Plant based food for the family!

I don’t talk a lot about my family, basically because it is my personal decision to share all this information and hope that it can contribute somewhere however to somebody living a better life. It’s not theirs and they make their own decisions, are on their journey and it is not up to me saying what they have to do and what not.

I do regularly receive the question that, ‘I want to change, now my partner not, what can I do’ and which is the reason why I will talk about it here a little bit, now mainly my personal view, it is not a family statement.

When me and my partner talk to each other, I (and I think we) never take anything for granted because the other said it. I will give it a big attention, big probability and most likely we will have more in depth discussions about it over time, exchanging on both of our experiences. So a first thing I would say that worked very well for me, is a good open, non judgmental communication. I’m talking about having an open non judgmental communication about food here, nevertheless, I think that it is important for all subjects in a relationship or family.

So for me, if there is one starting point to start on plant based food change (or any other change) in a relation or family, it’s to make sure that I can have open non judgmental communication and respect for each other in each bests authentic self. If I cannot have that, then that will be my core attention and make sure that, that is established before going any further for any kind of subjects.

When established, I’ve seen that there is a certain freedom for me in the family in which I can explore some things on my own. So concretely for food, some meals are pretty individual and I can eat pretty different from other family members. For breakfast I eat fruit, for lunch I eat a salad and so it’s only dinner where we eat together and that is potentially more difficult to change. Now I can already change ⅔ of my day on my own, if I do that, that would already be a big change and big step forward, so is it really related to the other members?

Dinner is thus the most difficult part. Assume I eat a normal dinner of potatoes, vegetables and meat. I can say, I increase the amount of vegetables, keep the potatoes the same and remove the meat just for me. In this way I eat completely plant based and nothing changes for my family. So I really believe that if I want something, I can do and find something to realize that.

What I felt is, that when going on a plant based diet, everything changed like I explain on my blog. Since everything changes in a positive way, partner or family members realize this positive effect as well. It makes them wonder, curios and maybe try something as well. Should I next time take some fruit for you at breakfast as well? Should I just for once make a salad for lunch for you as well? Should we just have one day a week where we all leave the meat out? ...

That is how things in reality started rolling for me as well. And then other members come back with other ideas, leave out the milk, get away of cheese (well the animal based one), let’s buy plant based cheese, let’s buy a veggie burger instead of meat to give it a try...and most importantly continue to have the open non judgmental communication while experimenting.

Share my feelings, share my thoughts, explain the effect it has, listen to each other…

I’m pretty sure by following this process, they will clearly understand how I feel, and that if I’m in the kitchen, I unfortunately cannot go against my natural feeling and don’t make any meat anymore. I truly believe we reached our natural self for food, and in the family, we’ve only very rarely a conflict about food. Sure, we all have our preferences and try to regularly address those for each member. Mine is, can we eat a green salad with vegetables like kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, celery, lettuce, fennel, endive, arugula, bell peppers...which I know is not the favorite of all of them.

For the relation with the kids, here can be found some previous information I've written on the subject as well. Now basically I try to listen as well as I can to their needs and preferences, and I try to discover together with them plant based alternatives. Via communication, it didn't take long before we had a dozen meals that they loved...

‘Communication to a relationship is like oxygen to life. Without it...it dies’ - Tony Gaskins

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #family #ownjourneys #changefood #opennonjudgementalcommunication #opencommunication #respectforeachother #plantbaseddiet #nonjudgementalcommunication #greensalad #TonyGaskins

The beauty of the artist!

I quite often hear from people that look TV, typically to programs like ‘Belgium’s got talent’, ‘The Voice’..., that there are some amazing talented artists out there. I’ve personally always some mixed feelings about that.

From one side, I’m happy they see the artist, from the other side, I find it a shame that we only see like a so tiny percentage of the artists that are potentially available. With all new technologies, I get so much triggers that the level for artists in order to get my attention is extremely high.

When I changed my food habits, started to practice yoga and mindfulness, my view on the world changed. It was like, I could more see the beauty and authenticity of every person way better. It looks also to me that in fact we unlearn the artist in all of us at school. I guess I’m not the only one that heard when being a kid, don’t go for art, I cannot live out of that.

So somehow I do think I’m not the only one that felt that all artistic impulsions had to be reduced or at least given less attention. Resulting in everybody coming from school with very developed skills to get in the capitalistic society. Only very little passionate ones would continue to develop their artistic side and come to amazing results.

