Stop focusing on weight and start focusing on health instead!

A lot of things inspired me to become healthier over the past few years.  Starting by returning to vegetarianism a few years back, I then cut down on takeaways, stopped drinking alcohol and smoking and started thinking more about the food I was consuming. 

That was five years ago.  Since then my path to healthiness has continued.  I started watching and reading things almost daily about nutrition and people’s own personal experiences, many of which I will share with you in this blog post in the hope they will inspire your own personal journey too. 

(Since writing this post I have even continued my healthy living journey and now drink distilled water and follow a vegan plant based diet since January 2018)

Last year I stopped eating most of the crap I was still eating.  I stopped with ‘normal’ (by which I mean adult) chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits, cakes, cereal bars, sugary yoghurts – basically any adult snack which is loaded with sugar, MSG and other poisons. 

I do still snack, but I eat a lot of children/baby snacks!  My favourite brand is Organix.  I love their gingerbread biscuits, carrot cake bars and carrot stick crisps.  These all taste delicious to me and contain wholegrain ingredients and if they need to be sweetened, they are sweetened with fruit juices instead of refined sugar. 

I’m still baffled as to why as soon as we create an adult version of these we feel the need to add a load of unnecessary ingredients that are so harmful to our bodies, when they can be created without.  They are just as delicious!  The carrot cake bars are just like eating carrot cake! 

I also love Nakd bars and Pulsin bars.  These are sometimes a little pricey, but I often receive them as gifts for Christmas as my family know I love them so much!  It’s also really easy to make your own versions at home.  I have several recipes on my website for raw energy balls which are so easy to make.

For takeaways last year we had ‘treat night Friday’.  We’d either have a takeaway or cook an oven pizza at home.  This was my treat each week.  This year, however, I’ve decided to go totally refined sugar free.  So most of the takeaways, aside from chippy chips, are out of the question.  So far, for all of January, I have not eaten anything containing refined ingredients.

(I continued and was refined sugar free / added sugar free for the whole of 2017!)

I was already only eating wholemeal grains and won’t ever buy white refined goods at home, but I was still eating some if out.  No more though.  If I can help it!  I think eating out could be tricky, but I’ll just have to be clever (and fussy) with what I order. 

I truly believe refined added sugar is one of the worst ingredients in modern food.  It’s responsible for so many illnesses and diseases.  I think in 100 years or so, they’ll look back and think we were crazy for eating it.  In the same way we now know smoking is so bad for you and cocaine.  People will realise sugar is an addiction and has terrible health consequences.

It still amazes me how people react when they discover I don’t drink alcohol, am veggie or don’t eat sugar filled snacks.  If you put on a lot of weight and lose it, you are praised.  But if you genuinely care for your health and longevity you are seen as quite a weirdo! 

That’s what I’ve found anyway.  I’m regularly questioned on why I don’t eat meat, how on earth I can survive without drinking alcohol and told ‘go on, just have a cake/biscuit/(*insert sugary snack here*)’.  It seems lots of people are quite unaccepting of people who want to be healthy!

My favourite healthy inspiration sources

Since becoming obsessed with being healthy (which is the perfect obsession if you’re going to have an obsession, if you ask me), I have come across several sources of inspiration which inspire me to continue on this journey.  Some are blogs, some are documentaries and some are films.  There’s something for everyone.   I want to share some of them with you and I hope they inspire you too.

Deliciously Ella
This was one of the first blogs I stumbled across and I am obsessed with the raw brownies!  I’d already discovered Nakd bars by this point and wanted to make similar ‘treats’ at home for myself.  Ella is so inspiring – a self-confessed sugar junkie, she literally overhauled her diet overnight and was able to come of the prescribed medicines for her illnesses within two years.

Joe Cross – Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

If you click the link above you can watch the whole film on his website for free!  This was the first film about healthy eating and changing eating habits which I showed to my husband Ben as I thought he’d like it.  Other things I’d been reading and watching were more scientific and complicated but this documentary is made in such a way I knew he’d be able to watch it.  I was right and my husband bought a juicer the next day!  This was around 2 years ago and he’s still juicing almost daily and tells other people to watch this film.
Joe Cross is able to get himself off medication and lead a healthier more fulfilled life through juicing and changing his diet.

Ben Fuchs – The Body is a Healing System
I couldn’t normally watch such a poorly filmed video, but I can with this lecture.  It’s the most inspiring eye-opening lecture I’ve ever watched.  I’ve watched it about ten times!  It just makes sense to me.  The amount of cells in our body is INCREDIBLE!

Robert Lustig - Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Another incredible lecture which really explains the dangers of sugar and proves it is a poison!  This video has been watched over 6 million times.  Wow!  I’ve watched it around 3 times and I want to watch it again.  It gets a bit complicated with all the science, but you'll get the point.

Kris Carr – Crazy Sexy Cancer

If you can get hold of her documentary, it’s worth a watch.  A real look into her journey from being diagnosed with cancer, all the random alternative treatments she tried and how she managed to control it through diet with success.  So inspirational.

A few other documentaries that are worth a watch if you are feeling inspired:

(there are tons out there if you start looking)

• Hungry for Change
• Our Planet from the Air (incredible and I love the filming)
• Food Matters
• May I Be Frank (a bit odd, but I love the concept.  I also love how in another documentary the main character Frank says he thought ‘vegan’ was a planet!)

If you’re thinking of being truly healthy, that’s a good selection to start inspiring your wonderful health obsessed journey.

And if you’re worrying about your weight?  You won’t need to be once you start worrying about being truly healthy instead.

 

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