Guest Blogger - Christina Ray

My entire life I’ve struggled with balance, especially with exercise and healthy habits. I watch a yogurt commercial, and the next thing I know, I’m jogging, drinking smoothies for breakfast and meditating first thing in the morning. Then the next week I’m eating fries for dinner, watching Netflix and not eating until 3 pm.  When I was younger, it was worse, and the pendulum swung further to the latter and involved a lot more mac and cheese and chocolate. 

Over the years, though, things have slowly changed. My body notices when it hasn’t been moved, and I almost crave vegetables. Does that even make sense? It’s like I can hear it screaming at me, “HELP! You’re going to get scurvy if you don’t eat your veggies!” Seriously!

Once I hit 30, I also started noticing changes in how my body processed food. Suddenly, I was uber aware that dairy and I were no longer friends. After my whole life being a vegetarian (ok, more like a carb-o-tarian), I finally decided to embrace what my body was telling me and went full vegan.  I feel like this deserves a side story: when I was a kid, I was super caring, to the point that when I left a stuffed animal in a roadside restaurant at three, I was upset that he wouldn’t have anyone to play with, not that I had lost my toy. When my parents tried to get me to eat a hamburger at the same age, I wanted no part of it and gave up sleepovers with friends or whatever else I had to, so I didn’t have to eat meat. Ethical or picky? I am not sure, but it stuck with me for life. 

Anyways, the point of this all is I’m finally listening to my body, and I think that’s so important. It’s not that I want to eat nothing but salads and superfoods and do Hiit workouts daily, but I want to feel good and live long. Life is amazing, and I don’t want to wake up with a health condition that I could have prevented by just listening. Currently, I’m eating nutritious foods Monday-Friday and doing short 30-minute workouts, then on the weekends, we treat ourselves to our fave meals, and I stretch or take a rest day. Honestly, just by listening, I have created balance. I feel like a light bulb went off one day, and my body is like, “HALLELUJAH!” 

So, if I in any way inspired you to listen to yourself more to do what’s right for you, I’d love to hear from you! Balance is so hard, and the more encouragement and cheering we can all do for each other, the more successful we’ll all be. Happy Spring, my balanced, healthy, and confident friends!  

Christina Ray

@xtinaray 

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