Hey you. Thank you so much for visiting my blog. My name is Lenore. I’m 29 and I grew up and lived most of my life in the Netherlands. I grew up in a super tiny village that no one has ever heard of, but during my university years I lived in Utrecht. I spend my current days in the beautiful town of Pai in Northern Thailand with my dear Thai husband and our two wonderful dogs. In daily life I am an environmental social scientist, a Thai boxing athlete, and of course a blogger!

I started this blog in November 2019 as a health and fitness blog. And as much as I love to write about that topic, I felt something was missing. There were so many times that I wanted to post something about the environment or sustainability, as that is another great passion of mine. However, that was outside the scope of my blog. So, what to do about that? Revamp my blog of course! I redesigned it by using some more natural colours such as green and yellow. And as of January 2020, I divided my blog into three new categories. The first one is still all about healthy living. I moved all my earlier blog posts there. The second category is all about sustainable living. I can’t wait to create more and more content for that. And the same holds for the third category: simple living.

So why did I create the health and fitness blog in the first place? I’ve always been a sports- and health enthusiast. As a kid I used to do years and years of gymnastics and athletics. As every kid in our country I took swimming classes for a few years. Together with my best friend at the time we took some fun street dancing classes. And a few years later I fell in love with kickboxing, which I’ve done for years and still do whenever I visit the Netherlands. I’ve also always loved doing fitness and group classes such as spinning and body pump. And fast forward to my time in Thailand, my current sport that I absolutely love and occasionally compete in is Muay Thai, also known as Thai boxing. What better place to do it, than Thailand itself!

Next to sports, I’ve always been intrigued by other kinds of health topics, such as the way we eat, drink, sleep, and rest, or for example how stress affects us and how meditation or mindfulness can help us. It is my goal to share information on these kinds of topics with other women like myself, who struggle to find enough time in the day to truly take care of their bodies and their health. To be able to accomplish this, I also share information on success habits and how to implement them into your life so that you can take action on creating a healthier body and mind: so that you can create your own fit and fruitful future!

So why did I want to start writing about sustainable living and simple living topics as well? As I said, it’s simply another great passion of mine, but let’s have a look at how that is reflected over the course of my life so far. As a kid I always loved being outdoors. I always loved playing outside in the woods or the fields and going to these beautiful new places in nature during family holidays. I’ve always loved animals too. I became a vegetarian when I was 17 and vegan when I was 21 (and still going strong!). My number one reason has always been animal welfare, but the environmental impact is definitely a close runner-up.

When I was approaching 18, it was time to choose what I wanted to study. It was really difficult to choose something, until I found out about this study that I never realized existed: Environmental social sciences! So that’s exactly what I chose of course. And then at the end of my second year, I felt I needed some more challenge, which is why I started another bachelor on top of it, namely: Human Geography and Planning, with a focus on Development Geography. Both bachelors were extremely interesting and very related! It’s all about how we as humans interact with our environment and the space around us. And then after finishing both bachelors, I decided to do a 2-year research master in Sustainable Development: Environmental Governance. I learned so much again and I wrote my master thesis during an amazing internship in Pai, Northern Thailand at an NGO called Conserve Natural Forests. That is also the time that I met my husband, which is the reason that I’m still in Thailand. 😉 But as he lived and worked in Chiang Mai, I first moved there. That’s where I found a job as a research assistant at a unit within the Chiang Mai University that focuses on social and environmental research. However, I was really not a big fan of living in the city. Way too much traffic, too much noise, and too many people. Which is why we decided to move to Pai after living together in the city for two years. Pai is a super beautiful town in the mountains surrounded by forest. For him the first time moving there, for me it was like returning home. I now work at Conserve Natural Forests, the same place where I did my internship. And I could not have wished for a better job. I coordinate our internship program and research projects, take care of our international communications, help with our daily ecotours, do clean ups every week, get dirty in our tree nursery, and my absolute favourite: plant thousands and thousands of trees!

Moving to another country and leaving nearly all my stuff behind has also made me realize: I really don’t need that much to live a happy life. It’s so freeing to live a simple life with just the stuff that you need or actually use. I’m still learning of course, and have definitely not “mastered” it yet, but it’s definitely something that I’d love to write about so that we can go on that journey together. 😊