Whole Body Wellness Journey Part 4
Okay, here it is, the last and final resting place of my health journey. It took all of that messy climbing and falling and climbing up again to get to this place of a completely plant-based diet living in alignment with my core values and lots of self love and compassion. But before we go on I feel like I should preface this with what is swirling around in my own head and perhaps yours. I feel like a hypocrite! How can I sit here and shout from the rooftops that a plant-based diet is the best diet for your body, the planet, all other humans and animals when I was eating meat just about 18 months ago?
That feeling of hyprocracy wants to hold me back. It tells me to stay small and quiet and just go about my own business. But I wont' listen to that voice anymore. I made a mistake but that doesn't mean I can't change and it doesn't mean you can't either. So many of us stay in the same old routines day after day and even worse, we expect different results from doing the same shit! We are happy in our little bubbles where everything seems find and we rarely challenge convenience or tradition. Listen, change is hard! Personal growth is hard! Going against the norm is a challenge but I think it's a challenge worth trying.
Before we get started I want to touch on my symptoms and that sort of thing for a moment. As I sit here today I have been back to vegetarian for about 18 months and back to full vegan for about 2.5 months.
When I shifted back to a vegetarian diet I included A LOT of fruit (still do) and I felt the brain fog and deep exhaustion lift almost immediately. My energy felt lighter and I felt more alive. My vision stopped getting blurred and tunneled, my arthritis improved and the tingling and numbness in my legs and feet improved. My carpal tunnel would get better then worse then better again but overall was better than before.
In November I shifted from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet and I felt nothing at first. Then all of a sudden I noticed that I could sleep without waking up multiple times a night with my arms being on fire with tingling. I could push the stroller, hold my coffee cup and shampoo my hair. My brain felt even less foggy and my sinus felt like they opened up and took a huge cleansing breath. My skin softened and stopped cracking and bleeding. My joints feel so much better and my arthritis hasn't bothered me other than once or twice. My eyes feel clearer and my night vision is better. I feel more alive than I have in YEARS! I do still have some muscle weakness that is strange but I feel well enough to try some exercise and see if that will help.
All of this is fantastic, but the best part of it all is I feel like I am finally living my truth. My values are lined up with my actions. My core doesn't feel like it is is broken and leaking energy through the cracks. I feel whole.
Now onto the why. I am not going to go into a ton of detail for a few reasons. One is that there is SO much amazing information out there written by people far more intelligent and well read than I am and two is that I simply don't have the time to write a full on research paper about the benefits of a plant based diet and the detriments of the standard american diet.
so what I'm going to do is break this up into three separate little sections because I know some of you aren't ready or don't want to hear about the animal rights side of it but I still want to share about the personal and environmental health side of it!
First up, plant based eating for the planet! This is a HUGE issue considering the state of our planet! Everyone knows that emissions from fossil fuels and transportation account for a lot of greenhouse emissions, but did you know that the leading cause of greenhouse emissions is actually from animal agriculture. Did you know that it takes anywhere from 400 to 2,500 gallons of water to produce ONE pound of beef? Or that it takes nearly 500 gallons of water for a dozen eggs and nearly 1,000 gallons for one gallon of milk! And I was concerned with shutting the water off while I brushed my teeth.
Animal agriculture is also the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, habitat destruction and water pollution. When I was eating meat I was choosing grass fed beef because the meat had more nutrients and I think we can all agree that factory farming is gross. Little did I know that our precious Rainforest, the very lungs of the earth is being cleared at a rate of 1-2 acres per second to make room for grazing grass fed beef and growing crops to feed to factory farmed animals.
I had no idea that wild horses and burros were being trapped and confined so that livestock could graze on their land. I had no idea that the USDA has a whole program designed to kill predators like wolves to protect livestock grazing where they don't belong.
The bottom line is I had no idea but now I do! I think we can all agree that protecting out planet needs to be a priority and that cutting out our reducing animal products is a huge step in the right direction. If you are interested in this topic there is a ton of information available. I recommend everyone watch the documentary Cowspiracy (on Netflix) and read the book Comfortably Unaware by Richard Oppenlander.
Next up, plant based for humans. The mainstream media loves to talk about how modern agriculture is feeding the world meanwhile thousands are starving to death every single day. At this time we are growing enough food to feed 10 billion people but worldwide up to 50% of that grain is being fed to livestock instead. It is thought that we could feed up to 800 million people with the grains that are fed to livestock. There are starving children dying every day in countries where massive amounts of grains are grown and instead of saving their lives they are being fed to livestock that is then shipped here for us to eat in excess! And speaking of the US, we are literally eating ourselves to death. We certainly aren't starving for calories but we are starving for nutrition!
