by Dreama Vance

Change is an ongoing constant of the Universe.

Think not? Take a look at a picture of yourself ten years ago and then look in the mirror! Better yet, get an old movie of one of your favorite actors and look at how young they were back when the movie was made!

Yep, change is a constant.

You, however, have in your hand a great deal of power to determine how change happens. Will it be for the better or for the worse? If we don’t make conscious decisions for the better, then by default we choose the latter. If we don’t make the positive choices and enact them, time takes care of it for us and we have ultimately chosen entropy.

Focus on the Positive

The past couple of weeks we talked about removing processed food from our diet. At first, this seems like our focus is on what not to eat. However, I hope you can see how tremendously positive this one step is in moving you forward on your journey. It really doesn’t matter how much good stuff you eat, if you continue to eat the junk. You are basically just treading water to keep your head afloat.

Consider an injury that is related to repetitive motion, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tennis elbow. You can put on oils, creams, salves, and whatever else the doctor dishes up; but until you stop doing whatever is causing the problem, the injury is going to stay irritated and inflamed, no matter what you put on it; no matter what good things you say about it or how much you love it. See what I’m saying?

So often I have heard raw foodist Dr. Fred Bisci say, “It is what you leave out of your diet, completely, that matters.” Even though I have heard that a gazillion times over the last decade, I didn’t really get it until several months ago. I understood it intellectually, of course, but it didn’t make the shift from the intellect (solar plexus chakra) to the heart chakra until just recently.

When this happens with any type of intellectual knowledge, an entire field of understanding opens up at a different level of consciousness. It is literally as if you never understood it before, even though we think we do. Leaving the bad stuff out of the diet is like resting the elbow or wrist. The body has the opportunity to start healing. The internal terrain changes, the tissue itself changes, and the energetic picture changes.

Okay, now I want to continue with the focus on the positive. It is the focus on the positive that enables you to make changes. If you see it as easy, it IS easy. If you see it as hard, it will be difficult. Your mind plays an important role here. How you view what you want to accomplish makes change enjoyable or a hardship that you struggle against every step of the way.

Let’s take a look at what I call the “Happy Shoulds.” Maybe these will dislodge some of the misperceptions we have all been saddled with from the get-go.

I always laugh when people indignantly say, “I don’t like to be told what to eat!” We’ve always been told what to eat! As a babe in the womb, you drew nourishment, or the lack thereof, from your mother. As a wee babe, you ate what she fed you, till you got big enough to spit out food you really didn’t like. Then, you were conditioned to eat what your friends were eating, what the television told you was good, what you saw on commercials in between cartoons, what the family ate, and on and on it goes.

Food is how we are indoctrinated into our society. If you go to a foreign country, you will immediately notice how they eat differently from what you are used to eating. Even different parts of the same country have their own cuisine specialties.

The Happy Shoulds

#1. Food should be delicious. I don’t know about you, but I want my food to taste good. If you believe “health food ” is boring, bland, and… well, awful, sometimes it is! But it shouldn’t be! So kick that idea right out to the curb. There are many, many delicious vegan, vegetarian, and raw food dishes that absolutely shine! And everyone can enjoy these foods. Everyone eats vegetables, whether they are vegetarian or not! Everyone can eat live, fresh food whether they are a raw foodist or not! My husband is always telling me to teach how to prepare tasty vegan cuisine because I have learned how to make food taste good. You can, too!

I will tell you in advance that when you begin removing processed foods from your diet, your tastes will change and foods that you thought were rather bland begin to reveal their true colors. Who would have thought plain celery juice was delicious? Ironically, processed foods that you thought were a real treat will begin to taste like cardboard. Isn’t that interesting?

Your green juice, smoothies and “good for you” superfoods should taste delicious, too. With very few exceptions, you should enjoy these. Why? If you don’t like them, you won’t stay with the practice for very long.

#2. You should eat when you are not yet hungry. What? Everyone says, “Don’t eat until you’re hungry.” I say, if you follow that advice, you’ll eat everything in the refrigerator when you come home. I say, never wait until you are really hungry to eat. Plan to eat on a schedule, that way you are never starving and your body gets used to having food in a timely manner. There are energy systems inside the body that follow the clock of the sun. The more we can follow a schedule of eating, sleeping, arising, and so forth, the more in harmony we are with the wisdom of the body.

