Food, We Have Been Misinformed Our Whole Life

I originally wrote this article back in 2019, but decided to update and repost

No matter where we come from, what age we are, or how much money we make, we all want health and well-being.

We grew up thinking that cow’s milk was for healthy bones, and meat would build great muscles. Meanwhile, all those influencers; doctors, nutritionists, the marketing dept of those organizations and the FDA were giving us research funded by the very industries with the most to gain from the studies. Eureka, low and behold the studies concluded that Americans should consume more of said products. Our food isn’t the only category influenced by the mighty dollar, no it isn’t, drug industries, tobacco, hospitals, and doctors to name only a few. But I digress, this isn’t the article for everything else so let’s stay focused on food.

Research has found that plants are what our diet should consist of, at first I like everyone else was resistant, how can that be? I didn’t want to give up some of my favorites; like hamburgers, steak, chicken, and eggs to name a few. We want to be healthy but want to have it all, unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t work that way. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I personally was feeling thick, bloated, and uncomfortable, feeling like the food I was eating was hurting me and turning against me. What do I have? What am I allergic to?

Earlier this year we did the whole30 (whole30.com) way of eating which included animal products, this forced me to elevate my cooking to include different salad dressings and other inventive tastes and textures. After a successful 30 days of eating only GOD-given foods in their original form, only then did we notice a significant improvement in our health. We essentially rebooted our body's hard drive, and we then felt healthier and lost weight. Not unlike many diets that you don’t stick to some of our issues returned. We concluded that it wasn’t that hard and we really didn’t feel as though we had given up that much. But this was our journey and opened our palette and mind to other foods and ideas. Fast forward 9 months and some of our issues have returned.

Now on our journey, we have decided that we no longer want to eat animal products. We have become flexitarians, a vegetarian with forgiveness. Flexitarian means we adhere to being a vegetarian most of the time, but if we want an exception on occasion, there is no judgment. This was our decision after watching more documentaries like Forks over Knives and Game Changers on Netflix and reading different articles and books.

In my own journey in the summer of 2019 while away at Yoga Teacher Training for an entire 30 days, I ate only fruit and vegetable smoothies with rare exceptions and drank only alkaline water. We exercised 16+ and I lost like 10-15 pounds in 4 weeks. I felt better, recovered better and hell, I never was sore or exhausted.

It shouldn’t have taken me this long to come to this conclusion, however, it is what it is and this is my time to make a change. This is my proof and my story. When will you make the change that will promote a healthier version of yourself?

If you need more information, Dr. Dean Ornish is one of the contributors to the Netflix movie, Game Changers, http://deanornish.com.

#healthandwellness, #bestlife, #healjup, #yogime #flexatarian

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Without delay find your purpose and live your best life. Cliché but truth!

Living with purpose, Treasea Johnson