Hi, I’m Kerri van de Loo
I am a Qualified Personal Trainer and Nutrition Coach, specialising in Eating Psychology, and the owner and director of Body Essence – a place I am creating to educate, inspire and ignite a passion within you to move, nourish and love your body. Within me is a burning desire to show you how to love yourself, to make you feel empowered by having a strong and fit body, to educate you on how to eat and nourish yourself in a way that your body loves, and to get you off this crazy dieting mentality that makes everyone feel like they are never good enough. I am a mum to my 4 year old daughter, Reese, and get to have the joy of my partner’s two boys in my life too. I spent most of my daughter’s life being a single mum, and know how hard life balance and self-care can often be in this busy world. Some of the journey I have walked through in this life hasn’t always been smooth and it has meant that I have had to fight incredibly hard to be able to move, nourish and love my own body. From me to you, I want you to know that I understand that life isn’t always easy. I understand that sometimes it can be just too tough to want to love yourself, to want to eat healthy and to want to exercise. I get it, I have been there, even with knowing how to do it all the way it’s meant to be. But I have figured something out, and it is that regardless of what we do or don’t do, we are always good enough. It has taken me a long time with a lot of work to come to this realisation, and I still work hard each day to maintain my self-esteem, self-belief and self-love. My deepest belief is that we all deserve to be able to accept who we are without the self-judgement and self-criticism we live with, and once we can accept ourselves, we can then learn to approve, love and respect our self on every level. It is only once this takes place that we no longer need to fight a daily battle with willpower and motivation to move and nourish our body. Because when our mind knows we are worth it, our body responds accordingly – we begin to realise what our body wants and we respect it enough to give it to it. We let go of food challenges, we let go of punishing our body with irregular and erratic exercise patterns, we let go of self-sabotaging habits, and we let go of self-punishment. The biggest thing I have realised in this whole process of self-acceptance is that I had to forgive myself. I had to forgive anyone who had treated me with disrespect, but more than that, I had to forgive myself for disrespecting my own self. I think there perhaps isn’t a person in this world that doesn’t need to forgive themselves for something. It is the most potent healer when we can no longer hold onto toxic beliefs that we have done wrong by ourselves or by others. Forgiveness is essential. I haven’t always loved myself. In fact, I still remember the pain I used to feel when I looked at myself in a mirror. I loathed everything I saw, I felt ashamed, disgusted, embarrassed and sad about who I was and had to be. The thing is though, I am still the same person, the only thing I have changed is my perspective on who I am which meant I could fall in love with myself. It took effort and work to do this, but my driving force of knowing I didn’t need to feel this way pushed me to never give up on myself. The five daily steps I have in my 28 Day Self-Love Journal is a replica of the processes I used to go from the person who loathed herself, to the person who loves, accepts and approves of herself. The only thing I changed was my mind-set. It mightn’t be easy, but start the journey of doing it, and then see what happens! http://www.bodyessence.co.nz/shop.html#!/28-Day-Self-Love-Journal-Book/p/84386272/category=0 Once you have your own Self-Love Journal, read through these pointers to help you get the best out of your 28 days: When thinking of things you love about yourself, aim to have a mix of things about who you are and the way you look. For the most powerful improvement, find the things you don’t like about yourself and turn them into a reason why you do like them. For an example, if you dislike your tummy, find a reason you love it – because it digests and processes all the food you eat to nourish your body, or because it grew and held your babies for 9 months, or because it breathes in deeply to relax and calm your body. If you don’t like your legs, find a reason why you like them – you love how they move you through life, or how they are healthy and strong to walk where ever you want to go. It’s all about perspective and gratitude. When picking your daily affirmation, select something that you know you want to improve on, and find an affirmation that reflects where you want to be, and how you want to feel. For an example, if you dislike your body shape and size, choose an affirmation such as “I love and accept my body as it is”. If you feel like you don’t think you are worth much or never feel good enough, choose an affirmation such as “I love myself and I am good enough just the way I am”. It is important to place the tense of your affirmations in a current tense of how you want to feel and with no negatives. Affirmations such as “when I lose weight I will love myself” or “I don’t hate my tummy anymore” are using the wrong tenses and the wrong positive perspective. Always use “I love” and “I am”. Go and accept the body you live in – because you are worth it! Kerri van de Loo x
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What you eat is only half of the equation to nourishment. You could eat the healthiest diet in the world, but if you aren’t eating those foods in a way that promotes healthy digestion, those nutrients you consume from all those healthy foods will not be able to nourish your body.
