Angelina

December 23, 2020January 7, 2026

My Christmas Traditions

Christmas is around the corner, so I wanted to try writing down all my favorite traditions and hobbies during the month. I’m one of those people who start listening to Christmas music in September, I would fill my home with Christmas decorations from October and bake Christmas goods every week if I didn’t control myself. I think we need these holidays to look forward to. We need the calmness it brings (to most of us) and all the beautiful decorations surrounding us. So, here’s a list of some of the things making me get into a holiday spirit;

“Take deep breaths, look at all the shimmering and sparkling on the ground, listen to the creaking snow under the shoes, and get your nose and cheeks all red.”

This is Christmas for me

1. Lighting candles and listening to Christmas music. Every morning I start off by lighting a candle on the table, making the whole room light up. If you can, choose a Christmas-scented one (Yankee Candles have both high quality and wonderful smells). I then put on some classic Christmas music while sipping on a cup of coffee or tea. It’s a simple thing to do, and it will cheer you up for the rest of the day.

2. Consume clementines and oranges. Not only are these giving you an important C-vitamin boost, but the delicious smell will also fill your house.

3. Watch a Christmas series. Here in Sweden, we have a Christmas calendar show on the tv and radio every year in December. An episode every evening is a cozy tradition.

4. Watch Christmas movies with a cup of hot chocolate. “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “The Holiday,” “Christmas with the Kranks,” “Home Alone,” “The Santa Clause,” “It’s a wonderful life,” “The Polar Express,” “Love actually,” “Miracle on 34th street” are some of my favorites, to name a few.

5. Go for long walks. Take deep breaths, look at all the shimmering and sparkling on the ground, listen to the creaking snow under the shoes, and get your nose and cheeks all red. Your body will love new oxygen in the blood, and you can clear your head at the same time – the cheapest form of therapy.

Try to be creative

6. Bake something festive. Saffron buns, cinnamon buns, gingerbread cookies, bread with apricot, fig and nuts, oat cookies or apple cake. Add frosting, cowberries, sprinkles or dry fruit for an even more special treat.

7. Add cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg to most of your dishes make them go from a dull to a warming and cozy meal.

8. Make your own mulled wine with raisins and almonds or choose a Christmas-spiced wine or beer.

9. Make your own Christmas cards and send them to your friends and family. Getting busy with your hands to let your creativity flow is an excellent way to get into the Christmas spirit. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Use whatever paper, colors, scissors, glue and pens you have at home. Or just buy a few cards and send them, I can guarantee the receiver will appreciate it.

10. Try to read more books or your favorite magazines. Just let your eyes rest from the TV and computer a bit, and make up the pictures in your head and escape to another world.

11. Have a family/friend evening at home, where you play table games, wrap Christmas presents, decorate gingerbread cookies, and walk around in your comfiest clothes, eating candy.

12. Make your own ornaments – candlesticks, wreaths, garlands, and so on. As I mentioned before, it’s creative and fun. And if you’re doing it with someone, it’s quite social compared to other activities.

13. Make your own Christmas gifts. These days, most of us have more than we need, so giving something from the heart can be more special than ever. Don’t get anxious about the amount of money you have to spend. Just writing a couple of notes with inspirational quotes or complimenting messages in a jar can mean so much. Paint something on a canvas, stone, or piece of wood. Knit, crochet, or embroider something. You give your time and energy, and it’ll show. (Side note: I don’t mean that buying gifts is any less than making them yourself. But if you want to give something unique and love to use your imagination, that’s a great idea.)

14. Go skiing or sledding. Fun and exercise combined into one activity.

August 4, 2020January 7, 2026

The reason why the “perfect diet” doesn’t exist

If you can’t kill the animal, don’t eat it?

From an ethical and moral side of the story, I would wish everyone to become vegan or vegetarian. I was a strict vegan for several years only because I was thinking about the animals and was willing to do everything in my power to consume less. The thought of killing an animal was unbearable. “If you can’t kill the animal, don’t eat it” was my philosophy. I can’t hurt a fly, so it’s not hard to see where this story will end…

However, as time went by, my health didn’t become any better. I was doing everything right in all the areas around eating, sleeping, exercising, and so forth. Then my focus leaned towards gut health. I came across Candida and started to look into that more. What it was, how you get it, why you get it, how you feel if you have it etc. There’s so much information, so many stories out there. You can read for days about the same stuff, so sooner or later your brain will become overloaded or exhausted.

There’s only one of you

All bodies are unique. We have different prerequisites, are born in different places (under different conditions), our mineral and vitamin foundation varies and our hormones shift during different days. So, to compare ourselves to others is like copying a haystack. My heart tells me that everyone should be vegan. But my brain says otherwise, at least until you’ve been checking or correcting imbalances in the body.

Some areas you need to look into, before I would recommend a diet are;

Are you female or male?

How old are you?

