Hi everyone,

*Just a trigger warning before we begin, in this post I talk about when I was suffering badly from my eating disorder and the relationship I had with food during this time. So if that sound a little icky to you, you might be best to sit this one out.*

So, I know I am way behind the ball with this, but hear me out.

I had never tasted a Sumo Salad until a few weeks ago.

I know, I know - it's not exactly new but I don't eat out and on the run much and if I do, it's almost never a salad. Why would I get a salad when I could get a delicious burger and/or chips! Anybody that knows me will know of my love for hot chips and because of such, why would I pass up the opportunity to have chips for something like a salad! I can have salads at home.

Anyway, the point is that I have had one (and many others since) and I loved it.

Source

After having this lovely salad, I did think that honestly, I probably could make something like this at home - thereby saving me money and giving me the option to customise my salads as I wished (and have them more often). Which also sounded like great idea because while I like salads, I never know how to make them more substantial than the basics (lettuce, tomato, cucumber and stuff). So I jumped onto the internet to see what I could find.

To be honest - I was quite surprised at what I found. First off, there were no recipes for 'My Take On X Salad by Sumo Salad' (which definitely was surprisingly), but more to the point, I was surprised about what else I found. I came across so many blog posts on how bad Sumo Salad was and how everyone thinks they are eating healthy by choosing that option but really it's a terrible choice and everyone should be much more conscientious and discerning when it comes to food choices and never eat fast food of any kind.

Posts like that really annoy me. There was a time in which I would have been their biggest advocate but thankfully, those times are behind me and now they just make me really angry. First and foremost, I feel they come across very judgy and patronising to those who choose to eat these foods. I get the feeling that the authors of these articles believe that people only eat food like this because they don't know all the facts and how bad they really are. I don't like that. I don't they give the general public enough credit in food knowledge. No, the average person probably does not know the optimum grams of fat, carbohydrates, sugars and protein they should be eating everyday and no, they probably don't know how much of those are in an average Sumo Salad, or burger, or medium fries from MacDonalds. But also, who cares? It's just a salad. Or a burger. Or icecream.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that we probably should be thinking a little about where our food is coming from and how long it's been sitting there, and making sure we are getting the proper nutrients, but again, it's just a salad. It's probably not something we have everyday and it's delicious.

I feel like that word right there is pretty important. Delicious. Tasty. Yummy. We eat this food because we want to. This is food that calls to us as we walk by it. This is food that we might buy on a whim, just because we're a bit peckish. This is food we might plan to buy for lunch, either by ourselves or with a friend. It's nice food. And it nourishes us. It gives us energy, happiness and joy.

In Sickness and in Health

Hi there everyone!

So I got a little sick a while ago. It was nothing major, just a very mild stomach bug. In fact, it was so minor that I didn't even vomit, nor have to call in sick for work (although I did come home an hour early one day).  It was basically just 3-4 days of general stomach soreness and nausea. Just enough that I didn't feel like doing anything, thus missing out on an opportunity to do another Halloween nail design and spending a fair amount of time lying down and generally feeling a little grossed out by the thought of food.

In big scheme of things, it was legitimately nothing.

But it really threw me. It affected me much more than it should have. And not just because I really don't deal well with nausea. It really threw me mentally.

Over those 3-4 days, I had a very small breakfast on all of them and had a small lunch one day and a tiny dinner once or twice. Which, is totally normal when you are sick in the stomach and food just seems a little repulsive - it's not nice feeling.

However, those couple of days with very little food broke down a lot of firmly built mental walls in my mind. In case you didn't know, I've recently updated my little bio (it's on the right under my picture) and my Disordered Story page to change my 'recovering' status to one of 'remission'. And let me tell you - I felt great being able to do that. When I made that decision, I really felt like I'd made it. I hadn't had an disordered thought in months and I couldn't actually remember the last time I consciously restricted in any form, whether it by large amounts of exercise or reducing food intake.

But anyway, back to my Mental Barriers.

They were pretty strong and very firm. I was very separated from my eating disorder. I was a free woman.

Source

But then I was eating very small amounts of food for a couple of days. And once again, I'll reiterate - that was not a disordered action, it was due to a stomach bug. It was purely physical. But the effects were mental as well.

I started catching myself thinking how about how nice it was to not to have to be thinking about eating, about how much weight I could lose if I just ate a bit less and how I was silly to be eating more when obviously I could get away with eating less.

Health at any Age?

