madi’s place

We are a decade into the 21st century. If there is something I have learnt in the past ten years is that health is a gift.  We must take care off our health. If we look great we feel great and we have more confidence to achieve those goals we so badly want.

I am not a model. I am not 6 feet tall and drop dead gorgeous. I am a normal 1.5 meter tall woman. I have never been skinny in my life. And being the mother of two my body is everything but toned and sexy. I will be honest this is a problem for me, because I have hangups and am forever scared that my husband might leave me because of the way I look.

I am sure there are a lot of woman out there who feel exactly the same. I have tried every single diet there is with no results whatsoever. Leaving me desperate and down in the dumps.

Being over weight did not only influence my relationship with my husband but it also influenced my confidence. I started wearing bags trying to hide my body. My dress size was a 40 (18). I hated myself.

Then a wonderful miracle happened. I was diagnosed with very high cholesterol. This changed my whole life. The doctor left me with two options. I either shape up or die from a heart attack at a young age. I am 32.

I made a decision and I do not regret it for one minute. I know it is hard getting around to a gym and exercise especially if you are a mother, and you need to work. There is just not enough time in the day. The good news is with a bit of dedication and willpower to achieve, it is possible.

I don’t go to a gym and exercise at home. Because it save me time and I can exercise while my kids are around me. The fun bit is that they sometimes join in and exercise with me. I only spend  30 min three times a week on toning exercises. The other 4 days I will either walk or ride my bike. The best thing about walking is that the kids go with me and they love it. I put them in the stroller and take them along on 5 km walk. This benefits all of us because they get out in the fresh air and I get to exercise.

I also cycle. I found that cycling is a great way to burn fat fast. You  are not only burning kilojoules when you are cycling you are at the same time building and toning your legs.

Because I have my kids I cannot always ride outside so I got myself an indoor trainer and there are a lot on the market. A great website to look at if you are interested in indoor trainers : indoor-trainer.com. This site also has great fitness tips.

The result,  I stopped using  diet tablets. I have lost a lot of weight and my dress size is down to a 36 (14) just because I eat right and I exercise.

I would like to dedicate this year to great health and share with you exercises, health secrets and fitness tips.  Not just to help you looking great but also feeling great about yourself and life.

I hope we will have a great year together. If you would like to share advice or any tips with me. Please feel free to email me.

Have a fit and healthy 2010.

Hi all my friends.  I’m back.  I feel very bad about not updating my blog over the last few months.  Life has just been a little busy in my life.  We’ve been busy building a new house that has taken up quite a bit of time.  While building we’ve been renting and had to move to a new rental house two months ago as our lease at the previous house came to an end.  Any way enough excuses now.

Hope you enjoy my next few posts.

Love to you all

Madi

One advertisement that I can remember as a child was the Nestle Nesquik ad. “Have a Nesquik and blame it on the bunny”.

How true is this not in our daily lives. Everything we do we blame on something or someone else. Shifting the blame, is the easiest thing in the world. I was involved in a accident today. I hit a pedestrian with my car and killed him. It wasn’t my fault he ran across the road, right in front of the car. It was not because I was speeding O, NO it was his FAULT.

It is GOD’s FAULT for giving me crappy parents that is why I am using drugs. It is my parent’s fault that I am having sex at the age of twelve – they don’t care about me. It is my husband’s fault that the kids are not listening; he is never at home to discipline them. It is my wife’s fault that I am having an affair, she is not giving me some special care – it always just the kids.

Do any of these sound familiar? We often blame our past for our current situations. South Africa is a great example of this. The people are unhappy with the government because all they do is “pocket all the money” and the man on street must fend for himself and if someone asks why. “It is because of apartheid.” Yet we are 15 years into a democracy. For fifteen years everybody in this country had a fair chance, yet we still blame it on something that died fifteen year ago. Why? Because it is easy and we don’t have to take responsibility.

The same with our own personal lives. My life is in a mess because of my past and the people around me, not because I made the wrong choices, NO NEVER ME, it is them, and the sad thing we always blame GOD when things go wrong.

Has it ever occurred to you that God might have nothing to do with it? We always pretend that we are here and God is there. There is always a distance between God and us. I mean Beth Midler even sang a song about the distance between God and us. “God is watching us from a distance”. We are so use to the fact that God wants this and that from us. The Ten Commandments is not there for God. It is there for us so that we don’t destroy each other and the creation God gave us.

