My Typical Vegan Breakfast

Now that I'm getting to a vegan lifestyle thanks to Freelee the banana girl, my main goal is to eat high carb and a low fat diet. Her Raw till 4 diet has helped so many people with weight, metabolic damage, and hormonal imbalance. It makes sense that eating whole plant based raw foods is immensely more beneficial than cooked, processed foods. You get the raw nutrients you need in whole, complete form.

I'm now on week 2 of the Raw till 4 program, and I typically drink Freelee's famous banana smoothie for breakfast.

I don't measure my ingredients, so I can't say exactly how many cups, tablespoons, or milliliters of liquid and solids I added. But I will try my best to explain:

5 bananas

about half a cup of coconut sugar (it might be more)

fill up until the banana pile in your blender is covered halfway with coconut milk

fill up the rest with water

Now, I know 5 bananas is low. I need to add more. 5 bananas was all I had at hand this morning, which is why I only added 5, and I'm slowly starting to get into eating more in the morning. I've been so used to eating less, counting calories, and restricting my calories, that I think my stomach is not used to eating so much. I'm slowly increasing my food intake, and I'm hoping I can eat 10 bananas in the morning one day. 

I can tell that I am losing weight. I know that in the very beginning of the program, people do lose weight. But depending on how much damage you did to your body with all the fad diets, there will be a period of weight gain. I am just hoping that I don't break down and quit this diet just because of a few pounds of weight gain. 

Another thing is, people forget that exercise is part of the weight loss journey. I've been biking to places I had to go, and it really helps pump the blood in your body, and even though it's a short bike ride, you still get the muscle training you need when you go uphill. My bike has no gears, so I especially get a good muscle workout when there's an upward hill.

The first step to a healthier future is moving your body. Do whatever it takes to get you moving. If it's cycling, try cycling greater distances to explore places you've never been to. If it's hiking, try going that extra mile to get to the top. Explore new places if you get bored with your typical exercise routine.

I want to recommend a good product line from Cotopaxi. They have the best backpacks you can find to use while you hike, cycle, rock climb, etc. They're very light weight, and have many useful compartments that can conveniently help store workout accessories that you'd take. There's a lot of designs to choose from, so take a moment to check them out. They donate a percentage of every sale they make to different organizations across the globe to advance health and other livelihood initiatives. So you know you're helping a good cause.

Let's keep continuing to work towards our goals whether it be by changing our diets to a healthier choice, or by taking some time to exercise. Hope you enjoyed my post, and I'm hoping to log my progress on here the best I can. 

Some Drastic Changes

Hello, everyone. I want to apologize once again for the long hiatus from writing on my blog. Things have been pretty crazy with me lately. There's nothing to really say why I didn't write on this blog because I really did have the time to just sit down and type away what was going on with my fitness life. But I guess I was afraid to say that I wasn't really exercising as much as before, and also to say that I wasn't really caring about what I was eating either. For the past couple of months, I have been going out to eat at in-n-out, binging on sweets (cakes, cookies, etc.), and riding my bike (the only positive) to places I had to go. For those of you who don't know, I don't own a car. I don't even own a license. I should probably get one for identification purposes, but I'm not financially stable enough to own a car. A bike has been pretty sufficient for me to take me to places I had to go in order to get my groceries, chill, and just get my exercise.

Now, I'm writing on my blog because I have had a change in mindset. A little back story about what has been going on in my life is... I worked as a front desk receptionist in an internal medicine clinic. I had so much stress from dealing with all patients that had a problem with whatever the doctor prescribed, whatever the other staff made a mistake on, and of course, the front desk receptionists had to deal with all the complaints they had for the day. Well, this was my first real job, and I have to say, that I was pretty overwhelmed and just hated every moment of it. I loved the people I worked with, but it was the immense amount of stress I got and the immense amount of responsibility I had that I just couldn't deal with. I understand that life isn't easy, and that this is something that I must learn from and go through in order to succeed in life and pursue whatever I want to achieve. I don't regret working there because I did learn a lot from the experience.

