(not my image/shoulders – it is the first one that comes up when you google image search ‘hot yoga’ – you should have seen some of the others!)

So the day dawned bright and beautiful and me and the littlest lad rolled over to greet the sun; despite the fact that master 4 had been awake until well after midnight last night (beating master 7 and I hands down).

Hot Yoga this morning – my first yoga session of 2015 (and first session in over 9 months) what to eat so that I didn’t throw up in the heat later on? I settled on my fave – a chocolate smoothie – and in fact I only had half because it is so filling – and saved the rest to have chilled after Yoga. Here is the recipe – it’s really easy – just whack them all in the blender and whizz it up. 1/2 an avocado, 1 cup almond milk, 1 frozen banana chopped, 2 tblsp raw cacao powder, 1 tblsp peanut-butter and 3 dates. SO GOOD.

Yoga was fucking hard. I am NOT flexible and NOT great in the heat – I have a red face in a warm room in winter ffs but it felt good to be doing something and I like the instructor Bruce; he wanders around telling absent minded little stories that keep your mind off the hard core ness of the temperature and the disgusting grunting sounds the man next to you is making. Seriously – the women don’t make those noises – are they really necessary dude? Anyways – it’s a nice change of pace between boot camps and the studio I go to has introduced different types of (not hot) Yoga in my absence so am looking forward to trying them all out.

Back home and I am thinking about what to do to prep for the year ahead, I have thought about it a lot, and have been planning but not really anything tangible as yet. Mostly I am obsessed with all things food so it will be a matter of making sure I am always prepared like a good girl guide – and never caught on the hop starving – because that’s when I weaken and make bad food choices for my tummy (and pay for it later). I have talked to friends on similar missions or people who eat a certain way for health and have gotten lots of good links to sites and recipes, and a book recommendation from Jonni that I am waiting to come in at my local library.

Here are my starter guidelines, mostly gathered from appts with various specialists including Dr Jenny who I see now, reading the book ‘The Calorie Fallacy’ by Libby Weaver, and general hunches firmed up by conversations with Cath (my friend with PHD’s who is amazeballs). Some of this stuff I was meant to be already doing but got seriously slack over the Xmas break so am getting ‘back on the wagon’ as it were 🙂

These are the rules for ‘my year of health’ all based around the plan of healing my gut and in turn (hopefully) fixing my skin and everything else;

• No Gluten duh
• No Dairy
• No refined Sugar, and certain natural sugars (honey and high fructose fruit like apples and grapes)
• No Alcohol or Coffee
• Try to cut out or limit dramatically processed-to-death food
• No raw food to start with, this might improve with time but for now the fiber is too much and it gives me instant tummy aches
• No ‘crunchy’ or ‘scratchy’ food – toast, crackers, corn chips, etc – anything that might scratch or damage my gut lining
• that goes the same for raw whole nuts – I can have nuts but in paste or totally ground up
• MORE yoga
• Regular WOF’s to check gluten, iron, magnesium etc levels
• MORE ‘good for my gut’ food i.e. bone broths, smoothies, avocados, salmon, casseroles etc
• MORE walks around the neighbourhood with the fam and the dog
• LESS beating myself up for not fitting my clothes at the moment.
• MORE mindfulness – appreciating the moment. The glorious here and now and the wonderful peeps in my life.

So not that much eh? HA HA. well, this is day one after all – Got to start positive!