Why Im going Raw / Vegan / Veggie on Monday

                                                                        

So, the burning question. WHY am I going Raw / Vegan / Veggie on Monday, am I crazy? Yes, yes I am. But no, really I'm not crazy, in that sense anyway. I have Fibromyalgia, that's why. Not why I'm crazy, but why I'm changing my diet.

When I use the word diet, I don't mean a two week crash fad rubbish diet like that. I mean a lifestyle change. A forever change. I'm 24, its about time I took care of myself.  I don't want to be on pain medication my whole life, I don't want to have fun for two days then need to sleep for three days, I want to be able to go out all day and all night and not worry about when I can fit my nap in cos of damn chronic fatigue. I don't want to be in agony all the time, I don't want to hurt any more, I want to be pain free and live the life a 24 year old should live.

I want clear skin.

I want strong, healthy long hair.

I want energy.

I want to loose weight.

I want my life back.

In 2013 I went into heart failure and gained a massive amount of weight. Two years on I still haven't shifted it. I'm currently 12 stone. That's way too much. I should be around 9 stone. Two years before the heart failure I developed, (can you develop an illness?!) Meh, you know what I mean. Fibromyalgia. My life has never been the same since.

Not long after getting sick I traveled Israel and Jordan and I slept 50 % of the time. If I wasn't sleeping I was planning my next nap.  My travels were wonderful but they were very different to my travels around Australia and South east Asia when I was a healthy normal 19 year old.  I wasn't able to party as hard as I did before, I wasn't able to do as much as I did before, I was just exhausted.

All the doctors I have seen over the years have just looked at me with pity and said ' Yeah you have fibromyalgia, nothing we can do' No one ever told me to look at myself. Look at my diet. Look at what I'm putting into my body. Do some exercise, do some yoga. Its only now, four years on, after I have done my own research that I have found out that food effects Fibromyalgia massively. Its only from support groups online that I have found out I shouldn't eat Tomato, Peppers, Chillis, Aubergine. I figured out myself that dairy and gluten caused my bones and muscles extreme pain so I cut that out a couple of months back, ( minus a trip to turkey, oh the bread was good, oh so naughty).

I am going Raw / Vegan / Vegetarian for MYSELF. To give me my life back, to improve my health and to give me a better quality of life. I know I'm going to get shit for this, but I'm not going vegan for the animals or the planet. Yet, anyway. Lets come back to that point in 12 weeks time. Im doing it for me, and right now that's not going to change.

People are going to think I'm crazy, I know. If the people who think I'm crazy had to live with this awful pain disorder, chronic fatigue, rapid weight gain due to illnesses, then they would try any kind of diet aka lifestyle to improve their life's.

I have done plenty of research and I honestly feel this lifestyle is going to benefit me most. Guess what ? Im well excited. I have always been obsessive about food. I used to use food as control. It started when I was 14 or so, and after years and years of bullying I used food as a control thing. I ate all the wrong things, became obsessive over all the wrong things, I would hide food, I would label food with menacing labels ' DO NOT EAT MY CHOCOLATE YOGURT' and I gained weight over time. In my teens it was fine. My early twenties it was fine. Then the heart failure hit and the fibromyalgia got worse and my weight just got worse and worse.

So now I'm going to use my food obsession in a positive way. I'm going to use my obsessive personality and my passion to learn about food and health and exercise to improve me. For once, my obsessive, impulsive personality is going to do me some favors and I'm so looking forward to it. I'm taking my Mum on this healthy journey with me and aim to post weekly body photo's to show my transformation and daily food posts to show what I have eaten.

I guess its about time I should mention my love for Juicing. Yep, juicing !

I was bought a juicer for Christmas and mid February I started juicing. I started by doing a 7 day juice detox and by the end of it I felt amazing. I had so much energy, my hair was stronger and no longer greasy, my skin cleared up and I just felt good.

I then went onto ' Clean eating '. I was super organised. I had all my food for work organised in little pots, i prepped all my meals and juices for work the night before and everything was going well. I was loosing weight and feeling great.

Then I fell into a fibromyalgia and Depression relapse. I was in pain, I slept a lot and I had time off work. I had a holiday abroad approaching. I slept for days approaching my holiday then started to feel a bit better. I flew out to Turkey, Istanbul. Food in Istanbul is healthy, or can be, if you choose it to be. The places I love are small and tasty, but, spicy. It was then I realized spice caused pain. It took me ages to realize why I was in so much pain. At one point I was in so much pain I took myself off to hospital. I was also missing my juices. I hadn't realized how much juicing had helped me. Helped my health, helped keep my fibromyalgia at bay and helped my energy levels.


So , anyway, lets wrap this up. In short terms :

I want a life.
I want to be pain free.
I want to have enough energy I can jump from the rooftops. Or maybe not, cos I might hurt myself. But jump at least.
I want to loose weight.
I want to live the life of a 24 year old and that's why I'm going Raw / Vegan / Veggie.  My diet will be a mixture of the three, I don't want to limited to just 'one diet type'.

I hope you follow my journey and watch my progress.

Anastasia x x x