JulieBhosaleAchive

Every year I set a word for the year. It is something I have been doing for a while time now after reading this in a business book. I used to do dream boards. I think these really helped when I was a lot younger, but after having the boys I have preferred to simplify the year goal-wise. Having a word for the year helps me to focus. I take actions and check that the choices I make are in line with this when the time comes. I do not spend a lot of time thinking about it. It is the first word that comes to me and feels right. A true gut-instinct. The word hope came so easily at the end of last year. In previous years I have had more grunter words, like ‘power’ and ‘unlimited’. Is 'grunter' a word....well it is now! Anyway, this year I want to change tack a little bit. It is no secret that last year was tough. I know that I did not even write my new year blog in 2018 until it was April! It was an up hill battle the whole time. This year while I know the fight is still going to be ...

As 2018 nears the end, I have been able to decrease the intensity of my work for a bit and it has been a time to pause and churn the year over. I have forged ahead into a lot of incredible ventures this year, but it has been a very hard process. Constantly stepping into the unknown and up against a lot of resistance. Like tackling a thick forest with a small blade trying to hack down a path in the trees, while also defending my back from creatures lurking out, attacking my business and my family. This sounds dark, but that is what it has felt like for a significant portion of the year. Looking over many of my blogs from the last 12 months reaffirms this. I guess I expected the small blade & thick forest as part-and-parcel of the deal, but not so much the hidden creatures. At least not at this point in the game. The ‘hidden creatures’ are also known as - other businesses, organisations and people who not only do not ‘get’ what we are up to but make an active and vindictive effort to...

It’s mid-July. Ask where the last few months have gone I would not be able to tell you. I do know what day of the week it is again. I have started to regain normality out of my ‘writing cave’. What ever normal is. As I shared on one of my Facebook LIVES the journey to finish The Nourished Toddler has been my toughest yet. Big call considering my other ‘projects’ I have done - a doctoral thesis and having two babies at the same time, self publishing a cook book and a year later my first non-fiction book. This time, the variables and odds were stacked against me hard and fast for a number of reasons. There were also a lot more people trying to bring me down. Now is not the time to go into that and many of you know some of this from previous blogs and posts. This may also sound left of field but it’s the aftermath which is harder to manage. I knew this too. Those previous projects taught me sharply about this. Everything gets put off and I mean everything . I must, in order to be able to ...

We are now firmly in the thick of the festive season. This brings along with it a lot of family and social occasions. As many of you know I spend a significant portion of my time presenting and being in front of people. Getting presentable for such engagements is not an easy task when covered in children! This year in particular I have spent a lot of time on the road, little monkeys in tow and very much awake when getting ready in the mornings. I wanted to share with you something that was really invaluable in helping me not only look presentable but feel really good too. Previously, the only make up lessons or guidance I ever had was back in 2006 (yes nearly 10 years ago) at a shop in the mall. The Body Shop from memory. One of those 'come in get your make up done and purchase some products' experience. Yes 10 years ago! It was fair to say my make up collection was a little worse for wear and something that pretty much came at the bottom of the priority list with the arrival o...

Like a lot of true-blue startups, our company was started at the kitchen table - which was to become my ‘work-station’ for a long time. While I have always had a desk at the university research office, a huge part of my work (research and business) has been done at home. With two young children this made the child care juggle easier as I could work when they slept and for a large part I was still breastfeeding both of them. Before our second baby was born I did have one of the rooms of our 3-bedroom place to do quiet work if I needed it…but I lost this after his impending arrival. When it came to writing my book ( The Nourished Baby ), just like my thesis, it was also largely written at the kitchen table late at night, as well as in a desk in our eldest sons room. This meant I could shut the door and forget the rest of the chaos of the house while looking out to at least something green. Not a long-term solution but one that worked in the interim and indeed I got the book done! Recentl...

Windy babies is a very common concern for new parents. Wind is the the air in your baby's tummy. During feeding your baby may swallow a lot of air along with her milk when they feeds as well as potentially gulping in air when they cry. While all babies can get wind, some will experience this more than others. Your babies gut is very delicate especially in the early new born days as it is very immature. While the organs of the digestive system are fully formed the upper and lower intestine which make up your babies gut take some time to mature - in terms of the bacteria that gets laid down as well as the enzymes that get processed. It is this process that can take longer for some babies. Some babies may also experience reflux - the technical terms for this is Gastroesophageal Reflux There is a valve at the top of the stomach that keeps food from going back up into the esophagus. If that valve is not fully developed, or opens at the wrong time, the stomach contents can move back, or ...

August the 26 th 2017 in Auckland marks the official kick-off to our massive 10:20 starting solids tour. It has been months of work behind the scenes – but we are pumped with that mixture of excitement and nervousness. Ages back… when I was writing my book…my husband and I were talking about the tours and what cities to go to. I wanted to reach as many people as possible so we decided just go for it and go as big as we could – taking the boys with us. While having a break from them is always welcome (and sleep too) in order to travel the country for the period of time we have planned, leaving them at home was just not going to be an option. I did not want to be away from them that long AND we would have struggled to get help with this too. More importantly, none of this would have been possible without them. Doing it as a family was the way forward. Truly merging my passion, our lives and business together. And so the 10:20 tour was born. First job was for me to finish writing the boo...

It has been just over two years since I posted my blog, My Real Postpartum Body. Two years and it is still going viral. Two years of mums reading this, major media outlets sharing it and being asked for interviews. Two years of getting messages time after time saying how relieved mums are to not feel alone with this. To me this just shows how much the changes that happen to us after having a baby affect us. How much pressure we have to look a certain way after having a baby. A few weeks ago, during one of the last days of our ‘real’ summer…you know when it was hot enough to get in the water, we took the boys to a family day at the beach. I had just finished writing my book and we were all looking forward to some quality time at our local beach. My husband took a small video of all of us – one for the memory books - he loves doing this. That evening he showed me the video and some of the photos he also took and asked me if he could share this (on social media). My first thought when I...

