My Five Reasons

A few weeks ago, ok I guess its months now Bernice challenged me to write about Sugar after I gave her a long lecture on why not to eat it. I guess lecturing is easy actually writing it down so it does not sound like a moan has been proving pretty hard for me. There are hundreds of reasons why sugar is bad for you and I could go on about it all day but I thought if someone really wants to change thier life then five should be enough to stimmulate the process of change. Ok so here it goes:

Sugar is a drug. It is one of the most addictive substances out there. You may not realise it but just a small ammount has you craving for more. Just like alcohol and tobacco your body craves the rush it gets from sugar. If you regularly eat sweet stuff and this includes lots of fruit (yes excessive fruit sugar also has its downside) you are probably an addict. Just try not eating anything sweet at all for two days and see how your body react. Just like with drugs alot of people get the shakes, feeling slightly weak, nausea, fatigue etc. I know I am an addict. I often say just this once or I don't eat that much sugar and before I know it every meal I eat has some thing a little sweet in it or after it.

More people die from sugar related deaseases every year than anything else. I studied diabetes in University and my proffessor likened being sick with diabetes to having HIV. Ok you cannot spread diabetes through bodily fluids but the outcome is very similar. Chances are you will die from a diabetes related deasease. My Grandfather died from diabetes related illnesses (stroke + cancer). My greatgrandmother also died from diabetes related illnesses and for about 15 years before she died she was blind and had both legs amputated due to diabetes. It will wear you down mentally and physically and eventually weaken your immune system to other diseas. Sugar related illnesses include diabetes, ulcers, strokes, heart attack, yeast infections, high cholesterol. Why would you want to have any of those?

Parasites in your body thrive on sugar. What happens to your teeth when you eat too much sugar also happens inside your body, the only difference is that you usually cannot see past your throat so you often don't even know what is happenening. The way your teeth rot is the same way your insides rot. Parasites need sugar and the acid produced from the digestion of sugar to live. These organisms in turn produce more acid and secrete hormones which mimic the bodies sugar craving hormones. So sometimes it is not you craving sugar, it is the stuff living inside you. Have you ever noticed that people who eat alot of green and hardly any sugar do not get ill very often? This is because, even if they come in contact with them, parasites cannot survive inside the hosts body as there is is nothing feeding them. So especially with it being colder this time of year why not avoid getting sick with the flu 3-4 times by simply cutting out sugar and eating more green foods.

Sugar is like a thief in the night. It robs your body of calcium and magnesium. An important companent of teeth and bones. To digest sugar you need calcium and magnesium. Most refined sugar however has been stripped of these minerals during processing. When its time for digestion your body goes looking somewhere else for these minerals to help it out. The most common place to get this from is your bones and teeth. If you are not replacing all this lost calcium and magnesium by eating plenty of green leafy vegetables your bones will eventually become brittle and oesteporosis sets in.

Finally I know the dangers of the overconsumtion of sugar and I am doing my best to provide a good example for my son. I don't want to preach one thing to him and do another. I try to lead by example which isn't always easy but I do sleep better at night knowing that he is growing dense strong bones rather than hollow brittle ones. It will be more difficult saying no to him once he knows the taste of sweetness. So far no he does not know what refined sugar tastes like. We tend to have a piece of fruit in the morning but our other two meals are packed full of green leafy vegetables, pulses and some root vegetables. His favourite meals are Okra (full of calcium) and seaweed rice soup. I would rather he had these two in his meal plan every day than having a cookie once a week.

Cutting out sugar alone is just one part of the process in reclaiming your health. But it is a pretty big part and I promise you will notice the difference.

I hope this has made you curious to find out more.

For more information on why not to eat sugar read:

The PH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health By Robert O. Young

http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/sugar-health-effects-risks.html

Or just google the dangers of sugar.

Alexa

Happy Thanksgiving

My Beet -the-carrot-ap juice and Apple-fennel-ginger juice. This is the stuff good life is made of!

I woke up this morning with a bbbbbbbbbbbang :-) Did my 20 minutes of walk with Nina and another 20 minutes of cardio and weight training. Today I decided to make Alexa's Apple-fennel-ginger juice. This is by far my favorite juice ever and the sweet aroma when you're juicing it is so intoxicating. Anise rocks!

