Stephanie's Studio

I know it's cliche, but OMG (meaning, Oh my goddesses) I'm so happy today. After a lengthy and energized discussion about race, at the family dinner table Sunday night, I woke up and finished my 6th book on Martin Luther King's Birthday. In fact, the last section is called "Woke." I will be sharing more on this soon-to-be-released title soon, but wanted to share this incredible news with you today! I say incredible because it took about 14 years to put this book together and go through my personal journey - which is still very much a work-in-progress . The book is "Earth Mama's Spiritual Guide to Weight-loss." It should be released sometime this spring or summer!

A few weeks ago my family and I watched the documentary  Fed Up  and have had an ongoing conversation about it ever since. This is an important documentary, especially to those struggling with being overweight or obese. It was released in the spring of 2014 and was directed by Stephanie Soechtig, with Katie Couric and Laurie David as executive producers. Katie asks some very deliberately cutting questions in this film and it makes me respect her ever more than I did. Fed Up came tumbling into my mind yesterday as I was partaking in my guilty pleasures that I really need to end: watching the  Barefoot Contessa  (Ina Garten) followed by Ree Drummond, also known as the  Pioneer Woman  on the Food Network. You may recall last year I wrote the post  Inclined Towards Dessert , sparked by yet another documentary, from PBS Frontline, called All of Me. That documentary was about how a group of women went through the process of losing very large amounts of ...

I use to not participate in New Year's Resolutions. Well, first I did, when I was really young, and then I didn't. For the past couple of years I've taken on a couple of doozy's. Two years ago, it was to lose 90 pounds. I'm more than half way there. I'm still at it. That resolution is never as far away as My Fitness Pal app or a fork, from my mind. I had no idea it would take more than a year to accomplish my 2014 resolution but I'm proud that I haven't let it slip away. The resolution for 2015 was to re-activate my art career. Let's face it though, in temperate zones like where I live, you're so busy strong shoveling the snow out of your path for the first few months of the year that most of us don't get to tackle our resolutions until early spring. That was the case with me. "Gardening Action with Bugs and Flowers" oil on canvas, Stephanie Rose Bird, c. 2015 There was something about the newness of spring that got me g...

Regulars here know of my weight loss journey. If you're new, here's some brief background. I decided to lose weight, using spirituality and calorie counting on My Fitness Pal about a year and a half ago. I lost 50 pounds. I felt great, gave away my big clothes to charity, celebrated and still planned to lose 40 more. I also embarked on writing the book "Mama Earth's Spiritual Guide to Weight-loss." Then life stepped in, in a big way. I got distracted. I started cooking my own food less, eating out more. Staying within the calorie limits I'd set (higher mind you), I reached for some "healthy" packaged foods. Low and behold, weight started to creep back on, slowly but surely. It came a pound here and a pound there--until I'd gained 5 pounds back. Recently I went back to the source. Back to Mother Nature for guidance and nourishment. I'd mentioned in a previous post how I'm eating more vegan and raw foods. That's a part of my mov...

I’ve written a lot about transformation during the past year because I started working on that journey seriously in January. Yesterday I went shopping. It was an eye opener. After having lost 45 pounds, I found that my former haunts were no longer mine. Over the years I had gotten so accustomed to being a certain size and shape that automatically when shopping I gravitated towards the same sort of clothing. Yesterday, I had to redirect myself away from the XL clothes, which would have bagged and dragged along after me. Instead, I headed to the size mediums—a huge breakthrough for me. In my past with the XL’s, my main goal was to find what covered me up the best. In some instances I had pushed past XL to a size XXL, so there was also a challenge to figure out which size I could actually fit. Generally at the XXL sixe, I would just leave the store to go find a store specializing in vanity sizing, wherein I could fit an XL. Now I’m no longer engaged in that sort of inner conflict. St...

It has been a winding, crooked path to meet my goals for weight loss. As many of you who have been following this blog know, losing weight was one of my New Years Resolutions. I have much to be proud of. I have stayed on that path without deviating even once since taking on this challenge in January. My body, however, has different ideas. Those of you on this journey with me know all too well, the body will drop its weight in chunks, then hold off, sometimes for weeks until it stabilizes before it will drop any more. This happens though I consistently eat the same way. Looking at this photograph of the pathway, it is easy to engage in the notion of journey. Yes, you can get to that destination promised in the picture but there is much to enjoy along the way to getting there. I have reached a major milestone. I am at the 30 pound mark, which means I am 1/3 of the way to meeting my goal. I get frustrated when I reach plateaus, such as where I am right now. Since my body is meanderi...

Yesterday, I wrote a post called Everyday Rituals. I can’t believe I forgot what I do before that warm shared drink. I like to start the day with a cleansing chilled drink. Simple, really but it leaves me feeling clean inside and ready for a day of clean, healthy eating. I have heard of people all around the world, doing a variety of different things with the types of water they drink, from hot water plain, to cool water with lemon, ginger and cayenne in parts of the Caribbean for weight loss. I like to fill my empty belly with several glasses of iced lemon water shortly after my feet touch the ground in the morning. Lemons are so bright—they scream Good Morning! They are also energizing and a good natural cleanser. Ice, is such a simple pleasure. What would we do without it? Water is refreshing. Often too, we mistake hunger for thirst so I start my day with this iced lemon water—a glass or two. It reminds me to get hydrated and stay that way. Then, through...

In "The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets," Barbara Walker says ancients believed any reflective surface, solid or liquid had mystical powers because the reflection is a part of the soul. Hence, soulless beings like werewolves and vampires, show no reflection in the mirror. The mirror is connected intimately to water, through the story of Narcissus and Echo. Various water orisha wouldn't be caught dead without their mirrors. Across cultures, water represents a mysterious spirit world. Walker closes her beautiful entry on mirrors sharing some Buddhist thoughts on reflections in the mirror; the belief that reflected images are a phantom of the mind. For the past few years, or realistically to be honest, the better part of the last decade I have avoided the magical mirror on the wall. Lately though, I have been catching glimpses when I go by the mirror that intrigue me so much that they have entered the landscape of my dreams. The other night, I saw an ...