Hi lovelies,

Would you look at me - another post after just two days! I am doing well, aren't I? Actually, I went a little gung-ho on the Halloween nail ideas and now I've had to boost up my posting frequency to make sure I get them all in. Also, isn't gung-ho the weirdest word to write down. When I first wrote it, I was convinced that it was actually made up, but it isn't, it's a real word. Anyway, moving on from the linguistics lesson, lets crack on with today's post, shall we?



I feel like this post might be a bit of a Unpopular Opinion one, but it's something that's been niggling at the back of my mind for a while now.

Can you be too young to be 'healthy'?

By itself, even I can see that's a pretty weird question. Being healthy and well is what we all aim for in life and so why would there be age restrictions on that?

Had you asked me that a year ago, I would have resolutely disagreed with my above question - health is for everyone! But now I'm not so sure...

Isn't this the cutest picture. Source

As some of you may know, I work in child care and a couple of months ago, one of the kids said something to me that sparked off the above question in my mind. I had been trying to get the kids up onto the oval because we had a soccer coach that afternoon and I was trying to get the kids enthused about going up playing with him. I had succeeded in convincing about half and was walking with them up to the oval. That's when one girl turned to me and said,

'I don't know why everyone doesn't want to come up to the oval and play sports. It's such a nice day and I love doing exercise because it makes me feel good and it makes me strong and it gets you healthy'

And I was like, 'Mmmmhmmm. That's nice, yes it's a nice day and I like sport too and what? Oh yeah, it does make you healthy, I guess?'

I don't even really know why I was so taken aback by the last bit. I guess because I wasn't expecting it. That's what I like about working with kids. They tell it like it is. They do what they want to do. And yes, sometimes that's infuriating, but for the most part, it's pretty refreshing. They don't have ulterior motives. They tell it too you straight.

When I Complain About My Boobs, It's Not a Humble Brag

Hi lovelies,

I hope you are all having a good week. This post is something I've been sitting on for a while, a sort of half formed idea that took a long time to manifest into a coherent post and then has been sitting around on my computer for even longer before I decided to post it.

Why?

Because I feel that maybe it doesn't fit with my blog, but then, it is my blog and I can do what I like with it, can't I? And also because I don't know what people will think of it. Will it come out the way I want it to? But then, again, it is my blog and I can't pander to the whims and desires of everybody, if I did, I wouldn't be here typing this to you. I guess I just feel that this is an issue and struggle that I'm still working through at the moment, rather than one I feel like I've worked through and moved on a bit from (like my exercise series) and I don't want to hit a wrong nerve with anyone because I don't have that secondary, past perspective to tamper and soften some of my ideas.

But then again, it is my blog, and this post is as good as I'm gonna get it and when I started this blog, I made a promise that I was going to be honest. And this is me being honest. I hope you enjoy and if you do, if you could let me know via commenting that would be amazing and if you didn't like it, I'd still like to hear why (I think.....) and if you have your own experiences, I would especially love to hear them!!

So, let us start at the beginning of this saga, shall we?

I've always had big boobs. It's just part of who I am. To be honest, I can't actually remember what it was like to not have big boobs.

Source

Exercise Can Be Really Scary. No, Really. | Exercise Part 3

Hi lovelies,

Today I'm going to be wrapping up my series on exercise and I'm mostly going to be discussing my current thoughts on exercise and what/why (if any) I doing right now.

I'm really sorry that this is so late but it wasn't coming together and I kept working on it and it just wasn't working. But finally, finally, I got it done. :)

If you missed the first parts of this series, here's Part 1 and here's Part 2.

Okay, so onto exercise.

After my epitome about exercise and suddenly realising that continuing to exercise as I was was going to end up killing me, I gave up exercise and for the first 2-3 weeks, it was really, really hard. My anxiety skyrocketed and the amount of nervous energy I was expending felt like it tripled. Equally, it was incredibly hard to keep myself still. I would have to literally force myself to sit down and not walk and pace and move constantly in order to keep expending energy. It also didn't help that my mother was not 100% behind my decision to stop exercise all together. Obviously, she supported my decision to do so, but she is a firm believer in the 'exercise makes you happy and healthy' and I had spent an awful long time convincing her that exercise was something I did because it made me happy, not as a way to lose weight and she was pretty desperate to see me happy again. Also, she is fairly fatphobic and didn't want to see me recover in an 'unhealthy' way.

