I often talk about my journey when it comes to health and fitness. yet you only really understand how far you have travelled until you stop and look back. At the start of this process, I hated the way I looked and knew I needed to overhaul my life and diet to get the body I wanted.
I’ve spent almost a year lifting weights, doing HIIT, hauling myself out of bed at unthinkable hours to train, going through phases of carbohydrate fasting, drinking protein shakes, throwing up after my final pull up, entering my macros religiously into My Fitness Pal and even almost drowning in my own sweat (note; this is impossible). Imagine that Kim K crying face with lot of sweat thrown in. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Where did it all begin? Why did I decide to put myself through this gruelling process? What started out as a quest to love my body and essentially just look good, evolved into a desire to live a wonderful life.
Shortly after beginning this process, I began focusing more on what was going into my body, not just the fuel but the thoughts too. Were they positive? Negative? I wanted to live well so I had to not only change my body and food, but my mind too. I’ve learnt to really care about every aspect of my body, not just to look good but to be healthy, strong and happy. And honestly? I’ve never felt better; I am stronger than ever before both physically and mentally. I am so proud of what I’ve achieved and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind
This is almost my mantra for life. How are you supposed to surround yourself with positivity if your mind is constantly thinking negatively. Turn those poisonous thoughts of “I can’t” that infiltrate your mind at its most crucial points to “I’ll try”. And no I’m not talking just about weightloss because thats not everyones struggle.
Whether it’s a new job you want to go for, a career change, a lifestyle or a fitness goal of sorts, thinking its a possibility is the first step to making it a reality.
Be You.
The most detrimental thing a person can do to their confidence, is try to be someone that they are not. Everyone of us is beautifully unique, but in a world full of influential and inspirational people, it’s easy to lose sight of who we are whilst feeling inspired by someone else. The most important thing to consider in this, is that people aren’t foolish and they can usually tell when something isn’t kosher and it’s pretty hard to keep up too. A good idea is to build on the factors of who you are that you feel are your strengths, are you a born leader? Do you enjoy looking after people? Are you fiercely aspirational? Honing those qualities and factors of your personality are a great way to define yourself in a world thats constantly trying change you.
Natural Beauty
Whilst I believe the ability to bare your natural beauty is something that comes with age, you’re never too young to take care of the natural beauty you were born with. Because I hate to break it to you, you are so much more beautiful under there than you realise so try to go make-up free once and a while to get used to the idea and also to be able to start seeing just how beautiful you naturally are. Make up is wonderful and it’s no news to you all that I wear it too but over the last few years I’ve worn it less and less, even going as far as blogging bare faced or even just with a touch of bronzer and a nourishing lip balm as I did in the shots above. There was a time where I’d sleep in my make up for fear of people seeing how hideous I thought I was. It wasn’t until I started teaching myself to love myself naturally, that I started to enjoy wearing less and less. You do not need a full face of make up to be beautiful, I’m just telling in case no body ever told you, you will realise when you’re ready!
Goals
That’s one thing to come out of 2014 that I absolutely adore, seeing #Goals under peoples pictures never fails to make me smile because quite frankly having Goals is good for you. But you don’t want to set your sights too high too early so be realistic with what you want to achieve and take baby steps towards them.
Also don’t be afraid to give yourself a BIG PUBLIC pat on the back when you do achieve them, it’s funny when people think I post pictures of my fitness achievements “for attention”. Come on, I’m just letting you know how awesome I feel at the time for setting a goal and achieving it, or hitting a personal best that I thought I’d never get! We all need pats on the back from time to time, don’t shame anyone for that.
Sarah Marie 