Sisterhood Tribes

HIGH INTENSITY WORKOUTS HAVE TO BECOME PART OF MY LIFE
- FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE

I realized that I am in fact strong enough to do a high-intensity workout 3 times a week. I have to tell you everything about my new passion Lagree: it is a low-impact high-intensity workout that has changed my life. I am not kidding. I year ago I finally found out what was wrong with me, I had not been able to sit for a whole year and the pain and discomfort was killing me: I was diagnosed with Chronic Pelvic Pain and Pudendal Neuralgia. Lagree - among many other things - helped find back to a healthy life.

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NO MORE REFINED SUGAR
I stopped eating refined sugar - unless I am eating out and get myself a tiramisu of course - I am a strong beliver in soul food after all! But seriously, I have been highly addicted to sugar my whole life and it has honestly been harder than coming off of crack (I imagine). Sugar causes serious inflammations in the body and I believe that it was one of the culprits of my health issues: I first suffered from an inflammation in my hand that lasted around four years and then I was diagnosed with pudendal neuralgia and chronic pelvic pain. I was not able to sit for over a year right after the pandemic which, if you are living in a car-city like Miami, means that you can barely leave the house - again... But now that I am off of sugar, it does not feel remotely as challenging as I had thought it would. My main trick is to not buy or bake any sweets with refined sugar. I am sometimes binging on organic dried apricots or will have some whole milk organic greek yoghurt with date syrup instead (which doesn't have the Glycemic Index of refined sugar and tastes delicious). I also make pancakes with organic unsweetened apple sauce and cinnamon. I will share my recipes here. 

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LESS CARBS
Just like sugar, bad carbs can increase inflammation in the body. When I stopped eating carbs for dinner and increased the amount of good carbs I had for lunch, I realized that I have lived my whole life with a bloated belly without even knowing it. But no matter for your health condition or weight: our metabolism slows down in mid-life, so it is a good idea to not intake the same amount of calories as before. 

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BECOMING CLEAR ABOUT MY PRIORITIES IN LIFE

This one is admittedly a work in progress, and I am still  far from having found my answer. But what mid-life invariably does, is that it brings you in touch with your mortality which in turn triggers questions such as "What have I achieved so far?" " Am I happy with the trajectory my life is taking right now?" "Do I need a drastic change in one or more areas of my life?" "How can I live a healthy and fulfilled life for as long as possible?" "Are there any dreams I still want to pursue?" etc. Sitting with these questions and determining where I am deviating from my heart's path has been an important practice in the past few years. As a guiding principle, I always resort to the Serenity Prayer:

"Higher Power/God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things which can be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other."

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