We complain and blame, maybe it is time that we start taking RESPONSIBILITY. Until we have learned that our lives are in a mess because of our own actions, nothing will change. He is not a distant God watching from somewhere up there. He is here with us right now. God lives inside each and every one of us, we must just allow Him to be.

God gave us free will to make decisions for ourselves, and that is why we cannot blame anybody for our lives or the choices we make. If you ask someone for advice and they give it to you. You still have to choice to follow it or not. Maybe we must stop shifting the blame and start taking responsibility for our lives.

BE RESPONSIBLE and THE WORLD WILL BE A BETTER PLACE.

Have you ever had a close look at the word “relationship”. It exists out of two sub-words namely – “relation” (which according to the dictonary means the way in which two or more people are connected) and “ship” (which is a big floating vessel).

When we are in a relationship there was something that connected us together, whether it is a friendship , marriage or a serious relationship, but we had something in common. We all know that a ship needs a good captain. Espesially when the sea’s are a bit rough from time to time. If the Captain is not capable of steering the boat it will surely run into trouble and sink.

The same with our relationships. We so very often run into trouble water and call it quits, without even trying to make it work. I have recently watched the movie “What happens in Vegas” and I had a good laugh but I also realised that there is something more to the movie than just a good comedy. This is what I loved about the movie. Instead of granting the two their wish and giving them a divorce, the judge sentenced them to 6 months of hard marriage. They tried everything to prove that they do not belong together, yet for those standing on the outside they were a perfect match. In the end their wish was granted and they did get divorced only to realise that they actually wanted to be married all along.

How many of us are in an unhappy marraige at the moment. We fight all the time – if it is not about the children it is about money , or because we think our partner is having an affair. I think we sometimes forget that we promised each other to stick together no matter what. Maybe it is because we forget that the relationship needs a captain. A lot of my friends always tell me that they wish their marriages were like mine. The truth is we also have our rought seas, the difference is we both have the same captain steering our boat.

A relationship is not just about love, it is also about trust, and faith. We need to trust each other. It doesn’t help that the minute your husband or wife walks out of the door and comes home late from work that you accuse them of having an affair. Have you ever asked yourself why do you feel insecure, so much so that you think your spouse is cheating on you? Is it something that happened to you in a previous relationship or do you just have a low self esteem?

I confronted my husband one day accusing him of cheating on me. The great thing was he did not get upset about it, he took me and sat me down on the couch and took my hands and told me ” I can have any woman in the world, yet I married you.” I then realised that he truly wanted to be with me and that no other woman will make him feel the way I could.

I know a girl who lost her husband to another woman, yes he cheated on her. When we asked him why he did it he told us that she begged him to cheat on her. She was always accusing him of cheating even though at that stage he did not even consider it. She planted the seed in his head to actually try it because that is what she wanted. She accused him of something he did not do. The more he denied it the more she called him a liar and the more they fought. He decided that he might as well do it since he is being accused of it.

This is where faith and trust comes in, not in your partner but in yourself. You must have faith that you made the right decision and you must trust yourself as well as your partner to make the marriage work. If your marrage is build on faith, trust and love you have a very strong foundation that can take the occasional wind and stormy weather.

Relationship and marriage is hard work, but it is the best thing I have ever done in my life. It takes understanding and sacrifices but it is all done in love.

We can learn a lot from our children, especially about faith and using our imaginations. My mother always told me as a child, that if I can imagine it I can do it. The funny thing is, as a child I always imagined that I was a teacher. I used to line my dolls up in a row and play school for hours. I did become a teacher in the end. I believe that, it was my calling in life. I felt strong about teaching as a child that it manifested in my life as a grown up.

It is sad that we can not apply that child like imagination and belief as grown ups. We have a terrible drought at the moment. It is so bad that we currently have water restrictions. Little Matthew must have heard me when I told my friend that none of my lilies bloomed this year because of the drought. In his innocence he told me that I must not worry, he will ask God to”send some rain for the flowers. “Tomorrow God will water the plants mom.” He did he prayed for rain, nothing else just rain. According to the weather forecast today is suppose to be sunny and warm. It is cold and raining.

I wish that I could believe in God the way my child does. They believe unconditionally. I find it very unfortunate that as we grow up we start to loose our unconditional belief. Maybe this is why we find it so hard to manifest the life we so desire. We always want proof of everything, and we always and only believe things when we see it. Yet Christ told his disciples that we need the belief of children.

Maybe we must learn to believe like children unconditionally. There is enough proof in the world around us to show that there is a power higher at work here. We need to get in touch with our inner child and start believing again without any doubts. Maybe then we will manifest the lives we so desire.