Apple-Fennel-Ginger
8 organic red delicious apples, de-seeded, washed and skins left on and diced
1 fennel bulb, with all the trimmings, juice everything.
2 Tbsp ginger (I love ginger so I put a lot)

With the pulp I came up with that fabulous pate below. I figured why waste when you can get two meals out of one? Nina can't get enough of the pate with some celery sticks, she wants me to make it everyday, lol. What a healthy-delicious appetizer!

Beet-the-carrot-ap Juice
Yes, you can go ahead and beat the carrot up for a day, lol-- I like the name-- or beet-it-ap like I did.
5 Lbs bag organic carrots
1 red delicious apple
1/2 to 1 whole beet, peeled and sliced

This has a nice burgundy color to it and tastes YUUUUUUUUUmmiiii hmm

Be happy on Thanksgiving Day. Do yourself a favor this time around and don't overeat, because if you do, it will not be a happy Thanksgiving but a sad one. Start your day with your regular 30 to 1 hour of cardio or circuit training or whatever form of exercise you do. This is a proper way to start your day and you will find out that you won't eat quite as much as you did in the past years. Did you know that on average, people gain an excess of five pounds over the holiday period? Let's add this up: It means you are eating at least 3,500 calories or more a day. At 1 pound a day, it's no wonder the scale cries after Thanksgiving and Christmas.

You might want to remember that it is not all about the food and remember why this day is celebrated.

Make smaller portions of food instead.

Substitute stuffing for vegetable medley.

Serve yourself on the smallest plate.

Always eat a big bowl of salad before you eat anything else, it will help keep you satiated and also aid in digestion.

Skip desert and eat it much later.

Drink water or freshly made juices instead of all the other choices.

When you serve yourself, remember that your stomach is as big as your fist. Make sure your plate is more than half way filled with more live/raw foods.

Do not combine starches and protein on the same plate: basic chemistry, they both require different digestive juices to digest them and a base and and acid neutralize or cancel each other out and hence digestion is put to a halt and food begins to putrefy--and then it goes down hill from there. Remember the gas, heart burns, bloating and food coma you felt last year? Help yourself, challenge yourself to start eating right this Thanksgiving, New Year is too far away. This is one of those times when all raw/vegans can rest assured about what we eat. When you live a raw/vegan lifestyle this is rarely a concern. We can feast and party with the best of them and end up with no weight gained and no food comas. It is BLISS being a raw/vegan.

We have been invited by our very good friends for Thanksgiving and it will be a wonderful feast and celebration. You can still eat together with people who don't practice the same lifestyle as you. While they will be cooking up a storm and making some of their great dishes, Rick will be making a vegan tofurky, mashed potato and gravy and I will make the fruits and veggies platter and some rawmazing deserts! I may also make some raw pumpkin pie for tomorrow. For my dinner I will make some raw/vegan patties and some flax seed bread, as you can tell I will be having a feast as well. I can't wait.

Apple-fennel Pate

1 heaping cup of pulp left over from apple-fennel-ginger juice

1/3 cup safflower oil

1/3 cup raw apple cider vinegar ( I like Braggs)

1/2 avocado

Put all ingredients into a food processor and blend till smooth.

This is very mouth watering and filling when eaten with some fresh celery sticks, it is sweet and sour and will keep you full between meals.

Make the right choice everyday. Tomorrow is another to prove to yourself what you're made of! Be kind to your body.

Stay blessed.

~B~

Ready...Set...Go!

The human body is phenomenal. To think that with all the abuse it gets from us through living an unhealthy lifestyle, it can still be transformed to what we want it to become is simply phenomenal. Our bodies easily adapt to what we put it through--but not without consequences like in the case of not eating the right foods.

Pilates

We have all been to that place of fear, where you think you can never do what I am doing in the picture above. But I tell people they can, you can do it with persistence and consistence in your daily routine. No matter what we do we can find time to squeeze in a little exercise, if it is a priority of course. Ten minutes of exercise is better than a day of no exercise at all. By exercise I mean physical activity; it could be working around the house, walking, squats by the sink when doing the dishes or actually setting time to do it. Eating right without exercising could be as detrimental as eating the wrong food and exercising. Those two components, eating right and exercising are both beneficial to ones health and you can do it!

