what I would tell my 18 year old self

Dear 18 year old me,

First and foremost, learn to love yourself. You are beautiful inside and out. Just stop worrying so much about your weight and be healthy. STOP throwing up everything you consider "bad" after you eat it. You have one body to live in. Cherish it. Appreciate it for all of the things it does for you every day. Stop wishing you were smaller. Stop thinking guys will like you more if you're skinny. It's not true.

Don't bother trying to transfer schools. You love Southern Miss and will make the best friends you could ever imagine. Don't study abroad in Jamaica, though. Go to London or France instead.

Don't rekindle that friendship. She doesn't stick around very long this time anyway, and it only hurts you again in the end.

You are so much better than that awful, abusive relationship with you-know-who, but you will learn so much from your year long struggle. You will learn how to respect yourself, how to stand up for yourself, and what you're worth. You learn that romantic relationships will not bring you validation and that your voice deserves to be heard. I'd say don't even date him, but you need to learn these lessons. You will appreciate your amazing husband so much more after you learn them.

Continue to love every minute of life. It becomes so much more than you ever dreamed it would be. It's not always easy. You're going to go through rough times, but keep Christ first in your life. He will always see you through with the utmost grace.

Keep your free spirit, positive attitude, and drive to succeed. Be proud of who you are and the things you stand for. Always help those in need. Be the first to smile when you pass a stranger, and love with reckless abandon.

With so much love,

Chelsea

| Images by: Judy Kellar of Killer Shots Photography |

balancing act

I do not like the circus. I am quite terrified of clowns, and I've never enjoyed watching people needlessly risk their precious lives walking a tight rope 100 feet in the air for the sake of entertainment.

That being said, the life lesson I have been learning lately is BALANCE. Life is a balancing act. Now, it's been a few years since I last took a gymnastics lesson, but I don't remember the balance beam ever being easy. Maybe I'm just clumsy...

Anyway...

Balance is hard, and I'm not talking about just food. Although, that's the hardest thing to balance for me. It's so hard to juggle work, relationships, chores, health, and everything else life brings along. Throw in having food issues and BAM--I'm a panic attack waiting to happen. I completely shut down. I'm sure everyone can relate.

After a long day of work, it is so incredibly difficult to come home and cook a healthy dinner that I won't feel guilty for eating and clean up the mess, work on my blog, do laundry, work out, and spend time with  my husband. STRESS. Like, only Wonder Woman could ever do all of that in a day. I can't even imagine having children to take care of on top of that. Seriously..how do people do it?

I'll tell you my secret--I don't. I think that's the key to balance. I'm learning that I can't do it all, and that's okay. I have to take it bit by bit and day by day. You don't run across the balance beam. You have to take it one step at a time. You build up to the tricks and turns.

So here's what happened yesterday...

Last weekend, I was balanced. I had been eating healthy and clean for weeks. After much distress, I decided I would eat the things I wanted in moderation since we were spending the weekend celebrating Nick's birthday, his mom's birthday, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras. While I didn't want to feel guilty for enjoying myself, I also didn't want to feel deprived all weekend. So I didn't, and everything was fine.

I got back on track on Tuesday when we returned to life as usual, but yesterday, I had to balance, again, due to situations beyond my control. I'm embarrassed to admit that it brought on full blown meltdown mode. Tears, cussing, screaming, jumping on and off the scale 3 times to see if I had gained any weight--RIDICULOUSNESS. If you're recovering from food and body issues like myself, and even if you're not, sometimes it just looks like a never ending battle facing you for the rest of your life. I just kept thinking, "Am I going to feel guilty for the rest of my life every time I eat something deemed 'unhealthy'?" "Am I going to have to live the rest of my life in fear of being obese again?"

After much coaching, supporting, and consoling, my superman of a husband talked me back down to reality. I am not fat. I am not going to gain every bit of weight I have lost back from a few chips and some bread. I am doing well and life happens. It's not a sprint. I changed my life 2 years ago when I started this. A meal not made completely of vegetables will not change that. I am beautiful.