Source

But, despite all that, I stuck to it and continued to abstain from exercise. And, surprisingly, after about a month, all the anxiety just left. It obviously was not gone all together, but all the extra anxiety, the exercise-related anxiety I had been experiencing for so long, it all left. For a while then, I felt more at peace with exercise than I had in a long, long time.

Exercise Can Be Really Unhealthy. True Fact. | Exercise Part 2

Hi lovelies,

Today we are moving onto Part 2 of my exercise series. If you missed the first part, you can find it here.

This post covers my experiences with exercise during my eating disorder and talks a lot about what I was feeling and my reasons and rationale behind my decisions at that time. If you are triggered by discussions of disordered thoughts about exercise, maybe this post isn't for you. xxx

Last time I pretty much gave a run down of my early experiences with exercise and I finished up with me being happy and jolly while doing Tae Kwon Do. However, unfortunately, that wasn't going to last.

After I had been doing it for about 2-2.5years, things started to head downhill. At this point, I was heading into my eating disorder and was a very stressed person. At first, Tae Kwon Do was a lifesaver for me. I was somewhere I went, twice a week and escaped every other bit of my life. The people that I met there were amazing, amazing people and were completely different from anyone else in my life. There were very few, if any people my age (16-17 years) and so I spent my time with a couple of girls and a boy about 13-14 and a few older men and women (probably in their late 30s or early 40s). This was so extremely valuable to me because these were people with whom I had very little in common with in regards to everyday life. I don't really care what other people say, there is a world of difference between the everyday life of a 13 year old and that of a 16 year old. The fact that they both go to high school is fairly negligible.

And those that did go to school were at schools that were very different from mine. One girl went to the local public high school and was in a constant battle to pass her subjects so that she would be allowed to stay on the triathlon team. For me, this was world's away from my struggles, although equally challenging, and it was a relief to be around these people. People that didn't care about school in the way I did and people that were just lovely, lovely people.

Lost and Found

Hi lovelies,

Today's post is a long one and quite personal. I debated a lot over whether to post this or not because I felt, after writing it, that I was making a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill. Maybe I am. But it's my blog and I want to share this with you, even if it's not the best or most interesting thing I've written. But, on with the show....

It’s been hard for me to pin down my identity. Who am I? I know who I was. A couple of years ago I was sure – my identity was solid. Irrefutable. A done deal. But, identities change, they flow, they transition. One day you wake up and realise that you are not the same person you were 5 years ago. And that’s okay. It’s okay because you know who you are now. You’ve been changing so slowly into this new person that you didn’t realise that you had changed. It’s not until you realise what you are not, that you realise who you actually are.

My very first school picture. I was 6 at the time.

Everyone changes all throughout their lives. You change more so at some points than others. Through primary school and high school and university you go through major changes. You become a child, then a pre-teen, then a teenager and then an adult. Some changes are physical but the majority are non-quantitative. You mature emotionally. The structure of your relationships change. Your understanding of things in the world changes and your interests change. They fluctuate, they come and go. Some come and stay – like my love for the colour purple. Some come with a passion and leave with disgust – like my obsession with calling everything ‘random’ and having every second word being ‘like’. Some wax and wane, being really important at some times and not so at others – like my passion for really bad teenager-y supernatural TV shows (such as The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf). And some you lose along the way and never quite realise why you left them behind – like my love for always wearing the biggest, flashiest earrings I could find. For me, it’s those bits, the changing of interests and likes, that is the scariest bits about change. It’s when you wake up one morning and realise that the person that you were, that you loved and that you knew inside out, they are gone and the person that is now staring back at you from the mirror is a very different person entirely.

Confessions of a Dirty Girl (Who Also Likes Control)

Hi there lovelies,

I haven’t had a shower in just under a week now and the time that has elapsed since my hair was last in contact with shampoo and conditioner is rapidly approaching the 3-week mark. Or at, they are my best guesses. I don’t actually keep track.

It’s nothing new, the hair-washing thing. I hate washing my hair. I hate it with a passion. I think it stems from when I was in the depthsof anorexia and hair washing was too tiring for words and whenever I did muster the energy to do the hair-washing thing, my hair just came out in clumps. And I mean clumps. Like actual handfuls of hair so big I used to have to stop the shower twice to unblock the drain because of all my hair. I hated that. The feel of hair between my fingers, getting caught around my nails, tangled in my flannel. I hated the deadness of it, having to scoop out the dead mess with my fingers out it in the bin, I hated the way it littered my bathroom, little dead reminders of what to expect when I washed my hair.

