How to live your best life

How to live your best life

This post contains products sent for review

Want to know how to live your best life?

Just make a decision that you are going to do it.  That you will do the things you previously never would have done, even if you only do them once, though the chances are that having done it once you will want to do it again.

Last year a friend I had met online, died.  Suddenly.  Unexpectedly.  Devastatingly for her family, shockingly for all her online friends who suddenly had a Kate-shaped void in their lives.

One of the last photos Kate shared online was a picture of her in a swimming costume as she headed off to hydrotherapy necessary for a healing broken elbow.   It summed up Kate.  Somebody who was not your typical swimwear model but who really didn’t give two hoots what people thought, she exuded body confidence and made those of us who weren’t so confident want to be more like her.   In her memory #BeMoreWitWitWoo was started and we shared photos of ourselves online that we might never have done previously.

The response I got when I posted a photo of myself in an old swimming costume on Instagram was staggering.  It was, and still is my most “liked” post.  Never in a million years did I ever imagine I would be sharing photos of my size 0 with a 2 in front of it body online and getting SO many positive responses.  In fact I didn’t get one negative.  Not one, “put it away, love” no “should you really, be doing that?” or “lay off the biscuits”.  I am sure some people thought that but nobody said it out loud on my post and it made me feel amazing, empowered, like I could do it more often.

So when we booked to go away to Iceland for a week and I saw that not only do hotels have geo-thermally heated pools, but that towns have them, and that the island also has a warm river, I knew I wanted to jump in them all, let Mr B photograph me and then share the pictures online.   I wanted to live my best life and I wanted to be able to share those pictures too.  Not just for me, but for that #BeMoreWitWitWoo legacy. 

Whilst Mr B therefore was scouring eBay for fleece lined waterproof trousers I was emailing Zoggs begging them to let me review a swimming costume on our holiday so I could upgrade the saggy ten year old one I had used previously.  They kindly agreed not just for me, for Mr B too.

Not only are their swimming costumes and amazing fit, they are resistant to sweat, oils and heat (which given the pools we would be in would be at least 38 degrees was something I knew we would need).  They are also ultra-chlorine resistant, which is something we needed on this trip as the pools were all chlorine free but given these will last for years it is important to know they will survive many a summer holiday.

It might have been -18 outside but that didn’t stop us jumping in the Secret Lagoon, trying to work out how to hike across snow to the warm river, and spending a relaxing half an hour in the hot tub outside our hotel room.   All the while, safe in the knowledge our costumes were also doing their bit for the environment.

You see these Zoggs costumes are part of their Ecolast range, made from ocean waste, something Zoggs are passionate about.

Around 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is left in the oceans each year, this remains in the marine ecosystem for hundreds of years.

By removing this material from the ocean and turning it into swimming costumes Zoggs are helping eliminate that waste. You can read more about how they go about that on their website.

Knowing that my Scoopback swimsuit was holding me in, in all the right places gave me the confidence to say to Mr B “Right, can you take a picture of me, in a minute when I go and stand in that snow?”.  I had seen a picture of Una Healey wearing her Zoggs costume on the beach in the Mauritius the week before and thought “well, what she can do on the beach, I can do on the snow”.

And to deciding that I would make a snow angel in newly fallen snow before breakfast one morning.

I have no idea what our fellow hotel guests would have said if they have seen me but I know my response would have been “I am saving the whales AND living my best life”.  Not a bad achievement for 7.45am.

Or indeed any time of the day or year.

Both my costume and Mr B’s trunks are available on the Zogg’s website, prices start from £28.