Honestly, I don't know the answers to those questions that pop in my brain when I've eaten something "bad", and that's really scary. I do, however, have hope. I don't feel guilty EVERY SINGLE TIME I eat an Oreo like I once did, but sometimes I do. The frequency of feeling guilty has gone down, but I don't know if those feelings will ever completely go away. That's just something I'm going to have to keep working on.

Post Panic Attack Snap Chat

So, today, I'm okay. Balance is the key, and eating some chips is what balance looks like in my life right now.

/////

a painfully honest post

When I wrote my blog post telling you guys that Mississippi Hippy was changing directions last week, I meant it. So I need to be totally honest with y'all, and this is NOT easy for me AT ALL. Today has been a rough day.  I've been thinking about throwing up my dinner for the past hour.  It just dawned on me that I should blog about it.  I promised transparency and honesty, so here it is.

I had a LONG day at work. After working late to tutor one of my 5th graders, I had to run some errands.  With Valentine's Day, Nick's birthday, and my mother-in-law's birthday all falling this weekend, I had some shopping to do. While running errands, I found out some tragic news that a college friend had lost her fiancé. I needed to hug my husband, and I needed to hug him right then.

On the way home, I decided to stop by the grocery store to get the groceries to make Nick's favorite cake for him for his birthday since we won't be home this weekend to do it. I wanted to start celebrating him. I hung up his Avenger's Happy Birthday banner and had dinner and beer waiting when he got home. I was so happy to see that man walk through the door.  We ate the healthy dinner I made, and Nick played some Donkey Kong on the WiiU (his birthday present). 

Then came the cake.  The sugar-free (mostly), coconut cake.

When it came out of the oven, I cut a piece off for me before I put on the sweetened condensed milk, sugar-free vanilla icing, shaved coconut, and Coco Lopez on top.  I finished Nick's part of the cake and cut him a piece.  I then sat down with him and ate my icing-less piece of sugar-free cake.

Now, I feel GUILTY.  Terrible guilt.  Guilt enough to consider sticking my finger down my throat--something I haven't done since 2008.  It is still a battle.  Every. Single. Day.

You see, I've been trying to drop a few pounds lately.  Not because I'm fat, but because after I have gained 20 pounds since my wedding last March.  For my health, I needed to drop the weight and get back to the healthiest me.  I'm down 11 pounds.

It is absolutely ridiculous for me to be having the guilty thoughts for eating a sugar-free, icing-less piece of cake.  Deep down inside, I know that BALANCE is the key to a healthy and happy life, and I know that I will get through these feelings I'm having right now.  I will not throw up my dry piece of cake, and I REFUSE to waste the rest of my night feeling bad and being mad at myself.

I am stronger than the guilt. I am stronger than the anger, and I am most definitely stronger than Bulimia.

This, too, shall pass.  I'm human. Tomorrow is a new day. A dry piece of cake will not define me.

/////

Empowering Women

Mississippi Hippy is changing.

Over the past year, I have come to realize my passion for empowering women and helping girls of all ages find health, happiness, and balance in their life's journey.

I know what it means to fight.  I've fought bullies. I've fought weight.  I've fought eating disorders.  I've fought body dysmorphia.  I've fought negative self image.  I've fought depression.  You name it, I've fought it.  ALL women have, and I'm tired of it.  I'm tired of fat shaming.  I'm tired of skinny shaming.  I'm tired of slut shaming.  I'm tired of shaming!  The media has pushed us too far.

Yes, we were created in God's holy image to be warriors, but how can we be warriors when the battles we're fighting keep us from our intended purpose.  We were made to be loving, confident, and courageous, but we are being force fed media images that tell us we're fat, ugly, weak, and not enough.

Well I have a message for you...YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH.

From here on out, Mississippi Hippy will be devoted to promoting real, normal, happy, healthy women.  I want to focus on teaching women to have balance in their life.  We cannot be the best person, mother, wife, or child that we can be when we're run down from the messages that tell us we don't measure up.