What I want to say, is illustrated beautifully in the story here below (that I discovered in a book of Dr. Wayne W. Dyer) often narrated by Leo Buscaglia, an educator himself, and can also be found slightly altered in his book Living, Loving and Learning.

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world” so they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a “charlie horse” from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.

I’m sure I’ve come across a lot of artists over time, now like saying, it is only not so long ago that I managed to really see the beauty in each artist. The passion, love, hard work, creativity, commitment… they set in their work is really something we should all be inspired by, I definitely was. Here is some great Belgium art that crossed my journey and where I’m so grateful for.


Nele, from nele.nu, which especially blow me away with the theatre acting and the creation of ‘Bitches’, which I had the pleasure to experience end of last year.

Bart Bijns, from Lobstar, a lot of people I know have been making music and I’ve always admired them all. Bart recorded some great music on YouTube and included some nice videos.

My preferred one, was if I remember well, his interpretation of “Mr Sandman” and made with that an amazing synchronized video of 4 versions (I nevertheless couldn’t find it anymore).

Martine Godard, from Compagnie Arts et Couleurs in her performance ‘Josette’ that I had to experience end of last year in the ‘Théâtre des 4 Mains’ in Beauvechain. The way she could entertain and tell a story for old and young, was truly amazing to me.

Interview can be seen here; http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5xkxmf

In the 3 examples here above, I really see the versatility of each of these artists, where they would bring in, every aspect related to their art, profound self and get out the best of them.

All this makes me realize that everybody has probably an artist in them, some will never find them (because they are not looking), some are on the discovery road and some are way ahead like Nele, Bart, Martine… Today I’m really happy they found (or probably never lost it) their beautiful artist in them already and made with their creations the world a better place to live!

Thank you!

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #Belgiumgottalent #TheVoice #art #WayneDyer #LeoBuscaglia #nele.nu #Bitches #BartBijns #Lobstar #greatmusic #MrSandman #MartineGodard #ArtsetCouleurs #Josette #Théâtredes4 MainsBeauvechain

I’m a sugar addict!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a sugar addict and besides wanting the energy, I’ve not completely found out yet why that is.

So far, I’ve been addicted to refined sugar. As a kid, I’ve always liked candy. With my own money loved to buy them in the local paper magazine shop on the way from and to school. With the family groceries, I loved it when we went to some dedicated supermarket close to where I lived, where they would sell everything more for other shops to resell. Really in big quantities, and I could thus buy of some candy that I liked, 2kg packages.

Luckily my parents understood that we should not buy that too often, since I would eat them at a speed that nobody could imagine. I would also take such a package with me, typically on a travel trip and they would be very useful to keep me awake when I wanted.

Besides candy, desserts like ice-cream (minimum 500ml) and crème brûlée has also been something that was very addicted for me. I used to make, or buy big quantities of those, and regularly use them as a meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) replacement.

And last but not least, pastries would be very delicate as well and I think that the whole family still remembers how unfortunately selfish and greedy I was for those. When I would come back from a basketball training or match in the evening, having a little hunger, finding the 4+2 ‘éclair’ pastries in the fridge, I sometimes eat them all 6.

Looking back to it today, of course I can’t believe I did that and behaved that way. Now, seeing that apparently some studies show that refined sugar provides the same addictive effect in the brain as cocaine and heroin does, I understand, why I always wanted more of it and it never felt like enough.

With my changing food habits I started by removing the refined sugar and basically replacing them by natural sugars.

Was it easy?

Not at all, it was a serious detox period and I can imagine it to be pretty similar to get off drugs or alcohol (since the effects in the brain are similar). I started by mainly only drinking water, appreciating the pureness of it, when it gets into my body, which helped me very well starting with this. Afterwards, if I dug deeper into it, I found out that refined sugar was in almost everything I eat.

Ah ok, yeah right, since sugar is very addictive, legal (not like hard drugs) I can assume a lot of food manufacturers add it to their products, so I get addicted to it and I buy more of them, all what they want in this capitalistic society unfortunately. Why did nobody tell and explained me that? No, no, nobody to blame, why did I not listen and found out about that earlier? Way too busy with other stuff I guess…

Was it worth it?

