There’s an empty, weightless feeling to travelling. It’s a certain kind of melancholia that kicks in when you walk onto a plane. Is it the lack of certainty? The fear of insignificance? (Here you are, about to enter the conceptual vacum that is international time zones where you have no anchor, no grounding.)
Image by Ben Frost
Why do we do it? Why do I do it? Travel triggers all my Stuff. My anxiety around smells and sounds and the general too-closeness of humanity. It leaves me feeling lonely and anxious that I don’t have close loved ones (husband, kids) who know where I am, who look up at the sky when planes fly over and think about where in the world I might be. Who bear witness to my existence by proxy.
But I travel, I think, precisely to plunge into this particular kind of melancholy. These kind of experiences are rare ones, where we are drawn way, way, way back from our Usual Life and we have to gaze onto it and question it.
I’m in the lounge at LA airport, en route to New York. I’m heading to New York for two reasons:
1. I have an agent convinced she can sell I Quit Sugar to the Americans. I’m meeting with publishers across Manhattan and doing some press interviews.
With each passing day, my lunch arrangements get more and more ridiculous. Actually, I don’t think they’re ridiculous. They’re very practical and economical and smart. If you ask me. And, if I can be boastful, they’ve inspired others to get ridiculous too. Check out the I Quit Sugar team’s efforts from the blog the other day.
Here’s how I bring in my meals. Zip lock bags and containers a’plenty.
My eating technique is this:
I make my own breakfast and lunch each day. I never buy takeaway – ever – and don’t eat out for breakfast very often (only under sufferance; I struggle to pay $17 for eggs).
As I don’t eat breakfast until about 10am most days, breakfast is eaten in the office or on planes. En route, as a rule. Lunch, I’m often in meetings, on shoots or interstate. And so I tote.
I eat dinner out a few times a week or at friend’s houses where I don’t necessarily eat what I’d normally like to eat. So breakfast and lunch is my own. And so I tote.
These are some of the things I do to tote:
1. I make my green smoothie which I carry in jars and drink bottles. I don’t go anywhere without one. It’s the easiest thing to take on a plane, or into a meeting. I use a really good metal Zip water bottle I got given at the Sydney
It’s been a cold few weeks. Our friends over in Tassie had their coldest day on record at minus 12, and I’ve been shivering in my ugg boots at home. It’s around about now, each year, that that I head overseas. Bound for warmer climes. Stay tuned on this front…
Image via Pinterest
I struggle in the winter. I have to work hard to keep my immunity up because of my autoimmune disease. You can catch up on that here. And I write regularly about how I try to keep things on track. Not by pushing too hard, but by experimenting and working at daily habits to build real wellness. And I’m constantly on the lookout for little things that keep me keeping on…
So here’s one that’s come across my radar a few times now – olive leaf extract, a natural product that can be taken all year round (but particularly in winter) to boost your immunity and manage viral infections, especially when fever is present. In Australia, Olive Leaf Australia is widely available in leading health food stores, or online.
And just so you know, this is a sponsored post, but opinions are all my own and I researched the topic and came to these conclusions myself. You’ll find my position on sponsored posts and advertising here.
I asked Jo to look into this one a little more. This is what she came back with…
1. The Mediterranean diet factor:
If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you’ll know Sarah’s done lots of work looking into this diet, in particular, spending six weeks with National Geographic’s Blue Zone team in Ikaria last year investigating it in detail. You’ll be
It truly is an oddity. It’s become a talking point among friends. A joke at first. I can’t buy a couch. And it’s come to hold up a mirror to a few fundamental sadnesses about life.
Cold comfort: It took Steve Jobs 10 years to buy a couch.
Indeed, I’ve never owned a couch. I’ve inherited old ones when I’ve moved into the various rentals I’ve traipsed between over the years. I bought my first apartment late last year. I’ve been sitting in it… on the floor. Actually, on my yoga foam roller on a bit of old carpet a friend passed onto me. I work from this set-up. I meditate here. I eat my meals from the one – yes one – chair I have (I sit on the floor, eat from the chair). I’ve lived like this for seven months. And, yes, I know it’s sad.
I struggled to know what it is that stalls me from buying a couch. Or a dining table. Or chairs. I’ve been trying to find a sustainably made one that ticks off all My Simple Home boxes. My criteria is tight; I’m a painful perfectionist who can’t buy a pair of undies until I know the manufacturing history and carbon mileage of them and determined that they’re the best design on the market such that my rare purchase of a new pair of undies (I own eight pairs currently) is not wasted.
But that’s only part of it. It’s this too: to buy something so… committed (THERE, I SAID IT)… is a big deal. Couches are commitments. Right now, I can pack up and take off with a moment’s notice. In fact, I’m about to next week. I don’t own a fridge either (I bought a place with an inbuilt one). With a couch (and a fridge) you can’t fly. At least it feels that way.
So since it’s a Big Deal, and reflects more than just seating apparatus, the potency of my couch-buying decision is magnified. And, of course, the more potent, the more I freeze. I can’t make a decision because it’s come to matter so much.
We stall on decisions when there’s fear. Indecision flags fear for us.
And so it reared it’s head: commitment niggles me. When things niggle me, I bubble-wrap them in perfectionism. No one can accuse me of being scared of commitment when I can just turn around and and say I’m merely being a perfectionist. And so my fear can continue, unchallenged a little longer. I’m seductive like that.
And then I came across the above picture of Steve Jobs in his lounge room. A concerned friend sent it to me. It could be me. That’s my lounge below.
