Thursday 6 December 2012

Is A Plant Empowered Diet For Me?

I've been reading a lot about nutrition, wellness, healthy living and all that jazz recently. I stayed up late the other night learning about Gerson Therapy by complete accident. It's well known to all my friends that I'm addicted to the internet (most, if not all, would say Facebook). While there's some truth to this Facebook addiction, I am also genuinely in love with the amount of information, inspiration and ideas that are out there online! Gerson Therapy seems to surround cutting out everything from your diet and having juices 6 times a day. It's not something I could ever manage as a Diabetic but it was interesting nonetheless.



Awhile back a friend of mine gave me the link to the trailer for the documentary Forks Over Knives. I'd heard about it before but hadn't looked into it. If you're not familiar with it, this blog gives a really good review. Good as in balanced :) Basically it's about how living a plant empowered diet is better for you. Just a warning for Diabetics, I felt just a slight kick in the gut, when I heard this line in the trailer:

"I have reversed the Diabetes. The Diabetes is not coming back."



Of course, comments like that in general make me not want to give any kind of credit to the documentary as I believe that the millions of preconceived notions and assumptions about Type 1 Diabetes stem from things like this. However, since I'm addicted to the internet and information I of course, looked into it. I really do believe in the power of plants. I think there's something to be said for eating organic, natural and unprocessed food. In a previous blog post I posted a photo showing the difference between free range and store bought eggs. If that's not enough evidence that eating organic/natural foods is good I don't know what is.

But what does that mean for me?
I'm not 100% sold on the idea of never eating meat again. I thought about living by myself last year and if I had I would probably have ended up making mostly vegetarian meals. However it ended up being cheaper to live with a group of friends. One of their comments was, I'm so glad you're not vegetarian. The idea is to do flat cooking and they obviously have a bit of bad will towards vegetarians! I don't but I can see how a vegetarian would make flat cooking a bit tricky. For me, I would just see it as a challenge to make sure I was including enough vegetables with my food! But each to their own. So it's looking like I'll be eating a bit of meat for flat dinners. This isn't something that bothers me but I'm going to make it a bit of a new years resolution to increase the amount of meat free/plant empowered breakfast and lunches that I have. At the end of the day, I don't need to be eating meat with every single meal. In an ideal world I would be eating a mostly plant empowered lifestyle with organic meat 2 to 3 times a week. For now, and for 2013 my focus will be on delicious plant empowered lunches and experimenting with my own flat meals. I found this year that a lot of my flatmates meals were often half carb, half meat. E.G Spaghetti Bolagnaise. So I'm going to ensure my meals have a heap of vegetables in them, and low GI carbs etc.

I love how Forks Over Knives calls it a plant empowered diet. I think it's much more politically friendly than just saying Vegan/Vegetarian. And I also love the idea that what I eat empowers me.

On a similar note, the friend who showed me the link for the trailer is also visiting me next week. I haven't seen her in over a year and I'm bouncing off the walls with excitement! She's a vegetarian and also a chef so I love seeing her ideas for meals. I also love her to pieces for everything else, not just her amazing cooking abilities.

I truly believe that Friends are the backbone to my own happiness and sanity  :)

xx

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Great documentary... Thanks for stopping by..

I became a veggies when I was 12, at 24 - I started eating chicken and now id say Im 85 veggie, 15% chicken, shrimp, turkey.

To each their own....but I do totally believe my energy level comes from a plant based diet. I don't drink coffee, or drink soda...

naturally high on life!

xoxo from Texas (awaiting surgery)