Finding my way... part one

Too much stress, too little sleep, too much travel, too little good food… exercise, once my cure all for stress and imbalance, only fatigued and injured me. I started out this summer in a sorry physical and psychological state. After one particularly grueling business trip, I happened upon inspiration at an airport bookstore… and began what is now a six week journey to balance and reinvigoration. Finding my way back to… me.

I began with what I was ingesting and when… yes, a diet. Not just to lose weight (puffy and bloated, I was miserable with my shape), but to gain so much… energy, focus, happiness, that light in my eye I used to have. I refuse to believe it’s just age or hormones or anything else we can’t control. We are given this gift of our bodies and… with the knowledge of how to care for ourselves for life. If we ignore that knowledge, that’s when we lose our bodies and our health – and for me, our minds along with that.
I’m already a vegetarian , but was doing several things wrong with my eating habits, some of these are lifelong bad habits:
• Drinking coffee first thing in the morning (before eating – although this energized me, it also minimized my morning appetite and in my rush to work out and leave the house, I often did not eat. By midday, I was fatigued and famished).
• Not eating breakfast (see above).
• Not managing my nutrition properly while traveling (it’s easy to go eight or more hours without food when you are in airports and/or on planes that don’t serve meals and what is offered is most often starchy processed snack foods).
• Exercising intensely even while my nutrition needs weren’t being met
There are more - those are the main things.

Here is what I have vowed to change for the next six weeks.
• Eliminate all animal products including eggs and all dairy. I have a history of severe allergies to these foods and so I wanted to see if eliminating them would make me feel better.
• Focus on plant foods and plant-based proteins.
• Avoid yeast – that means
• Drink hot water and eat a small amount of oatmeal and fruit first thing in the morning, before working out.
• Drink coffee around midday, without milk and sugar.
• Eat a midday snack.
• Include protein in all my meals (this meant legumes, nuts, tofu and other soy products for me as a vegetarian, now a vegan)
• Have a salad with protein for lunch.
• Eat a mid afternoon snack that includes protein.
• For dinner, eat vegetables and protein – avoid starches.
• Eat small amounts, just enough to satisfy. I get full fast – often, I keep eating because I’m so fatigued and starving.
• Eat at regular intervals, before I get hungry.
• Exercise moderately rather than intensely. (I’m also recovering from a sore back and right thigh, which has hindered my running in the past few weeks.)
• Soak in Epsom salt baths to ease inflammation due to exercise.
• Start an aggressive cleansing program (more on that next week).
Transformation, from the inside out. I’ll blog about my progress… stay tuned.