August 17, 2016No Comments

Wellness….WHAT?! – #WellbeingWednesdays

Wellness wooden sign on a beautiful day

Many of us work through life trying to achieve 'wellness'. But what is wellness? Is it the juice detox everyone is doing? Is it being able to sit in a cross legged position and 'ohm' at the top of my lungs for hours on end? Is it being outside?

What does Wellness even mean?

Every time you read a piece of media, or a medical study there is more advice of what is good for you, what is bad for you, what you haven't realised you're even consuming or ingesting and we can get so confused with trying to do the best things for our bodies that often we just give up and go right back to what we were doing before.

It's hard working towards 'Wellness'. All you want is for someone to show you a big sign saying 'Wellness this way', but that's not how it works. What is good for me, might be bad for you and may be essential for someone else.

The way I deal with it is to try and work towards feeling better, being healthier but also not taking life too seriously. You can get so caught up with being healthy all the time that you end up resenting the lifestyle, and yourself trying to achieve the unachievable. We live in a world where plastics, pollutants and chemicals are part of every day life. Yes you could try and eradicate them from your life but you'd have to live in isolation to achieve it and where's the fun in that?

Take it one day at a time and one element of your life at a time. For me, my journey started with fitness. I found things that I loved to do and just focused on those. I do them regularly enough that they become a habit. Equally if I skip them for a week, I have a mildly guilty feeling but I know I'll get back to them next week so it's no big deal.

Then I moved onto food and this was my HARDEST part. I LOVE food. I LOVE eating food. I LOVE cooking and exploring food. Most importantly I LOVE big quantities of food. So to find out how to change a lot of that I had to figure out the best way to be healthy, still enjoy the food I eat with it's flavours and the quantity but eat foods that are better for me. Vegetables, fruits, grains, beans.

Next came skincare and home life. I've never really been a big skincare person as having psoriasis has always dictated what I use. But finding Tropic and it's range of natural products has changed all of that. And I'm now experimenting with the cleaning products we use at home and finding ways to change those slowly but surely.

The last thing is my way of life. Spending more time outside, in nature. Potentially trying to grow my own fruit and vegetables, although living in London that's not always possible. I have however started doing exactly that in my office in Central London. We have a small roof terrace where there are all kinds of goodies growing. Cabbage, rocket, lettuce, sunflowers and lots of herbs! All of my own doing which isn't too bad for a first try.

My point is you can work towards being healthier, being happier in small steps. Don't try and leave your life and go off and live on a remote island and you'll live until you're 200. Just do it in small ways, and do things that you enjoy and you'll be sure to get where you want to be.

Ciao for now x

August 16, 2016No Comments

City Boy?! – #TalkToMeTuesdays

countryside

Today's post is about a little thing that's been bugging me for a while....am I born to live in the city, or am I really a country boy at heart?

This weekend I went away to the Cotswold's and after initially thinking I would get bored, I completely fell in love with it. Swimming in the lake, kayaking, relaxing on the decking, being outside. It bought back all the reasons why I love having Sicilian origins and why I still love visiting Sicily. It's a completely different pace of life where it's about enjoying where you are right now and not worrying too much about tomorrow.

Not to mention exploring and enjoying great food, great company and much less rigidity about time keeping or being somewhere on time.

There's always been a mini war that goes on inside me since I first explored Sicily. The ability to grow and pick your own fruits, to get by with whatever you have in the house, just appeals to me so much. I loved watching Jimmy's Farm and River Cottage and the desire has always been there to escape the city and live in the countryside.

The Cotswold's experience has now bought that dream back to the forefront of my mind and I'm wondering, am I a country boy in a city boy life?

So my question to you today is have you ever had a similar experience? Where you've been somewhere, fallen in love with it and it's made you want to make the move? Tell me your story and help me decide if it's something I should do!!

Ciao for now x

  
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