Nina and Mommy with their bunny aprons

It is always helpful to have a support system at home and at work. Let your family and friends know that you've made a decision to start living and eating consciously and if they are good friends and family, they will support you. My daughter, Nina, keeps me on my toes, when I have my lazy days and don't feel like exercising, she reminds me that I cannot give up on my myself and that I must keep my words. If you are a mom you know that alone is enough motivation to do something-- we want to be a good example. If you have no one at home or at work, keep a log book or a diary.

Our Youngest FYR member: Nina Lakota

I have heard people say "Yuck, green smoothie, never will i put that thing in my body." I know they say this because they don't know any better but my friends, ignorance can kill you. Ignorance can be the difference between living and dying. When I watch them eat hot dogs , I want to say " Yuck, do you have any idea what you 're putting into your body, how that was made, what it is made of and what havoc--overtime--it can cause to your system?" but most people would be offended if I said that. On the other hand, people have no restrain when you tell them how you've chosen to eat live foods as opposed to dead and decayed foods, they have many 'wise' things to say to you and you can imagine that they think you are a freak. I have had that before but all I felt was sympathy for that person...If only they knew better, if they only could accept the truth.

The New Year is almost here and many of us write long lists if resolution that we must keep, but after March most go back to doing what they used to do and it is not because they don't want to achieve everything on that list. There is only one main reason why people fail: Discipline is the main reason. There may be winners who aren't disciplined but there are no disciplined people who are not winners. By winners I mean in different aspects of their lives. You have to learn how to like reading, to be a leader you must be a reader.

Make friends with those whom you want to emulate. Be disciplined and tell you what, it is boring but it is those boring, redundant little things you do everyday that will get you to achieve your goals; little things like waking up and starting your day with a glass of water instead of coffee, eating fruits or green smoothies instead of eggs, bacon and sausages, choosing to go for the stairs instead of the elevator or walking to the corner video store instead of driving there. We must all make choices and those choices will determine your outcome.

I hope this gets you motivated to start this New Year right. I am ready to work with you, I am ready for another FABULOUS FYR year. Don't give up on yourself, your body rarely ever gives up on you except when you treat it wrong. Love yourself a little differently! Be the next FYR success story

Good things come to those who work hard, there are no free rides in life!

~B~

Food is Spiritual

There are certain things in life you wish you could wish upon those you love; like the day you found/understood/accepted the love of Christ, or how much different you feel being vegan, or happiness or peace of mind. But like political and social views one cannot do such things. Certain things can only be experienced and we are all at different points in this journey of life.

Nina and Savi

You wish you could recommend wonderful experiences like you recommend a favorite restaurant or a shoe or a dress because you know them and kinda' know they might enjoy it too. But food like most things is a spiritual thing and spiritual things are emotional things and emotional things are personal. At the end of the day you have to face yourself and hope you sleep well at night with the decisions you've made. You may be asking what this has to do with food but it has everything to do with food.

Our great dinner

We are our belief system. Our belief system controls how we act and react. What we eat, who we date and how we behave are all based on what we believe to be true. Your belief system can either make or break you because it determines your thoughts and your thoughts determine your words and action. Am I getting very philosophical? I hope so. If we want to be a well balanced people and stay Forever Young, all aspects of our lives have to be in harmony.

My beautiful friend Wanneh, her daughter Savi and our Nina

Sometimes starting a new lifestyle can be very scary and isolating but thank God for friends and family who understand and for great support from communities of people who are practicing the same lifestyle. Don't be surprised if you feel a little sad, almost like a separation anxiety, it is normal and it will pass. Nothing beats eating consciously, healthy and mostly raw; more greens,more nutrient dense and high water content foods--our bodies are made of over 70% of water. I was talking to my friend Alexa and we both agreed that the reason why people over-eat is because they are feeding their bodies empty, nutrient-deficient foods.


I remember back when I used to eat like a pig. I would find myself going to the fridge almost every hour to find something to eat. I felt like I was possessed, I couldn't stop eating and I couldn't feel satisfied with anything I ate, now I know why. When you eat mostly raw your body gets satisfied with even a single stuffed bell pepper and this is because you are giving your body the right nutrients it needs to function. If you looked at a SAD (oh, I love this so much. My favorite Acronym so far) person's plate, most of the times the only veggie is maybe a sprig of kale or parsley that was used to garnish the food.

