Showing posts with label self-love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-love. Show all posts

Sunday, 12 January 2014

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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Thursday, 7 March 2013

Me?!..... Beautiful?!!!!

I have this quirky thing I do, in that I go up to random strangers and tell them how beautiful they are.

The usual response is:

{While looking around to see if I'm really talking to them}"You're talking to me?!!!"

YES, I'm talking to YOU!

Do you know how truly outstanding and beautiful you are? 

All the people I stop aren't "beautiful" in the classical, standard sense. They usually have very distinct features, come in all sizes and shapes, and its true that when I stop them, they truly don't hear compliments enough.

When's the last time you stopped someone to appreciate their beauty? Without expecting anything in return; this is not an excuse to pick someone up, but you acknowledging someone purely for their existence on the planet.

I challenge you to make someone else's day, purely for knowing that it feels good to see someone else smile. 

Please feel free to share your stories, as I love to hear what happens when people do this!