Changes....

So a few years ago I found out that my cousin Amanda was a vegan. In fact she has her own vegan website www.theveganvoice.org. And while I have been aware that I need to eat better for years...never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would consider becoming a vegetarian or a vegan. As a matter of fact when my friend Kim was being treated for Thyroid Cancer, she started on a vegan diet. I thought she was crazy, after all you need good lean protein from meat and fish right?  

I read through the info Amanda's website, more because I wanted to know what she was up to. And a strange thing happened; the more I read, the more I wanted to know. Even though I realized that I had been completely wrong about what veganism is. I was still thinking "that's great for Amanda and others but not for me". After all I do not like vegetables. 

Last year in November 2012 I made a trip to Texas for my cousin Carley's wedding. Turns out several of my relatives in Texas were also either vegan or vegetarian. I made an observation that they all looked amazing and healthy. My sister Felicia and I (She traveled with me to the wedding) had some great discussions with Amanda and her husband Ed. I was amazed to find out that Ed had also become a vegan. Why was I amazed? Ed has a ranch in Marshall Texas and definitely had been a meet eater!  Before we left Texas Amanda gave me a copy of the book The China Study. This was the beginning of changes to come. 

When I returned home I had decided to try and eat healthier. But since I had just lost 60lbs eating the way I wanted, I wasn't really that motivated to change anything.  I had heard of The China Study, a while back I had started watching the movie Forks Over Knives but never finished. It seems strange now, but over the next several months I was reading and learning more about how to get healthy. Yet I was eating all the wrong foods, exercising less and gaining weight.

My Health and fitness has been on my mind a lot the last couple months. Really I was becoming a little depressed with myself. One particularly bad weekend when my daughters were away at their moms I downloaded a book called Buddhist Boot Camp. This is not a book to teach you how to be a Buddhist, but more to inspire you to be a better you. I read it twice before the weekend was over and even ordered a couple hard copies to give as gifts to friends.  I'm not going to say this book changed my life, but it sure inspired me to make some changes.  

So I set out to do more research. I started reading the China Study book again, and finished watching Forks Over Knives. I did research on the Internet, read blogs, watched movies like Vegucated, Super Size Me, Food Inc, and the one that really inspired me Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. This movie really had an impact on me.