Tuesday, September 4, 2012

You are what you eat = towards raw diet?

Was staying at my parents' place for two nights and came back home tonight just to find out that there will be no gas for 3 days, which means no warm water, which in turn means no cooking and no showering. So I'll most probably go back to my parents' place for a couple more nights.

However, the fact that I couldn't cook anything for dinner tonight (was planning cousous with chicken and aubergine in coconut milk...) made me think about the raw diet concept.

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It's not the first time I've thought about it, although it's not been long since I first started playng with the idea in my head. The first time was when I met Maggie, who told me she had to adjust her diet while in Poland and eat 'normal' food, which made her feel worse and gain weight in no time.

I think she's the first raw-getarian I've met. 
I know a couple of vegans and quite a few vegetarians (a guy I was with for over 4 years has been vegetarian since birth), I've even been told by a friend that I'd go vegetarian myself one day, because "I had a vegetarian face" (love you, Chloe baby!).

The truth is I like meat and I never really had a bad conscious about eating it. However, the more I read about nutrition, health and the "quality" of food that we get fed with, the more I'm beginning to question every eating habit I have. And well, it doesn't look good.

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When asked about a proper diet and their eating habits, a lot of people use the excuse of a lack of time to convince themselves it's ok to eat the way they do, even though they know they should change it. I cannot be using that excuse now, as I'm free to cook every day (apart from the time they cut off my gas, but that's once in a blue moon) and for every meal. Why don't I then, why do I keep on eating the same low-quality foods all the time?

It's not really the question of f.e. eating less white bread or less sweets, 3 or 5 times a day, with or without breakfast. It goes way deeper than that. Mostly, it's about the type of products I consume (processed, not bio, cooked) and how much I consume of it (way more than my body actually needs).

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I go around telling everyone how people could use some more self-awareness in their professional and personal lives. How they should start asking themselves "why am I doing this?", find the true motivators behind their choices, or the lack thereof.

I think it's about time to start being more self-aware when it comes to what I fuel my body with and how I affect it by not giving much thought to my eating habits. Maybe not even that, but doing more research on the matter. As I've already mentioned, I never felt the need to go veggie but I always came to the conclusion that the veggie people I got to know where the most knowledgeable when it came to health and proper nutrition. Most of the people I met who did extensive research on how given foods influence our bodies, ditched meat and some other products at one point or another. They might be on to something...

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It's not to say that starting tomorrow, I'm completely changing my diet. However, I think I've finally matured enough to start consciously choosing how I'll reshape my eating habits.

Once upon a time I used to drink lots of Pepsi, Nestea and such. Now, I've a problem finishing a glass of soda. Once upon a time I didn't like drinking plain water. Now I don't really feel like drinking anything else (which many a time is very hard for people to understand, especially when we're out and everyone looks at me as if I'm crazy for not wanting a drink or even a cartonbox juice, opting for water instead).

I didn't use to like so many vegetables! But I made a conscious decision to change it and little by little, I've taught myself to tolerate, than like and finally enjoy the majority of those. 
So this is what I'll do - I'll start eating myself healthy, strong, active and happy. 
Still figuring out what the exact steps will be, so if any of you have some good reading material, I'd love for you to share it either here or on the fanpage. I know it'll be hard, 'cause I'll be fighting with 25 years of habits and the whole environment which doesn't really help the cause of healthy dieting. Also, I throughly enjoy the unhealthy and processed food, or so I think. 
Seeing how I used to love Pepsi and now barely can drink it, I think there's hope.

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A couple of cool sites I've come across, if you're interested in seeing what I'll be aiming at incorporating into my life:

Rawmazing - amazing how delicious those innovative raw recipes sound, can't wait to try them out!
Salad Pride - tens of salads 
Feed me better - healthy recipes in Polish
Dietetycznie w kuchni - a healthy way to prepare some well known dishes, in Polish
Dietetycznie siostro - two Polish sisters showing us how to prepare our fav dishes in a clean healthy way
Rawstaurant - vegan, raw and with videos!

Plus a short article, just to get your juices flowing in the right direction.

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Let me know what your views on a healthy diet are!





2 komentarze:

makingthematrix said...

I'm a vegetarian for about seven years now. Recently I relaxed my approach a bit and I eat meat occasionally, once a month maybe, whe someone offers it to me or if the only alternative is junk food (which, oddly, is quite common in Poland). My main motivation for vegetarianism is Buddhism, and the school of Buddhism I try to follow makes a few exceptions - I should accept gifts (a sandwich, for example) and I should not waste food.

But I really love cheese and milk, so I couldn't be vegan :)

Magu Bee said...

I remembered you were vegetarian but never knew the background story, thanks for sharing!

What were the beginnings like? How did you feel, what was the difference?
Was it hard to stick to it?