A New Beginning...

Hello Friends,

With a bit of delay, but here I am as I promised on the next episode from my blog. Let me give you a little bit of introduction or behind-the-scenes of this post before I barge into the topic.

I have always been proud of my immune system and overall health since when I was a kid. As a kid growing up till marriage (23 ½ years), I have been to doctor for health reasons may be 5 times total (that too mostly severe cold or cough and may be once for prolonged fever, nothing too serious). I did go to doctor a couple of other times with some injuries driving my bicycle or moped, but that was extent of it. Since marriage, I have had 2 prolonged doctor visits (I have been married 11 years, OK, now you all know how old I am, he he he) – one for UTI and one for some kind of viral fever, which due to negligence converted into a 3 day hospital stay, but nothing otherwise. So, you got the picture of my health.

But, in last 8 months of my life, I have been sick at least 5 times and have been to the doctor and had antibiotics to cure whatever I had, viral fever, toothache (first time in my life), wisdom tooth removal, a few colds, constant migraine attacks, a bacterial throat infection and now the final nail in the coffin was severe throat infection 2 weeks ago.

All this made me think as to what changed in my life in last 8 months or couple of years ago that has been attacking my immune system badly in last couple of months. I knew there was something wrong. On further analysis, I found that for last couple of months/years, due to busy life schedule, work, school, home, other activities, we have been putting almost “anything” in our body in terms of food and beverages. And, it is all just coming back to me and @ some extent my family too. My hubby has high BP, Cholesterol  Triglycerides and other related issues that come as a package.

While I was doing this self-analysis from the sick bed, I stumbled upon, these 2 wonderful videos: “Hungry for Change” and “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” that kind of jolted me eyes open and showed me what was going on in my family and may be in many of your families too. I will recommend all my blog readers to watch these 2 videos at least once. These videos showed me how almost everything we eat are loaded with hormones or pesticides or other chemicals that we don’t want to eat/drink. How much processed food, we are getting used to just because they are “easy” to get by. Our bodies are not getting what they need in this entire process and we pop ourselves with external vitamins and what not. And, it is a complete circle of eating a lot of processed food (it even includes overcooked food sometimes), not getting enough nutrients in the body, body craving for more food and us being overfed in turn and becomes over weight and obese and finally getting the diseases in a package deal at some point in our life.

I know it all sounds like “oh yeah, we know about it and we really eat healthy”. But, do you? really? Analyze your daily and weekly food habits and then maybe it is time to make some change.

Do you know that if we complete adapt “plant-based” foods and food products (unprocessed for most of it), we will be soon in a great shape and free of any medical issues? They have shown a lot of medical conditions getting reversed as well in this new life style.

Sorry for a lot of rambling, but I wanted to put forward what I came to know and realized and working towards for all of you and hoping some or all of you will be tempted, watch the videos, research more and make some lifestyle changes, as needed and suited to yourself and your family.

I am really happy and proud of my hubby too @ this point, as he was initially skeptical, but after watching the videos, he was totally with me and to begin our process we did a 3-day Reboot. You can get a lot of info and guidelines on Reboot with Joe website, but in nutshell what we did was 3 days, all 5-6 meals in the day, we had only veggie/fruit juices (without fiber), which gave our digestive tract some well deserved rest and time to settle down. Do you want to know a great side-effect of this? We lost 4 pounds each, isn't that great for something that we didn't even try).

After rebooting our systems, we are doing a 5 day eating/drinking only veggies, fruits and legumes. After completion of these 5 days, we will slowly introduce whole grains in our diet and try to stick to whole grains most of the time. We have also decided to do a 3-day reboot once every month.

Another very important thing which we miss most of the time is “moving” our body. All we need to do and I strongly encourage you to do is do a 30 minute brisk walk a day. It doesn't have to be one 30 minute walk. You can do three 10 min. walks and may be most of you do already – walking the dog, walking the kids to school and back, walking stairs in your apartment complex or in office and many such small things.

We are really happy with this change in our eating habits and hope to help you all do the same. I am sincerely expecting most of you to say that after reading this and going through the videos, you have decided to convert at least one or 2 meals (specially breakfast and afternoon snack or dessert) to just fruits and veggies. So, who is on-board?

Now, keeping this process and change in mind, I would like to introduce a new event that I am starting on my blog from March 1^st. It will be called “Healthy Me and Healthy Us”.

Wait for more details on this. I can bet it will be fun and yes, I will be looking for me fellow bloggers to guest host this in future.

On this note, I sign off. Take care everyone and stay healthy.

Priya