FertilehealthyAiming for success, not perfection…

My husband always closes his business from 24 December and re-opens again on 2 January.  So, right now he’s on holiday and we’re having great fun!

We’re very fortunate to both still have both our parents and we’ve been spending a lot of time with them, going on outings and, you guessed it, eating, drinking and being merry! 

Yesterday we went with Craig’s parents to a berry farm about an hour away from here where we had a wonderful lunch (pity about the attrocious service – I intend to write and complain), took pictures of the stunning views and bought frozen berries (great for smoothies), berry-flavored vinegars and honey.

When we got home in the late afternoon, we lay down with our books for a bit of rest and relaxation, only to receive a phone call from a very good friend of mine who now lives in the UK to say that he’s in the area and popping in.  Wine and pizza ensued…  We had a lovely evening with him!  I’m so glad he visited!

Today we drove out to the farm where my parents live for lunch and so that Craig could practice target-shooting.  My mom made a wonderful vegetarian (with spinach from her garden) wholewheat pasta dish.  They have a big vine-covered verandah with beautiful views and we relaxed and chatted for hours while the birds came to feed and bathe only a few feet away from us.  It was lovely!

Tomorrow is my mother-in-law’s birthday and she’s invited us to High Tea at the iconic Mount Nelson (affectionately known as “The Nellie”), the Grande Dame of Cape Town hotels where royalty, heads of state and the stars stay.  I haven’t been to High Tea in about two decades, but if memory serves this spread is not low-cal.  Dear Friends, forgive me, for I intend to sin!

Tomorrow afternoon we’re going back to my parents’ where we will have a barbeque on the verandah as the sun sets over the valley.  We can even drink some wine, because we’ve decided to sleep over and not risk the roads.

So, while I am going to see this year out with a calorific bang, I promise that I’ll be firmly on plan as of Thursday.  The gym will probably not be open on New Years Day, but we can go for a walk on the farm – much better than the gym anyway!

I wish you a fabulous New Years Eve!

New Year is my favorite holiday. Not because of the parties, though. I like to spend New Years Eve with the people closest to me, reminiscing and saying good-bye to the old year and preparing myself mentally and spiritually for the new one.

To many people it’s just a new date on the calendar, but I’ve always felt a sense of renewal and rebirth at the start of each new year. It’s like being given a brand new note book with crisp white pages and a sharp pencil… who knows what you can fill those pages up with?

I have many hopes and wishes for 2009. Mostly they involve our emigration and the many, many not-so-little things that have to fall into the right place at the right time. I have virtually no control over these events, but I can practice the laws of attraction and believe that the whole process will be seamless and trouble-free.

2009 will be my year for preparing my body, mind, soul and husband for pregnancy. For me this involves:

- Another detoxification period, probably Juice Feasting for about 30 days. I’m thinking March or April, but of course it will depend on what else is happening in my life at the time.

- Continuing with the Eat to Live program for the whole year.  I have joined Katschi’s six week challenge as from January 1.  The idea is to be perfectly on plan, irrespective of which plan you’re following, for six weeks.

-  Exercising at least 6 days per week as of January 1.  This will be in the form of walking (road or treadmill), swimming (I’ll have to teach myself to do this again), Pilates, circuit training and weights.  I’m really excited about this!

-  Spending time outside every day so that I can get some sun on my skin (vitamin D) and on overcast days just getting natural light to help balance my hormones.  I have to make an effort, because now that I don’t smoke anymore, I tend to not spend much time outdoors.

-  Drink plenty of water.

-  Have a short nap every afternoon and a good night’s sleep.

-  Pay attention to my dreams.

-  Dry brush my body every day and have contrast showers.

-  Set aside 30 minutes a day for meditation and visualization (maybe I could do this outside, which will help with my natural light goal, but also to connect to the earth).

-  Continue using natural progesterone cream.

-  Drink the various fertility teas on a rotating basis.

-  Switch to more natural personal products, like the oil cleansing method for my skin, aluminium-free deodorant and fluoride-free toothpaste.

