To Vegan or Not to Vegan? - Let's Dispell Some Veg Myths

After being vegetarian for over 7 years, vegan for a year, then raw vegan for a year, before getting extremely sick and nearly destroying my own immune system, I get such a huge amount of questions about that lifestyle, that I thought I'd post a short few set of myths that I end up repeating on a weekly basis :

1. VEGAN DIETS MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT - Its usually not the fact that a diet is meat-free that makes you lose weight; its the fact that usually when you go vegan, you focus on eating more natural foods that come from the ground, instead of a box filled with chemicals and crap.

The honest truth is that in my lifetime, I've met more than a fair share of overweight and extremely unhealthy vegans and vegetarians, because they still continued to eat foods that were from a box, highly processed, that just didn't have meat. Not a great way to support body health.

2. EVERYONE CAN GO VEGAN HEALTHILY - Trust me folks, as much as I'd love to believe this one were true (as a big advocate for cruelty-free products), this one totally depends on each individual's body type, blood type and what works for them.

My nine year almost meat-free diet actually tore my immune system down so much, that I contracted viral meningitis. Unless I re-incorporated meat into my diet, I may not have recovered my health to such a strong level where I haven't even gotten so much as a full-blown cold since (over 2 years later).

Also, my body was trying to tell me over those nine years that I needed meat because I was consistently jittery, was battling multiple candida issues the whole time, and really had some severe hormonal imbalances. Folks, I learned the hard way what my body needs; please do not do the same.

3. NON VEGANS DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE PLANET - One of my biggest pet peeves honestly about becoming an omnivore again after being vegan for so long, is having some vegan eaters tell me I'm a part of destroying the planet. OH REALLY?

Considering
a) I might most seriously still be debilitated if I didn't start eating meat again, and may not healthily be here to tell my tale,

b) I buy mostly organic where I can, use the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle, with emphasis on the first two) every day,

c) Use awareness in nearly all of my buying choices, where I choose local, lightly used, and upcycled wherever I can, and last but not least

d) Have finally started to make a true impact in my love for all things green by relating it to people with their health,

my comment back is, I'd rather eat my meat (thank you very much), continue to have my positive impact on this planet as a whole, and teach thousands of others (which I do every day) how their small choices cumulatively as individuals have a bigger impact than one person going hog-wild.

I thought it would be useful to not only vent, but also help countless others in this vegan/omnivore debate... Now that I've been on both sides of this fence, I really get how futile the argument sometimes is. It's more important that people know what real food looks like period, as right now most people believe that fast food is really food. We've got a much bigger issue to tackle than we initially may have thought.

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Be Like Water?

My homegirl and amazing personal trainer friend Trina and I always have a point of connection around the phrase

Be Like Water

 Here's my interpretation of what that means:

• Be open to change - water in rivers just flows... it doesn't ask where to go, it just goes... It doesn't ask "why is there a dam here?", it reorganizes itself accordingly.


• Be cleansing - water purifies the mind, body and spirit. When you interact with people, are you leaving them in a better state than how they were before they were with you? 


• Be strong or weak, whatever is needed - water can change its properties very easily. It can be fluid, when it needs to work its way around things. It can be cold as ice and hard as a rock, when it needs to change the environment around it. Or, it can be hot and steamy, and warm up an entire room.

When you let go of needing to be in control of everything that's happening in life; instead control how you think of, manage and deal with life, the entire world around you changes! And what happens when things change? New things happen. That's what life was meant for.

If you were to be like water, what would that look like for you?

What's YOUR Body Saying?

When I was recently in Jordan, I felt like I became the Queen of parlour tricks! I would be sat down in front of people, and asked to "read" them.

I'm not pyschic... (well , I am, but that's a whole other story).

I'm going to show you how to accurately read people in a few quick steps:

• The health of their body - does their skin glow? Is their hair shiny and strong? what about their nails, are they white and strong, or soft and brittle? Physical well-being is always exhibited through the general state of the skin, eyes, hair and nails of a person.


• The health of their emotional state - does the person have bags under their eyes? Do they have frown lines?  Is their mouth pointing down when they're at rest? Does the person roll their eyes and sigh a lot? These are easy ways to tell if a person "disproves" of people and things a lot and are clear signs they are living with stressed relationships. Emotional well-being is always exhibited through healthy or unhealthy relationships with others.


• The health of their mental state - does the person cross their arms? Do you have to strain to hear a person because they speak softly? Do people use negative language about themselves - "I need to lose a few pounds", "Sorry I look so badly today". Does the person slouch, or do they stand straight? Mental well-being is always exhibited by watching a person's relationship with themselves.


• The health of their spiritual state - does this person have an air of confidence? Do they look like they are truly happy? Are they comfortable in their own skin? Spiritual well-being connected to a person's ability to be their unique, divine purpose in life and shows it in their comfortability to just BE. It is also strongly exhibited by a person's connection the planet as a whole.
  

When you master this skill of reading people, you learn to get accurate readings about where a person is in their life in under 60 seconds. You can see why it can be so amazing right?
 
I'm not showing you how I do this so you can be the master at judging all of those who you come into contact with (that's what we're so used to doing!). I'm telling this so that you can master being empathetic to all those you come across in your life. When you can tell what issues a person is dealing with in their life, you actually learn to judge them less harshly, and learn to walk a mile in their shoes.

I do this entire process for a living. And I wouldn't trade what I do for all the money in the world. It's important that you know where my work starts from, and this is it.... and it always ends (well, it doesn't really end, does it?) with LOVE.

So now that you know what I see when I see you, what is it that YOU see in YOURSELF?