We’re communicating with our body all the time about what we think of ourselves. The one eternal truth is that we are stuck with us until the end. So we probably should get to like us!

Sara* spent a fortune in gym memberships and fitness trainers and managed to shift a few kilos that seemed determined to only go into “temporary hiding”. They didn’t stay away until she shifted how she viewed her body.

Up until recently, she had seen herself as “someone who always struggles with their weight” and would tell herself “If only I had more willpower.”

Everything changed when she changed how she communicated with herself. Now her self-talk includes “I love everything about my body, so I choose to put into it what I know it would love.” It has also shifted to “I am a walking talking example of how to be a fabulous woman!”

Over the top? Perhaps. Effective? Absolutely. She now is her ideal weight, is kinder to herself and because she’s now her own best friend, she talks to herself in a supportive and compassionate way.

You have over thirty thousand thoughts a day and they’re either thoughts to support or thoughts to sabotage you. Whichever wins out – wins.

The Macquarie Dictionary defines nourishment as: ‘to keep alive with food, etc’; ‘supply with what is necessary for maintaining life’; ‘to encourage for further growth’; ‘to sustain with food or nutriment’; ‘to foster or promote’

Nourish is a word I use often. I find it is sprinkled through my oral and written speech. I experience nourishment as a full-bodied, life-giving elixir that not only maintains me, but supplies a depth of sustenance that is deeply satisfying, and promotes a state where I abundantly flourish.

It is not surprising that this word is so important to me. Having come from an incubator, as I was born at seven months, and tube-fed, I imagine ‘struggling to survive’ was imprinted in my being. What does it take for me to be able to generate an ongoing life-sustaining stream of well-being? I have held this question as a constant enquiry that has guided my life and the answer I have discovered, I wish to share with you.

Nourishment is a state of being I offer myself, that I continually feed to my body, mind, heart and spirit, in order that I am self- replenishing.