30 Chic Days – The Fourth Series: Day 10

Welcome to Day 10 of the 30 Chic Days series.  If you’ve just joined us, you can catch up from Day 1 here.

I’m following a simple format, logging my day.  The goals are:

Awareness of what I’m doing each day

Where I am placing my focus, and

Remembering what I want to achieve.

Here’s what I will be reporting on each day:

What I ate

What I wore

How I moved my body

What I read

My focus for the day

Day 10:

What I ate

Breakfast – Fresh chopped pineapple, apple and mandarin, raw mixed nuts, Greek yoghurt, soy milk latte

Lunch – A gourmet sausage roll with pretty salad (it had petals in it!), Lime Saffron dressing, an avocado, and half a raspberry lamington with tea after.

Dinner – Seasoned coated chicken piece with roast kumara (sweet potato), onion and carrot, steamed cauliflower and broccoli, and gravy.  Two squares of 72% cacao chocolate and decaf coffee.

What I wore

Berry coloured melange merino top with cowl neck, navy-black wash jeans, black suede Clarks ankle boots with a small heel.

How I moved

No formal exercise today.  I was at work all day and then it was dark once I’d finished.

What I read

I enjoyed reading from Anne Barone’s Chic & Slim Encore book today, specifically the You Can Too! chapter where she spoke about her journey from being an overweight child put on amphetamine diet pills by her family doctor at age six (really!) through to learning from French women how and what to eat, all the while knowing deep down that she was not going to be overweight forever; knowing that she would be slim one day.

Anne’s books were my very first introduction to a few things:

• The thrilling premise of combining being chic and stylish whilst losing weight in a French-focused way

•  Ordering from overseas on the internet (so funny that it was only 15 years ago when we order things online often now)

•  Self-published writing that was so much more interesting than anything at the local bookstore (this was before Mireille Guiliano brought the French lifestyle message to the mainstream) and in the old way of self-publishing which involved bankrolling a large amount of your own books and posting them out yourself, housing them in your living room until they all sold.  These days with on-demand self-publishing you don’t have to order up large or do the posting, it’s all done for you; not to mention Kindle digital books which weren’t around when Anne started out.  What a trailblazer!

For all these reasons I have a soft spot in my heart for Anne and her books.  I love having them on my shelves and I doubt I’ll ever part with them.  I love the simplicity of the red, black and white covers and I was reminded tonight of the great recipes in this book.  When I first bought this book, quite often I made Anne’s brown rice version of Tabouli for work lunches, and felt very chic and French as I enjoyed it instead of buying something less healthy (and less chic) from the food hall at the mall across the road from my office.

My focus for the day

After feeling so out of sorts yesterday, when I woke up this morning I said to myself ‘I want to feel peaceful today’, so I thought ‘what can I do to bring a feeling of peace to my day?’  I came up with a few things and they really did help.  I felt peaceful and content all day and my hollow-legs feeling had dissipated, thank goodness!

• Firstly, I focused on peace as a feeling and could actually feel it settle on me.  I know that sounds airy fairy, but just saying to yourself ‘I want to feel peaceful’ helps to do that.

• I got myself organised as soon as I arrived at work.  A sense of order helps me feel at peace.

• I wore cosy clothing and a comforting perfume.

• I stopped on the way to work and bought myself some yummy, gourmet lunch provisions. 

• I played French music in the shop – a Buddha Bar/Hotel Costes mix – so good!

All these little things added up and I felt great all day, no weird hunger or anything.  Plus, yesterday I knew that 'tomorrow would be better', because it always is, isn't it?

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Are you joining in this 30 Chic Days Series too?  If so, please mention this in the comments so we can click through to your blog, or if you don’t have a blog and would like to participate, you can let us know in the comments how your day went.

See you tomorrow, be chic!