I hate burpees…

Seriously, I would rather let someone punch me in the throat than do burpees but they are great for your core and fitness so I suck it up and do them. Much like I use escalators when there are no stairs to take (I mean seriously, they are so unsafe!) and I go to the dentist even though I am petrified.

We all have to do things we don’t like to do because deep down we know the outcome is good for us.

But what happens when we are faced with a situation where we have to make a choice that goes against how we feel, a classic case of head versus heart? Where logic defies love and you come to the realisation that the choice you are about to make is going to rip a little piece of you away.

I had one such moment last week when I made the decision to have my puppy re-homed. It wasn’t an overnight decision – it had been niggling away at me for weeks.

Here was this animal that loved me unconditionally even though since moving into a new place and taking on additional training and studying, was getting less attention than she deserved and yet was still so excited to see me at the end of each work day she would literally beam at me through the garden gates.

I don’t think there’s one thing I could have done wrong in her eyes and as long as she got just 5 minutes with me, the fact I was at home less and less would fly straight out of her mind. I could have carried on the way I was going, spending what time I did have with her and putting my guilt to one side. And the emotional side of me wanted to do this so badly because who can honestly say they ever want to let go of something they love? Where is the logic in making yourself unhappy?

But if you really think about it, the very fact that you love something or someone is the reason you want the very best for them, regardless of whether or not it’s you that can provide that. Here I was, torn between making a decision based on my head and heart when it suddenly clicked – they weren’t actually in disagreement. Both in fact knew what the right decision was and had come to a mutual understanding.

Logic was telling me I didn’t have the time for her, that with my ever increasing work and study load our time together would become less and less. And even though I loved her and she brought me so much happiness, my heart ached for a life I knew she deserved and wasn’t getting from me.

As I write this pups is no longer here – her new family are spoiling her with constant affection and she went to a home where people are with her all day. Do I feel sad for what I did? Guilty for buying her in the first place only to give her up? Yes and no. Yes because a part of me feels like a failure for not trying harder and I miss her little face when I get home. It was the first bond i’d ever formed with something from a young age and my first true experience of feeling like a life was dependant on me. But more importantly, no. Because deep down I know I made the right decision and even though I don’t feel too good about it now, her quality of life is the best it can be and that means more to me than I can explain in a blog post.

This won’t be the first time I have to make a hard decision i’m sure but it’s true what they say; the hardest thing to do is normally the right thing….

The bad makes the good…

I don’t know the specific moment I realised that life isn’t always going to be perfect but I do know that when I accepted this, things got that little bit sweeter.

Have you ever not done something for fear of getting hurt, in an emotional sense that is? Do you wrap yourself up in cotton wool and hold your heart close to you for fear of it getting stamped on? Perhaps you’ve had a bad experience with friends in the past that have let you down or a partner that strayed, maybe even a family member that took off without a moment’s thought to you or your feelings. If we really think about it we have probably all been a victim of emotional heartbreak at one point or another.

As human beings it is in our nature to crave love and friendship and when we give a little of ourselves away to people and they abuse this, it hurts. It hurts a lot! It creates room for all of this negative self-doubt “Why did they leave? What did I do wrong? Was I not good enough?” And no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that it wasn’t us and it’s their loss, the sensitive part in us can’t simply switch off the sadness we have been left with and so we have no choice but to ride it out until eventually the feeling passes.

So it’s no wonder we are quick to say never again and to want to hide away inside of ourselves. Why would anyone want to take the risk of ever feeling like that again?

But let me ask you this; how do we know how good something really is if we haven’t experienced the bad? How can we truly live in the present moment and enjoy what we have if we don’t open ourselves up to be vulnerable? We can’t have it both ways, simply picking which emotion to feel and we can’t move forward in life if previous experiences hold us back. We all have our demons, our fears, our concerns, our self-battles but this also means that we have the best parts of all these things should we decide to confront them. Choose to shut yourself off from the possibility of new friendship or love and well, you may as well shut yourself off from everything all together.

Sometimes we have to be a little bit wreck less with our hearts and take a risk. And it may not always work out but that’s ok, mistakes are there to be made as long as we learn from them. I’m all for planning and playing things safe on occasion but sometimes things won’t pan out how you expect them to and you just have to roll with it.

Two years ago a guy I thought was the one made a decision that caused the end of our relationship and I was devastated. I loved him and he made me feel inadequate in a matter of seconds. Fast forward to now and I owe him a thank you. He was right for me then but not now; we are worlds apart as people. Because of him I made the decision to go out into the world in search of something more and I found it. I made a new life for myself and became a stronger person because of it. I took a risk and I got comfortable with doing the uncomfortable and it paid off. The bad made the good and the good feels so much more wonderful because of this. Now I can look back and appreciate what we had for what it was and my memories are fond ones. He wasn’t a nasty person; he just made a bad decision.

