In mid-January we went back to Canberra to visit our family’s. Also, my bonus son was turning 30, so we there to celebrate too.
We were staying at my parents and aside from catching up with family and attending birthday events, we’d organised to catch up with friends.
I love Christmas, it’s one of my favourite times of the year and I make an effort to make it special.
Santa brings presents for everyone in our home, everyone, and all our Santa sacks are full – how exciting! Santa’s reindeers also leave ‘reindeer poo’ which is chocolates and lollies through the house. Once upon a time they would lead from the bedroom doors to the tree, these days, due to our puppy and chocolate being toxic to dogs, they’re on the dining room table – Santa and his reindeers are so accommodating!
In this exciting 200th episode, Project 22 so far, we welcome back the beautiful Mel Oxman for a soul inspiring conversation about Susan’s Project 2022 journey.
We hear all about Susan’s transforming and transcendant experiences this year as she has dived deeper into her health and soul, some things expected, and some not, but still so aligned.
Be Inspired xo
It was Friday night, Chris and I were on the lounge watching the new episodes of Sex and the City. I wasn’t overly keen to watch them, although I loved the original series. I’ve loved Sarah Jessica Parker since Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Footloose, and I wondered if it’d be like putting on an old pair of trackies that just feel oh so comfy.
It’s funny to be talking about my poo, but let’s do it and hopefully it’ll inspire you to explore your guts too.
That’s effectively what we’re doing. Our poo tells a story. Whether it be running, stiff or a number 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart, you can still have ‘stuff’ going on that you need to sort out.
I wasn’t expecting the results I got, and maybe if I looked at other signs the writing was on the wall, be it exactly what I had or a version of, it was a quicker way to sort my shit out (pun intended) and help me raise my energy levels.
At my second consultation with Brooke, I ask her about doing a Hair and Stool test. We’d talked briefly about it at the first appointment but hadn’t taken anything any further.
When I said ‘let’s do them’. She was like a kid in a candy store, ‘I wish all my clients did them’, ‘they’re so valuable’, ‘I can’t wait until we get the results’.
Needless to say, she was excited.
The hair test was testing for foods that cause inflammation in my body, so I was keen to see the results.
At my first consultation with Brooke, she’d given me a series of blood tests to do. It was actually only one donation of blood for me, but the pathologists would test for a few different things.
I could’ve either gone to the pathology place, donate blood and pay just over $230 for the service or go to my General Practitioner (GP), take 10 minutes of his time (bulk billed, which means no money changes hands) and get the blood test scripts from him, then go to my pathology place and pay nothing.
I opted to see my GP. The first appointment they had was the following Sunday and that meant I had to get my bloods done asap, so Brooke could have them the following week.
When I left Brooke, my Naturopath, I wondered – how many times do I actually get up during the night? Was it 1-2 or was it more like 2-3 times? hmmmm
I knew I definitely wasn’t drinking enough water. Some days I was getting as little as 750ml and for me that was super low. I prided myself on drinking about 2L a day, but I hadn’t done that in a while.
I took this opportunity to shift my habit.
My first appointment with Brooke, my Naturopath, was on 12 October 2021. I wandered into her office with my list of health concerns and we talked. I didn’t share my list with her, we just talked.
She asked me about what brought me to see her and I shared with her what I was working on for 2022. That I’d given up chocolate in 2021 and I wanted to take my health to the next level and there were a few things concerning me. My first step was to get a baseline of my health and to work with someone like herself to do that.
Whilst I knew that Health was my focus, I needed to understand my baseline of health. Where am I at right now.
I pulled out my list of health things: