New website address

I am now blogging at my new website: http://michellematangi.com
All the same content is over there and everything is much easier to find!

Hungry for Balance

So I have finally changed my blog name to "Hungry for Balance".  I have been thinking of doing this for almost a year and I finally bit the bullet.  I've been Primal Journey for 5+ years so letting go of that feels quite hard but I'm on a different path now so it feels like the time is right.  While I still follow a lot of Primal principles I have been feeling like the label of Primal or Paleo feels too restrictive with the direction I want to take my blog these days.

Most of you that have followed my journey know that's it's been a very long winded road to success, for as long as I can remember I have wanted to find a healthy balance, not just with food but in all areas of my life.  I have learnt that moderation and balance is a practice, much like Yoga, no one is good at Yoga when you just begin.  Practices take time and patience.  I am still learning how to navigate balance and I hope that as I continue further down this road I can inspire and help those that also struggle to find that middle ground!

I also understand that some of my followers will stop following and I have to be ok with that.  I cannot please everyone and I'm not here to do so, I've never blogged for popularity, it's just been an outlet for my crazy ramblings and I've just managed to have created quite a following.  So if you wanna join my ride then that is awesome and I am thankful x

All of my other social media sites have been updated too!
Facebook: Hungry for Balance
Instagram: @hungry4balance
Pinterest: Hungry4balance
Twitter: Hungry4balance

Power Salad!

This salad is amazing! I have yet to come across someone who doesn't like it!!!

Beetroot 200gms

Carrot 100gms

Yellow Zucchini (50-100gms)

(All grated)

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup roasted almonds

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

Fresh Parsley

Dressing:

Juice of an Orange

2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1-2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar 

Salt & Pepper

Moderation and balance!

Most of you know of my history with dieting, I’ve been underweight, overweight and every weight in between, I have been tracking my food, weight, mood etc for over 10 years and I found my old journals a couple of weeks back while cleaning my garage, I flicked through one and saw a weight of 57.4kg :( with a sad face next to it! How sad is it that I was that tiny and still I let a number tell me how to feel. One thing I know for sure is that no matter what number that scale says it doesn't automatically mean a better life.

I have been a very obsessive dieter, or some might say I was just obsessed with healthy eating of varying degrees and when I look back now I realise that I had/have disordered eating/eating disorder, there is no hiding from it or wrapping it up in a bow and presenting it as something else.  While I wasn’t on the extreme end it was still in the same camp.

I’ve always been off a diet or on a diet and I have up until about six months ago had a very unhealthy relationship with food and my body.  I never knew how to do moderation http://primaljourney.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/everything-in-moderation.html, I was your typical all or nothing type A personality, if I did anything I did it with passion and nailed it or I was a failure, there was no balance.  Moderation did not exist in my vocabulary and I wanted to change that, I was sick of the dieting life and I so badly wanted to eat intuitively!

Something has changed, in a huge way and I am finally confident to share where I am at.  I still wanted to wait until I could give you the perfect example, there I go again with my perfectionism (still working on that) but what I realise in this world of blogging is that authenticity has got me such a loyal readership and I know that there are many others out there who could learn from my journey.  

Finding balance for me has been a very interesting journey and what I have come to understand as of late is that balance means different things for different people.  While I’ve been on a journey to find balance since the middle of last year I didn’t find it the way I thought I would, it’s come in a very all over the show way and as I sit here writing this I feel goosebumps about how life changing these past months have been for me.

When I wrote this blog post http://primaljourney.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/finding-moderation-after-life-of.html back in July last year about letting go and finding balance, I had no idea that the best was yet to come and that I hadn’t fully embraced everything in moderation.  I had tried to let go of being on a diet and I had blimps of what that might be like but it wasn’t until I started working with Kate Callaghan from The Holistic Nutritionist that things started to change, it has been the best money I’ve ever spent, she has really taught me so much. 

What I truly wanted to learn for myself was how to eat in moderation, it has been "hand on heart" the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I can say that as I learn and grow on this journey I understand now how important finding balance has been to feel at true peace with my body.  