ABSOLUTELY! Like I explained here above, I find it unfortunate to find out only now and find like I explained here, that it should be something for sure somewhere part of the education for the future. My freedom and independence from refined sugar has been an amazing gift on this journey.

Today I’m even more active in sport than I used to before, so I still like sugar very well and I believe I somehow need it for my energy.

The main difference with before, is that I get my sugar intake from fruits (fresh whole food or dried ones), plants who contain quite some sugar (like e.g. beetroot) and that I’ve no intake anymore of any refined sugar today.

My intake of sugar today is also in line with the activities I do. If I’m very active, I eat quite some of them, if I’m less active, I eat less of them.

Great feeling of freedom, especially no addiction anymore and which is something I wish to everybody!

I could not imagine in the past, that someday a vegetable like ‘fennel’ would taste to me, way better than the taste ‘calish candy’ used to provide!

I’m very happy that nature took over on refined create products out of laboratories!

How do you work on addictions and what worked for you?

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #sugaraddict #needenergy #removerefinedsugar #refinedsugaraddictiveeffectbrain #sugarfromfruits

Why cows give milk?

I used to think that cows are meant to provide milk to humans, it is their purpose of life.

It is what I believed until my food changing habits, in the mean time I know the story, now I’m very surprised that still a lot of people believe like I used to believe and that it looks like the story hasn’t been told enough yet.

If not for the humans, why does the cow produces milk then?

Am I really so stupid, for the calf of course. It is the same for humans, why does a mom gives milk, to nourish her child, we all know.

The cow provides milk for the calf, so it can grow in a short period from a 40 kg calf to a 700 kg cow.

Indeed, the cow produces milk for the calf and what is left is for the humans?

Yeah, right, do I believe this again?

Here is the story, we take a cow, we inseminate it (for humans, we call this RAPE), when the baby calf is born, we remove and seperate it from the mom otherwise it would drink all the milk (for humans, we call this KIDNAPPING), we milk the cow at the maximum level, so humans can create a lot of dairy products out of that. This basically is why a cow gives milk (they secretly believe that the milk will somehow arrive at her calf). To make sure that the cow continues to produce quality milk, we inseminate the cow each year and remove and separate the calf immediately when it’s born like explained here above.

If after a certain amount of times, this process doesn’t work anymore, the cow is good to go to the slaughterhouse, will be used to serve human’s cheap meat and the cow is replaced with a new one to continue the process.

Ok, it’s cruel, I get it, now as a human I need milk to grow, no?

We need it for our bones?

Who told that?

The Dairy industry representatives and lobbyists that manage even to influence governments with this?

They will indeed not say that it is bad for me, creating a lot of allergies and responsible for a lot of diseases. It would be against their business.

Yeah, now it will make me strong, isn’t it?

Well, it made a calf from 40 kg to a 700 kg cow in 2-3 years. If it would have the same effect on the baby as on the calf, a baby of 3 years will be 60 kg.

Maybe I might be strong with it, now the question is more, is it good and meant for me?

Why am I so obstinate with cow milk, why don’t I drink giraffe milk, sheep’s milk, rat milk…

By drinking animal milk, the humans are the only species drinking milk from another species.

It’s all in the about what have I been told and by who, in the past?

Check the sources!

What would I do, if some other species came, raped the women, kidnapped the child immediately after birth, set the mom in cages so that other species can drink their milk?

All this because somebody who is making money in the milk business has with his enormous marketing and lobbying budget, said that it is good for the humans without any proof at all?

I’m happy for my conscious that I know and don’t consume any animal milk anymore.

Let’s liberate the cow, there are more than enough plant based milk alternatives available today!

Some big dairy companies even have their own plant based milks alternatives, since they understand that their animal based message is ridiculous and won’t survive much longer.

Thanks to all organisations that help accelerate this process and have less and less animals suffer in this milk producing cruelty!

Will you do your part as well, from now on if you didn’t know it yet?

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #nosufferingforanimals #freedom #cowmilkisforcalf #mercyforanimals #veganstrategist #bevegan #evavzw #animalrights #gaia #biteback #seashepherd #vegansociety #peta

We are the change we are waiting for!

I’ve never really liked to travel by plane as a teenager and especially not when I was alone. A lot of fear involved in that! Now when I started to work, the work required me to do some trips to Portugal, Canada… so it obliged me somehow to take a different perspective on that and flights became more and more part of it.