Part of the reason I launched iquitsugar.com is so that this blog can return to being an exploration of broader life-bettering stuff. Not everyone here wants to quit sugar. I get that. More to follow on this soon. In the meantime, I know many of you are asking me about the new site and 8-Week Program… mostly wondering if it’s going to feature meal plans. Before I completely sign off on sugary stuff here, let me answer: Yep!
In the Meal Plan: One-pan Salmon ‘n’ Super Slaw, recipe below. Photography by Martyna Candrick.
I have spent several months building the meal plans for the program, and I wanted to highlight a few things for you about how we’ve set them up.
* We provide 8 weeks of complete meal plans: three meals per day, plus snacks.
* The meal plans are dietician approved. I worked with a nutritionist to ensure they are balanced and work within dietary guidelines for vitamin, mineral and calorie intake.
* I’ve built the meal plans based around my own philosophy of food. Real, whole eating. Every meal is designed to be as nutritionally dense as possible. Each day includes 6-7 serves of vegetables. And we feature cooking techniques that preserve nutrients and enzymes.
* The plans are designed to be as economical as possible. We use economical (cheap!) ingredients and the plans are designed to minimise food wastage and features creative ways with leftovers. We use sustainable and economical cuts of meat, and we’ll provide information for you along the way on how to buy your meat and fish this way.
* The plans are for busy people. Most meals are one-pan meals, so you’re not spending all night washing and drying dishes.
* The plans are designed for solos and families or groups of four.
Hope that answers a few questions. If you’re keen to join up, click below…
The thighbone is connected to the hipbone…and our heart is connect to the head, and we are all one and… you get the picture. I read over the weekend about work being conducted by behavioural neuroscientists in the US that shows that our phone addiction is connected to our longevity, and that
disconnecting from your iphone makes you live longer.
Image via Favim.com
Essentially because our heart and our heads are connected. Biologically and figuratively (if you believe the two are different).
It works like this.
We have a vagus nerve that runs from our heart to our head. I’ve written on this incredible nerve here.
The better your “vagal tone” the better your health. That is, the more agility in the connection between your heart and head the better your cardiovascular, glucose and immune responses.
Vagal tone is improved by building that particular muscle – firing it up, using it as it’s meant to be used. Workin’ it. This translates, say the boffins, to smiling, connecting, engaging in face-to-face intimacy. Touching a real humanoid. Or at
Hello there, excuse me. Can I have three minutes of your time? OK. The day has come. Iquitsugar.com is officially Gawn Live. We here at the I Quit Sugar office are bursting with pride, excitement (and bloody relief!).
The I Quit Sugar adventure has taken on a life of its own over the past year or two. When I first launched the I Quit Sugar: an 8-Week Program ebook, I never expected it to take off like it did. Honest. It was all just a personal experiment. But for some reason it became one that a lot of people wanted to join me on. The first ebook came about from repeated requests to have the tips and techniques I was sharing in various blog posts set out in an all-in-one package.
Next came the I Quit Sugar Cookbook with all the recipes I was posting on my blog over time. Again, your requests to have them all in one spot were responsible! Next, the printed edition of I Quit Sugar earlier this year. More than 200,000 have now done the program. Which freaks me out when I think about it for too long.
And now it’s time to grow again…once more, because you’ve asked for it. And I largely have everyone here on this site to thank for giving me the confidence to take it this far. I Quit Sugar now has its own online home… Iquitsugar.com
And the I Quit Sugar Program can now be done as part of an online community.
Click over to Iquitsugar.com and check things out…There are a stack of features to help more people quit sugar and realise real wellness. But perhaps I can just highlight a few bits here:
My Grandad Frank taught me to ride. He would run behind me, wearing his vest as he always did, telling me I was doing great. I’d just turned five. I never did training wheels. I remember the feeling of that tentative, delicate moment when his hand released from my seat and I glided on my … Read more
Looking for inspiration for your Christmas in July celebrations with friends? Or wanting to kick start your Dry July and wondering how to do it all sugar free? I’ve put together the Ultimate Christmas in July I Quit Sugar bundle deal to help you do it all. Sans sugar. For this month, you’ll be able to get
all four I Quit Sugar ebooks for $40.
Which is a saving of $18 (or 31% if you prefer percentages).
Pumpkin ginger spice granola, recipe below
What you’ll find in the bundle deal:
A tidy, easy-to-relay-to-mates-at-the-pub explanation of how + why sugar is making us fat + sick.
A sugar replacement plan: tested + nutritionally sound.
Guidance through various stages of detox + adjustment.
Over 200 delicious recipes, healthy enough to eat for breakfast + keep you off sugar for good.
Handy conversion widgets, substitutions chart PLUS an ingredient saver helper.
A bunch of other tricks + tips + links on safe sweeteners + how to use them.
Three Christmas Meal plans designed to help you take the hassle – and the sugar – out of Christmas. Here in Australia it’s definitely Noel weather…you might find the Stupidly Simple Roast Turkey with Hot Stuffins (stuffing muffins) and the Yule Mule Cocktail just the “thing” to cook up for friends or family this weekend.
Ebooks included in the bundle deal are:
I Quit Sugar: an 8-week program
I Quit Sugar Cookbook
I Quit Sugar Christmas Meal Plan
I Quit Sugar Chocolate Cookbook
To get your bundle, simply click here or on the button below.
Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychologist and sufferer of bipolar disorder who wrote An Unquiet Mind, a book I read many years ago when my rough trots were more prevalent than my smooth.
Image by Arne Olav
This observation from her book has always stood out and I returned to it recently:
I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until…the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships.
It’s all OK, you know. The storms and bleakness and madness count for something. The restlessness will lead to something. These parts of life are not to be constantly derided, moved on from. Once I get over this rough trot, then life will start.No. They’re part of it all and it’s all happening now.. There is no run-up. No dress rehearsal.
