This is My Story, What's Yours?
- Princess Adao
- Mar 1, 2017
- 5 min read
We all love stories, don't we?
Health and fitness had always been something I’m extremely interested ever since I’ve seen results with my muay thai/ kickboxing stints way back in college. I used to be super chubby when I was young and still, I felt good about myself. Only I was constipated for years. I didn’t mind it until it caught up on me during my late teenage years most especially when I was working at the restaurant industry. It became very unpleasant until I’ve decided to quit my job as a Pastry Cook and went to Bahay Kalipay in Palawan. Bk is a Raw Food and Detox Yoga retreat center by Daniw and Pi Arrazola. I volunteered there in the kitchen which allowed me to learn new skills and most importantly it paved the way for my healing to take place.
I am a graceful survivor of childhood molestation when I was 5. At age 23, I was diagnosed with a Bipolar disease, a mental illness that is characterised by highs and lows of mood mania and depression.
I strongly believe there is a connection to all of this: my constipation ever since I was a kid, the childhood trauma I’ve experienced the bipolar disorder diagnosis. A good friend of mine who happened to have counselled me at one point in my life told me that traumas, have a certain way to be stored in the body and that it could possibly manifest in different forms. I’m not an expert or whatsoever in this, but this hypothesis came up from years of introspection and observing and being more aware of my own body signals. But I’m happy that I have completely healed and forgiven at this point in my life. All I have is compassion first to myself, to my uncle and to all other wonderful people in this world. Probably, that’s the reason why Self Care had been top priority for me. It was and it’s always a quest, a journey of discovering and loving oneself from the years that gone by to the years that we’ll go through. The greatest love of all starts indeed with loving ourselves first and nourishing that love with others.
Ever since I became conscious of my inner and outer self, I’ve always longed to be of great, vibrant health. I’ve always looked for ways to take care of my body that led me to experimenting on different kinds of diet and lifestyle – and as same as with my fitness regimen. I looked at it as a way to empower myself for every single time that I work on my body, my mind and my soul I feel a surge of strength, awareness and healing. And yes, I believe that the moment I’ve started to love myself more, the more I’ve healed…the more I’ve expressed myself more in the arts and painted, the more I’ve nurtured my inner child and once again, healed.
Healing in its broadest sense, was very painful. It took years before certain issues had come to the surface and had been addressed. It wasn’t easy at all, facing my demons but like what I’ve always said, I have learned to love this painstakingly beautiful process and yes I have also sought and I’m continuously seeking for fulfilment in my life.
From baking, painting to writing, I have explored areas in which my creativity needed to be expressed. Indeed, such pursuit is very healing for the soul. And so is Art.
In the process, I have given birth to a passion project, The Raw Beauty Project, which aims to create and empower a community of creative individuals most especially women to live their best, healthiest and most fulfilled lives through nourishing their minds, bodies and spirits by eating well, exercising and getting larger than life and ensuring a venue to create – a venue to express themselves through the Arts in their lives.
It was initially founded on the idea of promulgating a Raw Food lifestyle, an 80/10/10diet that’s mostly fruits, and a few nuts grains and seeds on one’s diet. For almost two months and most recently on the last first 2 weeks of November 2016,I lived on fruits alone. I lived off on green smoothies, mangoes, bananas, avocadoes, papayas and nut butters. And yes, my digestion during that time was at its optimal and I’ve significantly lost weight, mostly fat, have gone stronger at the gym and have learned to properly do a push up. I could even do knee and leg raises at the pull up bar during those times.
From that point onwards, my diet evolved and I’ve became 100% Vegan for a few years. But now, things have changed quite a bit, as I enjoy a serving of sesame crusted baked salmon with cumin and Indian Ayurvedic spices every week. Yes, for all ya know, I eat fish now, ladies and gents. Thus I have decided not to label my diet at all cause who knows, time will come that my body would want to go 100 % vegetarian or vegan? I couldn’t tell at this point so yes, I’m all for following my intuition when it comes to nourishing my body. There would be even times when I don’t feel hungry at all and I believe that’s completely okay. I’m all for intuitive eating and listening to my body for that matter.
I also apply the same principle with fitness but with a stricter regime as I know I have to be disciplined when it comes to hitting my weekly workouts to see positive and transformative results. As they say, if nothing changes, nothing..ever..changes…Though now, I may say, after three months of no solid workout, I’m continuously pushing myself every single day (or sometimes every other day hehehe) to get my butt off my bed and work out. FOR REAL.
As with the arts, I’m still on the process of getting back at it as I haven’t painted for almost 4 months now and it feels like years already. I miss stroking my brush of different colors and painting for the love of it!
There’s still so much to learn in this process and I’m all up for it. All for the love of health, fitness and nourishment. I still have a lot of dreams to reach for. Like what I’ve said on my previous post, I wish to study Raw Vegan Pastry and Savoury Raw Vegan food at the Seeds of Life in Bali, give Raw Beauty Smoothie workshops worldwide, fitness bootcamps and get certified as a Yoga teacher. I would also love to write a book about my first and last rehab experience at Life Change Wellness Center in QC (where I was diagnosed as a Bipolar and where my fitness stat came to a plateau, sadly! Hahaha!) There’s a lot more to share and yes, a few things in my list would be to travel to the healthiest communities in the world, build homes by the sea and live harmoniously with nature.
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