I Was Invited Over… – Healing Journey Day 35

Journal:
It felt so nice to sleep in today. I was actually surprised how late I slept in, but did not regret it at all. Since I only have one of my dogs living with me at the moment, I’ve been letting him sleep on the bed with me and every morning, I wake up to him laying directly beside me, head on the pillow and everything! He’s such a cuddle bug. I love him.

So, today was pretty much another write-off day. I had been invited over for supper to a colleague’s house and because I’m only eating fruit at the moment, I knew that there wouldn’t be anything there for me to eat in the way of fruit. However, I did find out they were having haystacks which meant there would be veggies.

If you don’t know what haystacks are, they are a build-your-own dish. You start with some type of chips (usually corn chips) then put beans or chilli on top of the chips, usually some type of cheese on top of the beans, then top with all your favourite veggies (cucumber, tomatoes, olives, lettuce, onions, etc…). The final topping is your sauce and depending on who you are, you may put ranch, sour cream, salsa, guacamole, ketchup, etc. There are many, many different combinations you can do and it is all up to your preference.

For breakfast, I got out my new, electric orange juicer that my husband bought for me. I only had three oranges, but it was enough to make me fall in love with this electric machine. No more hand-grinding for me! Along with the orange juice, I mixed in some organic blueberry juice. Oh my goodness! I wish I could tell you how good it was. It was… a dream. I could have drank that all day! Next time, I need more oranges!

Following my little breakfast, I washed up the dishes, folded a load of laundry, got ready and went to the gym. We were having a bit of a snowstorm and I found out later that between the hours of 11:00 and 4:00, there were 157 accidents in the city. I’m thankful to say that though I saw one accident and watched a truck and trailer slide into the curb and bounce off of it, I was safe and was not a part of that statistic. It was a bit of a mess on the roads.

At the gym, I had a really good workout. I did some squats, chest press, hammer curls, pullovers, EZ-Curl bar bench press, and 3 ab exercises. I then finished up with 30 minutes on the elliptical. I came out of that gym sore and tired but feeling accomplished.

After I got home, I decided that I should use up some of the vegetables that are going ripe too fast since I’m already not going to be eating all fruit later. If I’m going to break my plan, then it needs to be within the same day so I’m not breaking my plan every day.

For a late lunch, I washed and chopped up a whole head of butter leaf lettuce. I then sliced up half of an English cucumber to put in it. I cut up two Roma tomatoes and threw them in. I took a whole head of broccoli, chopped it up and put it in. I also had some raw, fermented beets and their greens in my fridge so I put a couple tablespoons of that in. I then mashed a whole avocado, a tablespoon of raw sesame tahini, some lemon juice and a bit of garlic powder in a bowl to use as the dressing. Though the first few bites were good, it quickly got very bland. I then remembered the BeeFree Honee I had downstairs (honey made from apples, no bees required to do the work). I put a splash of that in and it was ok, but still didn’t do the trick. So I did a dangerous thing (out of control) and found some organic, green sriracha that I put in as well as some Earth Island ranch that I had. It did make it a bit better, but honestly, I shouldn’t have put all that in. I simply sat, looking at my salad, and thinking of how much fat was in this salad. This was definitely not at the same macro levels that I normally eat at and it was honestly making me nervous.

I tried my best to eat the whole salad, but I just couldn’t do it. It was more volume than I’m used to, not to mention all the fat that was in it. Before I hit the stage where I eat fruit all day and a supper salad, I need to figure out how to make a good, raw, fruit and veggies only dressing.

After I ate, I had to quickly shower and get ready to go. By this time, it had stopped snowing and the temperature was half a degree above zero celsius meaning that things were a little slushy and not frozen, so driving was relatively safe.

We honestly had an awesome night at my colleague’s. It was a night of relaxation and laughter.

