Can you feel it too? Spring is in the air! The days are finally starting to get longer again and the nights shorter. There is more brightness, more noise and more hustle beginning to flow into our hibernating lives. With all such joyful new glow all around us often comes the desire to make such youthful reset also happen from deep within us. To up our beautiful glow and energy levels and like the nature around us make a fresh new clean start.
Here are my 8 rejuvenating steps that give you more spring in your step and empower you with this irresistible spark of natural beauty.
- Eat more plant protein.
Plant protein like legumes, beans, nuts, lentils and seeds are your total beautifying superpower. They do not only balance your hormones, keep you full for longer, up your gut cleansing and belly-fat-slimming fibre but also employ you with long lasting energy, shiny hair, strong nails, smooth skin and I-can-do-this vibes.
- Walk for at least 30 minutes every day.
If walking is too boring for you, you are very welcome to switch it up with running, skipping, cycling, rowing or whatever makes your happy heart up its beat – quite literally. Committing to taking 30 minutes out of your day and treating your beautiful cells to more oxygen through continuous movement – gentle or more vigorous either is great – allows your body to let go of any accumulated stress, toxic waste material, and those comfy rolls around your waste that might have gotten a little bigger during those winter months.
- Exchange your coffee with lemon water, green tea, and plenty of filtered water.
Helping your hormones to reset and letting go of stimulants that don’t really empower you will make room for a newborn wind of clean energy. Starting your days with fresh lukewarm lemon water, possibly with a spoonful or two of apple cider vinegar added to it, will not only detoxify your body but also alkalise and rebalance anything that might have gone off-balance during those darker months of the year. Green tea – my total favourite of all times will have to be matcha tea in powdered form – gives your cells an extra anti-oxidising boost and your muscles a metabolic, let’s do-this burn. Filtered water then does its beautifying rest by fully re-hydrating, plumping up your skin, and totally re-energising all of the gorgeous YOU without experiencing any of the after-coffee lows.
- Commit to nurturing your body with wholefood goodness.
With all this new energy in the air you might feel drawn to follow the season’s calling and re-invent yourself. Which I am all for, but I encourage you to do this without falling into the dieting trap. Instead of thinking of cutting down on your foods or restricting certain food groups, which might put you in an endless cycle of losing and gaining weight followed by guilt and negative self-talk, I invite you to simply nurture your beautiful self with wholefoods. Can you say no to refined grains, artificial flavours, fillers, refined sugar, too much salt, packaged foods, fast foods, and trans fats? And say yes to all sorts of vegetables and fruits in all its different colours and glory, combined with nuts, seeds, whole-grains, legumes, beans, virgin olive oil, eggs, and fatty fish? Go for it gorgeous, and give your beautiful body everything that it needs to blossom like all the spring flowers do.
- Take time to meditate and reflect for 5 minutes every day.
I know time is precious and we do not have much of it these days. However, I do believe it is more a matter of how we choose to spend this time … let’s call it a matter of priority. So, here is my suggestion: instead of spending more time in front of your computer screen, laptop, TV, or on your mobile phone use this time to go inside of you. Burning a beautiful candle or diffusing some invigorating essential oils while sitting with your eyes closed and coming back to your breath after, before or in between the frantic of your day, truly has magically beautifying healing powers. Try it for yourself. Irresistible glow happens when your inside feels as refreshed and taken care of as your outside looks, right?
- Exchange cow’s milk with plant milk.
Unfortunately, cow’s milk is full of hormones such as oestrogen, growth hormones, testosterone and progesterone. All of which you are ingesting when you are consuming such produce regularly. In addition, most cows are fed loads of antibiotics to survive their torturous lives for longer, the residues of which again will end up in your beautiful bodies. Needless to say, that either is not very good and will instead of helping you to feel your most awesome, vibrant, best self, create more hormonal chaos linked with weight gain and inflammatory responses in your less happy-licious life.
- Don’t skip any meals.
Make sure your body knows it can rely on you nourishing it repeatedly during the course of the day. You don’t want it to hold on to your extra fat but rather encourage it to let go of it. Eating frequently but smaller and easier digestible meals and foods will allow your body to do exactly this. At the same time, you will enjoy the benefits of stable blood sugar levels and the satisfaction of long-lasting feel-good vitality. In addition, when you know your next healthy-licious snack or meal is just around the corner, it will be so much easier for you to keep your portion sizes smaller. As we know constantly overeating – and even if it is only a little at a time – makes us tired, look old, and more prone to disease. Tuning back into your intuitive eating self, on the other hand, and only fuelling your body with as much goodness as it really needs to thrive will of course have the opposite effect and switch all of you into full illumination mode.
- Strive for balance.
I know … so much easier said than done. And I am definitely no saint when it comes to living my best-balanced life. But it is okay to be a work in progress, right? What I mean with living a life in balance refers to nurturing your body with all 3 food groups whenever you eat. That is your unprocessed carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats. But of course, I am also referring to eating lots of different kinds of foods in all the different colours of the rainbow and as many textures as you can imagine. This makes your life not only more healthful but also way more delicious – in short: healthy-licious. Lastly, I am inviting you here to do something every day that fills your heart with joy. This does not have to be complicated, expensive or take an enormous amount of time out of your day, rather the simpler, the better. This can be calling a friend, laughing with your hubby, hugging your child, listening to a podcast while driving, singing to a song or dancing through the kitchen. Only you know what makes your heart happy. Do some of this every day to rebalance all your heart work.
I know it seems too good to be true … but often making little adjustments in your life has far reaching, lots of feel-good effects. In my experience, you are far better off committing to such smaller changes in your life but doing them with all you have got. You will be surprised by how much more vibrant, alive and joyfully balanced you will feel after 4 weeks practising your 8 rejuvenating steps to a more glowing you. And yes, it will not come as a surprise that you will not only feel much better but look it too. Here is to the incredibly refreshing power of spring which is as much within you as it is outside of you – time to wake your inner sleeping beauty. Enjoy rediscovering how insanely wonderful you were born to feel!