WHY I STARTED 'STEPS WITH SANDRINE'

Two years ago, I joined my sister and founder of Alice Kass Lingerie on her mission to help empower women. She encourages women to overcome the societal shame around the female body and help them embrace their body’s natural shapes, their sensuality, sexuality and feminine power by practicing SELF-LOVE. She is and continues to be my biggest inspiration due to her resilience and drive to put out positivity into the world by helping women reclaim their divine goddess energy. 

Alice Kass was my stepping stone to connecting to self and learning to follow my true passion. In June 2019, I took a leap of faith and quit my job in Human Resources. I decided it was time to fully immerse myself in my Holistic Health & Wellness studies (Nutritional Consulting Diploma) I had enrolled in a year prior and start my coaching business.

However, the journey is never as clear cut as it may seem from the outside. After I quit my job to pursue my studies in natural health, so much self-doubt set in. With so much time on my hands, and looking at Instagram countless times throughout the day, I fell victim of diet culture once again and my disordered eating behaviours started to resurface.  I started comparing myself to IG fitness influencers and became obsessed with exercise and had very very very nervous energy around food. I began to gain weight, spent my days hating myself and had very low self-esteem. My sister kept reminding me that I was beautiful and told me this was the universe sending me a reminder of my past self (the girl I was before I lost 30 lbs 5 years ago struggling with an eating disorder and low self worth). She encouraged me to show up for myself with compassion during this phase of my life.  She told me this was another lesson for me to practice self-love and to be there for myself no matter how I looked or how much I weighed. Frustrated by my 15 lb weight gain, I brushed her suggestions off and just kept working out 2-3 times a day. I had totally let go of my self-love practices, I was super anxious, barely sleeping, bingeing on healthy foods then fasting, and over-exercising. 

Despite having the knowledge (through past experience and my studies) on how to lose weight by eating well, changing my lifestyle and setting up small actionable goals, I just kept putting pressure on myself and was in total fight-or-flight mode. It felt like I had a giant dark cloud over my head at all times and it felt like I was just gaining more and more weight every single week. I found myself spiraling on the daily and I was mentally and physically drained. It just felt like no matter what I did, nothing worked.

If you follow me on IG you know I began talking about "getting your steps in" at the beginning of summer. This was my way of relieving my stress and anxiety. I began sharing my walks with my friends and talking about how this was helping my mental state (and it was helping…during my walks… but as soon as I saw my reflection when I got home, I bullied the person I saw in the mirror). I shared all the benefits associated to walking and getting the body moving. The more I shared my walks, the more feedback I was receiving from people I didn’t even know personally telling me I was inspiring them to be more active and love themselves. My posts were not only helping me stay accountable to myself, but it was helping others, too! That's when it became clear I wanted to help people reclaim their lives lost to diet culture and learn to truly love and honour their beautiful bodies. I wanted to help others feel good in their skin throughout all their body's phases and weight fluctuations. I knew I wanted to help people feel confident and improve their overall quality of life and stop comparing themselves to unrealistic body types. These beautiful messages were what kept me motivated and shook me up and understand that I was going through the same struggles in which I wanted to help others overcome. I was on the SAME journey as the people writing to me, and I knew how difficult it was to be in a body you wanted to change and break free from EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. 

I don't remember exactly when, but one day I woke up and something had shifted in me. I knew I had to regain control of myself and my life. I made the decision to re-incorporate my self-love practices and I created my morning routine: Dance, affirmations, gratitude lists, meditation, breath work, mirror work. I was determined to reconnect and love myself again.

And then a month later…I broke out in Psoriasis!!!! (Click HERE to read my Psoriasis story).

First of all, thank god I was practicing self-love on the daily as this, as well as my support system, are what gave me the strength to accept my situation. My sister was right: the universe was really testing me. I absolutely needed to learn to love myself NO MATTER WHAT! Whether it be a bit of weight gain, a body that wasn’t bikini model like, horrible red dry skin spots and patches all over my body, a pimple here and there, a bad outfit, or whatever it was, I NEEDED TO FULLY SURRENDER AND LOVE/ACCEPT MYSELF!!!

Had I not incorporated my self-love practices, I am of the opinion that my entire world would have shattered with my Psoriasis outbreak. Yet, because I learnt to truly love myself, I was strong enough to know I was going to heal myself through the power of the mind and nutrition. And that's when I knew I had to share my 'steps' to healing. It's now been 2 months since my outbreak, and I am slowly but surely healing!! I have never felt so positive and have dropped 10 lbs of the 15 I gained over summer.

Nutrition, body image, and exercise have been my biggest hurdles to overcome in life and still preoccupy my everyday life, but I am happy to say, on a more healthy scale since practicing self-awareness. The journey is not easy, and  there are many ups and downs, however, it was through self-love practices and a complete lifestyle shift that I finally learned to love my body and accept myself for who I am and how I look.  I finally understood my worth had nothing to do with how I looked and was not going to be determined by a silly number on a scale and that no one cared or even noticed if I gained a few pounds or had red scaly spots all over my body.  And, even if they did notice, no one actually cares. 

The foundation of a healthy and fulfilling life is feeding your body delicious whole foods (nature's medicine), words of affirmation, and self-love! I promise you with all of me that it is possible to be happy and it all starts from within.