I have no preconceived number of pounds that I want to lose in 2009.  I will just be doing my part and trusting that my body will recognize that and release the things that don’t serve us anymore.  That includes stale ideas and habits, fat and toxins.

I started doing a Fertile Friday series of posts late this year, but I have since begun creating a website with all the information and this will be published early in 2009!  Don’t fear though, until the website is ready, Fertile Friday will continue!

I plan to keep my hand on my garden this coming year.  I did absolutely nothing in 2008 and it shows.  With my newfound energy I’m sure I can get it looking neat and beautiful again in no time, without investing a fortune.

I also want to implement a better schedule for cleaning the house, doing the laundry and ironing.  I’ve only been doing it for a month, but it’s been rather hit-and-miss so far.  I can do better.

I look forward to watching Barack Obama’s inaugeration on TV and wish him all the best for his first year in office.

From about September we will actively try to conceive again, although of course we won’t be using any contraception before then…  Hopefully I’ll have good news by Christmas!

I think I’ve finally realized what ”Life is a journey” means.  If life is the journey, we should never wish the journey away, or race through it.  We should revel in it, always do our best, find good companions and keep travelling.  Because the destination is probably the end of our life.  In the same vein, my goals for this year are not the results of my labors, but the labors themselves.  My goal is not to be healthy, but to do healthy things (and not do the unhealthy things).  Remember Doobedoobedoo?

I’m really excited about the new year.  I know that a lot depends on me and my attitude and fortitude, but I also know that I have the best cheering section anyone could ever wish for – YOU!  I hope that I can do the same for you… 

May we all be richly blessed in 2009!

Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

What a year it’s been!  An historic and highly entertaining presidential election, a world-wide economic meltdown, the Beijing Olympics, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods and closer to home a “bloodless coup”.  We said goodbye to Michael Crichton, Sir Edmund Hillary, Heath Ledger,  Mama Africa Miriam Makeba, Paul Newman, George Carlin, Bernie Mack, Charlton Heston and Yves St. Laurent.

For me personally, 2008 was a good year in many respects. I feel as if I’ve grown and learned a lot this year but of course, when one is going through the process, it can be rather unpleasant. We don’t grow in comfort and ease after all!

One of the best decisions I made this year was to join Diana’s Healthy You Challenge.  We kicked off our weight loss and fitness efforts with a bang in January and have been there for one another throughout the year.  The support, friendship and encouragement have been invaluable!  I can’t imagine my life without my HYC-buddies.

In January I started going to gym regularly and before long I was enjoying myself!  Me, who always hated gyms and exercise.  When February rolled around, I was doing Pilates four times per week, Aqua Aerobics four times per week, walking 20 minutes on the treadmill (and even running for a minute or two) and a working my way up to 10 minutes on the elliptical.  I was in the zone and totally surprised at what my body could do and how much I loved working out.

Towards the end of January I came across an exciting concept – Juice Feasting.  I knew I had to go for it and I started my Juice Feast on 1 February.  What a blessed time that was.  My body and spirit detoxified and cleansed for 80 days.  I felt like a new person afterwards.

The first big emotional benefit I had from the Juice-feast was that I lost my compulsion to binge-eat.  I’d been bingeing for decades and now I just can’t and won’t do it.  I don’t even have to think about it… that part of my brain that made me do it has been healed.

The second benefit is equally huge.  I lost my desperation to fall pregnant.  Of course I still want children, but the obsession is gone.  This is such a good place to be for me.  I’m not running after every potion and “cure” and driving my husband crazy with my demands anymore.  Instead, I’m concentrating on healing my body, a long-term project, but one that pays attention to every aspect of my being.  While my cells are being repaired and renewed, so is my spirit and very slowly I can feel the fingers of my deep-seated rage start uncurling the fist in which my uterus has been clenched for so long. 

Unfortunately, towards the end of February (during my Juice Feast) I was going through a bad patch of detoxing and had to take a break from gym for a few days.  I never went back.  I don’t know why, although of course I’ve been beating myself up over it for 10 months.  Pointless, I know!