I embraced imperfection, sometimes that means to me that my food choices will be less than stellar and I’m totally ok with that, in fact this part has been very healing.  I listen to what my body wants to eat and go from there, most people would think that if they did that then all hell would break loose and you would be stuffing your face with pizza and ice cream.  It’s really not like that at all and the freedom that has come from eating such a wide variety of food has never felt so good.  

I haven’t weighed myself in months! THIS IS HUGE!!! For me especially, because for the past few years while maintaining my weight loss I have weighed religiously everyday, even sometimes a couple times a day and I made myself CRAZY!!! All it did was dictate my day and that left me feeling miserable.

Now don’t get me wrong it is a tool for weight loss and while it had it’s place in the short term for my weight loss journey it didn't serve me well to keep in the long term.  It became such an unhealthy obsession and I love not weighing myself anymore.  

You ask how? I just refrained from doing it, simple right? Not exactly, it’s a struggle but I put it in the cupboard and anytime I had the urge to weight myself I would remind myself of how it really did me no favours and I didn’t want that number to tell me how to feel.  For example, a month ago I was feeling quite good in my body, my jeans were looser and I could tell I had lost weight, the urge came over me to jump on the scale just to see that number.  I stopped and said to myself, it doesn’t even matter what you weigh, you are looking great, your clothes are fitting you perfect, why would you want a number to define this healthy state of mind and body that you feel?! so I didn’t and to this day I still don’t know what I weigh and I hope I can tell you that a year from now I still don’t know.

When I was talking with Kate last month she asked me how I was going, the only way I could describe it was that I feel a reconnection with my body that was lost for years! 

A friend asked me what success with my relationship with food would look like?  In a nutshell it's this....

I can eat whatever I want without feeling like I made "good" or "bad" choices, it's just food.
I still crave vegetables and salads even though I can eat Pizza if I want.
I can leave food on my plate.
I savour my food and feel satisfied when I am done.
I don't wake up thinking about how to plan my day of meals.
I don't think about food all day long.
I can have chocolate in the cupboard and not devour it in one sitting.
I forget that I have ice cream in the freezer.
I can have just one cookie.

Sources of Inspiration that helped me:

http://www.theholisticnutritionist.com

http://jillfit.com

http://www.negharfonooni.com

http://summerinnanen.com

http://thefuckitdiet.com

http://stopfightingfood.com

http://maddymoon.com
http://eatwellnz.co.nz

Lime & Strawberry Cheesecake

C

With Christmas around the corner and Strawberries in Season (in New Zealand) this makes the perfect dairy free dessert and I just LOVE cheesecake!!!

Makes about 8 ramekins

Crust:
1 1/2 cups Walnuts
1/3 cup Desiccated Coconut
1/2 cup pitted Medjool dates
¼ tsp celtic sea salt

Filling:
3 cups raw cashews that have been soaked for at least 4 hours or overnight if you have the time.
3/4 cup lime juice, freshly squeezed
3/4 cup honey, maple syrup or coconut nectar
1 tsp pure vanilla powder or the seeds of a whole vanilla bean
3/4 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup Fresh Strawberries

Topping:
1/3 cup Medjool Dates
3/4 cup Strawberries

Directions:

1. Line your ramekin dishes with cling film so once they are frozen they will be easy to remove from the ramekin!

2. Place nuts, dates, coconut and salt in a food processor and pulse until mixure resembles a crumb like texture. Scoop out crust mixture into your ramekin dishes and press nice and firm.

3. In your high speed blender (I use the Optimum 9400), place soaked cashews, lime juice, honey, coconut oil and vanilla and blend on high for a couple of minutes, it should be nice and smooth. 

4. Pour about 1/2 of the mixture onto of the base into the ramekins, just less than half full.

5. Add the Fresh Strawberries to the rest of the filling and blend on high. Fill up the ramekins to almost full.

6. For the topping, blend 3/4 cup Fresh Strawberries and 1/4 cup of Medjool Dates and blend on high until silky smooth. Pour a thin layer over the strawberry filling to finish the cheesecake!

6. Place in freezer until solid.

7. Remove from the freezer about 15-30 minutes before serving or if you are like me you might prefer to eat it when it's still frozen!

*Optional: Add Lime Zest for a little more zing to the lime filling!