Spiritus Mundi

Before we go any further...What is Whole30? Essentially, it's an elimination diet that only allows you to eat "real" food: fruit, veggies, meat, and a few other odds and ends. You can have things like salt and oil to cook with, which helps a lot, too. The point is that you're avoiding added sugar, carbs and dairy (and, yes, alcohol too), completely getting them out of your system.  It's called Whole30 because you eliminate all of those "fake foods" for 30 days, but it's really like Whole50 if you do it right. That's because after the first 30 days, you're supposed to gradually add back in the foods you've been avoiding. If you really want to see how your body reacts to sugar (does it make you tired? overly emotional?), dairy (are there digestive problems? does your skin change?), and carbs (do you feel bloated? are you more or less full through the day?), you have to add them back in one at a time. For instance, you add dairy back ...

https://www.eloquii.com/customerservice-help?subViewFolderId=about_us&subViewId=about_us_main Photo from eloquii.com You should never feel forced to wear clothes that are baggy, ugly or too tight. Your wardrobe should encourage you to express yourself to the fullest extent of who you are and all that you want to be. In the last Self Love series post , I talked about Average Emily and her quest to find clothes that fit the body of the average American woman…and that fit her style, too. With the help of Whitney McGruder of  witandtravesty.com , I’ve put together a list of some of the most size-inclusive stores you can shop at. It’s easy enough to search the web for the best plus size stores, but what do those listicles really tell you? I don’t know about you, but seeing one cute shirt isn’t quite enough for me. Instead of that, I’ll be going in depth to see what these stores have to say about their sizing and purpose. I’ll do a price comparison of basic items and see ...

In  Self Love, Part 1 , I talked about the problems with the way we view obesity. One of the results of this is limited access to clothing. One of the most common names for girls in the US is Emily, so we'll use that name for the average woman in America. EMILY Emily is 5'4"; according to the CDC , the average waist size of a woman is about 38 inches. Look up a size chart to see what sort of clothes Average Emily would fit into. Some size charts strangely  skip over her; others just let you assume  what her size might be. The most valuable  apparel brands in 2018 were Nike, H&M, Zara and Adidas. In each of these stores, respectively, Emily would be a size XL, XL, nonexistent, and XXL. Average Emily should at least be able to find clothes in 3 of these 4 stores, so let's look at her options. As we do, let's remember that "average" includes a lot of people bigger and smaller than that 38 inch waist. So let's keep those other sizes in mind,...

"I hate going to the gym and seeing those overweight people wearing leggings and workout tops. If you need to wear anything bigger than a large, you should just stick to baggy t-shirts and sweatpants." An old coworker said this loudly while standing directly behind me. And I wear XL. I interacted with this person on a daily basis, and I assume the best in her. She didn't direct this statement toward me, and I'll give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming she didn't notice I was sitting right in front of her. I don't begrudge her for saying it, nor do I think the statement makes her mean or stupid or anything like that. But that doesn't negate the fact that I had to leave to go cry in the bathroom when I heard it. I didn't confront her or say anything to anyone about her statement. Maybe that's why it hurt so much. Obesity is a taboo subject for most people. We avoid talking about it because we don't want to make other people fee...