Some great movies on eating a plant based diet that don't get into the animal rights side of things are Forks over Knives (netflix), PlantPure Nation (netflix) and What the Health (netflix). Some great books about animal agriculture and a plant based diet that don't really get into the animal rights side of it are Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (you might remember him from the huge lawsuit with Oprah) My Beef with Meat and the Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn. The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. How Not To Die by Michael Greger. Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman and anything by Dr. Neal Barnard. And that is just a few, there are so many more.
Finally, plant based/vegan for the animals. This is where I began so many years ago and this is ultimately what brought me back and will keep me in this lifestyle indefinitely. I think we all consider ourselves to be compassionate. I think we would all step in to help an animal suffering if we could. We get gush over cute puppies and piglets and get tears in our eyes watching commercials for the ASPCA. We are outraged when dog fighting circles are exposed or when animal abuse is brought to light. Almost all of us would say we love animals if asked the question, so then why do we not only allow, but directly contribute to billions of animals to being tortured and slaughtered every single year?
We take our kids to a petting zoo and stroke the fur a baby calf. We let a little pig nibble out of our hands and throw scraps of vegetables to chickens. Our kids love animals. So why do we then go home and cook up the flesh of those very same animals and feed them to our children? I think if children were to witness even one step of the process from live animal to neat and tidy cut up piece of flesh in the grocery store they would be horrified. I don't want my kids to be horrified about the origin of their food.
The animals that are being used as food in this country are no less intelligent or less capable of emotion than your dog or cat that you love so dearly and care for as a member of the family. They think and feel and want to live their lives out in peace just as any animal does. The horrible things that are happening to farm animals every second of every day are considered standard practice. There are no protections in place for these creatures like there are for dogs and cats. Do you think a pig suffers any less than a dog under the same circumstances?
I know most of us make the connection with meat previously being a living, breathing animal fairly easily even if we choose not to take action and stop consuming it, dairy on the other hand is a little harder. Dairy is the number one reason vegetarians never go vegan. Dairy was the reason I always went back and forth as well. It wasn't until recently that I actually made a strong enough connection to the process that I can no longer even look at dairy products without feeling completely turned off.
If you think the meat industry is brutal, you should see the dairy industry. Let's start off with a dairy cow who arrives at a factory farm for the first time. She won't make milk unless she has a baby so she is forcibly impregnated. She grows her baby for a little over 9 months and then gives birth. She is a mammal and is designed by nature to do one thing, protect and nurse her baby, only she never gets a chance. Minutes to hours after birth her baby is taken away and she is left in a panic trying to get her baby back. After this she will almost immediately be hooked up to a milking machine still crying for her stolen baby.
If the baby is a boy he is considered waste and is either left to die or sold for veal. If he is sold for veal he will live a few months chained up to a tiny shed unable to walk around and then be trucked away and slaughtered. If the baby is a girl then she will be kept alive and share the same fate as her mother. This fate is a vicious cycle of every year being impregnated, delivering her baby and then having it taken away so humans can drink her milk instead. Her body will break down under the stress of being milked so much and cared for so little. Then around the age of 5 (cows naturally live to be about 22) when she is completely spent and isn't as productive she will be sent to the slaughterhouse and made into hamburger. As a mammal and a mother I can't think of a more merciless life.
If you are interested in learning more about the unthinkable treatment of animals and what you can do to help, read the books Mercy for Animals by Nathan Runkle (he also runs an amazing organization by the same name that has countless resources) or Dominion by Matthew Scully (a movie by the same name is coming out this year). Watch Okja (netflix) Earthlings on YouTube (I have never made it through this movie) and watch The Best Speech You Will Ever Hear on YouTube. You can YouTube all day and be completely horrified but I don't recommend that.
Honestly I don't like when vegans bombard others with horrifying images and try to make them feel shame. Nobody has ever made a positive lifestyle change out of guilt or shame. We are all on our own journeys and some of us take a lot longer to digest new information than others. Some never do and that's okay too. Gradually increasing your awareness is fantastic. Here's the thing, at the end of the day it is a personal decision but I believe that in order to make an informed decision you must actually be informed and so many of us aren't! We are just blindly following what has been done for generations and turning our heads because we don't want to see the suffering. I just think that if you can't even bare witness to the suffering then how can you contribute to it?
