The part for the environment with raw food vegan

I have grown up with already a mindset for a better environment.

We tried to reduce waste, buy eco friendly cars, try to get solar energy, try to reduce water usage...

Honestly, I had the feeling, I was doing great and at the maximum of what I can do!

In the meantime I learned that I can always improve and that, what I was doing so far, was so ridiculously low.

I understood that one of the most effective things an individual can do to lower their carbon footprint, is to avoid all animal products. The production of meat and other animal products places a heavy burden on the environment.

The good news is there IS something we can do about it and which is achievable for everybody that want to do so including me!

Every time I shop or order food in a restaurant - every time I eat - I can choose to help these animals. Every time I make the switch from an animal product to a vegan one I’m standing up for farmed animals everywhere.

Going vegan is easier than ever before with veganism becoming increasingly mainstream as more and more people from all walks of life discover the benefits of living this way.

It's time to ask myself: if it is now possible to live a life that involves delicious food and drink, delivers better health, leaves a smaller carbon footprint and avoids killing other creatures - then why don't I do that?

Interested? The source and more information on the subject; https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #savetheplanet #betterplanet #vegansociety #noanimalproducts

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

I’m starving all the time when eating raw food vegan!

That was my first thought when starting with raw food vegan. I realized pretty fast that I don't really know what starving is and that all the things I felt so far, were just my mind pretending that I'm hungry.

I was surprised to discover how much is just influenced by my mind and not a real need for my overall body. I quickly understood also how easy it is for marketing/lobbying to influence my mind and make these messages perceive as the only truth.

Personally today after all I’ve learned so far, I believe that my body needs water (majority of my body is water) and then a variety of whole foods depending on my activity.

In order to actually find out what is real starving and what is my mind saying;

• Hey, it's morning, so I need to eat.
• Hey, in the morning to wake up, I need coffee.
• Hey, to have eaten enough, I need to feel very full in my stomach.
• Hey, I will not make it between morning and noon, I need to eat something at 10h.
• …

At all those occasions I have just slowly drunk still water and waited to see if the feeling continued or not. If it continued half an hour after 1 or 2 glasses of water, it might be real, if not it was clearly the mind in my case trying to make me feel something that was not a real need of food.

When I had done that exercise for quite some time, I was amazed with the discovery of the huge influence of my mind in everything and especially food. I realized also of how much I eat emotionally, instead of when I’m hungry.

Today, after having lost 10kg and regularly vaste for a few days, I know I have still not discovered what real starving is (I’m too lucky here in Belgium) and for me it's just a mental state. When the whole body is in need of energy, it is actually a complete different feeling then the hungry I used to know. The ‘hunger’ I used to know, is more a need that my mind has, emotionally quite often and which is expressed like that, now it has nothing to do with real ‘hunger’.

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #themind #fruitsandvegetables #plants #mentalinfluence

#starving

Killing animals vs raw vegan!

The other day I was having lunch with raspberries out of the garden, that were extremely juicy. When my hands were nicely covered and pretty red, my phone rings. I picked up with just one sweet push and told the person; “I'll put on speaker, explaining the reason behind, with my hands all nice red”.

Felt all natural and the person also completely understood.

I was then thinking after the call, what if I would still eat meat, would I say; "hold on, I'll set you on speaker since I just grabbed a rabbit, killed it and my hands are covered with blood?".

That doesn’t feel natural to me at all.

Am I already too much into all the plants based stuff today, to find this very cruel and unacceptable?

I don't know how to catch the rabbit, killing even worse and then finally eat it… not natural at all to me today.

My main reason why I left meat out at one day, was because I knew, understood, found it unacceptable for myself and the pain it did to divine.

How come I did not know before? The cruelty of slaughterhouses is of all time aren't they? Was I so manipulated by the outside world to not see it and not speak about it?

I can really not tell today how I would have felt back in the days that I was still eating meat…

Would love to hear back from current meat eaters on whether they found it normal if I would say the meat eater sentence on the phone?

Because basically that is what it is…

When I ate meat in the past, maybe I paid others to kill it for me, now in reality that is exactly what is happening! So as a meat eater, I should have found that naturally… I’ve a very hard time believing that!

#vegan #rawfoodvegan #nature #worldwide #fruitsandvegetables #plants #bevegan #eva #vegansociety #peta #earthsprout #respectanimals