Ben Carson Under Fire?

I have heard from many different places that Ben Carson is under fire for the way he treated the press in a recent press conference. I don’t think Ben Carson is completely flawless – no human is! But this got my interests peaked because as many of you may or may not know, he’s quite the guy with quite the story! I really encourage that if you don’t know his background, look it up! This guy is pretty amazing, and the best part is, he’s kept God in the forefront of his life.

Anyways, the first thing I did was to look at different articles to see the opinions voiced. This is when I learned about what the press was upset about.

Years ago, when Carson was looking at going to universities, he was offered to attend a reputable military school. Whatever the wording was, he was told it would be free. Carson took this to mean a full scholarship. He told the military officer that he would decline as that was not the route in life he intended to go. Thus, he applied and went to medical school and the rest is history.

The press says that Carson claimed he had the full scholarship to a place that apparently doesn’t even offer scholarships. Now, that’s fine. The military officer may not have used the word “scholarship” so yes, maybe Carson did not quite understand the meaning at the time. He worked very hard to pay for everything he had in life, so going to school for free because of good grades would quite obviously appear to be a free scholarship to him. I can see that. But call it a lie if you’d like. I guess it depends on how you see the situation. But then there was an argument that he never even applied to this military school. Well of course he didn’t. He never once said he did. In fact, he said he had $10 in his pocket. Applying to schools at that time required a $10 fee meaning he could only apply to one – his medical school.

So of course, this completely disqualifies the arguments I’ve seen in the articles. But I didn’t stop there – I went on to see Carson’s behaviour at said “press conference”.

At this press conference, the press kept asking him about these same questions, the same ridiculous, disqualified questions. As anyone would, he got frustrated that they were going over the same things again and again. He then threw the ball back in their court and asked why they didn’t dig into deeper issues with the current president and other candidates, one being Obama’s sealed school records that nobody can look at. Carson questioned why the press didn’t want to know what was on those school records and why they were being hidden. Honestly, that’s a good point. Carson’s story is out there, his memoir is there, and the questions they’re asking are already answered if they look at the whole picture. Why don’t they want to know things that are completely hidden for some reason? Doesn’t that make you question things?

Anyways, I find this whole situation completely blown way out of proportion. What do you guys think? Did I miss something? Is it as ridiculous as it appears to me? I honestly think they’re just digging for anything against Carson, even the most trivial of things, because if this was the worst thing he’s done, are we even looking at other politicians? It blows my mind. Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Beating Mind Tendencies

I’m going to be embarrassingly honest with you in this post. We are all human, and we all have our own struggles. But when you choose to do something, you better do it 100%, or you will never be successful. There’s only one major road block that will battle you daily: your brain.

Yesterday, I decided I needed to do this vegan thing 100%. I’ve had too many travelling days in the past 3 weeks where I’ve had little control over what I could eat. Now that I’m home, I’ve gotta buckle down and do this.

My goals for this new lifestyle are as follows:
-Get rid of acne
-Weight Loss
-Feel Better
-Better Digestion
-More Energy

What I’m going to do:
-Work up to 8 hours of sleep per night
-Increase water intake up to 3L a day
-Raw fruit until 4 (some days raw all day)
-Minimize salt intake

So yesterday, when I completely made up my mind, I still started the day off wrong. I had half of a leftover black bean burger in the fridge, and simply because my husband was eating his leftovers and it seemed convenient, I ate mine. Remember, raw food is much better in the morning!

Throughout the day, I did well on the vegan side, but not the raw side. I did eat 6 organic bananas for one meal/snack, and then black bean pasta with marinara and nutritional yeast flakes for lunch. I could tell I definitely didn’t eat enough fruit because then I cooked up some “dessert” of coconut oil, oatmeal, and brown sugar. Sure it tasted good, but that was way too high in fat, and was another cooked meal before 4.

I don’t recall eating too much else throughout the rest of the day, but for a late, late supper, my husband and I went for pizza. I thought the place only had one option for vegan pizza. It was a wood-stove cooked, marinara pizza with fresh tomato marinara, basil leaves, and some rosemary mix. As I was browsing through the menu at all the other delicious pizzas I used to eat there, I noticed a side option of Daiya vegan cheese! My husband jumped right up and asked them to add that to my pizza. I was feeling pretty excited!

