We know they go hand in hand but which comes first?

Stanley Park cycling

He was of the mind that diet was more important to get sorted and then move onto exercise when you had a grip on the diet side of things. I was of the mind that exercise was the better thing to tackle first, I still am.

I had lost my first lot of weight through running, I was desperate to lose weight, tried all the diets and though I hated, HATED running I knew if I stuck to it I would lose weight. I was of the belief at that time having tried every diet, pill and potion that I could not control my weight with food, that food had more power over me so I decided to fight food with exercise and so I started running, through hot Australian summer days, torrential rain, late nights, on dirt roads with rednecks yelling out obscenities about my huge ass and even when it looked like it wasn’t making a difference. This was the most important part of running, not giving up when it felt like I wasn’t making a difference to my weight because it became about so much more than my weight.

Something cool began to happen. I noticed that I felt better after every run, yes every run left me feeling better. This was important because I had not long before been suffering severe depression to the point of seeking medical advice where my doctor naturally prescribed drugs, I took them for less than a week, I preferred the depression to the way the drugs made me feel. Within a week of running I could see this was helpful to my depression.

I also noticed that the more I moved my body, the more I was drawn to cleaner foods, less of what I call the Lethal Recipe of highly processed foods with their drug like affects. Then there was the time I spent out moving my body I was not on my butt watching TV and eating the food that was growing the girth of my butt.

The biggest obstacle as always was getting to the front door to put my shoes on and just get out the door, once I was there the rest was much easier.

I managed to get up to running 20kms on the treadmill at the gym, it took me 2 hours, my knees hurt for days and it was the last time I did that. Today I walk, hike, cycle (flat ground, big seats & baskets at the front type cycling) and do hot yoga, I love it, I still struggle sometimes with my hermit tendencies and getting outside is something I do rain, sleet, heat, snow and overcast. Getting out into nature is the strongest motivator for me. It is the most glorious way to move my body and hot yoga (not Bikram) feels like an indulgence. I love doing handstands in my house, on the beach as well as cartwheels despite how comical I’ve been told I look, it makes me feel good. I’ve discovered a love for kayaking and even went on a grueling but glorious 5 day kayaking adventure in the Yukon this past summer. Sometimes I just dance in my office or do yoga like stretching.

The big trick for me was to find something that felt good, not punitive. I don’t like gyms, running for miles and going nowhere, lifting hundreds of pounds without anything to show for it beyond vanity. I’m also inconsistent despite a phrase I learned 11 years ago when it comes to exercise think “a little a lot verse a lot a little” and I take the pressure off myself to be perfect at any of it or live up to anyone else’s standard.

I now exercise for reasons other than weight loss and the less I think about that and the more I focus on how it makes me feel good, the more I am inspired to do it.

In my Anti Diet workshops I get participants to drop and do 20, drop their pen to paper and discover 20 reason’s to get out and move their body beyond weight loss.

There are way more than that of course but here are some of my reasons:
best brain clearer ever
best way to get out of a funk, it is nature’s best antidepressant
I ALWAYS come back feeling better
food tastes better after exercise
I choose better foods than when I am sedentary
it firms my muscles and that feels good
I love getting out in nature
My best thoughts come up for me when I’m out walking/hiking (I always take pen and paper)
Life seems more in perspective and stress is muted

As far as which comes first I always look to nature and in nature you do not eat unless you move, so moving first is my suggestion.

There are more, the trick is to find your own, make it pleasurable, don’t let not being good at any of it stop you from doing it and try to catch yourself in those moments of really appreciating anything that feels good at anytime doing it as well as the buzz of wellbeing after. I’ll paraphrase Nike, “Just Do Something”.

Jumping for Joy in Stanley Park Vancouver

We Just Need to Know the Way Home
Following the Planets Oldest Guru, Mother Nature

How do you not drown in the plethora of information out there and conflicting voices that all claim to have found the way and you ‘should’ follow them? Everyday there is a growing number of people who are educated in what they’ve come to learn as the path of wellness. The more charismatic and certain someone is, the more knowledge they can espouse with fervent conviction, the more they are able to draw numbers of those suffering and less certain about which path to take.

Too many Gurus, Too much confusion.

Almost all the guru’s out there believe in the greater good, doing good and helping others. With influence comes power and that power is a responsibility, to guide people to what is right for them, not that of a personal agenda no matter how noble or altruistic. To get people to grasp within themselves to live congruently with their value system, will in the long term create more global harmony. I’ve seen people twist themselves into a stressful bind to drastically change their diets and lifestyles not understanding the full ramifications to their way of being adapted over decades, their strong emotional ties to foods, rituals and how the drugs in foods serviced addictions brought on by some form of emotional avoidance. Take the drug away without the process to manage that emotional avoidance and you create turmoil and angst that can lead to a different sort of disordered eating and self loathing for not living up to someone else’s idea of how they are meant to be living.

