It all started with a vision of a horse.

A year ago I decided to try once more to beat my body blues and made myself a guided meditation recording with the intention of making peace with my physical body. I've already shared the story on Pagan Forum but the meditation didn't go quite to plan. Instead of being met by a clone of myself, a white horse that I'd been meeting with in meditation for a little while, came to me. He was injured, sweating and panting as though exhausted. I ignored the narration on the recording and instead just hugged the horse that I realised was my physical body. I thought about how I'd been abusing my body for years and still it faithfully did its best to keep me healthy. I swore that night that I would make amends and that I'd never starve myself again. I would treat my body with the same love and care as I would if I were taking care of a beloved horse.

I was true to my word too. Of course I gained weight once I started to eat properly and that was difficult to deal with, especially as I'm not doing this with support from professionals. My 'therapy' initially took the form of journalling and working through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy workbooks. Then as I began to develop my own magical and spiritual system, I combined this self-help approach with the inner temples of Rotokia (my inner world), which saw me meeting with my guides at each new moon to discuss issues I have and set myself an action plan for the month ahead. This approach has proven helpful and I no longer feel as though I am working through my issues entirely unaided.

It was my guide Zack who resides in the Temple of the Earth who suggested that I read back over my self-help journal and I'm glad he did. I'd been moaning to him about how trapped I feel because I don't want to starve myself but I still hate the shape of my thighs. I'd also developed a complex over the past few years because I'd aged so much in such a short time. I always looked at least 5 years younger than my chronological age, and yet these past few years I looked exactly my age. That became yet another thing to hate about my reflection.

So, desperate to finally be free of this preoccupation with my physical defects, I did as I was advised at the start of the month and began reading through the journal in question. It was the journal I started when I had a panic attack back in Feb 2015 and decided I had to take action. At the time I had been listening to self-help ted-ex talks and suchlike and got into the idea of visualising your ideal future. However, this concept ended up fuelling my paranoia because I was frightened that the dark fantasies I'd have, such as finding my loved ones butchered in their beds, would create that future. I also decided that there's more to manifesting your dreams than just wishful thinking. After all, don't most people fantasise at length about what they'd spend their lottery winnings on? So after just a few weeks I gave up on all that 'law of attraction' bullsh*t.

Yet something really caught my attention while reading back through the book. I'd written down a few scenarios that I could imagine during my daily meditation sessions. One was for a wealthier future. It had details like me making myself a cup of coffee from a coffee machine, kissing JP as he leaves the apartment in a suit on his way to a job in finance in the city centre (he longed to work in the heart of Newcastle again), calling my mum who was happy in her new home having finally sold her flat, and then sitting on the balcony with my laptop to have an online Japanese lesson (I guess I associated being able to afford online tuition and good coffee with wealth!).

I'd forgotten all about that transcript. What I found interesting was that in January this year my sister had given me a coffee machine because she said it took up too much space and she doesn't drink much coffee anyway. Then in April, because I hadn't taken all my annual leave from work, I ended up with an extra few hundred pounds in the bank. The Japanese group was taking a few months off until September while Miyo had her baby and some of the students were still doing their year in Japan. So I decided to use my extra money to purchase a block of private Japanese lessons through nihongo-pro to maintain my Japanese.

It made me wonder, did my visualisation kind of work? Did the 'universe' or whatever just assume I wanted a coffee machine and Japanese lessons?

It was during that month that JP walked out of a job he hated. I was surprisingly calm considering that one of us losing our job was one of the things I'd worry about when my anxiety was at its worst. You see, my mum is reliant on me financially because of her mortgage so I actually had 3 people to support on just my one humble wage. Of course I called an emergency mid-month meeting with my guides to help me through it, but I felt really 'together'. Like, 'okay, this sucks.. but we can manage'. And then, I just continued enjoying my life as though everything was normal and got stuck into finding creative ways to spend less money. The past few months have been great in fact. I've been very happy, and at peace with life.

JP DID find a new job. Just 5 weeks later. He now works for a building society, in the city centre and he loves it! He wears a suit and he brings home a few hundred more a month than he did from the job he hated. I too have just had a pretty big pay rise (an increase of 50 pence and hour) and my mum has sold her flat so won't need money off me anymore. It might have taken over a year, but I can't deny that our financial situation really did improve.

What does this have to do with my body blues though? Well it made me realise, as I'm sure Zack had intended, that there may actually be something to this 'wishy-thinking' thing after all. It's not that different to witchraft really. So I decided to give it another shot, only this time focusing on my body, seeing my legs getting thinner and my face looking less haggard. It was worth a shot, right?

Within a week or so of using my new visualisation I stumbled upon videos by some guy called Erig Berg on youtube. He's apparently a Scientologist and was done for medical negligence but lets not hold that against him. What he introduced me to was the idea of correcting health issues through the diet. In particular he talks a lot about the endocrine system. I started to read more and more and came to understand how important the endocrine system actually is to our health. That even conditions such as diabetes and hypothyroidism aren't so much caused by eating the wrong things, as failing to eat the right things!

I discovered that those like me who gain stubborn weight around their hips and thighs and yet are skinny everywhere else, are oestrogen dominant. I had all the symptoms; the erratic periods, the bad cramps, the cellulite, the mood swings (see... I'm not bipolar after all.. it was my ovaries all along!). It explained why the contraceptive pill makes me gain weight, but the progesterone only pill doesn't! Dr. Berg recommended avoiding unfermented soya products and eating cruciferous vegetables. So I did this. I cut out the soy (besides miso, natto and soy sauce because these are fermented) and made sure to have at least 2 portions of cruciferous veg every day. I had to increase my iodine too, because cruciferous can affect iodine absorption, so I had miso soup with plenty of wakame once a day (and have reduced the cruciferous since, after reading an article about this effect). Miso is also a probiotic so a side effect of this was that my digestion seemed to improve and by adding a side of veg and soup to my meals, I was eating more at mealtimes so stopped snacking, which also seemed to help my body to function better. I've never felt so healthy and I haven't had to cut out anything from my diet. I can still eat whatever I like so long as I don't skip the veg and soup!

Meanwhile, I continued to work on my thoughts as I attempted to teach myself that my value isn't in how I look. I still struggle at the swimming pool, but otherwise, I can finally walk down a busy street without thinking everyone is looking at me and thinking how weird I look.

I now weigh over 8 stone. It was 8.2 the last time I checked (which was over a month ago which is a huge contrast to the several times a day I used to check the scales). I used to think I was overweight if I got over 7 and a half. My clothes fit just fine and I don't feel chubby at all. I feel pretty toned in fact. Maybe it's all in my head, but I'm pretty sure my thighs are slimmer too. I certainly don't have much cellulite anymore and my hips just seem to have a nice curve to them, instead of looking massive to me.

Oh and as for my face.. I really do look much healthier now. I've always had natural shadows around my eyes, it's genetic, but for the past few years they've been very dark. This is much less noticeable now and just a few days ago I was asked to prove my age while buying wine (the second time that this has happened in the past few months). The cashier said she thought I looked around 25 and it's their policy to ask anyone who looks 25 or younger. That is 9 years younger than my chronological age!!

Not that vanity should ever be a reason to take care of my body. No, the fact that my body is absolutely amazing is my reason. The fact that it works so hard to serve me and keep me well is my reason. The fact that hearing the horror stories of what can happen when, for whatever reason, your body isn't able to keep you well reminds me of just how precious my health is, is my reason.

So now I can say with all honestly that I love my body. My little white horse!