I did love to come in contact with different people, cultures, hear about their journey and experiences of life. So I worked much more to overcome my fears and continue my journey, rather than trying to find another direction of the job, having to travel less.

In these travels, America became more and more, a frequent destination and made me come in contact with Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Chicago… providing me with a good view of America. It created some kind of curiosity and it is always a pleasure meeting up with local people. Although quite often the ones I would have long conversations and contact with, would not be native Americans.

If there is one place that literally blew me away, out of all of them so far, it’s Washington, DC, that I had the privilege to go to, in 2013.

I guess it is the safest place in the US, there was really no place in the tourist area where I could go, that there wasn’t a security guy having his eyes on me, never seen that till such a level. Now I did feel safe there, walking around day and night. The biggest influences Washington, DC had on me, is due to its monuments and memorials.

I had heard of some historical events, now I didn't know much detail about them and walking around there, seeing these monuments and memorials, and at some of them getting a chance to talk with survivors, really provided me a completely different view of the US I had seen so far.

One that marked me very heavily, is the memorial wall for the Vietnam war, where the wall was huge and the names of the victims were written extremely small. I was extremely shocked by that and could not get how cruel people could be to have done something like that in history.

In a more positive direction, I was of course very inspired by all sorts of quotes around there from;

"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." - Abraham Lincoln

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." - Theodore Roosevelt

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt

And probably the one I appreciate most,

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

All speeches I had heard from especially President Obama, started to make much more sense as well, after this personal discovery from my side. Although he told them for the American citizen, I think they can in fact rely to any kind of situation I find myself in.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” - Barack Obama.

If we believe in ourselves and start to make the change we would like to see in the world, we can create beautiful things!

I personally believe that a travel trip, or journey is much more inspiring by the people I’m with or get in contact with, than by the location I visit. So I’ve always preferred to travel with great people, rather than to what some might call great places. Now I do have to admit, that travel, whether alone or in good company, provides me a different point of view on the world and that alone can inspire very positively.

Thanks America and especially the people that crossed my journey, for showing me that inspiring direction!

I’ve made one of my best changes in my life so far in 2014, that can be read here!


#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #giveupfear #America #WashingtonDC #memorialwallVietnamwar #AbrahamLincoln #EleanorRoosevelt #TheodoreRoosevelt #FranklinDRoosevelt #RalphWaldoEmerson #MartinLutherKingJr #PresidentObama #BarackObama #change

Happiness in simplicity not complexity!

I realize that I’m quite often unconsciously projecting a future vision and that it is hard to go against it. In those visions, the most difficult, complex, look, or feel always like the ‘one and only truth’, which it quite often not is.

Related to food, I will quite often say, when I can eat that special dish, it will make me very happy. In reality, that dish doesn’t make me any happier than another one (or maybe just for a very short period), it is just my perception of it that makes it that way.

In this purpose, what I can do is more identify my real need instead of a well defined envisioned future. Concretely, instead of saying, I would like to eat a ‘RAW blueberry cheesecake’, rather wondering what kind of taste I am looking for (of course, if I can understand mentally why I want this, it’s even better, now I will let that aside for the moment) and relate it to that. So for this I could say, I’ve really a hunger, or an envy of something sweet. From there to look around, try to see or feel it, and embrace with a let go attitude everything that’s on the way.

If I come across an apple, bananas… or a RAW tiramisu, it’s all good and I’m grateful that I managed to find something for my sweet desire.

Without doing any projection or vision of the future, this exercise here above is way easier to do. I relate to it in the example here above for food, now I find it true for all other things in my life as well.

Let’s take the example in a couple relationship.

I’m happy with the relationship I’ve, now via all kinds of ways (movies, TV, social media…) I see examples of what might to seem even nicer.

So I start to dream, vision and imagine myself in that scenario (until there, no issues).

It’s when I start to get attached to it, as that being my only reference of happiness, that I’m going in the wrong direction.

I vision myself in that situation and link it to my happiness.

If I do that, I might then explain that to my partner so he clearly understands my desires, right?

Oh no, in the movie the partner didn’t need any explanations, so if my partner is not doing it the same way, how can I be happy?

I’ve been in the kind of situation here above, in all kinds of contexts quite often and the only take out of that I had was; ‘I was not present in the moment and have always been disappointed with the outcome’.