If you are curious about what we do as a family I'll summarize. I eat a completely vegan and obviously gluten free diet at home and away. Ryan eats vegetarian and gluten free at home with most of his meals being vegan weather he knows it or not. When he is out of the house he is a grown ass man and can do whatever he wants but this doesn't fully protect him from my side eye. Caches and Arlowe eat a mostly vegan gluten free diet at home with some occasional cheese or eggs if they are in the fridge. Out of the house they are free to make their own decisions armed with age appropriate information about where their food comes from. If we are at a birthday party with pizza and cupcakes they can choose to eat it or not. I always try to feed them beforehand and bring some food in case they do not want what is served. Cache will usually pass up meat but will almost always eat sweets and goodies made with animal products. Arlowe still doesn't quite get it and will usually eat sweets but because I make her plate or order her food she doesn't get meat.
This is pretty much how it will go for the foreseeable future. I want my children to learn how to make their own choices. Choices that are not only informed, but that line up with their own developing truths and morals. They know why we eat the way we do form a health and animal welfare standpoint but I can not force them to choose this lifestyle when they are teenagers or adults just like I can tell them all the dangers of smoking and forbid smoking at home. Doesn't mean they aren't going to be offered a cigarette at some point. Doesn't mean they aren't going to smoke it. All I can do is arm them with information and breathe deeply as they take it with them into the world.
*I could address misconceptions about vegetarian and vegan diets ALL day, but for the sake of brevity I will only address the most common one. Where do you get your protein? You get your protein from the same place everyone gets their protein, from plants! For some reason we are obsessed with protein and in reality most of us are eating way too much! It is impossible to eat a diet sufficient in calories and not get enough protein.
*If you have questions about any specifics I would love to answer them. Want some recipes, just ask!
*If you are interested in feeding children a diet free of animal products there is a ton of great information online and in books. It really is the same as feeding an adult but little child centered nuggets of information always help. A book called Disease Proof Your Child is a very balanced read. One thing that always kind of strikes me is that nobody seems to bat an eye when kids eat fast food and processed foods filled with sugar, oils chemicals and food dyes but everyone gets in a tizzy when you won't give your kid milk!
*If you are interested in my medical journey and/or autoimmune disease please feel free to talk! If you are struggling with mysterious symptoms there is SO much information out there to help! Don't just accept it. One great resource if you have an open mind is the Medical Medium.
*If you want to borrow books just ask!
*If you want to tell me how wrong I am, feel free. I'm always open to respectful conversations.
.
That feeling of hyprocracy wants to hold me back. It tells me to stay small and quiet and just go about my own business. But I wont' listen to that voice anymore. I made a mistake but that doesn't mean I can't change and it doesn't mean you can't either. So many of us stay in the same old routines day after day and even worse, we expect different results from doing the same shit! We are happy in our little bubbles where everything seems find and we rarely challenge convenience or tradition. Listen, change is hard! Personal growth is hard! Going against the norm is a challenge but I think it's a challenge worth trying.
Before we get started I want to touch on my symptoms and that sort of thing for a moment. As I sit here today I have been back to vegetarian for about 18 months and back to full vegan for about 2.5 months.
When I shifted back to a vegetarian diet I included A LOT of fruit (still do) and I felt the brain fog and deep exhaustion lift almost immediately. My energy felt lighter and I felt more alive. My vision stopped getting blurred and tunneled, my arthritis improved and the tingling and numbness in my legs and feet improved. My carpal tunnel would get better then worse then better again but overall was better than before.
In November I shifted from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet and I felt nothing at first. Then all of a sudden I noticed that I could sleep without waking up multiple times a night with my arms being on fire with tingling. I could push the stroller, hold my coffee cup and shampoo my hair. My brain felt even less foggy and my sinus felt like they opened up and took a huge cleansing breath. My skin softened and stopped cracking and bleeding. My joints feel so much better and my arthritis hasn't bothered me other than once or twice. My eyes feel clearer and my night vision is better. I feel more alive than I have in YEARS! I do still have some muscle weakness that is strange but I feel well enough to try some exercise and see if that will help.
All of this is fantastic, but the best part of it all is I feel like I am finally living my truth. My values are lined up with my actions. My core doesn't feel like it is is broken and leaking energy through the cracks. I feel whole.
