How I Live Now, Happy, Healthy, Healing

It's been the craziest day and a half, since I posted my article about Why I'm Leaving Slimming World my blog has had a months traffic in less than 36 hours, obviously I'm thrilled because I work so hard at this blogging malarkey but what's been fascinating is the sheer number of people who've chosen to comment on threads on Facebook, the most interesting thing is that out of hundreds of comments only 2 people seemed to have any kind of issue or have disagreed with me, one worked for Slimming World (no real surprise there) and another who seemed to do some crazy old style version of dieting where all calories are equal whether that's cake, avocado or meat, am I the only one who thinks that actually it's insanity to think you could eat 1500 calories of cake every day and still be thin as long as you didn't go over your calorific count?

I don't want to get involved in judging people who do diet clubs and eating plans, and I certainly don't claim to be any kind of scientific expert, I wrote the article as someone who went faithfully to Slimming World pretty much every week for 4 years, I said some good things, I had issues with other elements.  During the last 4 years I've also read many books, changed my outlook on life, love, food and everything else really.

How I live now is different to how I lived 4 years ago, 4 years ago I thought I was mostly happily married, I wasn't particularly social and without a doubt I used food an alcohol as an emotional crutch, if I'm honest I've only really discovered the joy of exercise in the last couple of years and even more so since the arrival of super dog Holly Bobbins in my life.

I'm a singleton of course and I'm still healing myself emotionally after such a turbulent time but I firmly believe that I won't be in this state of flux for the rest of my life, I have the most brilliant wonderful friends, Harriet, Laura and Li are the most amazing friends who just keep supporting me no matter how sad or anxious or over excitable I am and together we're a formidable bunch, hopefully they feel as supported during times of need too.

my life goal now is to keep being happy and healthy, I've thrown away my scales, I continue to march to a speed at which my Apple watch considers me to be doing exercise and I live by the recipes of Jamie Oliver, Nigella and of course Joe Wicks who's taught me that you can be lean in 15 (or something like that).

So this is me, still trying to carve out my career as a photographer, a writer, blogger and one day digital nomad who can work from anywhere in the world, seeing the world and experiencing all that is good about it.  For when my children leave home I won't have any existing ties or reasons to stay where I am, I hope to find a way to make it work, to have my student gap year in my 40's or 50's or 60's, one thing I do know is that my life has just begun, I have many years to live and several more chapters to write so if you're one of my new readers, one of the thousands who mightn't usually be readers, I do hope you'll stay around and enjoy some of the journey with me.