I want to share my story in a way of demonstrating that a life in balance is not a goal we reach and then we are done. It is an ongoing process, with many ups and downs, with beliefs that get questioned, with many lessons that come from unexpected places. It's a way of life, a way of being.
When I was 19 I read a paper on how animals were treated in factories and became vegetarian. In the beginning I was not eating healthy. I was eating processed food, lots of bread and pasta, no balance in my diet, I just didn’t want to eat meat, I didn’t care about much else. In my late 20s, living in New York I really did not live a healthy life and my body started to show me. A skin irritation led me to a naturopath and it turned out I had candida and I needed to go on a very strict diet. The candida diet is much easier if you eat meat, and I didn’t, so I started losing weight and needed to do something fast! I did a detox, then started learning more and more about vegetarian nutrition. How to eat more balanced meals and how everything is connected.
I started understanding the consequences of my choices on my body. As I cleansed, I became more sensitive and could feel if something was good for me or not. I then started to understand the consequences of my choices on the earth and my direct environment. There was no point in being vegetarian for the animals but eating imported foods from all over the globe, out of season and ultimately creating more problems on earth. I came to understand that we are part of nature, one more in the circle of life, not the peak of some pyramid. I also came to understand that with my choices i can either support small businesses that care for the earth or multinationals that care more about money than my health.
The more I understood the food system and how everything is connected, and how my choices
supported the system, it became easier for me to make decisions. It was no longer a struggle, what is good for me is good for the environment.
I felt the need to remember how to nourish myself, re-learn the ways of my ancestors, how to take care of myself and my family. To re-claim my health and be responsible for it. It is my body and my life after all. Nobody else will live with the consequences of my choices but me.
When we live in the city, often our food is the only connection we have to nature. But this also is not real since we can find any fruit or vegetables in any season, these foods may have travelled from far and are harvested early and sprayed so that they can arrive to our supermarket in good shape. We are not nurturing our body, we are just filling our bellies.
In the begining it is easy to go extreme.. there were times that i was hungry and I really didn't know what to eat.. everything seemed to be bad for whatever reason. It took me a while but I eventually realised that extreme healthy is also not healthy.. And as I experimented with the different extremes, in time I found the healthy balance for me, then I lost it again, then I found it then I lost it again!!! Life, travel, living in diferent places, getting to know different cultures and different ways of being, and pregnancy and then later the responsibility of nourishing a small child all were incredible teachers in opening my mind and shaking my beliefs.
By going to the farmers market we support local producers, we see first hand what is in season, local fruit and vegetables which due to nature’s incredible intelligence and magic are usually exactly what our body needs in each season.
A lot of processed foods are full of substances that get us addicted to them. It is so important to start reading the ingredients label. Once we cleanse then our body will crave what we really need. Whenever we eat we are really feeding the incredibly vast microbiome that resides in our body. We feed the bacteria, fungi and parasites, and they feed us. Zack Bush talks very beautifully about this.
We are used to a fast life style, easy solutions, quick fixes but these all have consequences. If we take the time and make a bit of an effort we can see an incredible improvement in our physical health, our mental health, and the health of our families. We re-connect with our spirit, our body and the earth. We remember who we really are.
“You carry Mother Earth within you. She in not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer” Thick That Hanh