Throughout college while working on my Psych degree I always felt that I was a little different than most folks. I went through the motions though, working in a bar(s) which paid the bills sufficiently, and then some. I was a shopaholic, I partied way too much, and I treated my body like crap. I didn't exercise; I figured walking to class everyday was enough! I ate junk, I drank alcohol like the majority of college kids do, and I was depressed all the time. I just figured it ran in my family, so what if something seemed missing? I probably wasn't going to find it.
One day I was talking to a co-worker who had a 2 year old daughter. She said she had taken her to the doctor because she was having problems in her downstairs region. Well those problems turned out to be an early onset of puberty. To make things more horrific, the doctor told her that it isn't uncommon for girls to be having their menstrual cycle at such early age due to all the antibiotics they pump into the meat we are eating, specifically chicken.
What!!!??? I had vaguely heard of how nasty the meat and dairy industry was becoming, but how it was affecting people was absolutely unacceptable. So yes, I gave up the meat. Almost overnight. Well, I gave up red meat, chicken and pork. But not without a farewell dinner, just so I remembered what meat tasted like, I guess. I ordered myself one last steak. I was working that evening waiting tables, so I shoved a piece of that steak in my mouth so fast it lodged in my throat and I almost choked to death. I didn't know what to do, everyone thought I was kidding but I was really scared. I almost started to black out and looking for a chair, I remembered I could do the Heimlich maneuver on myself. Fortunately one of the cooks came running over and smacked me on the back hard enough to propel this piece of steak that I had inhaled into the trash. Needless to say, I had some epiphanies that evening. After calling everyone I knew and telling them I loved them dearly, I began my journey.
I was talking with a friend the other day about how you don't just make dietary and lifestyle changes over night. She reminded me that I wasn't even vegetarian when we met 4 years ago in that I was still eating seafood. I grew up eating fish and fish was good for you, right? My fondest memories are fishing with my father and catching what was going to be my dinner. These days, I know how polluted the waters are on this Earth, not only with chemicals like mercury but plastic. Plastic! There are actually huge areas in the Oceans that are constantly swirling masses of trash and plastic. When I found this out almost 4 years ago, I was told about the one in the Pacific. Just recently I found out there is one in the Atlantic as well. Unacceptable. So, how does plastic get into the fish? Well it just sits there in the water and yes, eventually it breaks down little bits at a time. The fish are eating those little bits of plastic thinking they are plankton therefore ingesting all the chemicals that all that trash is made of. And then we eat that fish. Two words: Food Chain.
I was also eating cheese. Ugh. I cannot believe that the day has come that I am honestly grossed out by dairy products.It was the single hardest thing for me to give up. I ate cheese on Everything! I ate it by itself. Snack snack snack. Well one day it dawned on me that for the same reason I gave up meat I should not be consuming dairy products. I did watch a film titled Go Further which I highly recommend. It presented the fact that all those antibiotics and filthy factory farming practices that cows are being forced to endure for meat consumption is the exact same process for milk/cheeses. Eureka! I couldn't possibly be a part of that system anymore and I don't want to be sick anymore.
Upon realizing that the same companies who owned all those packaged "edible food-like substances" also owned those organic packaged "edible food-like substances". So yes there is a market for processed food packaged and labeled "health food", but that doesn't mean that it's good for you. These companies don't care that you aren't educated as a chemist to understand what all those ingredients are and how they got in that cute little box. The only thing they care about is that you are buying those products. So what if they have addicting preservatives and additives in them? Chemicals and genetically altered ingredients that are killing you, slowly of course, so you will buy more before you kick the bucket.
I was on a mission: To be as informed as I could possibly be. But I still needed my health in order to stay on this mission and put this information into practice. I stumbled into a new world that seemed so alien to mainstream society. Unfortunately, we have stumbled so far off the path that the Earth has naturally given us to follow. Something as simple as growing your own food seems like an oddball thing to do. When I started learning about raw and living foods everything clicked right into place for me. Raw, living, and natural vegan foods felt like the missing puzzle pieces in the bigger picture of my life. I dove right in. I went to the library and checked out the only three or four books they had on raw and living foods, one of which was Brian Clements' Living Foods for Optimum Health from the Hippocrates Institute. I read it cover to cover. This is when the amazing stuff started happening. I was listening to the radio one day and there was going to be a seminar on the living foods lifestyle here in town. The woman giving the talks came from the Hippocrates Institute and I thought Wow! How ironic that I just finished this book and I'm searching for knowledge about this new lifestyle and voila! Well I dove deeper.
For me it only seemed appropriate to seek out one of these facilities and find out what all this detoxing and cleansing stuff was really all about. I found the Living Foods Institute in Atlanta and signed up for the Educator Certification Course. While working and saving up for the classes I tried to prepare myself for some mild detoxing but nothing can prepare you for what you will embark upon while really learning how to listen to your body. Now I'm working on my first 21 day juicefast and it is an amazing transformational experience. I am always surprised at the detoxification levels that I experience because I consider myself a fairly healthy person. It's funny, with all my psychology and holistic healing background I never made the connection with emotional therapy. Now that I have made that connection, it all makes perfect sense to me!
I hope with my story, I have shown that we don't get to a certain point overnight. We may choose to pursue a new lifestyle, but these changes take hard work, dedication, and education. I want this blog to be an educational tool for anyone who may be on a similar journey or anyone changing their eating habits. I plan to discuss a variety of issues relating to health and wellness and I hope that if you have read this far, you will like to read more.
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