Fake Tattoos Nail Tattoos Review + Birthday Nautical Nails!

Hi lovelies,

A couple of weeks ago, I received my order from Fake Tattoos, which is a Scandinavian based company that sells, obviously, fake tattoos. I hadn't even known you could get nail tattoos until I saw this post over at More Nail Polish. I immediately went, 'that is so cool I want some!'. Luckily, I was able to get some on sale and guess what?? They do free shipping worldwide. :)

I bought the Ocean Design and Bird design, both of which I am very happy with.

What's in a Name Anyway?

Hi lovelies,

This is a post I've been thinking and toying with the idea of writing for a long, long time, and each time I've dismissed it as too hard and not necessary. But, as my blog grows older and I grow with it, I'm feeling like it's a topic I need to discuss.

When I started this blog, way back on the 5th June 2013, I didn't expect it to last. It was my second attempt at blogging (the first just ended up being forgotten about and ignored after a while) and to be honest, I didn't really expect it to last either. I thought that I would just do i for a while and then just forget about it like I did with the other one. And yet, here I am, almost nine months later, with me still posting. I know I'm not the most reliable blogger in the world, and I know that I can, and will disappear for days and weeks at a time, with no explanation, but I really want to change that. Having this blog has really given my own place. I place where I can write about the stuff I want to and that I'm interested in, as well as connecting with people that blog about amazing stuff.

Source here

When I started this blog, one of my main goals was to use it as a way to track my recovery progress as I moved out of anorexia (you can read my whole story in the My Disordered Story tab at the top, if you're interested). It was also a place for me to escape my life and be somebody else. Because of that, I took another name. Taking another name helped me to separate the shit that was happening in my real life and that i couldn't control, with my blogging life, which I could control. It was as if I created another identity - my blogging one and my real one. Which, in itself is stupid, because they are both real. They are just two separate halves of the same person.

However, as my real life becomes better, I'm leaving my eating disorder behind, I'm now on anti-depressants, I've graduated high school and left a lot of shit behind there, my blogging persona and real life persona become similar. I feel now that I'm more willing to share the fact that I blog with people in real life and the fact that I blog under a different name makes it a little difficult to explain. Also, I feel now that I'm lying to you guys, the ones that know me only as Lissa Spelt, the ones that came to listen to my silly ramblings and don't know me as anybody else. The fact that you are there, and that you are listening, means more to me than I can say, and I feel, now that my personas are melding into one, that I owe you guys the truth.

I don't understand it, but the snake is cute. :) Source here

I chose Lissa because I liked it, and because it was a shortened version of Melissa, which was one of the names that my parents were considering to call me. I've always liked Melissa and always had a connection to the name, but shortening it to Lissa gave me the feeling of control. I was taking control over something that I had never had control over - my name.

I've always been someone that needs control but it's only recently that I've realised this. Looking back over my life, it's fairly easy to recognise this trait throughout my life, but it took me a long time to accept that needing control is a trait of mine.

The last two years of high school, which is when I started this blog, were tough for me and felt out of control for a good deal of that time. When you start recovering from an eating disorder, it's one of the first things you have to give up. You have to give up control of your crazy rules, your beliefs and the control of your own food because you are literally too sick to make decisions. Being at a very prestigious school for academic achievement also didn't help. During year 12, I felt like I was out of control all the time - I just did what other people told me to do, I wasn't allowed to make choices, everything I did went towards something bigger. I felt like school ruled my life - it had the control over me.

Source here

I also was scared during this time. I was scared of people that I knew finding out that I blogged. I was scared of my family finding out that I blogged. If I took another name, it reduced the chances that they would find out. To be honest, I doubt it really stopped them from finding out - I'm sure they all saw various pages that I'd left open on the computer and I know it came up on my favourites page and I'm sure they wondered why I suddenly started taking photos of food and watermarking all the pictures of my nails. I know for a fact that Opinionated is out there, reading what I'm writing now because I saw my blog open on her iPod once (hi sis! You can stop pretending you don't read this now). But again, it gave me a feeling of control. I felt like there was something that I controlled in my life (and to be honest, when you look at the other choices I've made in my life to regain control, this one is fairly healthy.