In June we visited relatives in the USA and decided that we’d like to settle there ourselves.  As you may know, South Africa is not a safe and sound place to live anymore and we’d been thinking of emigrating for a while.  We came back full of hope that we’d be able to sell our properties and business quickly and be gone by Thanksgiving.  What we didn’t take into account was a global economic crisis which means that in five months we’ve sold only one property and we’re having a summery Christmas in Cape Town.

Of course I just wanted to be gone straight away and quickly descended into depression when I realized that this wasn’t going to happen overnight.  Although I wasn’t bingeing, I was cooking fattening food and drinking lots of Coke and coffee.  I even started smoking again.  I just didn’t care.

This was exacerbated when my best friend, Lizana, left early in August to stay with her sister in Florida for six months.  I felt as if I was missing a limb…

Strangely enough, through all of this I was maintaing the 20 pound loss from my Juice Feast.  But I was dragging myself through my days… spending most of my time transfixed on the US presidential race on CNN.  This was not necessarily a bad thing, because after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech I got up, wiped the tears  from my eyes and said “Yes I can!”

Evita recommended Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live program, I ordered the book and started the program in mid-November.  Within a week I was a different person…  I let my maid go and started cleaning my house myself!  I jump out of bed in the morning and do stuff!  I feel like a million dollars!  “Yes I can” has become my mantra.

I lost about 35 pounds off my body this year, but I lost so much more weight off my mind.  I toppled some lifetime strongholds of the mind, for instance that I couldn’t eat oatmeal.  I tried it and now I love it!  My world is a much bigger place in December of 2008 than it was in January 2008.

My husband continues to be the most wonderful man I’ve ever known and I’m glad that I had so many lessons to learn before we started a family, because it’s given me the opportunity to get to know him deeply and intimately.  I found that my relations with my family improved tremendously this year.  Dr. Christiane Northrup says that when a woman heals herself, she heals the generations of women who came before her too.  This has certainly been true for me.  I am also very grateful that my parents read “The China Study“, took it to heart and changed their eating habits for the better.

2008 has been a year of acceptance of myself, my strengths and my weaknesses and forgiveness for my past choices.  But most of all of hope… the kind of hope that at first just flutters its butterfly wings softly against the contours of my heart, but grows steadier and stronger each day until it becomes more than hope.  It becomes conviction.  Yes I can!

Oh and by the way, I stopped smoking on 23 December and have not experienced any discomfort or cravings.  I don’t miss it or mourn it.  I’m doing fine as a non-smoker!  Find out how to stop smoking easily and painlessly.

You know I’ve had a soft spot for this man since 1985.  Enjoy!

It’s all over for us! I left the leftovers with my mother-in-law and normal eating will resume tomorrow. It was great though… Thankfully Christmas only comes once a year!

This line from the song Tell Him with Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion has been running through my mind since I started wrapping the Christmas presents yesterday afternoon.  What does this mean for me?

We spend all year redefining our relationship with food and telling ourselves that food does not equal love.  Yet, this past week or so I’ve been reading about baking cookies all over the blogosphere,  ”because I love my family/neighbors/friends”.   Why would we want to give our loved ones the very things that wreaked havoc on our own lives? We sagely quote the worrying statistics about childhood obesity and obesity in general, yet we are perpetuating the myth that cookies = love.  If we want to give them something home-made and personal, why not opt for candles or sugar body scrub (a huge hit, just google it!)?  I make glycerine soaps and little tubs of fruit-flavored lip balm.

So, what is the best way to show that we love ourselves?  Taking care of ourselves, inside and out, from top to bottom, physically and emotionally.  Let’s eat healthy, exercise regularly, cleanse our bodies, reflect on the wonder of life, appreciate the beauty around us and breathe deeply.

A life of eating healthy and exercising is not punishment, it’s the greatest gift we can give ourselves.  We are so lucky!

An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

You, my dear friends, have been such a blessing and a gift to me this past year. I want to wish all of you a blessed and merry Christmas / happy and joyful Holidays.   Peace be with you.