Now onto the why. I am not going to go into a ton of detail for a few reasons. One is that there is SO much amazing information out there written by people far more intelligent and well read than I am and two is that I simply don't have the time to write a full on research paper about the benefits of a plant based diet and the detriments of the standard american diet.
so what I'm going to do is break this up into three separate little sections because I know some of you aren't ready or don't want to hear about the animal rights side of it but I still want to share about the personal and environmental health side of it!
First up, plant based eating for the planet! This is a HUGE issue considering the state of our planet! Everyone knows that emissions from fossil fuels and transportation account for a lot of greenhouse emissions, but did you know that the leading cause of greenhouse emissions is actually from animal agriculture. Did you know that it takes anywhere from 400 to 2,500 gallons of water to produce ONE pound of beef? Or that it takes nearly 500 gallons of water for a dozen eggs and nearly 1,000 gallons for one gallon of milk! And I was concerned with shutting the water off while I brushed my teeth.
Animal agriculture is also the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, habitat destruction and water pollution. When I was eating meat I was choosing grass fed beef because the meat had more nutrients and I think we can all agree that factory farming is gross. Little did I know that our precious Rainforest, the very lungs of the earth is being cleared at a rate of 1-2 acres per second to make room for grazing grass fed beef and growing crops to feed to factory farmed animals.
I had no idea that wild horses and burros were being trapped and confined so that livestock could graze on their land. I had no idea that the USDA has a whole program designed to kill predators like wolves to protect livestock grazing where they don't belong.
The bottom line is I had no idea but now I do! I think we can all agree that protecting out planet needs to be a priority and that cutting out our reducing animal products is a huge step in the right direction. If you are interested in this topic there is a ton of information available. I recommend everyone watch the documentary Cowspiracy (on Netflix) and read the book Comfortably Unaware by Richard Oppenlander.
Next up, plant based for humans. The mainstream media loves to talk about how modern agriculture is feeding the world meanwhile thousands are starving to death every single day. At this time we are growing enough food to feed 10 billion people but worldwide up to 50% of that grain is being fed to livestock instead. It is thought that we could feed up to 800 million people with the grains that are fed to livestock. There are starving children dying every day in countries where massive amounts of grains are grown and instead of saving their lives they are being fed to livestock that is then shipped here for us to eat in excess! And speaking of the US, we are literally eating ourselves to death. We certainly aren't starving for calories but we are starving for nutrition!
Some great movies on eating a plant based diet that don't get into the animal rights side of things are Forks over Knives (netflix), PlantPure Nation (netflix) and What the Health (netflix). Some great books about animal agriculture and a plant based diet that don't really get into the animal rights side of it are Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (you might remember him from the huge lawsuit with Oprah) My Beef with Meat and the Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn. The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. How Not To Die by Michael Greger. Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman and anything by Dr. Neal Barnard. And that is just a few, there are so many more.
Finally, plant based/vegan for the animals. This is where I began so many years ago and this is ultimately what brought me back and will keep me in this lifestyle indefinitely. I think we all consider ourselves to be compassionate. I think we would all step in to help an animal suffering if we could. We get gush over cute puppies and piglets and get tears in our eyes watching commercials for the ASPCA. We are outraged when dog fighting circles are exposed or when animal abuse is brought to light. Almost all of us would say we love animals if asked the question, so then why do we not only allow, but directly contribute to billions of animals to being tortured and slaughtered every single year?
We take our kids to a petting zoo and stroke the fur a baby calf. We let a little pig nibble out of our hands and throw scraps of vegetables to chickens. Our kids love animals. So why do we then go home and cook up the flesh of those very same animals and feed them to our children? I think if children were to witness even one step of the process from live animal to neat and tidy cut up piece of flesh in the grocery store they would be horrified. I don't want my kids to be horrified about the origin of their food.
The animals that are being used as food in this country are no less intelligent or less capable of emotion than your dog or cat that you love so dearly and care for as a member of the family. They think and feel and want to live their lives out in peace just as any animal does. The horrible things that are happening to farm animals every second of every day are considered standard practice. There are no protections in place for these creatures like there are for dogs and cats. Do you think a pig suffers any less than a dog under the same circumstances?
I know most of us make the connection with meat previously being a living, breathing animal fairly easily even if we choose not to take action and stop consuming it, dairy on the other hand is a little harder. Dairy is the number one reason vegetarians never go vegan. Dairy was the reason I always went back and forth as well. It wasn't until recently that I actually made a strong enough connection to the process that I can no longer even look at dairy products without feeling completely turned off.