Don't buy into the bull, ladies!

Here's some post topics you will now be seeing:

• Health
• Body Image and Recovery
• Lifestyle (what real women's lives look like every day, not the crap you see on Real Housewives)
• Fitness
• Food (cause you can love kale and chocolate chip cookies, ok?...not together, of course..unless you're into that sort of thing.)
• Entertainment
• Travel
• and more!

If you have anything you'd like to see on the NEW and IMPROVED Mississippi Hippy, please comment and let me know! It is truly time for us, as women, to band together to build each other up.  We are not competing against one another.  We shold empowering each other to lead the lives we were born to live and deserve to live.  The images being shoved down your throat every day are FAKE, FAKE, FAKE. It is time to make a change.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

And here's all real and all natural me. (excuse my MacBook Photo Booth glow)

/////

Consistency is Key

Now y'all know this time of the year gets crazy for me.  If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen my all too often, "on the road again" posts.  I've been living in my car going back a forth to the Gulf Coast and to Jackson.  No, seriously.  I think half of my wardrobe is still in my car.  To say life has been hectic would be such an understatement.

That's my travel buddy back there in his kennel.  He hates traveling in that thing.

With that being said, I wanted to talk to y'all about consistency in your workouts and diet.  Over the past month, I had really hit a plateau.  I'd either stay at the exact same weight from week to week.  Or gain about two pounds, then have lost them the next.  It was so frustrating, but when I stopped to think, I realized that I had not been being very consistent.  With all the traveling I had been doing, I had been cheating on my diet more often and missing workouts.  My cheats weren't huge.  Just a little bite here and there or a small portion.  Nothing necessarily wrong with that.  I firmly believe you have to indulge every once in a while or you'll go crazy.  You can't deprive yourself forever.  It's just not possible.  There's nothing wrong with having a small cheat, except during this time, it was keeping me from hitting my next goal.

So last week, I decided I was hitting it hard.  A perfect week.  No cheating, no missed workouts, and stick to my diet 100%.  Guess what happened! IT WORKED!  There really is so much to be said for consistency in many aspects of life.  I'm starting perfect week #2 with strength and determination.

Health is having a good relationship with yourself, you can't cheat on a relationship and expect it to work.

Also, I've been posting a lot about health and fitness lately.  I will continue to post about fashion, but this is a lifestyle blog also.  Health and fitness is very large part of my lifestyle, and I love to learn more and more about it and share it will y'all!  Hope y'all don't mind! :)

xoxo-Chelsea Eli

P.S.  I take back everything I said about Miley Cyrus.  There's a difference in being yourself and doing things just for shock value.  There are other ways to separate yourself from your past while showing some self respect.  I like your music, Miles, but where is your pride?

Hungry for Change

If you read my last post, How I Conquered My Negative Body Image, you might realize that I now have a bit of an obsession with all things health related.  My apologies if this begins to morph into a health and fitness blog. (JK...I think?!)  A lot of documentaries and books have piled on to my must read/watch list, and this weekend, I finally got the chance to mark one of those off the list.

The documentary is called Hungry for Change, and you can find it on Netflix.  Be prepared to have your world rocked.  Don't get me wrong, some of this I knew already, but the statistics and testimonials are just staggering.  Our bodies truly were not made for all the junk we put in it.  The best medicine for many of our humanly ailments really is a healthy, primal diet.  When we nourish our bodies as such, we begin to function properly and the difference really is so worth it.  No more sicky, icky chemicals!!

I've seen this quote many times, and Hungry for Change brought it back to the forefront of my mind.  I want to know, and I will know.  I will continue on this journey and strive to be the healthiest, happiest me I can be!