It started as a typical hectic day. Children waking at the crack of dawn, inhaling coffee while ensuring they are fed, asking a million times for pants and shoes to be put on, refereeing the fight over the one particular dinosaur they both want and then like an octopus carrying them plus daycare bags and the kitchen sink into the car, to do the double drop off. When I finally sat down to work, finding my sanity with a peaceful second coffee…my email pings. I had a feeling when I saw the title of the email that it was not going to be pleasant and I should have probably left it unopened, but like a magnet you somehow get drawn in and I opened it. The words have been hard to forget…. “Commercial Whore”….. “You are a Commercial Whore.” I will spare you the subsequent lengthy paragraphs of ranting that were also included in this email to me because…well you get the gist based on those two words alone. This was not an isolated email. This is one of many emails and messages I have received o...

  The universe certainly works in mysterious ways. I find it no surprise that on the week of our one year anniversary for my first cook book ( Healthy Easy Dinners for Busy Mums ) being released, the manuscript for my first published book is also due. I have always loved writing and have dreamed of writing a published book for as long as I can remember. It was not however until a particular day when writing my thesis that I actually felt  like I was a writer. I was down in Wellington for my first writing retreat after having Sahan. We had scheduled this before he was born as a bit of a break...well break from the kids and a chance to catch up on some sleep (like months of lost sleep really). When I booked into the hotel the receptionist said to me "oh you are the writer! We have a quiet room assigned for you". My heart soared. I loved how it just fitted me, even though it was my Doctoral thesis I was writing at the time – I was indeed a writer. Self-publishing my cook book, w...

Dairy is one of those very ‘grey’ areas when it comes to nutrition. On either side of the dairy argument there are positives and there are also points to consider. Positives being that dairy is a great source of numerous nutrients such as protein, fat, calcium and vitamin D. Plus a number of dairy products like yoghurt actually put good bacteria back into your gut. On the other hand, dairy products typically have had some level of processing and depending on individual tolerance can actually cause a range of digestive and gut problems. My general take on dairy is that if you can tolerate it – great! It is an easy source of the afore mentioned nutrients. However, you just want to make sure you do not go crazy as it can irritate your gut (differing levels for different people) which is central to so much of our overall health especially our immune system. It is also crucial to keep your intake of other nutrient dense whole foods high. Clear as, ah, a milky cup of milk? Like I said, dairy...

The coming of the new year is a time we set a lot of new goals. Less work, warm months (or cold months sorry Northern Hemisphere!), family and Christmas all contribute to this being a natural time of reflection. When it comes to goal setting and news years resolutions there are a lot of practical strategies around how do this is. I have actually previously written a blog on this – it is actually quite an interesting read as I did this at the start of 2015 – 37 weeks pregnant with Smushie and facing the last year of my thesis or as I aptly called it the 'Mr Everest of the academic world in a storm'. But what about if you just do not know what you really want or even how to allow yourself to dream of what you really want? As mums we are so programmed to forget us, to put ourselves last, if at all. When our dreams have been shattered or perhaps the daily grind of life just feels so never ending - the fatigue, the work, the bills, the children's demands....we can forget to dre...

Life BC (Before Children)… Life with children is all our marriage knows – I fell pregnant while undergoing fertility testing about 2 months after we got married, pregnant against huge odds with sever polycystic ovarian syndrome, no period for over two years and was potentially facing three years or more of IVF. I have this vague memory of ourselves in life BC, the two years together before tying the knot, that involved a lot of breakfasts in bed, spontaneous weekends away, late night dinners (we actually used to Google cool new restaurants to go to at 6pm on a Saturday night and be out the door on the same night!!)….hour long showers and hot steamy nights….. I am sure we still fought but the above is all I remember. Life AC (After Children)…. Now we are knee-deep in parenting two young boys while juggling three business and an academic career in there too. Breakfast is coffee gulped down in the morning and if we are super lucky some scrambled eggs made with our four year old helping an...

The worlds of business and academia are harsh and at times, unforgiving. Behind the highlights of corporate attire, trips away and television interviews is the under belly of pushing deadlines, working in the wee hours, having to call people to put off payments, and huge self-doubt. Plus, I am still a mum with all the sleep-less nights, snotty noses, scraped knees, tantrums and a truck-load of mothers guilt thrown in there too. If I said to you that I never felt like giving up – it would be a down right lie. The last couple of weeks have been especially tough. Battling the never-ending juggle of invoices, feeling the fatigue of the year and struggling with some very tight deadlines ahead of me.  I am particularly feeling the pressure with my book. And it is not just the book, it is making the jigsaw pieces fit. I know it seems like you receive a book deal and ride off into the sunset, writing away and a quiet table under the trees with a vino beside you. It is not like that, least not ...

  Sunday was a hard day. So was yesterday. We have just spent 3 days in Wellington for two events, with a day to do some business work in between. It was amazing! One of the highlights of the year. I got to meet amazing mums, spend time with my husband and had sleep. Oh glorious sleep. I felt like I slept more than I had in two years. Just two full nights deep sleep will do that. When I first left both my babies to go away for work I wrote this blog . It stands true today. Going away is good for me. It makes me a better mother. I feel so fulfilled. Working in different locations both here in NZ and around the world is part of what my husband and I have (and continue) to create for our businesses as well as our lifestyle. It also does not mean it is easy. With children work is never easy. Going away is never easy and nor is coming home. The logistics are there regardless. The guilt is there regardless. I find for me I already start thinking of ‘coming home’ even before we have left....