July 22, 2013

ISIQ-0202

“Eat healthy. Be healthy. Think healthy.” – Indrani Smith.

Yes, I’m related to the person who gave us today’s quote. It is, in fact, my 7-year-old daughter, Indrani.

Tonight, just after dinner, Indrani grabbed her journal. “I have something to show you!” she exclaimed. Then, she fumbled around for the key for a few minutes, and finally after unlocking said journal, showed us one of the opening pages.

In glorious, colourful marker pens, she had written exactly this quote. On her own, with no prompting from me or my wife Bel.

We are so proud of our little girl. AND, she speaks a great truth. 

Our health stems from our food, our actions and our thoughts. I’ve noticed a significant improvement in my general mood, resilience and outlook on life in the past few weeks. I have concentrated on adequate sleep (asleep by 10:30pm, 7.5hours minimum), exercise (yoga and surfing), good food (no junk, little or no sugar, minimal gluten/dairy), and building a daily practice around these things to ensure I do something to “love myself” every single day.

The results have been great. Calmness, peace, focus, and discipline.

That is, until I went out for a junk food lunch on Friday. I went to Oportos, had a triple Bondi burger with extra chilli, large salty fries, and a 600mL Coke to wash it all down. We had a super-late night on Friday to see You Am I, and these two events led to a general slide in my good habits.

Yoga stopped. Exercise stopped. Food choices went from bad to worse. Chocolate / sweets binges. More fast food. I felt generally OK, until this morning.

I woke up grumpy. I didn’t think I was, but my wife saw it way ahead of me. (She’s very intuitive and clever like that.) It eventually degenerated into a full-scale three-way argument between Bel, Indrani and myself, on the morning of our Family Day.

Wow.

I spoke about it with Bel and Indrani at dinner tonight, while we were discussing some other families who have children with similar symptoms to Indrani that appear to be gluten-intolerant. (Not full-blown coeliac, but just intolerant.) I realised that my food choices went South on Friday lunchtime, and hadn’t really recovered.

“Junk food = Junk mood” I said. (I heard this from one of the seminars Bel had been listening to for her health diploma.)

“Wow Dad, that should be your next Inspirational Quotograph!” piped up Indrani. I agreed, except the message was focussed on negativity, not positive, uplifting language. That’s when Indrani ran to get her journal.

And there, in a nutshell, is the story of today’s IQ. Thankyou for reading.

With love,
Israel. xo

 

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