If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that being healthy doesn’t have to mean being perfect. I am far from perfect
And it definitely doesn’t mean living on salads (although I love SALADS) saying NO to everything else you enjoy, or feeling guilty because you ate something that wasn’t part of the “plan”
For me, fitness and food have always gone hand in hand. It’s so important
I love training. I love feeling strong. I love challenging myself and seeing what my body is capable of, especially as I’m getting older.
But I also really love food. Good food
And I’m not prepared to choose between the two.
Strong, not smaller
My relationship with fitness has changed massively over the years & my relationship with food has followed.
These days, I’m far more interested in being stronger than being smaller.
I want to lift weights. I want to do my pull-ups. I want energy. I want to feel capable. I want to look after the body that has carried me through 51 years of life and hopefully keep doing all of this for a very long time yet. 🤲
And I want to be really clear about something.
Fitness is my life.
I sometimes hear people say, “I’ll train if and when I get time.”
That’s not really me.
I don’t ask myself if I can train. I look at my life and decide when I can train.
There’s a difference.
Work, family, holidays, Simply Sabina Eats, relationships and socialising are all important parts of my life. Very important
But so is training. A huge part of my life
I don’t put it at the bottom of the list and hope there are 60 minutes left over for me at the end of the day.
I make space for it. Always
That doesn’t mean fitness controls my life. I’ll move a session. I’ll change the time. I’ll train somewhere different. I’ll do less when I need to. And sometimes life happens and a session doesn’t happen at all.
But generally, training is going somewhere in my week.
Because that’s me…
When I say fitness needs to work around your life, I don’t mean it should be the first thing you drop when life gets busy.
I mean the two have to align.
I want to train, but I also want holidays, dinners, nights out, days out, family time and all the other things that make my life mine. I don’t want one at the expense of the other.
If I started telling people fitness was just a little thing I fitted in when I had time, I wouldn’t be being true to myself.
Fitness isn’t everything in my life. But it is huge part of who I am.
And I’m absolutely okay with saying that.
And then there’s food…
I’ve been plant-based for years, and food is a massive part of my life too.
I want food that tastes good, fills me up and gives my body something useful.
But I also want a treat to feel like a bloody treat.
That’s actually a huge part of why Simply Sabina Eats exists.
I started making things that I wanted to eat myself.
Energy bites, protein brownies, flapjacks, banana loaves, things made with real ingredients, plant-based, with protein, but still enjoyable.
Not “healthy” food that tastes like cardboard.
Because nobody wants that. 😂
And somehow, what started in my kitchen became something other people wanted too.
People came back.
They reordered.
They told their friends.
And suddenly I had a little business growing alongside everything else I was already doing.
The two sides of me were actually the same thing
For a while, I almost treated my fitness and Simply Sabina Eats as two separate parts of my life.
But they’re really not.
They’re both about the same thing.
Feeling good. Being strong. Eating well. Enjoying yourself. And finding something sustainable that actually fits into real life.
That’s what I try to encourage with the women I train too.
I don’t want anyone leaving one of my sessions thinking they need to “earn” their dinner because they’ve exercised.
Food isn’t a punishment or a reward.
It’s fuel. It’s enjoyment. It’s culture. It’s sitting around a table with people you love. It’s grabbing something sweet with your coffee.
You can care about what you put into your body without becoming obsessed with it.
Strong body, noisy mind
There’s another side to getting older that I probably don’t talk about as much.
Physically, I genuinely feel stronger.
Mentally and emotionally..
That’s sometimes a different story.
As I’ve got older, I feel like the noise in my head has actually become harder to control.
I don’t know whether that’s ADHD, hormones, getting older, life experiences or probably a mixture of everything.
But I do know I seem to feel things more intensely now.
If something happens or something is worrying me, my mind can grab hold of it and run with it.
I can become extremely anxious about things. I can overthink. I can spiral. And sometimes I know the amount of space something is taking up in my head probably doesn’t match the situation itself.
And I don’t think that side of me has necessarily become easier with age.
But this is where training has become so much more than exercise for me.
I do sometimes wonder what I’d be like if I didn’t train scares me sometimes.
Training doesn’t magically switch my brain off. It doesn’t fix everything.
But when I train, I feel capable. much more capable.
When my head feels chaotic, there’s something incredibly grounding about knowing what my body can do.
Picking up a weight.
Doing a pull-up.
Getting through a session I didn’t particularly feel like doing.
It’s almost like the confidence I’ve built in my body has slowly followed me into my mind.
The stronger and more capable I feel physically, the more capable I feel of dealing with everything else.
Maybe that’s another reason I protect my training time the way I do.
It’s not just about what I look like or how much I can lift.
It’s something I know I need.
I’m still learning too
I think sometimes when you work in fitness, people assume you’ve got everything figured out.
I haven’t.
I’m still learning about my body and I’m definitely still learning about my mind.
I’m still navigating getting older, hormones, energy levels, recovery, emotions and all the other lovely surprises that come with this stage of life.
And I’m still experimenting in the kitchen too.
Some recipes are amazing first time.
Others definitely are not. 😂
I’ve had dry flapjacks. Brownies that needed another go. Energy-ball mixtures that weren’t quite right.
Then I tweak them and try again & sometimes again
Fitness is actually pretty similar.
And maybe life is too.
You adjust. You pivot . You learn. You keep going.
This is what healthy looks like to me now
Healthy, for me, isn’t always the number on the scales.
It’s being able to train.
It’s feeling strong.
It’s eating food I enjoy.
It’s having energy.
It’s looking after my head as well as my body.
It’s going on holiday and eating the pizza.(no cheese usually 🤣)
It’s coming home and getting back into my routine without punishing myself for enjoying it.
It’s laughing with the women I train.
It’s standing in my kitchen covered in ingredients making another ridiculous number of energy balls.
It’s knowing that training matters to me and not apologising for making time for it.
And it’s accepting that some days are going to be better than others.
At 51, I don’t have everything figured out.
Far from it.
But I think I’m learning what I need.
I don’t want perfection.
I want a strong body, a quieter mind when I can get one, good food, good people around me and a life I actually enjoy living.
And somewhere along the way, fitness and Simply Sabina Eats have become part of the same story.
Turns out they probably always were.
Strong. Fed. Still having a life.
That’ll do me. 🤍