If you think the meat industry is brutal, you should see the dairy industry. Let's start off with a dairy cow who arrives at a factory farm for the first time. She won't make milk unless she has a baby so she is forcibly impregnated. She grows her baby for a little over 9 months and then gives birth. She is a mammal and is designed by nature to do one thing, protect and nurse her baby, only she never gets a chance. Minutes to hours after birth her baby is taken away and she is left in a panic trying to get her baby back. After this she will almost immediately be hooked up to a milking machine still crying for her stolen baby.
If the baby is a boy he is considered waste and is either left to die or sold for veal. If he is sold for veal he will live a few months chained up to a tiny shed unable to walk around and then be trucked away and slaughtered. If the baby is a girl then she will be kept alive and share the same fate as her mother. This fate is a vicious cycle of every year being impregnated, delivering her baby and then having it taken away so humans can drink her milk instead. Her body will break down under the stress of being milked so much and cared for so little. Then around the age of 5 (cows naturally live to be about 22) when she is completely spent and isn't as productive she will be sent to the slaughterhouse and made into hamburger. As a mammal and a mother I can't think of a more merciless life.
If you are interested in learning more about the unthinkable treatment of animals and what you can do to help, read the books Mercy for Animals by Nathan Runkle (he also runs an amazing organization by the same name that has countless resources) or Dominion by Matthew Scully (a movie by the same name is coming out this year). Watch Okja (netflix) Earthlings on YouTube (I have never made it through this movie) and watch The Best Speech You Will Ever Hear on YouTube. You can YouTube all day and be completely horrified but I don't recommend that.
Honestly I don't like when vegans bombard others with horrifying images and try to make them feel shame. Nobody has ever made a positive lifestyle change out of guilt or shame. We are all on our own journeys and some of us take a lot longer to digest new information than others. Some never do and that's okay too. Gradually increasing your awareness is fantastic. Here's the thing, at the end of the day it is a personal decision but I believe that in order to make an informed decision you must actually be informed and so many of us aren't! We are just blindly following what has been done for generations and turning our heads because we don't want to see the suffering. I just think that if you can't even bare witness to the suffering then how can you contribute to it?
If you are curious about what we do as a family I'll summarize. I eat a completely vegan and obviously gluten free diet at home and away. Ryan eats vegetarian and gluten free at home with most of his meals being vegan weather he knows it or not. When he is out of the house he is a grown ass man and can do whatever he wants but this doesn't fully protect him from my side eye. Caches and Arlowe eat a mostly vegan gluten free diet at home with some occasional cheese or eggs if they are in the fridge. Out of the house they are free to make their own decisions armed with age appropriate information about where their food comes from. If we are at a birthday party with pizza and cupcakes they can choose to eat it or not. I always try to feed them beforehand and bring some food in case they do not want what is served. Cache will usually pass up meat but will almost always eat sweets and goodies made with animal products. Arlowe still doesn't quite get it and will usually eat sweets but because I make her plate or order her food she doesn't get meat.
This is pretty much how it will go for the foreseeable future. I want my children to learn how to make their own choices. Choices that are not only informed, but that line up with their own developing truths and morals. They know why we eat the way we do form a health and animal welfare standpoint but I can not force them to choose this lifestyle when they are teenagers or adults just like I can tell them all the dangers of smoking and forbid smoking at home. Doesn't mean they aren't going to be offered a cigarette at some point. Doesn't mean they aren't going to smoke it. All I can do is arm them with information and breathe deeply as they take it with them into the world.
*I could address misconceptions about vegetarian and vegan diets ALL day, but for the sake of brevity I will only address the most common one. Where do you get your protein? You get your protein from the same place everyone gets their protein, from plants! For some reason we are obsessed with protein and in reality most of us are eating way too much! It is impossible to eat a diet sufficient in calories and not get enough protein.
*If you have questions about any specifics I would love to answer them. Want some recipes, just ask!
*If you are interested in feeding children a diet free of animal products there is a ton of great information online and in books. It really is the same as feeding an adult but little child centered nuggets of information always help. A book called Disease Proof Your Child is a very balanced read. One thing that always kind of strikes me is that nobody seems to bat an eye when kids eat fast food and processed foods filled with sugar, oils chemicals and food dyes but everyone gets in a tizzy when you won't give your kid milk!
*If you are interested in my medical journey and/or autoimmune disease please feel free to talk! If you are struggling with mysterious symptoms there is SO much information out there to help! Don't just accept it. One great resource if you have an open mind is the Medical Medium.
*If you want to borrow books just ask!
*If you want to tell me how wrong I am, feel free. I'm always open to respectful conversations.
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