It feels like a good time for a bit of a life check in (this is a lengthy post so grab a cuppa!) spring has finally begun, as I write this it’s a New Moon and the end of Mercury Rx, and I don’t know about you, but this winter has felt tough. I really tried to take my own advice about getting through January and February, but I didn’t see the bad weather lasting well into April! I don’t think I realised quite how much it was impacting me until we got a few days of good weather and I noticed how much better I felt!

So it’s been ages since I’ve written one of these posts, I think the last time I said that it felt a bit like a switch had flipped and I just wasn’t in vulnerable sharing mode, at least the way I was a couple of years ago, I think being connected with becoming a Mum as well.

Plus I feel pretty lucky that I don’t really have any big issues I’ve needed to get off my chest. I’m in a very contented period of life right now, motherhood has become so much easier now that Finley actually sleeps, my relationship with food and my body is the best it’s ever been and everything is just ticking along nicely – which opens up some other stuff which I’ll mention in a moment!

It’s actually quite weird when I think of just how screwed up I was around food, and even quite recently I had still wanted to lose weight. I found the body positivity scene inspiring and also triggering in equal measure, for such a long time it seemed to highlight something I couldn’t quite own for myself, that total love for my body and complete freedom with food. I feel like this is one of the issues with any kind of labels, even positive ones. They create a pressure (even if that pressure is solely internal) to adhere to something and when you don’t you feel like a failure.

But over the last couple of months I’ve felt a real freedom in how I think about my body, I’m a UK size 14 / 16 and my body seems to be very happy at this size and weight, my periods are really regular and after all the issues I had before I had Finley I take that as such a blessing! I’ve also got a wardrobe full of gorgeous clothes I love that fit me. Another thing that’s been sinking in is just how pointless it is to expend so much energy to try and change my body when it’s inevitable that it will change as I get older.

I just don’t have the energy for it anymore basically, all the fucks have ran out! I do still make some effort to eat well and move, but those have nothing to do with weight and everything to do with feeling good. I notice a massive difference when I’m not exercising often and when I start eating less healthy food too often. But mostly I eat whatever I want and it’s great! That fear of gaining weight has disappeared, the last time I weighed myself I was roughly the same as I had been a year earlier, so that’s been reassuring that things are pretty stable.

With all of that in mind it feels like things have come full circle for me. I started this blog 8 years ago, 1 year after I’d started my weight loss journey and I can’t believe how much I’ve changed. I’ve gone from being obsessed with food and exercise to really understanding that health and happiness is so much more than that.

I’ve learned that me desperately trying to lose weight hasn’t so much linked with wanting to be healthy, it was all about wanting to be accepted and wanting to feel good enough. Losing weight and then letting all of that go has been such an important part of my own journey, it’s helped me realise that there’s so much more to life than weight.

This is where being wholehearted has come from for me, living life to the fullest by being the whole you – something I’m still working on!

One of the reasons things are ticking over so nicely (on the whole, nothing is perfect of course) is because I realised that most of the things which became ‘dramas’ where linked to deeper feelings of not being enough. So being able to notice that and where those things were happening has been SO helpful in ways I don’t think I could have imagined. It’s like peeling off layers of old wallpaper to get to the most authentic me underneath.

And now, as things are generally calm and steady, I have the energy to see more of these areas where I’m doing or not doing things because of a lot of subconscious beliefs (I talk about this a lot in the Mindset Makeover Course!)

For example, Instagram has sometimes felt like a shit show for me because it triggers my old ‘being left out of the cool girls gang’ in school thing – the reality is not that, but my old belief is that I’m not one of the ‘cool girls’ and therefore I perpetuate it because I don’t post often or don’t comment.

Another thing I’ve noticed lately is where I’m staying silent, again this is mostly on social media (hello the perfect place to see all your triggers and limiting beliefs in action!) – especially around some political / social stuff. I did a fucking masters degree in community work about social justice and empowerment and I’m just not speaking my true mind about these things!

One way I’ve looked at it is to see the areas of my life where I feel I’m actually not being wholehearted and to just open myself up to thinking about why that might not be the case.

And again, this is where so many of the changes in how I work and blog here have shifted lately as my passions and interests have shifted quite a bit over the last couple of years.

I’m really interested in how we can care for ourselves better on a really holistic level, how we can deepen our self knowledge and how we can be ourselves more. I love how spiritual practices can be so helpful with that. I’m also really enjoying my own creativity these days, and on the business side of things what’s been great for me is seeing how starting this business and doing this work is an extension of my own self care. I spent years feeling like ‘there had to be more than this’ and creating this job and way to make a living for myself has been like magic! Sharing that part of my journey and helping other women create that for themselves is something I absolutely love. 

Almost everything good that I have now came after I got over my food and weight issues, I wouldn’t go back and change things because that’s how I got here, but blimey I’m so glad I’ve been able to let that go.

And here’s the thing about all this mindset type stuff, it never really ends, there’ll always be more layers of old wallpaper to tear off!

Can you look back over the last few years of your life and see a journey in it? What old layers do you feel you need to tear off?