and what not to believe?

Delaying Gratification for Happiness

So I've realised I have been fighting with time lately. The symptoms came in the form of anger, frustration and resentment. It took a couple of confronting statements from my husband and a great book to help me see that.

We all are faced with challenges throughout our life, and as Buddha so eloquently puts it "life is suffering". Seems a like a depressing quote from such a great man. What Buddha is trying to help us achieve however, is acceptance. We all need to accept the fact, and yes it is fact, that life has its challenges, its suffering - there is no way to avoid it (though most of us do try).

Slim Down for Summer

I just want to start by saying if you want to lose weight and keep it off then you should aim for 0.5-1kg per week. The key is for the weight to come off slow so it will stay off, the faster you lose it the faster it will come back on. With 10 weeks until Christmas your goal should be between 5-10kg max. I will do more on goal setting in another post but it is important to set a goal for your weight loss. Use the SMART principles when you do this and give yourself a reward that does not sabotage your weight loss efforts, like a new dress.

Why You Need to Meditate

Now I am not going to claim to be an expert on meditation, in fact I am just a beginner, but the benefits are too great for me to wait until I am an expert before sharing this with you.

Motivated Monday

I love change, I am great at it. Well, I'm not actually great at it, I'm great at getting excited about everything new and shiny and jumping head first into anything and everything. I don't have a plan, I just see the end product and nothing in between.

Over the past couple of years I have been researching and implementing lifestyle changes to help combat a degenerative form of arthritis. Some changes have stuck and some, well, for various reasons haven't. This is very common, I know I am not the only one who has got excited about new years resolutions and not made it through January. So Motivated Monday is about breaking down a bigger goal into smaller goals. Here is how it works.

5 Tips to a Healthy Sleep

I don't know many people that haven't struggled with sleep at some point. Whether triggered by a traumatic event in our lives, too much stress at work or the inability to switch off. I believe we have all had at least one night wondering whether we were ever going to drift off to that blissfull place that Garfield makes look so easy.