Body Conscious

In a post a few months ago, I made a bold claim. I announced to the world (or at least, to the people who read this blog) that I loved my CrossFit/primal eating body.

I lied.

Or rather, I was misinformed. I thought I was loving my body. In reality though, I had just been attempting to beat it into submission. I hadn’t been nurturing and honouring it, I had been training it and depriving it, in the hope that it would one day look the way I wanted it to.

But what way was that? When it really comes down to it, what is ‘beautiful’?

Is beautiful skinny? Pretty? Blonde? Brunette? Is it confident? Rich? Successful? Is it really what’s on the inside that counts? And is strong really the new skinny?

Sure, society has it’s own definitions of beautiful, but so do each of us as individuals. I’m sure that many of us have our own idea of what we want our body to look like, but then aren’t we taught that we should be happy with the way we are? How do we strive for improvement while still accepting ourselves and loving ourselves as we are?

I had a great conversation with Cliff Harvey about this very same thing. Like many women, I’ve had a hard time seeing my body as beautiful. I’d love to have a leaner mid-section, a visible a 6-pack…but then I feel bad for not accepting my body the way it was…and I didn’t really believe I had the body type for a 6-pack anyway. What a dilemma! Well not so much anymore. Cliff shared a great saying with me: “Happy but not satisfied”. There’s nothing wrong with having goals and striving for improvement – a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo, I think it’s referred to as – but that doesn’t mean we have to be ‘unhappy’ with where we’re at currently. And as for my 6-pack, who says I don’t have the body type for it? If I tell myself I can’t, then I won’t. We create our own truth. So I’ve started to tell myself that I can; and it’s starting to become my own truth.

Returning to the idea of beauty now, I think we’d all agree that for many people, their definition of beauty includes some concept of fitness and health. But what happens when getting fitter means getting bigger? How do we reconcile that with the ‘feminine ideal’ of smallness? The other week, for the first time ever, I found a pair of pants (in my size) that wouldn’t fit over the increasing circumference of my thighs, and another that didn’t fit my calves. Oh the excitement! I’m actually getting muscly!! But while I love what my increasing size means in terms of my strength and capabilities, it’s kind of hard when all my clothes are getting tight because of it. In the past, tightening clothing have never been a good thing! Loving my new muscles doesn’t necessarily provide protection against the depressing feeling of not fitting into my clothes.

Happy but not satisfied. It can be a fragile balance, and one that’s not always easy to achieve. But now, every morning, I look at myself in the mirror and I accept myself. I look myself in the eye and tell myself that I love myself – right at this moment, for who I am and where I am. But I have goals, I have things that I’m striving for; and that’s ok too.

6-pack, here I come…

True story.

28 January. To most of you, it’s probably just another day. But it’s a date I’ll never forget.

7 years ago today, I was facing one of my greatest challenges. 7 years ago today, I was lying on an operating table while surgeons removed my large bowel. Crohn’s Disease hadn’t succeeded in taking my life, but it had succeeded in taking my colon.

In September 2003, just before my 23rd birthday, I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease - an autoimmune disease that affects your digestive system. They don’t know what causes it, or how to cure it. However, the chronic nature of the condition wasn’t made all that clear to me, and I went away thinking that, just like most other illnesses, if I took my medications it would eventually go away.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite to plan! After about 3 months of very little change in my symptoms, I suddenly got really sick. I could barely eat, I was in the bathroom more often than I was out of it, I was losing a lot of blood, and I was in a lot of pain. At its worst, I was actually crawling between my bed and the bathroom. Unsurprisingly, I ended up in hospital, but because the disease had been so mild when I was diagnosed 3 months earlier, it took the medical team about 5 days to realise how bad things were.

On December 31st 2003, because I wasn’t responding to treatment, they performed a sigmoidoscopy. My Mum had stopped in to say goodbye before heading away for New Year (that sounds callous, but none of us realised just how sick I was), and will never forget the specialist telling her that if that was her daughter, she wouldn’t be going anywhere. She didn’t. From the scope, it was apparent that my bowel was very close to perforating, and the doctors had to start considering major emergency surgery to remove my large bowel. This surgery would mean that I would end up with an ileostomy, which is where they bring the end of the small bowel out onto the surface of the abdomen and stitch it in place. Happy New Year.

Only the problem with doing emergency surgery at that time was that I was really too sick for my body to be able to cope. Wait, or operate? Either option was going to be risky, so it was a fairly tense time while the doctors tried to decide what course of action would give me the best chance of coming through this.

Thankfully, after a few days, the medications had enough of an effect that they were able to hold off on the surgery, allowing them to try all the other treatment options available. Although in the end none of them were effective and I did need the surgery, at least my body had a chance to build up a bit of strength, I had a chance to come to terms emotionally with what was going on, and I knew that every other option had been explored.

28 January. Surgery was rough (pain control was a massive problem) and the recovery was long and hard. When I came out of hospital, I struggled just to walk up my parents’ driveway. I was just starting to make progress when I had another disease flare and needed more major surgery in July of the same year – this time, making my ileostomy permanent. But I resolved that I wasn’t going to let the Crohn’s or the ileostomy stop me doing anything…and it hasn’t [well, it has stopped me doing one thing, but this probably isn’t the appropriate forum for a discussion on toilet habits!]. In fact, I probably do more now than I did before my surgery, including the very things I was told I shouldn’t do with an ileostomy (namely, contact sports and heavy lifting)! My experience has motivated me to make the most of my opportunities, to challenge myself, to push myself beyond my comfort zone.

But it hasn’t always been easy. Pushing yourself, trying new things, embracing what life has to offer is sometimes difficult when you just want to curl up in bed and sleep for a week. It was a constant battle. For 7 years, fatigue has been my nemesis…until now. Having changed my diet to primal eating when I started CrossFit in October, I have experienced a huge change in my energy levels. Sure, I get physically tired when I’ve trained hard, but it’s so totally different to the fatigue that I fought before.

Not only that, I actually love my CrossFit/primal eating body! It’s not perfect – far from it. It’s not as strong or as toned as it could be. But it’s stronger, faster, and fitter than ever before.

This was me not long after I came out of hospital from my first surgery, my face still puffy from the huge doses of steroids I was on, my limbs in serious need of some toning…






This was me when I started CrossFit in October last year…





This was me two months into CrossFit and primal eating…



For the first time in about 12 years, I can honestly say that I love my body.



28 January 2004. 7 years. I never thought I would, or could, have the life I do now. I have worked, I have studied, I have travelled. I have played music, I have played sports. I have amazing friends and family, I have a partner who I adore.

7 years. I have laughed, I have loved, I have lived. My illness has made me the person I am, and if I had to go through it all again to be where I am today, I would. In a heartbeat.

7 years. Time flies when you’re having fun.

True story.