There is always going to be upset, pain, confusion, fear and times of hardship in our lives but its how we choose to deal with it that makes us. We can hide away from potential heartache or we can embrace it and everything else wonderful that comes with it.

I know which I prefer…

Raw Choc-Mint Mousse Cake

This is one of those moments where I just want to throw on my onesie, chuck my hair up into a messy pony and dive face first into chocolate. But I don’t want the guilt nor the roller coaster highs and lows that normally follow after a dessert so what’s a girl to do?

Enter this beauty….

Completely raw, completely guilt free and completely yummy!!

Courtesy of my friend Marie, lets bow our heads together and give thanks to this young lady for bringing such joy into our lives…. And then lets eat!

For the crust

1.5 cup almonds (or mix of ur favourite nuts)
1 cup medjool dates pitted
1/4 cup cacao powder
1 tsp vanilla powder
1 pinch salt

For the filling

2.5 cups almond milk (can use rice or oat milk)
3/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup medjool dates pitted
1/3 cup raw honey or or agave syrup
1 cup cashews soaked 2 hours (optional)
1/2 tsp mint essence
1/2 cup raw cacao powder
2 tsp vanilla powder
2 Tbs agar agar
2 pinches salt

What to do:

Crust

Place dry ingredients in food processor and plend til roughly chopped. Leave processor on and feed through dates. Process til finely chopped. Firmly press into spring form tin and place in fridge to set.

For Filling

Place wet ingredients first then everything else into high speed blender and blend until smooth. Pour filling over crust and place back in fridge to set overnight. When set garnish with mint leaves and cacao nibs if desired.

Can substitute mint essence for orange essence.

Enjoy Pecans! And send me a slice yeah???

Men are from Mars…

There was a time not too long ago where for me being skinny would have been at the top of my wish list. And as shallow as that sounds I can bet that 99% of females have had the same thought.

The runway is full of stick thin girls and horror stories of models surviving on an apple and coke diet grace the pages of magazines. I can only think of a handful of girls that have gone into the social scene that is Hollywood and come out the same size they were when they went in.

We should all work hard to achieve what we want in life, whether that be a great body or change of career or lifestyle in general but when does it reach the point of being too much? When do we cross that line between doable and dangerous? When do we start doing things not because they are what’s good for us as the individual but because we think it’s what other people will like more?

I love the saying “Men are from mars, women are from venus.” It wasn’t until I started to get a bit older that I started to appreciate what this saying actually meant. For example now I know that when I write a long message to a guy and he simply puts “ok” it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like or want to talk to me, it’s just that he’s more likely engrossed in the footy game he has on with his hands down his pants. Or if I need a good cry I don’t go to my boy bestie because he’ll get weirded out and start making inappropriate jokes about my “hot” Mum to ease the situation. Accepting that men is different is just a part of life.

But much the same as they don’t think as emotionally as us or with their hearts, it would seem they also tend to differ from us on our opinion of the “perfect body” and our perception of what guys think is attractive is actually not the case for a large majority of them.

I asked the males in my Facebook friends list what their opinion of the perfect female body was, giving the options of thin, curvy and athletic.

The results were as follows:

Thin 0%
Curvy 78.5%
Athletic 21.5%

Now isn’t that funny. It would seem that although we as females tend to be right (most of the time, c’mon guys!) the boys have got something right here for a change.

Whilst I understand that some people are genetically very thin regardless of what they eat, a lot of what we see in the media is not natural and therefore not achievable at a safe level. The bodies I’ve seen and heard of friends and young girls trying to achieve just isn’t feasible yet we still beat ourselves up when we haven’t accomplished it.

I’ve battled with body image like a lot of us out there and I can honestly say that the one of the worst times for me has been when I’ve strived to achieve a body shape that isn’t practical for me physically, emotionally or mentally.

Yes I want to be the best version of myself but not at a cost to my happiness or more importantly, my wellbeing. So now it’s about eating more of the right things and working out because I enjoy it and it’s what leaves me feeling my best. I don’t under eat as a quick fix or stare longingly at size 0 models desperately hoping that one day I’ll be able to run in a bikini and have nothing that wobbles apart from boobs. I do what’s right for me and accept that however I turn out, whatever clothes size my body slips into, that will be what the big man upstairs intended.