I made myself a small haystack because I was still a little full from the salad. I used only a few of the small, round, Tostito corn chips (I didn’t want that nasty over-salted feeling again), some vegan chilli, some soy cheese that my hostess had bought just for me (if it wasn’t just for me, I would have left this off to be honest), tomatoes, lettuce, corn, an olive, cucumber, pickles, and salsa. I know it sounds like a lot, but when you consider that I’m only putting about a tablespoon of each topping on the half cup of chilli that I ate, it actually wasn’t that much. Needless to say, I was STUFFED.

When we finally came home, I didn’t do much but go to bed. I was really hoping my digestion would kick in, but it didn’t. It takes so much longer to digest cooked foods – particularly processed foods – than it does the fresh fruits and vegetables. I was almost sure, with all the fat I ate today, that I would be up another 8 pounds like that one day I went up 8 pounds from eating cooked foods. However, I was ecstatic to find what I stated below. To find out how much this day set me back, keep scrolling down!

Review of Symptoms:
-Tongue is clear. 🙂
-Acne still bad; almost thinking it’s worse today.
-First day in a long time feeling stuffed.
-Digestion is delayed… a cooked food/processed food result.
-Hair is not so greasy (will try to explain this finally tomorrow).
-Noticed that my thighs have shrunk A LOT! I was getting to the point I hated my legs and didn’t even want my husband to see them. I couldn’t even look in a mirror with shorts on in the summer or I would take them back off. Now? I am LOVING my legs again! Eating naturally has made such a difference!

Weight at the end of the day = 172.2 lbs (only up one pound from yesterday!!!)

Total Calories = 2051 (58% carbs, 36% fat, 6% protein… way too much fat!)

Watermelon Island – Healing Journey Day 18 – Experiment Time!

Journal:
Wowee! What a day. Where do I even begin?

Well, let’s start with the fact I was running late this morning, so I packed 3 mini watermelons with me. I attempted to eat one before leaving on our field trip only to find out it tasted ROTTEN. Not a good start to the day.

After returning from the field trip, I attempted to eat another one for lunch. This one tasted better, but still not like the watermelons of true summer. I’m hitting the end of the season and the results are nasty. Why did I choose to eat fruit at this time of the year?

So needless to say, my idea of getting in some watermelon was a disaster. So I decided to use today as a true experiment day. For the past 17 days, I have only had MINIMAL amounts of fruit. I have not had anything else. Well, today I decided to see how I would react to some vegan junk food.

First I had a slice of vegan carrot cake. I wish I would have taken a picture of this beauty, but I was so nervous to actually eat it that it didn’t cross my mind. I actually was nervous to eat this piece of cake! I think back to my childhood days where we ate sweets REGULARLY (and here I was questioning a piece of carrot cake!!). Well, my body was dying while I ate it. It was so unbelievably sweet that I honestly started not feeling well. I stopped after a couple bites. It was not “good” to me at all. Oh have my tastebuds changed! As I forced myself to eat some more, I noticed that I even could end up with a headache if I continued eating this way. Oh man. Processed sugar is clearly bad.

Then I had some Ruffles All-Dressed chips. It was a very small amount, but the salt almost felt like it was burning my mouth. Oh it was so strong I can’t even begin to describe it to you. I felt like I might even go puffy around my eyes. Thankfully I didn’t as I was in a staff meeting, but man! Once you’ve been eating clean for so long, you really notice the unhealthiness of such foods when you eat them again. The power was potent!

I didn’t leave work until around 7:30/8:00 at night. It was a long, stressful day. But after I got home, I was starving. I didn’t get around to eating the third watermelon and I was STARVING. All I could think about was going ANYWHERE to get some kind of food. Fruit was not on my mind. It took a bit of willpower to prevent myself from getting in the car and driving to a drive-thru but I knew it was the effects of the junk I had today. It’s honestly terrible. Why do we do these things to ourselves?

