Journey to Living a Healthy Lifestyle - Becoming a Vegan?

So... Where do I start... I guess that the best place would be about a year ago when at the age of 33 my unhealthy lifestyle finally started to catch up with me. I've had an unhealthy diet for most of my life. That diet consisted of fast food, soda, chocolate, chips, and anything else that could be considered an unhealthy food. Most people can eat food like this every so often and it won't have a negative impact on their health. But when you eat it the way that I eat it, you are in for some health problems later on in your life. You CANNOT eat fast food two to three times every day and not have health problems. You CANNOT stop at the convenience store every night after work and get snack food to get you through the night (this would usually comprise of cinnamon gummy bears, cookies, and some type of sour hard candy). I think you are starting to get the picture, right? Fortunately, my weight has never skyrocketed way out of control. For most of my adult life my weight has been between 200 to 265 pounds, and I'm 6'0" tall. By any standards, this is considered obese. I'm just thankful that I never let myself get into the 300's or 400's because the journey back from those weights is so much more difficult and the health problems are much more prevalent when you get into those ranges of weight.

Now that you have a little more understanding about me and my habits, let's get back to the beginning of where I started this article. About a year ago (at the weight of 255) I started to get chest pains. Not pains associated with a heart attack, more like pains associated with anxiety and feeling like their is a large weight on your chest. This obviously concerned me but having no health insurance in this society forces you to make life and death decisions based on money and possible bankruptcy. I did NOT go to the doctor or an emergency room. Looking back, this is stupid. Please everyone, don't play games with your life and if something feels wrong go to the doctor. The decision that I made was to go to one of those blood pressure monitors that you see in the grocery store. I checked my blood pressure... 155/100!!! DANGER ZONE!!! This was not good. What have I done to myself? How could I let myself get to this point? I didn't want to be one of those people that died of a heart attack before the age of 40. Or someone who develops diabetes at a young age and has to live with it for the rest of their life. I didn't want to get trapped in a situation where I'm taking medication for the rest of my life. What was I going to do? I had let my relationship with food completely control my lifestyle and now my life was at risk. I knew that I needed to make a change, and fast. Or I could be dead within five years and be leaving two little girls behind. Change was on the horizon...

I was confused and scared, and too embarrassed to even tell anyone that I had let everything get this out of control. I didn't have health insurance so going to a doctor was out of the question in my mind. So I did what anyone would do in this ever-changing world, I started to do all of my own research using Dr. Google. I wanted to learn about diets and what food you should eat to prevent heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. Through that research I started to find some documentaries and these movies helped to open my eyes and change my life around for the better. The first one that I watched was called "What The Health". Overnight I decided to become a vegan. If you haven't watched the movie yet I would highly recommend it. But I didn't stop there, I became obsessed. I watched other documentaries including but not limited to "Fork Over Knife", "Food Inc", "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead 1 & 2", "Fed Up", and so much more. I couldn't believe how blind I had been to the reality of the food industry. We are always taught how important it is to eat fruits and vegetables but we are bombarded ALL DAY with the advertisements of food industries trying to pump chemically altered foods down our throats which they genetically engineer to make us become addicted to it. It made me sick to even think about it and foolish that I would fall for it. I refused to give them any of my business and I started to live a whole foods plant based lifestyle. I had to take back control of my life and one of the things that I learned in these documentaries is that everything you put into your body is either CAUSING or PREVENTING disease. Let that sink in for a minute...

I'm happy to report that since making the change I've had some great results. My blood pressure is down to 130/90 (which is still high, but moving in the right direction). My weight is down to 235 and I've never felt better. I will say this though, I have not been perfect. I still have to fight back my bad habits on a daily basis and I still get cravings. It's truly similar to how a drug addict would describe their addition. I'm an emotional eater so when I have a hard day I want to comfort myself with food. So I will be the first to tell you that I have slipped up while on this journey. I've had a bad day and decided to "give up" and just eat a cheeseburger and french fries. Not only did this make me feel bad emotionally, but now this food was making me feel bad physically. The times that I did give in to temptation I paid the price by feeling sick the rest of the night and sometimes the next day. My body was rejecting this food that it used to crave on a daily basis.

I just want everyone to know that it isn't easy and I'm still on this journey to living a healthy lifestyle. If you are going through something similar I urge you to not give up and keep fighting to save your life. Feel free to comment below with some of your experiences and we can be here to help and support each other through our journey's to a healthy lifestyle.

Stay Cool My Friends



*DISCLAIMER* - This article is not meant to serve as medical or health advice. This is a story about my journey and is purely for entertainment. If you are considering changing your diet I highly recommend consulting with your physician.