Health Journey

Three and a half years ago I decided to do something different in my life. I was going through a recent breakup and still working on healing and finding myself with who I truly wanted to be. With this decision, i not only began a deeper journey of spiritual, mental, and physical healing, I began to truly align with my bigger purpose.

At the time, I didn't even realize what I was doing or even why, I just knew that something had to change. For me this started out as a challenge to not only to challenge myself, but better my health. As the years i progressed, I realized that not only was I trying to better my health. I was challenging myself to be more disciplined in life starting with the foods i consumed.

Every January my family and I go on a spiritual cleanse also known as "fasting" in which we give up something important in our lives and don't eat certain foods. By this point, I stopped consuming red meats and towards the end of the fast, I decided to give up chicken and other meats expect certain seafood.

I started the first year off as a pescatarian, but slowly transitioned to a pescatarian -plant based lifestyle. This included eating only specific seafood such as salmon (really the only fish I would eat), shrimp (lol, I know guys this is soooo bad), and I slowly transitioned to not consuming certain dairy products. Eventually, I got to the point where i cut out all of the meat and dairy and the the past year and a half have been dedicated to a plant based diet. For the past year and a half I have been following a plant based incorporating a variety of vegan foods and processes.

From podcasts, to books, to articles and more, I was fortunate enough not to go on this journey completely alone or blind-sided. I was aware of certain issues and problems that may arise to finding and figuring out quick transition meals on a budget (yes, on a budget, because your girl was still in college and figuring things out).

For the past three years this plant based journey has become more than just what I eat, it has become a lifestyle, from the foods that I eat, the organic products such as skincare/hair care, to even the processes like using a dehydrator and completely cutting off using a microwave. I aimed for natural and organic and products.

This journey has made me more the enlightened to the endless possibilities the world has to offer. I have even explored intermittent fasting even OMAD (one meal a day) in which I only at between a certain block of time and have 1 meal a day. The OMAD was pretty difficult for me being that I really like to eat, but still to this day I try to stick to my intermittent fasting schedule as much as possible. If you would like to know more about my journey on intermittent fasting please comment below. :)

With all that being said, I have had my struggles as well. from trying not to fall into temptation, to making sure i understand or better yet fit into the norm of what is considered to be vegan conscious or not, to even losing way more weight than I needed to. I went from 125 to 110. a weight that I was completely not confident with, but I challenged myself to get back to a healthy weight. I did this by eating more calories all while making sure I am getting the right nutrients (Comment below, if you would like to know about my weight loss/gain experience during this journey.)

I am not an expert nor do I try to force this lifestyle on anyone, I have found what works for me and what doesn't. I I have foods that I like and foods that I don't. I have even had the opportunity to figure out what I am intolerant to such as pineapples, chickpeas, even gluten. Figuring out these intolerances have helped me focus more on foods that are better for my body. I have now incorporated more soy-free and even gluten-free options into my diet.

All in all, I have learned so much and gained so much have experience and immense amount of growth and healing through this journey. I now consider myself plant-based and do what makes me happy to maintain this lifestyle.