Missing essentials like protein… due to a raw food vegan!

I agree, I have been very scared with that. When I do something that is not mainstream, I quite often do not directly get the support I would be needing, resulting in doubt and fear.

Missing on essentials is one of those things.

I get overwhelmed with questions like;

• Where do I get my protein?
• Where did I get my ...
• …

In the beginning, I was very busy with that, trying to find answers for it, resulting in fear and anxiety.

Today I’m not at all busy with that anymore, I just eat what I feel my body is asking for, try to eat a big variety and drink the water my body asks for.

Now, regarding protein, do I think meat is the only earthly thing containing protein?  Where do I think animals get their protein? Elephants are vegan!  There are many plant-based sources of protein like kale, nuts, seeds, spinach, broccoli, avocado…

In order to be a bit stronger when people ask me about it, as well as to get over the fear I guess, I do a yearly blood check and they over and over again confirm that they are healthier than ever before. So although I don’t want to say that I ignore sciences completely, I try to minimize it and built on my own feelings for the future.

In order to connect with my own feelings, meditation, mindfulness, yoga… help of course, very well with that.

For the food side, to guarantee that I eat what my body needs, I just make sure that I have a lot and a big variety of whole food, fruits and vegetables in the house (if not, I do the exercise in the local organic shop). When I’m hungry, I get in front of them, feel, smell them and eat as many of the whole foods that I want.

I feel good by doing that, I keep fit, don’t gain any weight, don’t lose any weight and eat as much food as I want from the whole foods I like the most, for me it feels like one of the great natural discovery of life!

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #protein #missingprotein #veganathletes

Yoga, find your inner self!

I've always been attracted by Yoga. Now for one or another reason never really much practiced it and never really incorporated it into my life. Until the moment that I changed my food habitudes.

From then on, it felt like I was more flexible and felt better what my body was telling me.

That was the moment that I started to appreciate Yoga quite heavily and knew it was something I was about to practice more in the future.

I found it great to feel the possibilities as well as to realize the limitations of my body. The Yoga practices provided me exactly these feelings and I became to see these discoveries as a real part of my life.

I started to do Yoga in a group course, which were the ideal circumstances for me.

I enjoyed the calmness of the teachers, the great communication skills and the ability to get in contact and share with other yoga practitioners.

Due to planning and family organization, unfortunately the group courses didn't really worked out for a long term goal. Well, I really had to make a choice. So I switched to 1, 2 times a week at home basically on 1h to 1h30 Yoga workout that I found first in books and now on YouTube. There are really some great ones available! And I can really search on what interests me the most in the present moment, like; “1h30, intermediate, vinyasa, yoga” and I can adapt to my own needs. Isn’t that great!

Of course, nothing above the real teacher and the group courses, now sometimes I have to make the best of what is accessible for me.

These workouts do me so good, and whether I can, I try to do some group courses if I can, really enjoying it.

I can only encourage to at least try it and try to look and feel the possibilities of the body as well as the limitations!

Happy discovery, Namaste!

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #yoga #bodypossibilities #bodylimitations

Rich Roll on my path of Vegan and Raw food Vegan!

When being somehow concerned if my new food habits (starting with vegan) would still fit with my sport activities, my lovely wife offered me the book, “Finding Ultra” from Rich Roll like mentioned in my previous topic.

I liked the book very much. My story was pretty similar and I just had not to feel it the hard way. I'm always very grateful that it was a realization based on little discomforts.

Now at first the book was for me so American. It felt like it cannot just be a transmitted message, it had to include what felt to me like pretty commercial stuff as well.

For me it personally lost some of his charm. When I then visited the referred website out of the book, they confirmed to me to be pretty commercially based as well and I left all that on the side.

Since I still followed Rich on social media, I saw that there would be a retreat in Italy, which looked like accessible for me as a European. When seeing the conditions I realized it was way too expensive for me, and felt again that commercial taste I had originally started feeling with the book as well.

Some time later, I had a great conversation on this subject with a wonderful woman I recently met. About why it gives me that feeling, how we sometimes underestimate the value of something (apparently Belgians are modest for that), how, why a price like that is set on it, about that if I really want it is maybe accessible in the future with sacrifices… This conversation made me look different to Rich Roll again, again with the open non-judgmental way, like it used to start when I started to read the book.

When browsing to his website again with these eyes, I realized that his podcasts were free and can be downloaded, great! Now they last sometimes more than 1 hour which seemed like too long for me.

Then towards the end of the year, I saw a message of a best of compilation of Rich Roll podcasts and decided to at least give this a try.

http://www.richroll.com/podcast/the-best-of-2016-part-i/

This compilation was amazing, it provided me the taste of wanting more, I took a lot of notes and made me listen to a lot of them individually afterwards.

http://www.richroll.com/podcast/best-of-2016-part-ii/

I fell in love with his podcasts and learned a lot from it on a variety of subjects about life that particularly interest me.

From Mindfulness, Education, Minimalism… to Yoga and Spiritualism.

I can’t hardly understand how I was about to pass besides all this great discovery due to prejudgments and probably emotions.

Well from the other side, I didn’t pass by it, my way of life brought me completely in contact with it and showed me all the beauty of it.

Rich is doing great things, is very passionate and it shows again to me how prejudgments can be so wrong.

Is this a lesson about leaving prejudgments out, or is it a lesson of having faith in life and that everything will come to me at the right time and moment?

I consider it to be a bit of both, nevertheless great discovery, check it out by yourself; http://www.richroll.com/

And I can definitely recommend to listen to his podcasts; http://www.richroll.com/category/podcast/

And like he also regularly says, and which I sincerely repeat here after my discovery, nothing commercial in here, just designed to provoke, educate, inspire and empower you to discover, uncover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self.

Which is what it did for me!

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #fruitsandvegetables #plants #vegansport #veganathletes #richroll #findingultra #peaceandplants #peaceplants

Sport, muscles, ego and raw food vegan!

I love sport!

Running, swimming, snowboarding… to get a deeper connection with myself and have that great feeling after a workout.

Basketball, football.... to get that super feeling of working with others and having that great moment of fun together.

Since I started with raw food vegan, I haven't done less sports. I rather increased the sport activity I did, took more pleasure, got less injuries and felt way better my body in what it was capable and what not.

That all looks great, weren't there any negative effects then?

Oh yes, one that I have been puzzled with for quite some time. From one side, I gained very heavy in endurance with almost no injuries, on the other side, I lost quite some pure muscle strength.

So concretely, I can run and jump more than before, now probably not so fast anymore and definitely not jump so high anymore.

In basketball I was still able to dunk before going raw food vegan and today I can just touch the ring (overtime, today 2+ years, I even realize the muscles are slowly coming back, I can unfortunately today not say yet till which level they will come back).

Did this bother me, oh yes it did, now it made me discover the ego and the “why” I wanted that so badly. I realized that I maltreated my body quite heavily in the past just for my ego. Today I treat my body like the most precious thing I've and even though I don't dunk anymore, I still enjoy the sports like I have always done so before.

In my search for food and sport, my lovely wife offered me the book of Rich Roll, which was a great gift, where I discovered kale (which I love) and quite some other aspects of food and sport. More on Rich Roll in a next separate topic, since he learned me way more than just what’s in the book!

So as a summary, by accepting and understanding my ego in the sport side, I do more sport, enjoy it more and feel great since going raw food vegan!

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #fruitsandvegetables #plants #vegansport

#veganathletes #richroll #findingultra