It’s been 4 years since I’ve posted on this blog site. I have posted a few times on my other one about eating and training, however I am not training for any races and feel I should return back to this blog. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since I started my green smoothie challenge.
It sounds funny to me that I had to “challenge” myself to drink green smoothies because now I feel off if I don’t start my day with one. Along with my green smoothie challenge I gradually made other changes too. Each year my biometric scores would get a little better. They were never bad, I always scored very well, but of course I want to beat myself each year.
There were a lot of lessons learned these past 4 years and a lot of ups and downs. I made the mistake of trying to quit things cold turkey without finding a healthy replacement and of course failed. When I tried to quit processed sugar, I ate more cheese. When I tried to quit cheese, I ate more sugar. However, I successfully quit eating meat. I started with no land animals and in turn would eat seafood a couple times per week. I increased my consumption of dark leafy greens, vegetables and fruit. When I joined a CSA, it was great because I was learning about new vegetables I had never heard of and how to eat them.
I bought several cook books with plant based recipes. I was introduced to a whole new world of food. It was pretty exciting and I was becoming healthier. A little over a year ago, I started decreasing my consumption of seafood. I would eat fish once or twice a month. This past fall, I officially quit seafood.
My next goal was to try to quit cheese again, because I ate too much. However, this time I decided to gradually back off cheese. I learned to make a few nut cheeses which made me realize I can eat nut cheeses instead of dairy cheese and it’s acceptable. I also don’t buy cheese at the store anymore. If cheese comes on my food at a restaurant, then I’ll eat it. But not buying it and bringing it home has definitely helped me to forget about cheese. I have not fully quit cheese but I’m getting closer. The longer I go without it, the worse I feel when I eat it. For instance, I had a grilled cheese sandwich the other day for lunch and had real food coma. I struggled to staying awake after lunch and when I finally got home from work I passed out. The next day I felt like I had a hangover from drinking too much alcohol but it was from cheese. This is what cheese does to me now.
Since I’ve backed off cheese, I’ve also backed off processed sugar. Now when I do have a small piece of candy like M&M’s, Snickers, etc. I instantly get a very bad headache. It’s amazing how I used to be a junk food junky and didn’t notice any of this. I had built a high tolerance to these foods. But when you don’t have the tolerance anymore and try it again, your body actually freaks out. And now I listen to my body.
When I started this journey, I wanted to become Superhuman. But as time went on I realized, I was learning to become human. We are all super strong and resilient when we are young, so of course we can do super human things and our bodies recover quickly. However, when we age, we have to learn to accept this next stage of our lives. By accepting it, we have to learn to listen to our bodies, and adapt. We have to make the necessary changes in order to remain healthy.
In order to stay healthy we have to maintain balance. We need to balance our nutrition, our sleep, our exercise and our mental attitude. If any one of them is off, we can break down and become sick.
You get what you put in, if you eat crap, you get crappy energy. If you eat healthfully, you become full of energy.
It’s not easy to completely change the way you eat. It should be a step-by-step journey to set yourself up for success. But once you do it, it’s so rewarding and it’s amazing to look back and see how far you have come.
Will share more of my actual learnings soon!
My discoveries... 