it’s true, we are what we eat

When I decided to stop working full time, I already knew this was not going to be a full stop. Mums are very busy people. All. The. Time.

“Eating well (i.e. a well-balanced diet rich in vegetables and nutrients) may be associated with feelings of wellbeing. “

Diet and Mental Health

My initial thought was to allow myself more time to build my own writing business. It’s something I always wanted to do.

I have always been a freelancer on the side. A linguist professional. That didn’t change. What changed was that now I was going to focus on reshaping my freelance business.

Recently I decided to go on a diet. This may sound completely unrelated but walk with me here. The diet had an impact on me that in many ways surpassed the physical realm.

“Research shows that what we eat can influence what we want to become .”

Eat Yourself Happy

Reshaping my business for me means that I don’t want to be a linguist only, I want to offer writing services too. I am entering a dimension that is new to me. It will need ire a lot of practice, networking and funly enough, advertising.

Getting into that brave, all-confident mind frame can be a slow process. I read it can take years. I’m pretty sure that is because we all have/had different career paths.

Not everyone has the first right vision. Sometimes it takes a while to be clear, other times personal life gets in the way and priorities change. Our physical (and physiological) wellbeing play a more important part than that one we think.

I’m the latter. Marriage, emmigration, children, divorce, house moves, redundancy, lockdown. All more than valid reasons to delay my true call. Or so I say to myself.

Since I started this venture, in October last year, I have enrolled on a couple of copywriting courses. And started exploring freelancing platforms in more depth.

I spend a lot of time on the side building up planners and testing and changing settings. As well as playing around and experimenting with platforms and blogging.

In the beginning stages all these tasks can feel daunting. Especially when you look around and see so many “peers” successfully established can be scary, even though you know much of what you see may be fake.

All this requires a reasonable amount of time and mental and emotional juggling. I need to be at my most disciplined (and swiftest) status ever. I need to be able to switch between mother and freelancer-mode.

This diet has been life-changing. I’m certain the extra weight I was carrying around was fogging my brain. It was impairing my judgment. It was hard in the beginning, I’m not gonna lie, but it was totally worth it. My ability to focus increased, my views are now more positive.

As a consequence, this has had without a doubt, a major impact in my confidence. We tend to overlook the mental benefits it brings, as we generally only see its physical benefits. But it can actually affect you positively in many other ways. This has shown to be true.

I have read about it before and although it only sounded like my mum repeating herself, it was common sense. But, like most people I procrastinated my attempts to test it myself. I have never been much of a diet person.

The thought of prohibitions of food that I enjoyed has never been appealing. And on the other hand, I’ve never been a fan of take away food or regular fried food of any sort. My extra weight was mostly due to the portion sizes.

The fact that I felt this change myself, more than a validation, it made me proud of my achievement. Furthermore my mind is now free from enrooted preconceptions related to different ingredient combinations, which made eek (like my daughter says). :D

Now I find myself eating things I wouldn’t consider before AND enjoying them! I am absolutely loving the dieting experience and I have no intention to stop. Maybe it was only a coincidence or maybe it was the right time and only now my taste buds and my body were ready for this.

Have you experienced the same? I would love it if you’d care to share.

The most important thing now is not to lose the momentum and keep it going. Onward and upward!