Meatless Monday, meatless Tuesday, meatless Wednesday. Its meatless everyday around here, I’m one of those vegans. I’ve gone from a rare steak eating kinda girl to living a plant powered life in little over 5 years. Its been a process, but I can truthfully say its the best thing I’ve ever done for me and my family.

Cheese, that’s a killer, in more ways than one. Its full of shit that really isn’t good for you, creating mucus in the body and all kind of skin problems. But when you’ve been eating it for 35 years its also a killer to give up. Cheese on toast with a glass of port, Italian dishes with baked aubergine and cheese oozing out of the layers, pineapple and cheese on sticks at kids parties, they were all so tempting. These days I get my fix from nutritional yeast and the occasional soy cheeze.

Meat was the easiest for me. I’d attended a weekend seminar where we were shown videos of meat production and that was it (apart from the one time in Paris when I succumbed to a lamb cutlet) I carried on eating fish for a while, as a family we all enjoyed seafood and it seemed to give me a wider choice when eating out.

So what happened. Well yoga and meditation came into my life. It’s quite common for people who start connecting with their bodies more or start a regular spiritual practice to start looking at how they treat their bodies. I got completely opened up to the idea of what I put into my body reflected how my life was on the outside.

Back in my 20s when I was drinking lots of booze, taking drugs and eating burgers (ha ha I thought this was sexy) my life was pretty toxic too. I had shallow friendships, lived in a crappy flat and thought I wasn’t good enough to have a life that was meaningful. I always shopped for new outfits and lived my life very much on the outside. Now at 40, I drink occasionally (champagne being my downfall) I eat an amazing plant passionate diet, I exercise and meditate. My friends are awesome and supportive, they reflect back to me the way I want to feel. I live in a beautiful flat in a leafy part of London and fill my time do things I enjoy.

So little changes can really bring huge results. Try this …

Put your hands in front of you in prayer pose, open your hands about 2 inches, keeping the bottom of the palms together. Take a moment to look at the space you’ve created, breathe into it. Then slowly start raising your hands up into the air in the natural line that they follow, your hands will be moving away from each other. Creating a huge space. This is what it’s like when you start to introduce small changes into your life, big things happen. That space you’ve just created in this simple exercise is call peace. Peace of mind. It creates a vacuum for all the amazing things you want in your life to come rushing in. It doesn’t have to be filled, just nurtured.

As we are approaching Spring, its a time when most of us are looking at making changes to the way we eat or drink, why not just choose one. Choose one thing to change, stick to it, nurture it, don’t overload yourself. And you’ll see from the space this one change creates that others will follow with as much effort. When you succeed at things it sends a happy postcard to your brain saying “You can do it”

With Love

Jayne x