The road to a healthy lifestyle has not been an easy one for me. Sure, I love being active, but I can’t honestly say I’ve cared that much about my eating habits over the years. Then I started volunteering in an animal sanctuary and making friends with the exotics that, through whatever unfortunate circumstances, found themselves living there. These animals should be free. But because of human folly, they lost their rights to live in freedom.
The only things we volunteers been able to give these unfortunate beings is a safe place to live and a healthy diet. I saw transformations before my very eyes from animals who had come from homes whee all they were fed was junk. I found a great reason to care about healthy foods.
Changing focus to a healthy lifestyle
No, it’s not easy. Many of us see the horrific news shows and declare, “I’m a vegan now!” But then someone offers us ice cream, or we get sick and blame the illness on a lack of meat. Rubbish. Rationalization about why we should eat meat, or addictions to habits we are too lazy to break is just not good enough. I’m not preaching here. I’m the first to admit that I forget and enjoy a piece of cake that has eggs in it. There was a time when I kept my mouth shut and ate what was put in front of me, because I couldn’t stand the ridicule for not eating meat. Trust me, I’ve got plenty of weaknesses, and they don’t spell healthy lifestyle.
Yet, it’s a wonderful thing to start questioning our choices and trying new things. Habits do not change overnight (and I do wonder why so many vegans use the saying “cold turkey” — isn’t there a vegan alternative for the phrase?). We don’t need to beat ourselves up for making bad choices, nor beat others up for their choices. We can, nevertheless, help ourselves and help others to make baby steps towards a more healthy lifestyle.
On the next page (click that round 2 below) you’ll se what I’m talking about.