How much body fat do you have?

How much training experience?

Are you deficit in any of the essential minerals or vitamins?

Do you have regular periods?

How is your gut health?

And then a full-body exam with liver tests and so forth.

From there, I could get a better picture of what’s going on in your body and recommend what I think would be suitable for you right now. So, my message to you is: don’t go on a diet that doesn’t feel right for you. Don’t do something only because your closest friend succeeded with that specific diet. If you try something and it doesn’t feel right or make you feel worse, switch to another.

Different food affects us differently

To give an example. If you start the ketogenic diet it may feel great initially, but then worse or like it did before you started the journey. Hormones and the shift between them often cause that, and research has shown that the Ketogenic diet can raise estrogen and cortisol levels in women (link to article), so it all comes down to your starting point in those areas. Maybe the diet doesn’t fit for you as well as it does for your boyfriend’s hormones.

Another example is a vegan or vegetarian diet. If you have a sensitive gut like leaky gut or not enough good bacteria, there’s a chance your body can’t absorb all the nutrients. It may raise some of the minerals while others get suppressed. For example, the body has a really hard time absorbing zink so things like cereals and a lot of fiber may not be for you (phytate in some fiberinhibits zinc uptake).

I would suggest you do some research before you start something long term. Make sure you have checked with your doctor before. And if you can, your hormones, minerals and you’re your overall health. Due to the fact, that there’s no “one solution fits all”, is the reason why I give different tips and talk about what’s been working/is working for me. But in the end, it’s your body, so you know what’s work best for you.

I also want to point out that a “diet” doesn’t have to be something that makes you lose weight. It’s not what it’s all about! When I say diet, I mean a long term eating style that makes you feel as good as you can and deserve — a way of living for optimal health.

July 29, 2020January 7, 2026

How to overcome procrastination – the effortless way

My advice for overcoming procrastination in life and everyday life (the effortless way), due to unresolved or too many unstructured thoughts and feelings, would be to:

Follow inspirational and motivational Instagram accounts, forget the people that make you stressed, anxious and bring you negative emotions in some way. I love “Law of Attraction” accounts (more on that in another blog post) and general business themes where they give you advice on books, side income, and so on. These can give you the daily dose of goal-setting motivation, which keeps you from spending too much time with unnecessary things.

But remember, take time off from social media occasionally, especially before going to bed (and in bed). In general, take a day off from everything, so that you can feel energized for the rest of the week. You’ll work harder and smarter!

Take a walk each day. Many of you may think that all kinds of exercise increase the stress hormone cortisol, but a slow walk actually lowers it. So, if you have a lot on your mind, take a walk, breath in the fresh air and clear your thoughts. The day becomes even more productive then. Many of my best ideas come while I’m doing these activities.

Write down a list of the things that bother you. All the stuff. Even that annoying pile of laundry. Sort them according to the things you can do right now, the things you need to work on and the things you can’t do anything about. Make a daily checklist of things you can do now, take time every day or a day every week for the things you have to work on, and lastly, write down why you can’t do some of the things in your checklist and how you feel about that.

ATTENTION! If your issues have to do with other people, realize that you can’t change anyone. You can talk to them (communication is key), they may listen, take it in, but when it all comes down to it, it’s up to them to do something about it. Do not waste your energy on the things you can’t change. Set goals for yourself to strive upon.

You can’t do everything at once

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, take one small step in the area you tend to procrastinate, and they will add up and become a walk towards the right direction or at least you can pat yourself on the shoulder for trying.

Make a vision board. Cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers of stuff you would like to have, emotions you would like to feel, places you want to go to, etc. Glue them onto a cardboard or a paper. Or you can store them in a safe place where they’re easily viewed. Everything can come true if we put our mind and energy on something. We can at least make most of the time we have in order to “create the highest, grandest vision possible for our lives, because you become what you believe!”

And with that said, believe in yourself! This has to be the most important point. If you do not believe in yourself, no one else is going to. No one is better or lesser than you, but the level of commitment varies. Another thing that makes us different is the fact that we have different skills, we think differently, learn differently, want different things and have different childhoods. Some of us might have to put in more energy onto our projects, but we can all succeed or at least get to a higher level by trying.

Read books, in general. But also books that reflect on your goal. If you want to start a business, read about business, if you want to eat healthily, read nutrition and so on. The book above “You’ve got a book in you”, by Elizabeth Sims is a gift from my little sister. She knows I love to write and wanted to give me an extra push in the right direction. Inspiration and motivation – check!

The list goes on

This was just a few of all the things you can do to get inspired enough to just get moving, with other words “How to overcome procrastination – the effortless way”. But remember that some days you just have to take it easy and binge watch Netflix, just keep working on your mission the next day with even more energy. It’s a difference between procrastionation and give your body a chance to recover and relax! I will talk about vision boards, Law of attraction and my favorite sources for inspiration in another blog post.