Alexa's delicious Miso dressing

3 tsp white mellow miso

1 tsp Tahini

1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger

dash of black pepper

1.5 cup of olive oil

Then may be a little fruit bowl to have after the improperly combined food. To add fruit to this is a practice most of us learned from when we were little. Fruits should always be eaten on an empty stomach for proper digestion or 30 to 60 minutes after a meal (depending on what kind of meal it was, a flesh meal usually takes over 48 hours to digest at which time it has already begun o putrefy). When fruits get in contact with a meal it ferments (fermentation is an anaerobic conversion of sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol by yeast)

My Rick, Wanneh, Savi & our Nina
One thing that ties all men: Love.

My husband once said to me "Never change who you are. Never compromise who you are for anyone not even for me." At the core of each one of us there is a shinny person waiting to emerge. Somethings are very logical, some things are very true, some things are very basic and uncomplicated like eating right and eating to live. Live foods make for live people, dead foods make for dead or dying people. Let your food be as alive as you can have it be. There is a vast difference in the way you feel and view the world when you eat a more natural/raw diet. Spiritually there is also a vast difference. You cannot be at a certain level of spirituality with your body still haboring tons of toxins, we are all connected and I think what separates us--if we have to get down to the nitty-gritty-- has everything to do with they way we view food.

My Yummy Salad with Alexa's Miso Dressing

I still say one of my worst foods on the SAD list is milk. There are quite a few others on the list but Milk has been so glamorized--as long as a celebrity has a milk mustache it must be good for you--and popularized by all the big shots who control the money in the government. What difference is there from drinking a rat or a horse's milk? or even worse how controversial would it be to have lactating mums fill out gallons of their milk for sale by inducing them way past their lactating period? what is the difference from doing that to cows? I don't know about you but I love the green mustaches from my green smoothies better, plus it is environmentally friendly :-)

Raise your carrot juice and let's make a toast...CHEERS!

Natural Blood Transfusion

According to Dr. Ann Wigmore the consumption of chlorophyll (the green in plants) is like having a natural blood transfusion. Did you know that only one atom differentiates a molecule of Chlorophyll from a molecule of human blood? Makes you think huh?

Nina making some carrot juice.

Did you know that greens contain more vitamin A than carrots
- more vitamin C than oranges
- more vitamin E than whole wheat
- more vitamin B2 than milk
- more quality proteins (amino acids)

With the help of Victoria Boutenko's Green For Life green smoothies are pretty easy to make
You can drink your greens or eat your greens.

My favorite Mediterranean kale salad
Check the recipe on this site. You can add dried cranberries or even raisins to this. I love this so much that I eat this salad at least twice a week. I haven't met anyone who has tried it and not loved it, even the typical SAD (Standard American Diet) "I am a meat and potato person" will love this.

Give your body the fuel it deserves. Not eating enough greens is like filling the tank of your car with gravel.

Green is such a pretty color isn't it? Your body loves it even more. Three cups of green smoothies gives your body enough nourishment for a day.

Encourage your children to eat more greens. Nina's favorite thing to eat is fruits and vegetables.

~B~

Rich Choconana Shake

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! yes, I am awake for sure:-) Today I had a rich choconana shake for breakfast. I was going to make some fresh almond mylk (stole this spelling from Alexa) and have it with my yummy G-raw-nola but then I decided to make this shake when I spied my fresh looking bananas. Thing is, I still have about 1 cup of almond mylk left...

This is so very delicious and rich, so rich that one of those glasses was enough. Nina came up with the idea of making these yummy Choconana squares with the remainder of the shake. We sprinkles it with some raw cacao nibs for visual and some crunchiness. If we choose we can always blend it again and make a shake, eat it as is, or simply let it thaw a bit to have it as ice cream, however we have it, it's going to be yummy-delicious.

So here's the recipe for my Cinnamon Almond Mylk:

2 cups of almonds, soaked overnight and rinsed

4 cups of water

1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean

6 mejool dates, pitted

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Blend till liquefied and put mixture through a nut milk bag or cheese cloth to separate mylk from almond pulp. Makes a creamy rich mylk.

...and for the Rich Choconana Shake:

2 cups almond mylk

4 ripe bananas, frozen or fresh if you don't have frozen
1 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1 heaping Tbsp of raw cacao powder or carob powder

1 tsp coconut butter

Blend, pour into glasses and sprinkle with some raw unsweetened coconut shreds.

~B~