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 🙂