Eat Your Way to Health??!! Can We Cure Ourselves?

We started up with Netflix again and with that came documentaries. A friend of mine was talking about a few she watched and I was intrigued. For many, many years now, I have been on a path to more “clean” eating. I am by no means 100% on anything I do, but I give it a good whole-hearted try! I have learned more and more as the years went on, but I was FLOORED when I started watching these documentaries!

Here is what I have watched so far:

• Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (this one started it all for me!)
• Forks Over Knives
• Food Matters
• The Gerson Miracle
• Veducated
• Hungry for Change
• The Beautiful Truth
• Food Inc. (this was the first documentary I ever watched… years ago. This is what started me on my buying local meat kick!)

Others on my list:

• Food Fight
• Dying to have known
• Ingredients
• King Corn
• Farmageddon
• Chemerical
• Food Beware
• The Medicated Child

Needless to say, I was AMAZED!!! The more I watched, the more I wanted to see. Most of these documentaries talk about our health and its direct relation to what we put in our mouths. Now, I am not just talking about “dieting” or getting “skinny”, but more so curing our bodies from the inside out. There is an abundant amount of research out there, shown in these documentaries, that people are literally curing themselves of diseases such as CAD (coronary artery disease), Cancer and other vicious diseases. What all of the documentaries talked about is how these people cured themselves with a plant-based diet.

O.k. so I had you until plant-based right?! :) I am not saying go vegetarian, BUT I am saying that there is significant proof that eating a plant-based diet can literally cure your body, among other things. Now, I won’t go into much more than this because I could go ON AND ON AND ON, but I will urge you to just replace one show a week with a documentary and see what you think!!

What have I done after watching all of this? I started with a smoothie fast as a restart/ cleanse of my body. My goal was to drink only green smoothies for 5 days. I made it 3 days and then I had lunch on thursday (the rest was smoothies) and then Friday I had two meals with the rest smoothies. It sucked!! I was starving and not feeling good. If I ever tried it again, I would allow myself to eat fresh, raw produce with the smoothies just to get myself over the hunger. At the end of the 5 days,  I had lost 6 pounds and a lot of my yucky food cravings was gone. I was craving more produce and less junk! Whoo hoo! I have noticed that I can only eat 1/3 of what I use to eat, I get full much quicker and I am craving more healthy foods!!

After watching all of these documentaries, the hubby and I decided that we aren’t ready to completely go vegetarian and may never be, BUT we are going to try to eat more veg meals. A large portion of the meat we do buy is local and I vow to try to make sure that those farmers are treating the animals humanely. With all of this being said, I can’t just eat salads all day and beans… I LOVE me some food and I need variety and yumminess when I cook a meal! So I will be searching high and low for some good, healthy vegetarian meals and will let you know what I find! Another thing I am doing is a green smoothie a day. This has been shown to be a great way to get greens into your diet, along with increase energy, clearer skin, and weight loss.

Ignorance is Bliss, but if you want to know more, start watching these documentaries or check out the links below.  Knowledge is POWER and I really believe that we need to take our health into our own hands. It is extremely overwhelming as you learn about all of this. They talk about how many things are bad for you and I look at the food in the grocery store and think, “Can I eat anything??!!!” I think it goes back to the Garden of Eden. God put plants on this earth to help us survive. We can use plant-based food to fuel our bodies and even for other ailments we have. I know that I haven’t even scratched the surface, but I certainly am intrigued to learn more. Yes, I do think that we can be genetically wired to get sick young or that God may have a plan for us to be with him sooner than we think. My main goal in all of this is to feel good in my body for as long as it is here. As I get older, I feel more sluggish and just not as youthful as I once felt… well duh, I am not that young anymore :) HOWEVER, I don’t think we have to feel like crap just because we are aging. I think if you take care of your body and don’t feed into all of this processed junk, we can feel good no matter what our age! At least that is my hope :)

Here are some of the sites that I have been researching along this journey:

• Healing the Gerson Way (they claim that they have been curing cancer and other common diseases since the 1920’s) This was a common theme in a lot of the documentaries. VERY interesting!
• MSG Truth
• Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and Joe’s Blog
• Forks Over Knives
• Get Veducated (I love this one!. Scroll to the bottom and on the right they have some great links to get you started on eating more of a plant based diet!)
• Food Matters
• Hungry for Change
• Raw Family (great smoothie recipes)
• Blender Lady (great info on smoothies, etc and nutrition!)
• Juicing vs. Blending: which is right for you and what is the difference?

I would love to hear about any other documentaries or findings you have discovered along the way on this topic. PLEASE send me or comment on any yummy vegetarian meals you have that I can try! Also, as a sidenote, if you see me eating a Milky Way, Cheeseburger or any other “not-so-healthy food”, please don’t judge me :) I am trying here people, but I am NO Superhuman! lol

I went WAY overboard on the produce. If you were juicing for a week straight you may need all of this, but you use a lot less when you are just blending the produce. We are still eating on some of this produce and my cleanse was two weeks ago. I was able to freeze my greens I couldn’t consume and I can throw them in my smoothies as needed. I would recommend washing your greens right before you use them because they do start to wilt soon after they have been washed.  If you want to do something like this and usually shop all organic you could just do the dirty dozen organic and go with conventional for the Clean 15 (I got my clean 15 from Costco to save $). You could also buy freezer worthy organic produce when it is on sale and then freeze it and throw it in your smoothie as it calls for it!

Here is the finished product. If you are using greens, it doesn’t really matter what fruit you put it, it pretty much stays green :) Don’t let that turn you off! They usually end up being pretty good! A good rule of thumb is to start out with 60% fruit and 40% veggies!

 I also use Essential Oils in my smoothies to change-up the taste! I have been amazed at how they are changing my life!   If you have any questions about smoothies or essential oils or need help locating the right oil for your own particular health issues please send me an email and be sure to check out my website for all things DoTerra!