In an attempt to bring a little more balance and contentment into my life and adhere a little more closely to anti-inflammatory diets, I am slowly drawing myself back round to a more animal-free way of life. It’s going to be a process of baby steps, first up I’m cutting out meat and dairy (I shouldn’t be eating dairy anyway due to a lactose intolerance), working out all the products I like and don’t like. For instance I had forgotten how much I love vegan “cheese” slices but yesterday we had some tofu sausages which have given me the worst indigestion I’ve had in ages!

I have to say in the three years in which I have been omnivorous again** both the variety of vegan products on the market and the variety of places you can get them has definitely increased. And that’s going to make it easier. What makes it harder of course is living with a carnivore! That’s not really fair, Himself is omnivorous and has no objection to eating veggie at least five times a week – but what I am not going to do is push my beliefs and my lifestyle choices on to somebody else. Relationships are about compromise and my compromise is to experiment in cooking dishes to suit us both. Which is probably why I’ll never be the uber-strict vegan I used to be — but baby steps eh? Anything is possible!

=

**I was vegan for many, many years but ended up really ill about 5 years ago with iron/Vit B12 deficiency due to endometriosis issues (not the vegan diet, although at the time I was going through quite a lot and totally not looking after myself – one cannot live on peanut butter sandwiches it appears) and started eating meat again. Since then I have of course spent several years fighting fibromyalgia and feeling I needed all the protein I could get! I am now in a position to start to cut meat out of my diet again.

I woke up this morning to pouring rain, a pile of kitty vomit and a Googlereader feed full of stories of Swine Flu.

However, it didn’t depress me as much as it may have done. Whilst my thoughts are with all those in Mexico who have lost people to the illness and whilst I hope and pray the illness does not become pandemic, it reminded me of an incident during the avian flu “crisis”.

At the time I was working for a large American law firm in London. The American offices seemed very concerned about the outbreak (I can’t remember what triggered it) and the CEO in Pittsburgh sent us out an email with about a trillion bullet points of things to do to stop us being infected.

Best of all the Americans sent over two huge care parcels. One was full of disinfectant hand gels the other full of face masks to hand out amongst the staff.

To my knowledge those two boxes are still in the basement of my old London office.

A classic example of the British stiff upper lip eh?!!

Back in the days when I did full Primary Series three or four times a week I used to think of yoga as exercise as well as a moving meditation. These days as a Viniyoga teacher and practitioner, my practice has become much slower, more meditation, more healing. It stretches and tones, it calms and heals, it makes me breathe more evenly, but it doesn’t really make me sweat!

So, as my health begins to take an upturn I have begun Project Fitness. I’ve written myself a programme to allow myself to gently and slowly raise my fitness levels (one of the best things about being a trained fitness instructor is one doesn’t have to pay a personal trainer – I just shout at myself whilst I’m on the cross-trainer instead!), because I am determined to get better. My health has become too much a part of me and I know longer want to be defined by my health. Fibromyalgia is not who I am, it is merely a word.

So this morning I did:-

20 minutes on the x-trainer (3km, heart rate of 160)
10 minutes of weights
15 minutes of stretching
Short swim
Lounging in the jacuzzi (this is the best bit).

I’m hoping to do this twice a week, and then take a two mile power walk outside the other three days.

I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed a good workout. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed feeling like this. I’m so happy to be rediscovering my fitness levels (which really aren’t as bad as I thought). A good workout is meditative and healing in it’s own way — and I think the balance between a yoga practice and a cardio programme works well.

Plus as yogis we know so much more about the importance of stretching and releasing the muscles, so hopefully the muscle aches will be at a minimum!

Namaste