So today, I started to realize all this (made much easier after my changing food habits) that, of course I can hold on to a goal, now make it global, simple and leave much of room for creativity in it.

For the RAW blueberry cheesecake, make the goal looking for something sweet.

When interested in RAW food, make the goal to eat just a bit more whole foods, don’t go right away to make the RAW tiramisu.

For the couple relationship thing, make the goal just being together and talk/listen to each other.

For a holiday, make it just a disconnection with usual daily habits.

…

don’t go any further than the above, and have peace with what I quite often hear; ‘only future can tell’.

I should keep it simple, and realize that thru all kinds of simple things, happen great things that I could have never have imagined, that I managed to feel and live full consciously.

Life is beautiful, let go and enjoy all wonderful things very consciously in full happiness.

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #simplicity #happiness #conscious #presentmoment #stopprojecting

Are you or do you want to become a plant-based entrepreneur?

I once read about the Asian culture that they have some kind of network, in which all people have some direct connections (we could say very close good friends or family). If they want to get in contact or know more about people outside their direct connections, they work via the direct connections of their direct connection, in the form of introduction or recommendation. When I first heard about this more than 10 years ago, I found it very weird and a limiting slower way of living. Today, after my food changing habits, I do see some positive aspects in that, and it is something I try to apply more often, of course, most of the time in what I found a western way of doing it (I have some personal feeling of never wanting to bothering someone for my personal journey, books and technology somehow allow that today, besides that I will only in very rare cases ask for direct help, not sure if it is a good or bad thing...).

Meaning that every time I came in contact with somebody that was somehow active around plant based lifestyle, approaches I liked very much, that were very inspiring to me... I would look to their interest and resources, to get deeper into things and get educated myself on some subjects. The approach helped me very much as finding out quite fast about some amazing people and resources. When I read the amazing book from Tobias Leenaert, I felt so much inspired by it, that I made it a clear action item by going over all resources mentioned in the book.

In the resources, I would find a reference to a podcast The Plant-Based Entrepreneur Show. The subject and concept, sounded very interesting to me and when I looked more in detail into it, it was downloadable, so I definitely had to give it a try.

I’ve like I explained here, falling into listening to podcasts via Rich Roll.

What I liked very much about his podcast was besides the content, the quality of the audio, the fact that you can download them and especially allow me to listen to them offline whenever I want to (I’m not mister connected all the time like explained here). Every time I would look into a potential new interesting podcast, if they were not downloadable, I would very often only listen to one of them and not pursue that road.

So the podcast, The Plant-Based Entrepreneur Show looked all good. The first one I listened to, was of course Tobias Leenaert and quite fast Ken Spector, Meg and Komie Vora, Jodi Monelle... followed. All inspiring people I already heard or wanted to learn more about.

Being used to listen only to Rich Roll’s podcast so far, I’ve to admit that when I first listened to Jerry Server’s - The Plant-Based Entrepreneur Show podcast, I was a bit disappointed by the audio quality and by the very strict, clear articulating English by Jerry. It makes it of course very understandable, I found it just personally a bit less attractive to listen to, than listening to Rich talks, which sounds more rock and roll (of course just a matter of personal taste). Now something that surprised me very much and what a podcast in general is of course all about, is the content. Jerry really manages to get very interesting information out of these inspiring people and provide it via, a way to inspire others with very useful information. I’m even sure it provides that little push to those that would be hesitating in starting a Plant-Based business.

When I listened to the recent podcast’s with Moby and Nathan Runkle, 2 amazing guys, that also Rich has interviewed, it really showed me the nice and authentic way of Jerry to get other very interesting information to inspire as well. It made me personally realize that both podcasts are complementary to me, addressing different views and results in me having 2 podcasts I closely follow and try to grab out any inspiration I can get.

So if you are or want to become a Plant-Based Entrepreneur, I can strongly recommend to listen to Jerry’s podcast on http://www.theplantbasedentrepreneur.com/, great work and continues every time to inspire people all over the world including myself!

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #PlantBasedLlifestyle #TobiasLeenaert #ThePlantBasedEntrepreneurShow #podcast #RichRoll #KenSpector #MegVora # KomieVora #JodiMonelle #InspiringPeople #JerryServer #Moby #NathanRunkle