In the end, I cracked open the third watermelon I had. The flavour sucked. It almost tasted like the red parts were the same as the rind. I couldn’t even eat it. I maybe had 2 or 3 bites. Fruit just sucks in quality here right now so my calories are staying very low. I’m not eating what I need, especially with the long hours I’m pulling and the stress I’m going through at the moment. Tomorrow is a banana island day and I’m hoping my bananas show better results. So here’s to going to sleep hungry and awaiting to have bananas tomorrow. Let’s hope it’s a better day.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad, especially on chin and where cheeks meet neck. Hating it.
-Hungry. Fruit quality is sucking right now.
-Almost a headache from sweet vegan junk food.
-Burning mouth and feeling of swelling from chips.
-Hair is slight greasy after water washing today.

Weight at the end of the day = 174.6 (up 1.8 lbs from yesterday… salt retention much?)

Total Calories = Approx. 966 (63% carbs, 32% fat, 5% protein… way too high in fat!!)

Cruelty-Free Sandwiches! Yum!

As a kid, I LOVED sandwiches. All the time, anywhere. Picnic foods were my favourite. I don’t know what started it, but it was a love that grew quick.

As a vegan, I don’t indulge in bread too often. I try to eat more whole foods and less processed foods. However, I broke that today.

I did a quick grocery shop with my husband this morning, and I picked up a loaf of Silver Hills bread, some Vegenaise, Symphony lettuce (check it out, so pretty and good!), as well as a few other things. I came home, said goodbye to my husband as he had to head to work, and then got out my knives and my toaster. A sandwich was made!

Yes, that was the finished product. Two slices of toasted Silver Hills bread – The Big 16, with one organic, sliced up tomato, roughly 10 small leaves of Symphony-packed lettuce, and Vegenaise, included in the picture for you to see. Not one animal was harmed in the making of this sandwich! How cool is that? And the taste? Delicious! Yum! In fact, I ended up making another sandwich with a different head of the Symphony-packed lettuce and cucumber instead of tomato. Drool…

For those that are wondering, Silver Hills is a bread company that works out of British Columbia. Their breads contain no dairy or eggs, and have excellent ingredients, primarily being made from sprouted grains. Check them out here: Silver Hills.

Tastebud Change: Part II

So as I said in my previous tastebud post, when you drop all dairy and most processed things, your tastebuds change. The example I used in my other post was the coconut rice that I had never been able to taste the coconut in before. Now it hits me like a coconut bomb. I love it.

Well, the other night, I had a moment of weakness. My husband and I went to a restaurant we normally don’t go to. And we ordered our favourite dish from there, which is cactus cut potatoes. There is no dairy on the actual potatoes, but there is in the dip that I used to love that comes with them.

I avoided it at first, but we had waited way too long to eat, and I had a moment of weakness. I dipped a potato in. Sometimes it sucks to be honest, but I do want to be transparent here. But here’s the funny part. It tasted awful. It tasted nothing like what I remembered. And it was’t just the batch. My husband said it was the same as always. I never thought the day would come where I didn’t like dairy… Oh my!

It’s amazing what your body can and will do. I won’t be craving that dip again anytime soon.

It’s So Easy When You Feel God Around You… But What About When You Don’t?

I just got back from a large trip with my students. They are in the school’s choir, and we just completed a Fine Arts Trip where we put on three performances. Our students are actually very talented, and were given admiration left and right. Our kids truly are blessed.

But as I was sitting watching this heavenly-voiced choir of my students, and thinking about how perfect and wonderful they sound and are representing their God on stage in front of so many people, a thought struck me that I hadn’t really processed before: When you feel like you are in the presence of God, it is so easy to “behave”… to be “good”. But when my students and other people in the world leave a place where you can undeniably feel God’s presence, and you walk into the world of sin that is so easily seen around you, it all of a sudden becomes way too easy to “misbehave” or to be “bad”.