Well, when I decided to quit my job and try to pursue my dreams, one of the physicians there wanted to talk to me about what I wanted to do for my future career. I originally wanted to get into medical school, which was why I applied to work there in the first place. But my life history kept yearning for a different path.  So I told this physician that I wanted to get into naturopathic medicine because I've personally went through hyperthyroidism, got treated from an alternative medicine and naturopathic medicine physician and healed when conventional medicine said that I would be taking pills for the rest of my life. This physician laughs at my story and says that hyperthyroidism comes and goes and it's pretty natural for it to do that. He then suggests that I get into DO school rather than go towards the naturopathic medicine route because he believes that I won't make enough once I get out. I told him that naturopathic medicine is my passion, and this is what I want to do. I get confused to whether I think naturopathic medicine is meant for me after leaving my job, and spend a few months questioning my future.

I don't know about hyperthyroidism enough to know whether it comes and goes like that physician explained. But to me, it was months and years of torture. I felt tired almost every single day. I couldn't concentrate in class. My hands were constantly shaking, so I couldn't even write legibly. My grades were dropping at a very fast rate, and I just couldn't bear to go on. Constant depression and anxiety would flood my brain, and it was all due to problems with my thyroid. I honestly don't think this was a laughing matter, but to doctors that learned about this condition from a textbook, it may seem typical. At that time, this hyperthyroidism didn't look like it was going to leave. My thyroid gland was so swollen, I was told to surgically remove it.

After being cured from my hyperthyroidism, I still had problems with my body. I would gain weight, my brain would be foggy, there would be days when I would feel tired. I blamed it on my diet, so I changed my diet to a healthier option. This was when I first started my blog and posted my diet and exercise routine. I tried caloric restriction, counted my calories, and drank tons of water to keep myself from feeling hungry again. I exercised so much to the point where I didn't even give my body any time to rest. Yes, I lost weight during that time. Yes, it worked like how everybody promised. But the diet routine didn't stay. Restricting my calories just made me binge. I would think about food all the time, especially high fat and high refined sugar foods. Exercising helped my mind clear away the fogginess, but the fogginess came back. After the DietBet success that I had, I tried my best to stay the same weight and even lose more. But I plateaued, the weight stayed the same, and I just got heavier. I thought I was gaining muscle weight during my 30 day Insanity program, but my fat just didn't go away. I would get toned, but my fat stayed. In no way am I saying the Insanity program doesn't work. If high intensity exercise is your thing, go for it. If you can keep up the intensity, go for it. For me, I burnt out quickly, and I slowly caved into my cravings and started to binge all over again.

Here I am, at the weight before I started the DietBet. I gained everything back that I lost. Now I realize that weight loss is not a quick process. If you want long lasting, long term weight loss, do not expect to lose weight fast. Fast weight loss is unhealthy, and it never stays. That being said, I recently got into watching some of Freelee the banana girl's youtube videos. At first I really didn't like the way she criticized everybody's diet. I thought she was being pretentious and snobby because she was skinny and thought she could say whatever she wanted to chubbier people. But then I started to watch some of her other videos, and her message started to get through to me. I remember my alternative medicine physician tell me that red meat is not good for my health. So it made sense that meat can increase the chance of heart disease. It started to make sense that milk is not intended for people to drink because it's originally to get calves bigger in size. I did hear about eggs being avoided for people with high cholesterol. I guess when Freelee explained all of these points, it was just a reminder to what is considered healthy and what is not. You hear so much contradicting information on the internet about what is healthy and what is unhealthy. It's so hard to determine who to listen to. You see how long Freelee has been on this Raw till 4 diet, and you see her results. She's been doing it for years, and she is fit. She does explain that there could be an initial weight gain, but then your weight does start to drop afterwards. A lot of people will be put off by the thought of gaining weight at first, but I like to think in long terms. If it'll help me to keep weight off and be healthy, I don't mind.

So, I've decided to try the Raw till 4 Vegan diet. I have a long way to go to truly become vegan, but this is my first step. I'll be documenting my progress to best I can on here, and let you know how I'm doing.

Just a little blurb before I take off. I got into the vegan diet through Freelee, and through her videos, I got into watching some raw food diet documentaries on youtube. In those documentaries, there were a few naturopathic physicians explaining about what they do, and how they implement raw diet into their patients' lifestyle. It got me thinking, and I truly think naturopathic medicine is where my passion lies. No matter whether I can pay off the debt to my loans after attending naturopathic medicine school, I think it's the right thing to do to chase after my dreams. People may say that I'm chasing after false hope, but this is what I've been passionate about. Words of discouragement sent me into a long journey of struggle to find out what I truly want to do. But in the end, I came back to my original dream.

Start your new health goals with small changes. Doesn't matter how small: