We Are What We Eat

You Are What You Eat.

We've all heard it before; for most of us, when we were much younger, this phrase constituted many a joke. Some more vulgar than I care to recall.. Which, in hindsight, makes complete sense given the context of this post, trashy behavior and mindsets were definitely being bred in my hometown. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I'll try to be as straight forward as possible by asking you a simple question: When you eat junk food how do you feel? Most would respond that they feel sluggish; "food coma" comes to mind. Do you not see anything wrong here? Food is LIFE. It is literally something that you cannot live without. It should not make you feel like you are going into a coma. It should not make you feel dead. The fact of the matter is that most of us have been brought up to eat in such way that has made us grow accustomed to this crappy feeling. We now perceive this as normal. It's not.

Food is life. Yeah, I already said that, and I'll say it again. Food. Is. Life. You require food for your life to continue, and not just any food. The food you eat needs to breathe life into you. It is the fuel your body runs off of! Let's do an exercise: Right now, close your eyes and picture your dream car. The car you have always wanted and if money was absolutely no factor, you would own. Now picture yourself in that car, because it's YOURS. Dang, feels good doesn't it? Now answer this question: If you had the option between high quality fuel and dirty, watered down, low grade fuel what would you choose to put into your dream car? This should be a no-brainer, so I'll move on.

You should look at your body the same way that you look at that dream car. Scratch that. You should be looking at treating your body BETTER than you treat that dream car. Because guess what? More than likely there are millions of models of your dream car in existence.. but you only get one body. You only have one life; don't you want to live it to it's fullest potential? As in not feeling like death 75-80% of your days?

This brings me back to the fact that most of us have grown so accustomed to this feeling that we label it as the norm. When I switched to a Plant Based Diet (Eating 85-90% fresh fruits and veggies) I experienced a huge wake up call. I would sit down for my meal, eat until I was fully satisfied, then get up and GO. When I say go, I mean it; I was ready to tackle any task, running around the Animal Shelter I regularly volunteered at like the energizer bunny. This was not my norm. Typically after eating my fill I would need a good 10-15 maybe even 20 minute recuperating period before I even wanted to consider physical activity that involved more than a brief walk.

What I am trying to get at is that when I began to feed my body foods that were more vibrant and alive, I felt more vibrant and alive! What a concept, huh? This goes vice-versa as well, (duh) eating things that were processed and greasy and not alive had me feeling that ever so familiar way- groggy and sluggish and bogged down.

Now, here's another crazy piece of information for you: when you don't feel good your mood reflects that. You don't say?! I know, I know, just hear me out. How often do you get angry at someone when you're driving on the freeway? How difficult is it for you to deal with that annoying coworker who's always doing/saying something that gets under your skin? How often do you feel hopeless, anxious, depressed etc? I'll give you a moment to think about this.

When I started to incorporate more high vibrational foods into my diet I stopped experiencing these lower vibrational emotions. Not completely, not in the slightest! But the rate at which they manifested was seriously minimized. When I ate junky, trashy food I felt that way most of my life and it manifested in a number of ways internally and externally. Remember the comment about the vulgar jokes from earlier? Yeah, let's just say.. definitely interlinked.

The way I was able to look at life changed. Instead of feeling so upset over the many things I had no control over I was able to more easily let go of the anger or anxiety. I can't attribute this entirely to the food, because what you feed your mind is just as important to your overall health.. but I'll leave that for another post.

I'd like to close with this challenge: Starting today keep a Daily Observance Journal where you track the things you eat, how you feel before and after eating them, and take note of other outstanding emotional moments from your day (Road Rage, Anxiety, Irritability, Depression etc.). Do this for a week and then reflect on the patterns you have identified. If you are called to, take it one step further and begin to incorporate 1-3 full fledged vegetarian/vegan(if you're really hardcore!) meals into your next week and repeat the journal exercise. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you experience! And remember; what you feed your body is what fuels your body, you truly are what you eat.. so why not choose for that to be healthy and vibrant?