Much like my thin friends who can eat and eat what they like and remain tiny, I shall land on whatever size I am to be as me. Not as a result of a crazy starvation diet but of a realistic, sensible and healthy approach to living a lifestyle that suits me and my needs.

It’s common sense. We have one life and if we do it well then that’s all we need. A mars bar will only make you happy for a second and starving yourself will leave you miserable for hours so realise that there is no logic to either and approach it from a different angle.

Real foods, heart pounding exercise and big laughs. That’s the stuff right there 🙂

David Wolfe – My Best Day Ever!

What better way to start my “Pecan Princess People” section than with a date with David Wolfe himself!

Unfortunately it wasn’t the by candlelight with music type of date and I did have to share him with about 300 others but it was amazing all the same.

“The best day ever!” was held at the Ridges Perth and seeing that I’ve never been to a raw food conference before, I wasn’t really sure what to expect…

When you think of raw foods, do you think of a rabbit munching on a carrot? Or a hippie type lady smoking whilst dancing around a campfire with no underwear on? Glad I wasn’t the only one then 🙂

It’s that typical situation of us not understanding something new so we fear it and stereotype it, a little bit afraid of accepting change. But I needn’t have feared because I was met with 3 of the most exciting hours of my life from a nutritional perspective. David literally BLEW MY MIND!

Not only did he discuss the hundreds of super foods out there and the effects they can have on various diseases, he also talked about how we can prevent illnesses before they even happen, all whilst delivering this information in a fun and interesting way. He kept me hanging on to his every word.

David was also very relatable, being a man who had grown up with a different outlook on life than the one he shares now. He followed the typical over processed, harmful westernised diet that many people currently live and so he talks from experience.

Here is some of the information I took away from David:

The top 10 anti-aging super foods are chocolate (raw cacao), olive oil, tobacco, honey and port wine (the unprocessed kind)
Cacao is higher than any other plant in iron and is also high in magnesium. This combination could explain why women crave chocolate when we have our period so let your partner know this the next time he sees you tucking into a raw chocolate bliss ball 😉
Foods that are black are the best for you such as schisandra berries and olives (when an olive falls to the ground from the tree and has not been touched by man)
Foods that look like body parts help that body part. For example a walnut is good for your brain, a tomato is good for your heart, celery for your bones and berries for your eyes.
Salt is amazing for us! But not the kind we find in processed food. The natural kind. In fact warm salt water can help with many problems and has been spoken about for years, it’s just in our current day and age the message has become somewhat contorted.
Medicinal mushrooms (shiitake, chaga, trametes, reishi etc.) are the most powerful healing foods.
We need to be stacking the favours in our odds, implementing small changes daily that set us on the path towards self-healing.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

And the most important thing I took away from the 3 hours was this following piece of information:

DEVELOP SOPHISTICATION ABOUT YOUR BODY – ACTIVATE SELF HEALING AT HOME. TRY EVERYTHING OUT THERE AND FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.

No one way of living is right. What suits one person may not suit you so listen to your body, try new things and eventually you can feel what works for you and what doesn’t.

For me David confirmed something I’ve thought for a good 6 months or so now – that we as a generation have made things all too difficult. We have become far more “materialised” as he put it and now conform to a way of living because we have been brought up with it in our faces. Everyone in the room that night had reached a point in their life where they knew that there was something more out there, something they hadn’t quite sussed out yet or were on the cusp of realising. Some had had a life threatening disease and had witnessed the miracle of food and lifestyle changes for themselves whilst others were more than likely there just to see what all the fuss was about.

Whatever our reasons, I don’t think anyone can say they left that room without plenty to think about. I know I certainly didn’t. And whilst I didn’t go 80% raw the following day, I have incorporated more raw veggies and fruit into my diet daily since and am on a mission to make a mean raw cheesecake very soon. I accepted a while ago now that what I had been brought up believing was good for me, simply isn’t so a lot of what he said rang true for me.

David lives an amazing life travelling worldwide and experiencing the world in a light I’ve never seen. It’s one to be respected and I feel a little more blessed just for having heard about it. The universe has everything ready in place for us to be our best versions and I think he realised that a little bit sooner than the rest of us…

Take yourself out of the box…

Did you know that I’ve been a vegan? I’ve been a raw foodist (for a day – it was really hard!) I’ve been a tomboy, a horse rider, a singer, an artist, a runner – the list goes on and on.

Until recently I’ve always thought that I had to give myself a label or be good at one particular thing in order to have any self-worth, that I had to be the funny one or the pretty one or the clever one. I dabbled in various things whether it be a new hobby or a type of diet that looked interesting or a new idea and each time I felt a little let down that I didn’t feel more like I’d found my place…

And then one day it dawned on me. I am not just one thing – I am several. And the label that I had been trying to give myself for so long was staring me straight in the face. It was called “Emma”.