#3. You should eat enough so you aren’t still hungry. This “happy should” takes care of the misconception that you will starve to death on a vegan, vegetarian, or raw food diet. Not gonna happen. Eat and be happy with your food. Eat enough to be fulfilled.

Somehow when I first studied the raw food diet, a sense of “don’t eat too much” got hammered into my brain. It finally dawned on me this past year that I had somehow bought into this sense of lack as being beneficial. That idea is really a disservice, particularly when it comes to a mainly raw food diet.

The flip side of that is eating until you are stuffed to the gills and that is just as miserable in the other direction. I think the best way to phrase it is, “Eat in balance and in harmony with your body.” Enjoy your food, take your time dining, and allow your body time to signal you when it is full. This takes about 20 minutes. The rule of thumb is, “Stop when you are 80% full.” So how do you know when that is? For me it is when I would like to have a second helping of something… just one more scoop. If you stop without indulging, you give your body the time needed to send the message, “That’s enough!” Pay attention to what your body is telling you when it is happy.

#4. You should eat a wide variety of food. Eat good-for-you fats such as avocado and raw nuts and seeds. Eat raw fruits. You should eat greens. You should eat vegetables. Most of your food should be plant-based and you should eat as much raw, living food as you can. You should keep your meals simple. That way they are easy to prepare and easier to digest.

There is probably at least one expert out there in disagreement with at least one of these recommendations. If you are following a specific protocol, then by all means feel free to ignore whatever is not applicable to your protocol.

My goal here is to empower you in making your own decisions. No one knows your body better than you do. By the same token, no one is responsible for what you do to it but you.

If you listen and just pay attention, you will find your higher self communicating with you. Back around 2000, tofu was all the rage. So I would buy boxes of tofu thinking I would make things with it. The expiration dates would come and the boxes would get thrown out and I would buy more the next trip into town. After about three trips of this happening, I finally got the message… maybe this wasn’t for me. The same thing happened with cacao beans. Raw cacao beans became the rage in the raw food movement, so I bought a bunch thinking of all the wonderful desserts I would make. I think they are still in my cupboard, several years old. Your higher self will either let you know what is wise for you, or just take care of it for you!

#5. You should use your common sense. Be smart. Personally, I am never going to eat 30 bananas in one day. I am also not going to eat three cups of nuts in one slice of raw cheesecake. My point here is for you not to get hung up over labels or someone’s indoctrination. Do your own research and also realize that just because some study “proves” something, that doesn’t mean it is “true” and it doesn’t mean it carries the message the proponent wants you to think it does. It doesn’t mean it is necessarily for you, specifically, either.

Listen to your higher wisdom. There are no food police. There are no wagons from which to fall; there is no failure.

There are only good, better, and best decisions to be made. Keep your goal in mind and enjoy becoming more and more conscious!

Tip of the Day

Here is my favorite tip for you to include in your healthy journey. Soup is one of my favorite meals. It is easy to prepare ahead of time and I usually fix enough for several meals and to freeze some. This tip works great for just about anything chunky: vegetable soups, bean soups, spaghetti sauce. Here it is.

Gather a bunch of raw spinach under your hand on a cutting board. Make thin ribbon slices by cutting across the board (not your hand!) to produce a chiffonade, which is just shredded or finely-cut vegetables. Place a handful of the spinach in a bowl before adding your soup or beans, or on top of your pasta before adding sauce. This is a great way to add some fresh raw food to your dish and to boost the nutrient content of your meal. The heat from your soup or sauce will wilt the spinach just enough to soften it and not cook the life out of it. Chopped, fresh baby tomatoes work nicely as an addition, too.

Next week we will cover more about your soul. Although we did talk a bit about the wisdom of your higher self in this article, there is still a little more information I want to give you. The bigger picture includes quite a bit of information, so we will see how that spans out in the next article or two.

Happy Eating!

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