Spare, Local & Personal Change

It seems as though we are constantly faced with challenges. Ya know, the good with the hard and sometimes emotional.

I was laying in the backseat as my boyfriend drove my grandma and I to Cottonwood, where she lives. As I stared up at the stars, I wished so hard to be spared an idea of a way off the never-ending, emotional eating roller coaster I've been on for the past few years.  It's been quite the ride, learning about raw food nutrition, trying 90 day juice feasts and not making it past 3, being vegan & finally settling with vegetarian.  A few months ago I found out I was allergic to refined sugar (surprise, surprise) and I quit eating it cold turkey.  EVERYTHING got better. I felt awesome, my lower intestines stopped hurting, my attitude towards life was outstanding.

Then I went on vacation with my boyfriends awesome, amazing, incredible family. The free meals, plenty of delicious wine & scrumptious desserts became mine for the taking.  Lake Tahoe, through Yosemite National Park and on into San Francisco the sugar started to creep back into my life and I felt like I had land slid into Hawaii's sugar crops. Needless to say, this has been happening a lot and I needed something, anything... 

...so I asked...and I was given.

Suddenly (on the car ride) I had a thought! It went something like this: "SAC". That was it. SAC, ah, yes...I have come to a new realization, a real AHA moment! But wait, what does SAC mean?

I came to realize it stood for : Sugar, Alcohol, Caffeine.  Now, I don't drink all that often (maybe once a month or every other month) but I (used to) eat refined sugar like it was going out of style. I also indulged in coffee & basically anything else that I wanted to during the day.  I know about raw food nutrition and eating optimally for my body, but seriously, it's hard. So, sometimes I would beat myself up for eating poorly and sometimes I would go into denial, but neither were healthy.

Okay, so the solution was SAC and has morphed into DW-SACS.

Broken down:

D(airy): Most of the dairy on the market today is pasturized, which means that all the nutrients have been killed. Once this happens, when it is consumed, it actually leaches calcium from the bones.  I've even read that because of the way that the animals are mistreated, blood and puss can be present in the dairy products. (I've even heard that *A huge corporation in America that is EVERYWHERE* has chocolate milk that contains chocolate coloring because there is so much blood & puss in the milk that if it wasn't covered up, you'd see it & would be unsellable--> Who knows if this is true, but that's gross!).  (Most) traditional & commerical yogurts have a TON of sugar in them.  Blah.
GREAT ALTERNATIVES:  Rice or nut products. If you can make homemade nut milk & butter, even better! Raw yogurt...I have a kicken recipe if you would like it!


W(heat): Wheat is a hybridized grain between the king grains of spelt & kamut. When the wheat was hydridized a long time ago, the quality was comprimised and this is why so many people have such an allergy to wheat (even if they don't know it).
GREAT ALTERNATIVES: Spelt, buckwheat, amaranth

S(ugar-refined): I don't think I even need to explain this one. Refined sugar has been bleached, ground together with animal bones and put on the market for human consumption. There is ABSOLUTELY NO nutritional value to sugar and white, refined sugar makes the blood glycogen levels rise and fall very quickly, creating a CRAZY crash.  This is where the addiction comes in. 
GREAT ALTERNATIVES: Agave nectar, maple syrup, sucanat, stevia

A(lcohol): There is tons of information out there on this. If you're going to consume alcohol, the best thing to consume is organic wine free from sulfites.

C(affeine): WOAH! This stuff is nuts. You can feel it, people use it to stay awake, we know why it's bad. Tea, fresh juice & tons of water drinkin' is a great alternative.  If you are going to drink coffee, GO FOR THE DECAF, it tastes the same and won't give you the nutty up's & down's.

S(oy): All soy is now GMOed (genetically modified). The last statistic I read stated that 98% of the worlds soy is genetically modified, however, to get that 2%, there is a very slim chance.  Soy also has very high estrogen levels which can cause issues in both males & females.
GREAT ALTERNATIVES: Rice or nut products

My deal these days is to allow myself ONE "treat" like a chai tea or a DECAF coffee (caffeine, alcohol & refined sugar are OUTTA here) per day.  Absolutely NO other sugary treats. The middle SAC are really the meat of it. These are the things that are the worst for my body.  Dairy, wheat and soy are to be very limited and not eaten at every meal (for the above described reasons).  For some reason (although it's always been all or nothing for everything else) I'm unable to quit all my dirty little eating habits at once. So, this is a means to help me get there. When I go to eat, I ask myself, "in this meal, how many of the DW-SACS are containted?" If the answer is none, I'm good to go. If there are more than 2, it's not an option.  It's good, for me, for now.

So these days, I do my best to over-dose on veggies, love on the fruits & munch on quinoa, nuts & seeds.

After all...I had to start somewhere and here, now, where I am and with what I've got sounded like the very best option.

MuAh!
xoxo