I am Emma. I love animals, dancing like an idiot, laughing so hard at absolutely nothing, being a geek, wearing no makeup and trackies, dressing up to go out, high shoes, wearing no shoes, eating food with my hands, having a night in alone, watching funny videos on You Tube, singing in the car, the sunshine, the rain, the snow, early mornings and lay ins. I am made up of a million things that allow me to be one thing – me.

And the same goes for what I now eat and how I life my daily life. If I want to eat raw foods one day, I will. If I want to go easy on the meat another day, helloooo “Meat Free Monday”. If I’ve cut out all dairy but one day a Nutella jar is looking up at me screaming “EAT ME!” then chances are I’m going to nose dive in head first and you won’t see me for several hours.

I now make decisions on what I want and how I want to feel and I take away all of the pressure that’s involved in conforming to be one particular thing. Because let’s face it, life is forever changing and on some levels you have to just kind of go with it.

And to be quite honest, having this kind of balanced approach seems to be working for me. Nothing is off limits. If I want to eat ice cream for a whole day and nothing else, I will. If I want to go out and drink tequila and throw some t rex shapes on the dance floor, I’m doing it!

Making healthy and clever decisions seems to come more naturally now I don’t restrict or ban or class myself as one thing or another. Life is about having fun with friends and family and living in the moment! I want to eat well and workout most of the time because this is what keeps my body healthy and carries me to that next fun moment so it makes sense for me to do this. But drinking cocktails and sharing a bag of malteesers occasionally with my girls is what’s good for my soul and isn’t that just as important…?

I have butterflies!!

Eeeeeeeekkk so here it is! My very first blog post! I guess I’d probably best start off with why am I here, why This Pecan Princess?

For as long as I can remember I’ve felt a little bit inadequate, a little bit anxious and a little bit sensitive… I’ve made decisions based on what I don’t necessarily agree with or want to do but what I thought would eventually make me happy.

Then one day on a complete whim I thought, I’m going to move to Australia. I’m going to leave everything and everyone I’ve known for 25 years behind me and go and live over 8000 miles away. I mean why not right?

So after 8 months of planning and saving and boring everyone around me with monthly, weekly and daily count downs, I left. And life was never the same again. In fact it was the most awful it’s ever been for a time.

Do you know what happens when you have nothing and nobody familiar around you? When you don’t even recognise the street you are on and have no one to call and talk to about your day? You start to look at yourself long and hard and start over thinking things and it becomes very apparent (and very quickly too) if there is something you aren’t happy with. Because you literally have nothing else to do but to search within yourself. You aren’t going about your normal routine, rushing around and blocking out thoughts and feelings. For once you can actually hear the noise in your head and you can’t escape it! It’s a scary thing.

But it was the best thing to ever happen to me. It made me face what I had been hiding from for so long. All of these little niggling doubts about the types of people I should be having in my life or the food I was eating because I had been told it was good for me or the lifestyle I should live because that’s what you do when you’re an adult. I was at a cross roads and it was time to start making decisions based on what was best for me…

I started to be kinder to myself, working out because I enjoyed it and trying new forms of exercise which lead to making new friendships. Eating wholesome foods because they actually made me feel good and not because a new diet said I should eat them. I began to form friendships based on people who brought out the best in me and I them and I said goodbye to the people that brought me down instead of holding on to them for fear of feeling like a bitch.

And then one day it hit me – i’m happy! And it was all down to the simplest of changes, so simple in fact I can break it down into one sentence for you:

Treat your body and soul with kindness and happiness is yours for the taking.

That’s it! Just those 14 little words and yet it had taken me 25 years to figure it out.

So why it had taken me so long to realise where I was going wrong? It’s because the everyday noise and bullshit around me had prevented me from waking up to it sooner.

And so, This Pecan Princess was born!

My site is dedicated to promoting a healthy and balanced lifestyle that is maintainable by anyone and everyone. It doesn’t focus on a size or a shape and there is no right and wrong. I am not a personal trainer or a nutritionist and I don’t have a degree in psychology. What I am an expert in though is me. My thoughts, my feelings, my wellbeing and my happiness and if how I live my life can help or inspire even just one other person out there who is just as lost as I was, well then that makes me feel all giddy inside!

So welcome! This is the first of many posts to come, posts about wholesome foods, exercise, positivity, love, friendship and an overall healthy and happy lifestyle that leads to just one thing – your very best you 🙂