Why is this? Why can my students, or people in general, be so respectful and so Christ-like in a church or when performing in the name of Christ to hopefully show others the deepest love of all, and yet be so different when they leave that setting? What is it about the world that is so “pulling” on us in the wrong direction? What is it about being at church or in a Christ-promoting atmosphere that makes it so easy for us to do what we know is right?

I wish so much people were able to freeze the moment: freeze the feelings and the thoughts at the time when they were so easily attained and hold onto them when the rest of life comes in. Why aren’t we capable of doing this? Even when I was younger, I can remember going to spiritual retreats and feeling so connected with God. Yet, a few weeks pass and I feel that connection fading. Why is this? Why can’t we be on a “spiritual high” all the time?

I hope my students, and all people of the world, will notice this difference as I have. I hope they will take more seriously and hold on more dearly to those quickly fleeting moments. If we choose to surround ourselves with the biggest influences all the time, maybe we could live our lives a little louder.

What do you guys think? Leave a comment below.

Why Go Vegan?

Hello everyone!

This is a huge decision, as you can imagine. I want to explain myself as to why I’m choosing this venue. Let me explain my history.

My father was very young when his family went from Quebec to New Brunswick. Speaking little to no English, they struggled for awhile to because accustom to the new province. My grandfather was a woodsmen complete with a team of horses and later big machinery. My father quit school after grade 9 to work with my grandfather. And so the lifestyle of “meat and potatoes” began. Whatever they shot was their meat, and whatever my grandmother grew in the garden was their produce. A very simple, carnivorous life.

Naturally, I grew up eating A LOT of meat. Not because we didn’t go shopping, but I was still a hunter’s daughter, and meat was a regular, every-meal thing. When I was young, it would be no big deal for me to sit down to a pound of bacon myself. It’s a miracle I wasn’t obese!

When I met my first vegetarians in grade 8, I was amazed. This concept that I believed to only belong to celebrities belonged to real life people! I was the only vegetarian in my area, and the lack of knowledge was evident in a quick trip to a hospital with extensive stomach pains. The doctor then informed me of some vital nutrition I was missing, and instead of telling me to eat meat again, told me some vital vegetables I needed to be sure I ate daily.

I was vegetarian for around 10 years. I quit meat cold turkey. My grandfather of course was convinced I was going to die, and was continuously trying to feed me meat. My only family was shocked, but my grandmother on my mother’s side, who has always had an interest in health, was happy. She basically went vegetarian with me! (She never was much of a meat eater).

When I met my husband, he was vegetarian and had been his whole life. My university graduation had led my brother to convince my future husband to try the “real stuff”. From then on, he was hooked.

Eventually, it was the smell of beef jerky that won me back. That smell in my very house all over again won me in. In fact, it opened up the whole new realm of macro counting with my interest in fitness peaking too. With the high levels of protein “needed”, it seemed as if I couldn’t survive without meat. And so I ate meat again for roughly 4 years.

Now, I’ve done so much research. And to keep it short, there is so much evidence that a plant-based diet is the way to go. I would like to think of myself as “getting back to the basics”, naturally. The world of fitness and diet will continuously battle itself. All information can be conflicting. But nothing can deny the way you feel both mentally, physically, and spiritually. Mentally, I’m not hating my food, I’m not worried about going over my “macros”, and I’m not worried about having to stop myself from eating while still feeling like I’m starving. Physically, I feel better. I don’t have to worry about eliminating things to figure out what’s wrong with my body, I get to look forward to younger, more flawless skin. And spiritually, I can feel good about being accountable for selecting the best foods that I can. I can also feel good about my choice not to inflict pain on animals that I myself could not kill. If I couldn’t do it, why do I take part in the process at all?

Some things I’m going to be doing are:
-Trying to buy as much organic as I can
-Continuing my workouts
-Drinking 3L of water a day
-Learning more about, and sticking to food combining rules
-Cutting processed sugar 95%
-Eating mostly fruit until supper
-Eating raw 90% of the time
-Eating until I’m full!

I will keep you posted on my journey! I’m excited for this new phase 🙂