It is often when people are facing a fearfully compelling diagnosis that they are compelled to change overnight, cancer, heart disease, diabetes or a myriad of other debilitating conditions plaguing our affluent culture. Unless the shift is deeper and we get to the cause of our sickness, the imbalance in our thinking that led to the physical behaviour that manifested the illness, the change is still superficial and often temporary. Often if the condition eases due to a change in lifestyle or medication that treats they symptoms people often revert to the very lifestyle that caused the problem in the first place unless they work through what is below the surface creating the imbalanced perspective driving behaviour.

What is it about our culture that seeks out the need to find a guru, an answer outside ourselves? Beyond that we are spawning a culture of people who wish to be guru’s, the internet is teaming with millions of people offering advice to those seeking the answers outside themselves. When the flaws of a guru come to the surface as every guru is intrinsically flawed (unless you are the mythically perfect messiah of some incarnation), the followers seek to find another voice or their ego now speaks to them declaring perhaps they are the new messiah (not just a naughty boy).

I believe the true guru is not one voice but rather two voices that synced create a beautiful harmonious cacophony of reason, beauty, wisdom and intelligence that is so compelling is draws us to it, fills us with insight and wonder. It is ego less, timeless and complete.

It is the voice of nature that is my guru and the guru of those I admire most through history, Emerson, Thoreau, Einstein, Aristotle and Suess. Nature is the one constant with a record of intelligence that is far more complex and wise than any human o collective of humans I’ve observed.

Nature is both my church and teacher, where I go to when I need guidance, the cleaner and more pristine the natural environment the stronger sensation of calm and healing I experience, the more clarity I am able to attain, I am both energized and grounded and humbled. It is easy to sit in a lecture room and allow your ego to expand, I’ve not only done this, I’ve experienced it in many others who are seeking validation in the adoration of others and so the follower and guru get their needs met, it is like a drug for both parties, one who’s sense of power is increased from giving the life force ‘koolaid’ and the one drinking in the drug as they abdicate responsibility for their true education. There is the innate laziness of humans to find the quickest route, don’t teach me how to think just tell me what to think as it is all to confusing to learn all of this myself. I know this well from experience.

Don’t get me wrong, teachers are invaluable. True teachers that teach you how to think versus those that wish to manipulate you by telling you what to think no matter how good their intentions are, they fail you because a gifted teacher will guide you to the answers yourself, to use your incredible gifts of intellect, intuition and instinct. It is the teach a man to fish principle, if you teach people how to think you create independence, if you teach them what to think you create dependence and in many cases sell more products.

When it comes to health the gift lies in learning to be still, listen to your body, get a sense and feel what it is that nature and your environment is communicating to you, what has worked for millennia and how deviating from that is making us sick. largely since we got this notion in our brain that we are smarter than nature and when we don’t like of fully understand how she works, we can change and improve on her system. I all cases creating more problems than existed in the first place.

Gather data by all means but understand without context data is noise, it is only when you take that noise and place it in context, in harmony with the big picture and you have beautiful music to your ears, your mind, your heart and soul. When you learn like this, it is transformative and the gift you present to others in knowledge from this space, without agenda is harmonious with nature, our environment that universally serves the globe, not just one guru or a few followers.

With Wendy at the World Wellness Project Summit, one of the first to join the Tribe and most enthusiastic tribe members….thanks Wendy!

I sincerely wish you the best things in life for 2011. I’ve learned the best thing you can do for you health and living a long vibrant life is to fall in love…..with yourself and your body. To be so incredibly grateful and appreciative for your amazing body that you crave to fill it with nourishing, energizing and protective foods that enable you to live the best life possible.

Here is to a year of amazing life giving foods, regular healthy doses of self love, movement with meaning, rich conversations, deep connections with the people around us and meals that are shared with love and honesty!

I am in the process of creating heaps of resources to help you harness vitality and health as well as a certification process to teach people to do the work I do. I look forward to seeing how I can be of service to you in your journey into vibrant wellbeing.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions and if there is anything you feel would be of help in your journey in health.

Warmth, wellth and love,
Sherry

Transformational Weight Loss

Answers instead of Guilt

Solutions instead of Gimmicks

Love instead of Fear

I am so excited to be bringing to Australia the most amazing minds, hearts and souls who are also experts in “Sustainable Healthy Weight Loss.”

In one day you are going to hear from 7 revolutionary thought leaders that I’ve specifically chosen because they are engaged in truly life changing work.

Charles Eisenstein, Andrea Albright, John Toomey, Sam Gowing, Jacqi Deighan, Grace Gedeon and myself.

During this day you will;

Understand why diets don’t and never will work

Discover how to lose weight without dieting or spending your life at the gym

Learn why the key to losing your gut is all in your mind

Find the secret to getting the last ten pounds to go and stay away

How to do this in a pleasurable, no guilt, painless way that is all about joy and what you can have not about what you can’t or must do.

