who are you?

Recently I have been asked by a few family members, "who are you?" This to me is a compliment and proof that I am evolving and changing for the better. The past two years I have had the worst problems with my health. I often feel sick and beyond tired. I have been leaning more toward healthy lifestyle choices. I started working out and taking more walks. I noticed that I felt the most horrible after I would eat. This made me do some research. As someone who has a food allergy, food can be a struggle. I've had to adjust my menu and I added vegetables as a source of protein that I was not gaining from eggs. In the last few months I have been watching what I have. One of things is that I have been trying to avoid is high fructose corn syrup. It took a few stores but I did find a ketchup without it, I have yet to find a BBQ sauce and I now drink water. I was drinking tea to try to be healthier and found that even that had it unless I make tea by dropping a bag in some water. This was shocking to find the first ingredient in my tea was a corn syrup.

I cut out sugary and corn syrup type drinks and added more vegetables to my diet but I still felt sick. I started to journal when and what I was feeling sick. I started to notice that I always felt the worse after each meal. I started to look at when I felt the worse and it was at dinner when we had a large amount of meat, usually mostly red meat and started looking into a 'plant-based diet'. I read articles online, watched documentaries about it and of course prayed about it. I stopped by a local farmers market and stocked up on vegetables and fruits. I started only eating meat at dinner. After two days of feeling great all day and then feeling sick after dinner I decided that the choice to stop eating meat was for me. I want to be very very clear. I am not an animal activist. Although I do believe that life is precious and animal cruelty is a problem. However I am not choosing the vegetarian/plant-based diet because of animals. It is a personal choice...a health choice.

To be honest I thought it was going to be really difficult to do. It has been a challenge but not as difficult. I think having a food allergy helps. It's not uncommon for me to eat something different than those in my family or to buy separate food. I just added more greens and grains that I would normally eat. This is the new me at least for the next year. I committed to doing this for a year. I have been only doing this for a week (and two days with absolutely no meat) and I have never felt better and it's only been a week. For the past year I have been challenging myself to do things to improve my life. Thanks for reading.

Who Am I?