Hello to all my beautiful angels,
I want to treat this blog as a journal of sorts, where I will pour my heart and soul. As you know, my biggest drive, push and motivation is for all of us to find the perfect within our imperfections. So this blog won’t be perfect. It will be my thoughts, my truths and my struggles and wins. A delightful insight to the inner workings of Coco and as you would know through my e book I truly believe journalling is a way to heal ourselves. Thoughts swirl around in our heads, sometimes for even years at a time. I feel when I write down my thoughts, my darling Aquarius moon can do what it’s meant to do and make sense of it all. Injecting the much needed logic into the situation.
I also feel like this would be the perfect place to discuss my diet and training as sometimes this can be a bit long winded for other platforms (not to mention, every Tom, Dick and uneducated Harry wants to jump in)- it’s also incredibly difficult and raw for me to discuss on an open platform which is often ridiculed and taken the wrong way by certain media outlets (rhymes with Faily Dail).
I guess I want to show you how much psychology, astrology and health and fitness weave into my life.
I’m not sure how many of you know this but I struggled and continue to struggle with my weight and body image my whole life. I was ridiculed and bullied about my weight throughout my teenage years, my parents still to this day run a very open commentary about my body and it’s still something I work through every day.
The interesting thing is- what happens if our core beliefs are shown to be true? There are two schools of thought that I bounce back and forth between. Am I that much more confident and does my inner light shine more when I am in (or what I perceive to be) great shape? Is it this inner light that shines through that powerful that it ripples towards others? OR are people genuinely more interested in beautiful, fit people? Just open instagram to see how much more engagement half naked beautiful women receive. Why do we think that beautiful people have a firmer grasp on life than the alternative?
It’s so interesting trying to write all my thoughts into this blog- how do I introduce all the facets of my thoughts and feelings around this topic? When do I drop the bomb that my Chiron (the wound that we are destined to heal in this lifetime) is in my 1st house? Your sense of self and identity. Yet I am also blessed to have the Sun and Jupiter in my first house which means that I shine greater than any other planet and have natural luck and expansion. How do I openly discuss the fact I hate how much my identity is tied to my looks and body YET it is also one of the things I am most proud of?
Because there you have it and in a nutshell why astrology and life is so much more than ONE THING. It isn’t black and white. I often get questions- “I am a Capricorn and I don’t relate to it at all. Why?” Because there is so much more to it, just like fitness, health and mental wellbeing.
The inner arguments we have with ourselves/ thoughts and beliefs are often mirrored in our chart. For example, YES- an Aquarius moon by and large gives me a strong sense of logic HOWEVER, that cancer rising really packs an emotional punch.
I was recently speaking to a friend who is (in my eyes and the eyes of many others) one of Australia’s top psychologists and she taught me the power of ‘AND’ and ‘BOTH’. You can love your body AND want to change it. You can like your face AND still want to use filters (much to the irritation of every Karen in my DMs). You can be logical and yet accepting of a *slightly irrational* heightened emotional response. You can be a fire sign and still be introverted and you can be a water sign and still be scared of showing emotion (unless you’re a cancer moon LOL). But this is all because we are made up of multiple elements, thoughts and often contradicting signs.
Back to my current gym and fitness update… So yes, after having a great rig for a few years I must admit post MAFS threw me into a deep hole that I spent many months wondering if I would ever get out of. However, it did bring me the gift of understanding how much stress impacts the body. I resented going on the show for a long time because of what it took from me and the HEAVY impact it had. Nonetheless, I am starting to see why it happened (after all, would I be my spiritual self if I didn’t sit back and think ‘what is the universe trying to teach me?’). I’ve spoken a few times about the ridicule that wasn’t shown to the nation I received about my body, not to mention just the emotional toll it took on me going through the whole process. When I lose myself I do the only thing I know what to do, I push myself incredibly hard in the gym. It’s the only way I can block out the world for 90 minutes of the day. I restrict my calories and control what I can control. Now reflecting on it (YAY for journaling), I learnt the detriment of 1. Being so invested in your body, you think this is the only thing you have going for you. 2. Staying in a deficit for WAY too long. 3. How imperative having lean mass before you diet is (after all, you want there to be a nice package underneath and be satisfied when you do shred- I will actually do another blog on this). 4. The harsh reality of being torn down because of jealousy and malice.
So skip forward to dieting that hard and due to the fact I was just burning lean muscle at that point, I wasn’t happy with my shape and my metabolism was SHOT. I’d lost my period for 6 months, that plus the impact of the show meant I was losing hair. I kept thinking I wasn’t lean enough (even though everyone around me was freaking out. SIDE NOTE- if you are ever concerned about someone being underweight DON’T mock them. This is another point I will raise later).
So I caved, after months of being SO HUNGRY and fatigued (I still have videos saved where I was so hungry and drained I would just sit in my car unable to muster the energy to even drive). I decided it was time to build muscle, after all, I was told nearly every day that I wasn’t feminine (cue another blog to discuss what in God’s name that EVEN MEANS?!).
I started to bulk (eat in a surplus to gain muscle). However, I trained in a way that I HATED and I ate everything I could that “fit into my macros”. Now to be fair, there are multiple studies on this and the argument could go on forever. But here’s what I need people to understand- YES, when your body is functioning, your stress and inflammation levels are normal you can somewhat eat to fit your macros and put on muscle. HOWEVER, when your adrenals are shot, your inflammation is through the roof and your insulin sensitivity is completely out of whack- you will store it as fat and not gain a lot of muscle. Think of it like this, our bodies, even though they have somewhat changed through evolution, are still lagging. For all my body knew it had just gone through a period of famine, a war and god knows what else and now it was seeing food. My body did what it thought it had to (Lord knows, would the famine come again? Would another war be around the corner?! Let’s prep her body for survival.) So I put on body fat, VERY quickly. I gained about 10 kilos in three months. Granted a lot of this was inflammation and my blood tests were atrocious. I don’t think I will ever forget the day the doctor called me and said “worst case scenario is that you have blood cancer”. Now pair this with a million eyes across the nation judging a HIGHLY edited version of events and passing judgement on me. Needless to say, it was a brutal time of my life that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
So where did I go from there, I hired a different coach (my coach last year was absolutely INCREDIBLE) however, it’s very beneficial having a coach who specialises in women’s hormones and inflammation and who was based in Australia and completely stripped my diet. I also went back to the training that I love (another thing I am extremely passionate about, TRAIN HOW YOU LOVE and accept the results that come from that training). I am currently 4 kilos down however, I have put on more muscle now than I ever have in my life and I have a completely different approach to my body and everyone else’s physique. HEALTH COMES FIRST. Results never come at the detriment of your health.
So that’s the crux of it. Life will always happen to you, you can’t out train or restrict your calories away from the pain. Your health comes first and most of all “do no harm but take no sh*t”.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you can take something away from it. It’s actually a bit scary to open my life up (after all, I do have scorpio in the 4th house).
I look forward to helping you find the wonderful mixture that makes up your chart, offering you guidance and assisting you in your own journey (whether that be spiritual, self love or fitness related- hopefully a combination of all three).
See you round like a rissole.