This is a mind, body, spirit approach to developing a loving relationship with food and your body. We are even tackling the weighty issue of childhood obesity in our creating Happy Healthy Families session.

All these speakers are passionate about helping you transform you life, so much so they are donating their time and some of them are flying across the world to bring you this life changing information.

Book on the link below:

www.makemewellnow.com

Join the Tribe – Attend the Summit – Change Your World

Two years ago I approached Taren Hocking of a fantastic event company Champion events about creating a global Wellness conference here in Melbourne Australia. She was excited to let me know that she and Megan Dalla-Camina had the same idea and so the power of three joined forces to create the World Wellness Project Summit which is now taking place in February 24th-26th, 2011.

The conference is all about creating conversations around the world that accelerate World Wellness which is critical for the planet right now.

If you are a leader in wellness or simply passionate about creating real change for the planet then you need to be at the Summit. Taren, Megan and I would love to see you there.

http://www.worldwellnessproject.com

I will be giving a new presentation based on my book and using my illustrations on October 26th.

A Return to Food – how going back is the way forward

I will share with you the secret to getting you, your family and friends truly excited about preparing real food. With benefits of weight loss, amazing energy, better sleep and increased concentration you will love learning how to make healthy “Delicious!”

Love to see you on the 26th!
Sherry

return to food flyer

N.B.For those patiently waiting for the book after all these years, I am now actively seeking a publisher and very excited to finally be ready to give birth!…… which of course is when the real work of getting it out to the world begins.

Wake up with Energy Everyday

May 29 2010 Workshop

This One Day Workshop will cover how you can;

• Slow the Ageing Process
• Dramatically Increase Your Energy
• Look Years Younger in One Month
• Bounce out of Bed Happy, Every Morning
• Beat Addictions & Eliminate Temptation
• Avoid Ageing Foods & Crave Life Giving Foods
• Achieve Super Healthy Weight Loss without Dieting

Where:
Rescom corner of Park St and Kingsway South Melbourne

When: Saturday May 29th
8:30 Registration
9am sharp start til 5pm
Bookings: sherry@sherrystrong.com or 0412 098 992
Investment: was $345 now $197
Includes: workbook & lunch

Feedback from the February 2010 Workshop

“I enjoyed the cooking demonstration, all the content, the take home workbook,
absolutely every minute of it! The most inspirational and interesting presenter that
I’ve ever met.” Fiona

“Sherry is a dynamo, I enjoyed the taste tests, great information, very enlightening,
Sherry is fantastic, engaging, interesting, great stories, informative, one of the most
amazing smiles I’ve ever seen.” Shane

“Great way of awakening the spirit by giving moments to reflect on ourselves, great
to combine the practical and the theory, Sherry is effervescent giving, generous and
inspiring, glowing from the inside” Ewa

“This message needs to be available to as many people as possible, Sherry is
present to herself, the universe and others. I enjoyed the generosity & value
provided throughout the day. I am in love with Sherry’!… centred, real humble
generous knowledge.” Anneli

“Awesome! Gr8 knowledge and lives the talk” Lynda

“Sherry has an amazing ability to impart her wisdom, passion and knowledge in a
simple, fun & easy to understand fashion, she is funny generous, genuine, insightful
and non-judgemental-) would have liked another 9 hours!! “ Katie

Excellent!! Fantastic!!! Entertaining!!! Dr. Kristian Ronacher

“I am more aware & feel empowered I will gradually start making changes in my
food choices & hopefully quietly influence those around me. Sherry…..Wonderful!
Funny, warm, very knowledgeable, A delight. “ Ania

“ loved everything. I think Sherry is fabulous, I really like/respect her honest and
sincerity.” Emma

“Sherry’s content is brilliant, convincing and humourous, 10/10”, life changing. Ian
“Loved the delicious food! Sherry’s wisdom, fun, easy to listen to. Great personal
examples. “ Donna

Loved EVERYTHING! Amazing, Inspirational, motivating and funny! The perfect
combination. “ Michaela

“I enjoyed seeing how easy it was to actually prepare the amazing food we ate,
then getting to taste hw YUMMY it was. Sherry is smart, passionate about her
message, invaluable for our future and the future of our planet.” Julie

“I enjoyed Sherry’s energy, realness & grace, the information shared incl the
workbook and the new way to prepare food. Thanks for a wonderful day
experience.” Diana

I’ve recorded a greeting to let you know about the upcoming Pitcher Partners Healthy Life program lunch and learn on February 16th, 2010, 12:45 in the Presentation rooms in William St Melbourne.

During this presentation you will learn how to;

• To thrive despite stress
• How to get more energy and select fuels specifically designed for your body
• Wake up with a grounded feeling and sense of profound well-being everyday
• Secrets to slowing down the aging process

Plus heaps more information that will truly inspire and motivate you to take care of your most precious asset – YOU!

Looking forward to seeing you there,
Sherry