Smoothie Fast Complete... sort of.

So earlier I wrote a post about embarking on the 10-Day Smoothie fast, it was successful. And I am still consuming a smoothie a day, and throughout the day, in order to keep my system optimal. As I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and some food allergies, I have had to make dietary and life altering changes in order to keep on the good side of feeling good.

I did the fast, as subscribed in the book, incorporating lots of green healthy kale, spinach, apples, flax seed, spring greens, berries, and mangoes. This allowed my taste buds to adjust to a lower intake of sugars and salt, while upping my nutrition throughout the day. As a chef, our breed often doesn't eat well, you would think that they opposite was the case, but as we work all day, long hours, often forgoing our brakes, we don't take care of our own nutritional needs. We see and handle food all day long and it can kill your appetite and at the end of a long shift of 12 hours or more, we usually just grab something quick and simple to consume leaving us with deficits and skipped meals.

With that in mind, I am striving hard to always make a blender full of nutrition to take with me during the day and/or be at the ready in the fridge when I need it when I am at home. It is helping me regulate my bowels which has been an issue for me for many years, but increased in the last two to three years. I feel more energetic during the day and I am not reaching for the candy or chips nearly as often.

Just like with small children, we must train out pallets to better habits of consumption. When the traditional habits are not leading to a healthy outcome, then we must do better and create change. Food is medicine and should be the first time we changes instead of asking the doctor for a new pill for this or that. All of the medications that the doctor can subscribe have side-effects that will cause another problem that will need addressing. The average American is taking more than 12 medications a day in order to function. This is not a positive trend nor a healthy one. The pharmaceutical companies are getting rich feeding us chemicals to correct maladies and discomforts. We are becoming zombies dependent upon corporations to feed us and make us remedies for our bad eating habits.

Not everything that is good tasting is in fact good for you. Simple changes and  little effort can make huge differences in our quality of life.