I have a tendency to throw myself into the new things I start; I'll assume it's because I'm a quadruple Aries (Chinese Fire Dragon). Probably having amazing and supportive parents growing up taught me to be fearless with taking chances. Whatever the source of this often fun, occasionally dangerous urge, I find that as I get older I strive more and more towards finding a balance within my self; my habits, my life and my goals. It's not that I don't throw myself into new things- of course I do! But I think about how I'm going to sustain those new things, and add them to the balance of my life.
OK, having long term goals is a pretty neat thing to have. I tend to be a bit of a grasshopper when it comes to planning. I do well in the now. Thinking 10, 20, 30 years in the future is pretty neat. I like it.
my physical health and nutrition play a big part in that. I have recently come to realise that I spend a lot of time thinking about what I eat, how I eat and why I eat things. I read about nutrition and health. I research amino acids and bioavailability of proteins and flavinoids. I also have discovered that I *love* to cook/prepare food- whether it is raw or cooked. Taking ingredients and turning it into building blocks for a healthy body is endlessly fascinating for me. Given my druthers I will talk about nutrition for much longer than a sane person should, likely boring folks around me to death.
There are challenges- spelt cupcakes? (delicious!) and frustrations (spelt flour has *how* many calories??) but I love working with food and my weirdness around food to create a healthy eating environment for myself, and healthy eating attitudes within myself.
I've found a happy balance between raw and cooked vegan food. I think I feel best when I can eat 75% -ish raw, with hot drinks and hot meals thrown in when I want those, too. I definitely eat a *lot* more fruit than I used to. For some reason, a few years ago I began to consider fruit to be basically a useless carb with a whole lotta sugars and not much use in my diet- boy, how THAT has changed!!
The fruit cravings I was getting in January I still get- this morning, all I wanted was a smoothie (almond milk, orange and banana with Amazing Grass- delicious!) and I kind of want a banana-spinach smoothie for dinner. The trick is not to think of smoothies as a 'drink' but as the actual meal, especially if there's things like avocado, banana, yoghurt (soy or other), honey, nuts etc.
I listen to my body more. Some days all I want is to eat light, lots of raw veggies and water. Other days, it's all about curry and tea and cupcakes and cocoa. It's easy for me to fall into the idea that I'm not doing it 'right', somehow, even after all this time. As if someone else has the right to dictate what I can eat! Ridiculous.
as an addendum to that- there has been quite a bit of a stir going around about the not-anymore-vegan woman blogging about eating meat, and how 'so many' of her supposedly vegan friends cheated by secretly eating meat, and how happy her body was eating meat. Sads.
I've been a happy healthy vegan for 5 years now and have never been tempted to eat something that goes counter to my ethics with the exception of wanting a marshmallow very much, but not being sure if the gelatin used was meat or vegetable gelatin (I didn't eat them. But I pouted.)
balance. After all, you are what you eat.