The complete food picture for wellness has to be about WHAT you eat and HOW you eat. Eating fast, eating in a hurry, eating while stressed, eating without paying attention to your meal, eating with negative emotions and eating with little to no preparation of foods all encourage your digestive system to slow or shut down, resulting in an inability to actually assimilate those nutrients. This means, even if what you are eating is healthy you will struggle to receive the goodness from the foods. We are now living in a world where there isn’t actually time to eat, so instead we fit it in while doing our other tasks, chores and jobs for the day. Indirectly we are creating a society of people who are unable to digest their foods all because we are ‘too busy’. When was the last time you sat down and spent an hour or more enjoying your meal without having to be somewhere else? When did you last deep breath and relax through every mouthful? When was your last meal that you spent laughing, happy, and fully present within your eating environment? The issue with this whole obesity and weight loss thing does not start with eating better foods and cutting out unhealthy treats. It begins with eating in a relaxed and happy state that promotes healthy digestion and love and nourishment of the food you eat. Relax, deep breath, and be present – every time you eat! Kerri x Unfortunately in the last several decades there has been incorrect fear instilled in us that fat is bad, fat is responsible for making us ‘fat’, and it is the leading cause for heart disease. It is now realised, and proven through science, that this information is far from the truth and in fact is creating almost the very thing it is trying to prevent. The issue is that your body needs fat, it needs it for survival, it needs it to burn fat, it needs it for energy, it needs it for healthy skin and hair, it needs it for nourishment, and it needs it for protection. If you limit or restrict your intake of fat then it must be replaced with something, and that is being done in the form of sugar or processed/refined carbohydrates. Your body doesn’t need refined sugar and refined carbohydrates for health, but it does need fat. To really be healthy, to manage sugar cravings, to lose weight and to have a healthy digestive system, healthy fats must be a part of your daily diet. If you restrict fat intake too much, your body’s energy and calorie burning ability slows right down in a means to hold on to the stored body fat you have, in case enough is not received through diet. So if you restrict fat intake through fear of gaining weight or as a mean to reduce body fat, you are actually training your body to hold on to stored body fat. There are many different types of fats, and it can be a somewhat complex topic to understand, but to keep it simple, aim to increase your intake of natural plant-based fats. Some valuable food sources of this are:
Also try including moderate amounts of oily fish such as salmon and unprocessed chicken. Raw Health Slice I think of this slice as a powerhouse of nutrients, nourishment and healthy fats. If you struggle with sugar cravings or not being able to eat enough healthy plant-based fats, this slice is perfect – and super easy to make!
The nuts and seeds supply your body with loads of nutrients, including magnesium and zinc, as well as a great source of monounsaturated fats, and the coconut oil is great for a plant-based saturated fat to help manage sugar cravings, as well as being high in anti-inflammatory, antifungal and antibacterial properties. Try it – it’s delicious! Ingredients: 1 ½ cup almonds (or any nuts work) 1 cup pumpkin seeds ½ cup sunflower seeds ½ cup ground Linseeds 1 ½ cup dates (soaked for 5 min in hot water) ½ cup cacao powder 6 tablespoons coconut oil (melted) Directions: Blend seeds and nuts in blender until fine and tip into a large mixing bowl. Blend dates and cacao powder together until finely chopped and add to the bowl with seeds and nuts. Add coconut oil and mix well. Line a cake tin with baking paper and pour mixture in, pressing down firmly with the back of a spoon or finger tips. Set in fridge for several hours before cutting. Tips: make double and freeze. It freezes well and tastes great straight from the freezer. Enjoy! Kerri x The trouble with dieting is that many diets are more often than not based around restrictions, removal, banning and deprivation. A diet is designed to make a person lose weight by removing the foods that are contributing to weight gain.
The thing is though, they are just never successful. Or maybe, they are incredibly successful but only for a little while. There are many reasons why diets don’t work long term, but more than anything, it is to do with our mind, our thought processes, our beliefs, and how much or little we love. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s not. It is our minds that create the ability to lose or gain weight, not the diet itself. If your mind is positive, positive things happen. If your mind is negative, negative things happen. It’s simple. The best diet approach you can do is this:
Because you are worth it! Kerri x |
Kerri van de Loo - Mindfulness coach, Personal Trainer, Nutrition Coach & SELF-LOVE COACH:Join our Online Wellness Club here: https://www.bodyessence.co.nz/wellness-club.html Categories
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December 2022
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