Today, I hit my official smallest number on the scale ever. (Well, I mean I'm sure I had to pass this number at some point, but I haven't seen it in my adult life.)  I'm so happy and super motivated.  The response to last week's post has been so sweet and positive.  I have the best support team in all of y'all!  Thank you so much for letting me share my life with y'all and sharing yours in return.  I truly love you all!

xoxo-Chelsea Eli

How I Conquered My Negative Body Image

I've been putting this post off.  Remember last week when I said I had a very personal post coming?  Yeah.  It's that one.  It has to do with body image.  I've written on this topic before, and it wasn't easy then either.  It's hard for me to practice what I preach on this subject.  You see, I feel like I'm in a constant state of trying to lose weight.  I've spent most of my life being overweight.  Body image is something I STRUGGLE with.  I spent a lot of high school and early college teetering on the edge of various eating disorders.  I know I'm not alone in this, but sometimes it just plain feels lonely.

At the end of my sophomore year of college, after ending a TERRIBLY unhealthy and abusive relationship, I lost 50 pounds.  I felt incredible about myself, finally.  I really came out of my shell.  I still had a few more pounds to lose, but I felt really great about my looks for once.  I was, however, still greatly wounded from my previous relationship, and the bad thing was, I lost the weight in a very unhealthy way.  I had restricted my calories to between 700 and 800 a day while going to the gym and burning all of those calories back off in one session.  BAD BAD BAD.  It began from being depressed in that relationship, once I noticed I was losing weight pretty rapidly, I consciously began restricting my fuel intake.

I spent the next year healing from the bad relationship, and I met the beau.  We began dating, and I was extremely happy, and I sometimes these things happen, the weight began to creep back up.  I was no longer obsessively watching everything I put in my mouth, but I had gained 30 pounds back.  This past November, I realized I had to do something ASAP.  I didn't want this problem hovering over me for the rest of my life.  I wanted to do it for me and for my future family.  I would die if my children spent their life suffering from extreme body image issues like I have, and I knew it had to happen the healthy way or it wouldn't stay off this time.  So, I began researching.

I starting running every day, lifting weights, and really focusing on a balanced, clean, and healthy diet that I could maintain for a lifetime.  My body had never felt better, and I began noticing some growth in my muscles, but I wasn't losing any weight.  Don't get me wrong, the number on the scale isn't the sole thing you should be focusing on, but I knew that number had to come down because I was still considered overweight.  By March, there was still no significant change in those numbers, so I decided to talk to my doctor.  After discussing with her my issues, she decided to check my thyroid, but nothing seemed to be wrong in that area.  It was my metabolism.  It has been so significantly damaged from dropping weight the unhealthy way, I was having difficulty losing it the healthy way now.  I couldn't believe that it had come back to haunt me like that.

She gave me a few pointers for remedying this problem, and I am happy to say that after months of hard work, those 30 pounds are finally back off.  I'm not stopping here though.  I have a few more pounds to go, and when I finally hit my goal weight, I will share all the numbers with you.  I need a little more time to get comfortable with doing that!  It's scary!  I have more goals ready for when I reach that ultimate goal weight, don't worry!

From L to R:  heaviest ever, 50 pounds down, 30 pounds back up, and now

I've become so infatuated with health and nutrition and the way being healthy makes me feel.  Learning the proper way to care for your body has really pushed me to come to terms with the way I feel about my body.  Instead of hating my body for the way it looks, I've come to love it for the things it can do and the way I can make it feel.  I want to test it and push it to its limits now.  Don't get me wrong, I still have days when I don't like the way I look, and I want the rest of the weight to just fall off at once.  It feels so good, though, to truly love myself for the first time in pretty much ever.

On a side note:  I've recently just discovered that I have a gluten intolerance.  After suffering from eczema for my ENTIRE LIFE, it's become painfully clear that gluten sensitivity is the cause.  Weird, right?  Just another helpful lesson from my health and nutrition research.

I hope y'all enjoyed this post.  I know it's a little out of the ordinary compared to what I usually post, but I felt like I should share it.  If anyone ever needs to talk about your body issues, wants an accountability partner, or has any questions about my past struggles, please feel free to contact me.  I'd love to talk to you!

For more from me on learning to love yourself and body image visit this post.