I'm now also thinking I might like to branch out a little bit from just blogging. I have tumblr and pintrest for my nails (I promise I'll add a link to them soon) and I'm considering going over to youtube as well. Do I know what I would make videos about? Nope. Maybe some nail art tutorials, otherwise, no clue! It's just that, one of my closest friends has just told me she has a youtube channel and after seeing her videos, it makes me want to do my own (and if you're interested in checking her out, she's there as OwlsandBiscuits). Anyway, the fact remains, the more I want to integrate my real life into my blogging life, the harder it is and the worse I feel about maintaining two separate identities.

But, what I do want to make clear is that I'm not making things up or changing facts. Everything I post as Lissa is true - it's just the name that has been changed. And that is partly why I've held off blogging about this for so long - I'm just so afraid that people will see me as a fraud, a liar and a cheat. You guys that follow me, whether on tumblr, pintrest or blogger mean a lot to me and I don't want to lose you guys, simply because I'm coming clean about my name.

This is me, fresh from the pool, about to make lunch.

So, hear goes. My name is Dani. It's short for Danielle. It's origin is French and it means 'God is my judge'. It's a really boring, run of the mill name. It's not different and a little it quirky like Lissa (which I really liked), but it's my name. It's what people call me when I'm out in the real world. And I'd like you all to know.

As for my blog, I don't really know. I think I might keep posting as Lissa, but maybe not. Maybe Lissa was a persona that I took to hide behind when I couldn't cope with the real world. Maybe she is somebody that I've outgrown now, although she'll always be apart of me. Maybe she is my online persona or maybe I've grown tired of hiding and am ready to accept that this is me, and yes I have problems, but I'm not afraid of telling people that. All that I do know is that I feel better for writing this and I feel good about stepping up and coming clean.

Pretty please, and I'm really asking you this time, please let me know what you think of this. How do you feel? I said I felt better for writing this, and it's true, but I'd also like some reassurance that you are not too deeply offended. If you are, please let me know anyway. I really want to know what you think about this because it was such a personal post.

Dani xxxxxx

I Had to Buy Pants for Fat People And the World Didn't End..

Hi lovelies,

Three weeks ago, I started my nail course in order to become a qualified nail technician. As part of the uniform, I had to go out and buy black professional pants and black shoes.

How I wished I would look in black pants. Source here

I was a little dubious as the last time I wore tailored pants was for school and the reason I stopped wearing them was that I thought they made me look fat. But, I was more excited about looking professional and starting the course than about how I felt 3 years ago. However, when I got to the shops and was perusing the racks, looking for pants that said 'short length', one pair stopped me in my tracks. They said 'short length, wide leg'.

My brain immediately went 'Pants for Fat People, Pants for Fat People! Put those down immediately! You'll get contaminated and ARGH! Run! Run far away! You really need to out them down! NOW!'

I found a bikini and watch me rock it!

First full picture of me in aaaaaaaaages. I'm so proud of myself.

Hi lovelies,

So, following on from my previous post on bathers and bikinis (and steering away from the huge amounts of nail posts recently), I am proud to announce that I know have purchased one. Yay! While it is unfortunately not the one mentioned in the previous post, it is still pretty good. Or at least I think so.

Hello and Welcome - A formal introduction

Hi lovelies,

A couple of days ago, I realised something. You might remember my post about make-up, photoshop and photos and this realisation was very much to do with this.

So, I was out at the zoo with my family and I was, as always, attached very permanently to my camera. I was snapping away happily, taking photos of everything from an interestingly shaped rock to some baby meerkats to my family and myself and realised – these are great photos. These are happy photos and I would be proud to show people these pictures. I look happy and healthy. I look pretty great in all of these. And that’s when I realised – I don’t have to post just one picture of myself. I can post as many as I want because this is my blog. And so, if I post lots and lots of pictures – I can build a more complete picture of myself. I don’t have to let people judge me on only one picture. I don't have to let the way people see me be defined by only one picture. By only one snapshot into my life. By one tiny porthole in a rather large ship. This is my blog and I need to remember that. So, that's what I'm going to do. :)

Fake It 'Til You Make It?

Long time no see - right?

Sorry about the long absence, I had exams and I was tired and to be honest, I just couldn't be bothered to do any blogging or posting. But I am back now. :)

This post took a while for me to write and a longer time for me to decide to post it. It might not seem like a big deal to some, but for me, this is a big deal. Body image is hard for me and it's hard for me to write about these fears and my insecurities. Also, I just don't want people thinking that I'm stupid for worrying over something as simple and as trivial as a photo... But, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it, as one of my aims when I created this blog was to be honest and to be truthful. Not only to you, to to myself as well. So, here goes...