Leaving Spain With Stronger Shoulders and Softer Thoughts
A little farewell to La Manga, fitness routines, taco Fridays, golf lessons, body confidence, lipedema waves and the strange feeling of slowly coming back to myself.
Before I continue talking about the place I arrived at yesterday, Portugal, I need to properly finish Spain. More specifically, I need to finish La Manga and the very British little universe I somehow ended up living in for almost four weeks.
Since I published my last post about life in Spain, I had really settled into some great fitness routines. The gym was ridiculously expensive, so naturally I had no choice but to go every single day for two weeks. Financial discipline, but make it wellness. And honestly, I think it worked. I can finally see that my arms and shoulders are coming back a little. Or maybe I am imagining it. Either way, I feel very good about myself at the moment, and sometimes that is the whole point.
It might also be because I am not as pale as I can be. During my surgery period, I could not expose my scars to the sun at all for one and a half years, and I honestly felt like my legs looked like chicken legs. Not cute Mediterranean chicken either. More like confused Norwegian supermarket chicken.
It is so interesting how we can walk around in this world with so many positive thoughts about the body we live in, and then at other times feel completely disconnected from it. Right now, I feel like I can show off my cellulite and lipedema unevenness without caring too much whether people notice it or not. It is not always like that. So when this feeling appears, I try to pay attention to it. I try to understand what builds this kind of confidence, because I really want to protect it and foster more of it.
Because so much of body image, self esteem and self love is about feelings. It is about what you tell yourself when you look in the mirror.
Those of you who have followed my articles for a while know that earlier this year, I was in a very different place. I was desperate for a change. I needed something dramatic, even though I knew it probably was not ideal for my physical health after everything my body had gone through. I had two egg retrievals in January and February, and my body was still very affected by all the hormones. I lost so much hair, and a lot of my hair turned grey. It was honestly wild to watch all those changes happen so quickly.
As a food scientist and nutritionist who has lived with a lipedema diagnosis for many years, I know that sustainability is the key. I know this deeply. But at that moment, my mental health needed a shift. And as soon as I started feeling like myself again, I stopped the dramatic changes.
So being in the place I am now feels a little strange, because it was not that long ago that everything felt like the complete opposite. At the same time, I know I will probably need a couple more egg retrievals, so I am aware that more waves may come in the future.
So yes, I have been running almost every day for nearly a month to the store to buy water, and then walking uphill with ten liters of water like some kind of lipedema pilgrim. Conveniently, the gym was right next to the grocery store, so for two of those weeks I also added proper workout sessions. Now I feel highly motivated to keep these routines going here in Portugal.
I usually take photos of my twenty percent. The joy, the food, the culture, the small beautiful moments, the life part of life. But the place I am staying in now in Portugal has much better light, so I will try to take more photos of the eighty percent too. What that looks like for me. Because you have probably already seen that I enjoy life and that I do not let lipedema take everything away from me. But you have not yet seen everything I do for my lipedema.
Before we close the Spain chapter, let us have a little throwback since my last post from Spain.
I had five golf lessons with an amazing Scottish trainer who actually helped me improve my skills. After five lessons, I am basically ready for the PGA Tour, as long as nobody asks about my handicap or watches me play under pressure.
My partner and I also had Mexican food every Friday at this little Michelin taco place. In Norway, eating tacos on Fridays is a whole cultural institution, so doing that for several Fridays in a row felt strangely like home. Just with better weather, better tacos and alcohol free Corona beer.
We only left the resort once in almost four weeks, which is slightly insane when I say it out loud. But that one trip was to Cartagena, a beautiful Spanish town that gave us some fresh impressions, a proper change of scenery and some really good freshly roasted coffee beans.
Enjoy the photos.