Happy Hump Day!

xoxo-Chelsea Eli

Health and Fitness Journey

As I've mentioned before, the beau and I have been training for a half-marathon in April.  We had originally been training for the Country Music Marathon in Nashville on April 27, but after many seasoned runners warned us about the hills and difficulty of that race, we decided to change directions.  We have decided to run in Hattiesburg Clinic's second annual Rise and Shine half-marathon and 5k on April 6th.  This has pushed our schedule up a bit, and I'm nervous and excited for race day to finally be here!

Image:  Hattiesburg Clinic

In addition to pushing ourselves a little harder in race training, I have begun a rigorous weight training and clean eating program, too.  I'm absolutely loving it.  It's fitness model, Jamie Eason's, LiveFit program, and it is NOT easy.  I love how it challenges me, though.  Maybe I'll post some progress pictures, soon.

That being said, I recently started following Ashlee Hendry Fitness on Facebook and Instagram.  She is such an inspiration going from 205 pounds to 133.  Ashlee started her weight loss and health journey with Jamie Eason's program as well.  She is also a single mother to the cutest little boy and second year med student, and I just realized, she's located right here in Hattiesburg! How cool is that?  Ashlee has a HUGE following and will be competing in an NPC Bikini Competition in 18 weeks.  Her progress photos and updates have really been keeping me motivated.  Check her out, y'all!

Image:  Ashlee Hendry Fitness

Image:  Ashlee Hendry Fitness

There are so many exciting things happening right now in my life, and I'm so blessed to be able to share it with all of y'all.  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all of the love and support all of my readers constantly provide.  Y'all are the best!

xoxo-Chelsea Eli

Day 1 of Eating Clean

Here's what day 1 of eating clean consisted of--plus my 8 glasses of water.  I know I should be eating more than 906 calories in a day, but I was eyeballing serving sizes so chances are it's more than that.  I feel like I ate so much though, so the low number of calories really surprised me.  I also did Yoga X today and worked from 9am-8:15pm, so I AM BEAT. 

I really recommend using My Fitness Pal.  I've been using it for years, and it's wonderful.

My scrumptious dinner.
Sorry, I already started eating it before I remembered to take a picture.

Also, a reader and dear friend, Ashley, recommended another website to me.  It's the best of any website I've come across, and I can't wait to try all of the recipes!

The Gracious Pantry

Oh!, and checkout Ashley's blog, Homemade on the Homefront.  She's a very talented Air Force wife who has been a dear friend of mine for a very long time.  She moved from Mississippi to Beale Air Force Base in California, makes lots of neat things and has recently changed her family to clean eating, as well.  Send her some love!

Cheers to a great first day!  Feeling healthier and more energized already!

xoxo-Chelsea Eli

Eat Clean, Train Dirty

The goal of my summer was to take some time off from school and work before I begin grad school in August.  Well, that didn't really happen.  I decided to do an unpaid internship two days a week to get some experience, then I decided to babysit one day a week to make a little money.  That one day a week has turned into 1-3 days a week, and although I love it, the time I really wanted to spend focusing on myself and getting healthy has dwindled down drastically.  With my 22nd birthday quickly approaching and the end of summer, I've decided to reel myself back in and really focus on my health and sanity, so I'm refreshed and ready for a new school year. 

In doing this, I've decided to take on the task of "eating clean."  For those of you who do not know what this means, eating clean is the practice of eating whole, natural foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and complex carbohydrates.  Also, it means staying away from the junk that makes up most American's, especially southerners, diets.  I've been doing P90X, so I've got the training dirty part down so far, but the diet is more difficult for me.  I'm always on the go, so it's hard to cook and eat at home all the time.  I'm really going to try to make this work though.

Here are a few websites that I've found helpful so far on this journey:

http://www.coachmmorris.com/2012/05/eat-clean.html

http://www.heandsheeatclean.com/

http://www.cleaneatingonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=36&Itemid=54

http://www.lauramustloseweight.com/

I'll keep y'all updated when I come across recipes I particularly enjoy, my progress, and what works best for me.  How do y'all stay in shape and keep healthy?

xoxo-Chelsea Eli