Gotta Start Somewhere

I wish I had started this blog 6 months ago. I really do. But, I figure there is truth in the old sayings, like 'better late than never', and I want to avoid the experience of 6 months from now thinking, 'I wish I'd started this a year ago'.


I'm coming up on nearly 6 months since going to a plant-based diet. This has been, with the exceptions of marriage, motherhood and horsemanship, the biggest and most fantastic journey of my life. The reason I regret not starting 6 months ago, is that I know there are many positive changes that I will now have to just try to recall; things that aren't a problem now that were before. For instance, the other day I had a headache....my 2nd one in nearly 6 months. It hit me how odd it was to be having a headache but I recall quite vividly the excruciatingly debilitating headaches that have plagued me for most of my life. Gone. So many things like that that I will have to now squint my mind's eye to recall.


I am one of those individuals, like so many probably, who thought they were being health-conscious. I know many in my family would have even classified me as a health-nut from time to time....I've always been active, taken vitamins, eaten fruit and veggies and so on....yet I now know that I was not even close....forget being on the same page....not even in the same book. Not eating in fast-food restaurants and baking one's own whole wheat bread and eating fish and chicken instead of beef, and eating organic greek yoghurt is still the path of physical destruction. (I think too on that term: Health-Conscious.....funny when so much of America is health-UNconscious, being duped into believing the current food pyramid, trusting our government and people PAID TO LOOK OUT FOR US about our food safety, and so on).


I'm going to create this blog as a running record of my results and experiences on my journey of 'going Vegan', of getting healthy, of getting RE-educated and of truly creating my life. My hope is that possibly, some day, I can refer someone to it and it'll give them a bit of support as they go on their similar journey. Healthy Girl's Kitchen http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/ has been such a life-line for me as I hope to be for someone. There were days when I was so lonely on this path that I would just search Wendy's blog and read and re-read and come away knowing that at least one other person was also fighting the good fight. But mostly, this blog is for me; to help me keep track of the road already traveled, as I go forward deeper on the path that I am finding, sadly, isn't all that well trodden. Still, the food revolution is definitely coming about, and there are others firmly on the kale-flanked road to good health through food. Like Dr. John McDougall says: You can't keep a truth secret forever or something close to that.


To punctuate my first blog and to prove to myself that I really am as brave as I think I might possibly be, I'm going to upload a photo. This is a photo taken June 2010. I don't know if anyone else has ever had this same experience, but when I first saw this photo, for a second or two, I could not figure out who was standing next to my husband and why we would have a picture of them. You can imagine my gasp as I realized it was me and that I had just had the experience of not recognizing my own self in a picture!

There I am....at the Grand Canyon. Now, I'm not brave enough to tell you how much I weighed in that picture, but I will tell you that it was 20+ pounds more than I have on me now. AND, I had already been doing a serious work-out regime for 6 1/2 months and had lost 12 pounds before this trip!

So, here's the start of my blog...gotta start somewhere....maybe someone reading this someday will also be considering starting their journey, their blog, or whatever. START! Doesn't have to be perfect...don't we do that to ourselves so many times? We need to get this in place or that in place first and then we'll start... I will create my own adage: any effort is better than no effort at all! Wait, there is a much better, time-honored one: The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.

Best to you in all you start.

Sue, blogging, in Ohio

(Now to find a suitable picture that shows me now!)