Recent Struggles and Change in Diet

Why haiiiii there, I am still alive!

So what is my excuse for going disappearing again? Well, I do love blogging I really do. But I guess I haven’t been in the right mindframe. I can remember there was a time when I used to force myself to bang out posts every couple of days but now I just feel like doing it when it feels right. I guess life lately whilst has not been terrible, has been a little harder in some ways. I feel stressed mentally for a number of reasons from body image, to stomach problems continuing, to my brother starting to suffer with his health to my recent failure from my last sketchbook which I genuinely thought I’d excelled in and done the best work I’ve ever done which has therefore just made me despise my course even more than I previously done and have no heart in the work I am doing at the moment.

I’d say my number one right now is my body image. It really is starting to take over in a negative way again. I am really not comfortable with who I am although I have maintained this weight for 11 months now. I am not on the lower end of healthy, I am more in the middle, and I admit, a part of me struggles with this. I am jealous of some people, I know I am. There is still a part of me that wants to be thinner and I honestly do not know why. I hate having to buy bigger sizes in clothes, I hate how I don’t feel comfortable in anything I wear anymore and I really feel like I want to lose weight and I’ll admit that I have tried. I tried to restrict, I even tried fat metabolisers and yet neither have worked. I remain the same. And it does feel like my mind is torturing me at the moment every single day. I can’t remember the last time where I thought I looked good. My skin is appalling at the moment, I feel like my thighs are tree trunks, I feel like my arms are bigger than they’ve ever been and I’ve never been the one to have big arms and there’s not a single part of me that I actually like. I don’t know what the answer is and when I will feel moderately happy but what I do know is that my body is obviously happy at this weight as it has remained stable all this year despite having periods of not exercising, periods of over-eating, periods of under-eating and at this weight my body functions. What I also know is that despite my mental battles with body image, I am happy with how I live and my way of dealing with these problems is to continue to live in a healthy way; feeding myself well and exercising moderately whilst having a social life and balanced life full of friends and family.

I don’t feel compelled to overexercise and even exercise more than 5 times a week. I have got into a routine of doing half an hour cardio with up to half an hour of weight with the odd spinning or zumba class thrown in. And that’s what I’m comfortable with..I don’t like pushing myself too much anymore because it never makes me happier. I do not feel compelled to do anorexic things, I am more free with my food. I am no longer vegan and that’s okay because I don’t feel the need to be a label that I thought was best for my health. Currently I am also gluten free due to my intolerance so this added more of a restriction on my diet and made my diet very unvaried and eating out very difficult. Being vegan was for my time in recovery and definitely helped me more than I and many other people who saw it as restriction imagined. It made me face my fear of fats but I don’t have that fear at all anymore, I love fats and I love raw food which is full of it!

Addicted much?

So recently it has meant I have been comfortable with eating dairy again and I have to admit, I think I’m a little bit obsessed with it at the moment!

Part of my lunch everyday at the moment consists of a salad with full fat cottage cheese (Longley Farm’s is the best by the way…)

I’ve also gone back to eating Babybels for snacks. I don’t think the kid in me will ever go

And of course you can’t beat a good bit of Fage greek yogurt. In this case mixed with peanut flour and stevia.

And a more recent add in has been quorn. I have kinda missed quorn from a vegan diet and was happy to add this back in! Lots of protein and tastes good so win win I have to be careful as some of their products do have gluten in though but there are still some to choose from.

Another newbie in my diet, not necessarily anything to do with adding dairy, but has been figs!

These used to be one of the very few fruits I just didn’t like and now my tastes this year have suddenly changed to like them! Yay!

However I will forever love vegan food. It will always be a passion of mine aswell as raw food and it will always be part of my diet.

Obsessed with these. Totally. Obsessed.

I’ve found it interesting how some bloggers have started to realise what works for them recently and have started to adjust their diets accordingly. I think it’s so positive to see because why should we all follow trends in belief that it will work for us and make us get the body we imagine? We are all individuals with individual mental and physical requirements with different bodies and lifestyles. I just hope that we can all find what works for us and be happy with it because it makes us happy and healthy.

Have you changed your diet recently? Why?