Now I’m not sure if it was because my taste buds are reprogrammed to all the junk food I had the past few weeks, but if I could describe the pizza in one word, it would be “fresh”. It literally tasted like tomatoes, oil, and a bit of flavouring. The cheese sadly didn’t do much against the amount of oil I’m sure they put on that pizza. I ate most of it, but took two slices to go. It honestly was all I could do not to reach out and put that parmesan cheese on my pizza, knowing it would improve the flavour so much. I’m holding out on this vegan thing, I can do it!

Now naturally, this morning, I wanted to reach in and grab those two pieces of pizza. But I’ve been watching a lot of Freelee’s videos lately. I’ve started with her oldest ones and I’m working my way to the newest. When you have so much of that information running through your head, I can honestly say it makes a difference.

Now, the embarrassingly honest part is that I was coming up with all kinds of excuses as to why I should eat the pizza. I was thinking about my blog, and how I could just not talk about what I ate today. I was thinking about how I want to eat raw until 4, but I could just go one more day. I’m sure we all know about that “one more day” psychology… And as I sat there making up excuse after excuse, I put my foot down and said no. I need to do this right, right now, not later.

And so I’m happy to say that this morning so far, I’ve juiced 6 oranges, savoured every sip of that fresh orange juice, and in a bit, throughout the day, I’ll be eating pears, a mango, apricots, and nectarines. I would love to get into more mono-meals, but right now this is what I have on hand so it will have to do.

I hope you are all having an awesome weekend!

Day 12 – An Unplanned Write-Off

This morning I woke up so dehydrated! So right away, knowing I caused damage last night, I drank some water.

But problems started right at breakfast. I actually tried to sit down and eat this red papaya I had. I noticed it smelled a little funny when I cut it open, but went on to eat it anyways. The very first bite, I spit out within two seconds. I don’t know what happened to this papaya, so of course I went looking for something else. I didn’t really feel like eating after the awfulness of last night, but of course, I want that stuff out of my house, then rationalized that I couldn’t waste all that money, so I finished last night’s leftovers. Awful, terrible, don’t even want to talk about it. The biggest key to success is to not even bring it in the house. I’ve gotta learn!

At the gym, I went for a gruelling 35 minute stationary bike ride. I kept raising the difficulty every two minutes and it took so much work. I was so happy when I was finally finished the last 10 minutes. I was beginning to think I should lower the level, but I managed to stick it out! I was so thirsty and drank a ton of water when I was done. But I was happy.

I finished my workout with some lunge stretches, walking high kicks, and my chiropractor’s exercises. It felt good to get things done in the morning for sure.

I don’t even want to speak about my lunch, but to be accountable, I must. Remember those brownies from last night? Well, let’s just say they got finished, topped with some vegan coconut milk yogurt. I should have just eaten the yogurt, but I can officially say all the junk is out of my house again. I just feel awful and need to get to the point of throwing stuff out rather than risking my health, and not ordering it in the first place. It’s back on the proper mental train.

Or… let’s just add fuel to the fire. My husband and I eventually got ready and headed into town. We’re due for our weekly groceries, and he had no food to really eat left. So we stopped to get him food. Instead of not getting anything like I should have, I did make a vegan decision, but a bad decision as far as eating when I wasn’t hungry. I had a green onion cake, and I would have been just fine if I hadn’t had it. Ugh… The moral of all of this is just stop. Just don’t indulge in things you KNOW are going to make you feel awful. It starts a huge train wreck that you have to try and reset yourself from. Learn from my terrible, bloating, sick-feeling, stomach-turning mistakes. I have not done my job in taking care of my body.

So, I’d like to say the rest of the day finally went better. To some minor extent, it did. But honestly, I snacked on Veggie Chips, organic limeade, and that’s about it. I was going to make baked bananas, but found out I had forgotten I was out of tin foil.

Today was a bad day, and a prime example of why the avoidance of eating junk is so important. Because I ate so badly all day, I had huge cravings for candy tonight. That’s a sure sign that I did not eat enough fruit today (or any) and it’s just a wreck. I’m thinking of doing a completely raw couple of days to help flush out my system. Let’s see if I have the mental power to do it!