I'm changing my diet...

Today I have a big announcement to share.

I've written and rewritten this post over ten times now and each time I've struggled with what I want to say to you and how I want to say it. I finally boiled it down to this: Living a healthy, happy life should be about eating whole, fresh foods that make your body feel energized and good -- and it shouldn't be about what we call it.

I have always felt strongly that this blog is a place to talk about seasonal, delicious food and healthy living and I wanted our blog community to be a welcoming space open to anyone curious about eating better -- regardless of what they ate or how they labeled their diet. I believe that food and what we eat is an entirely personal choice. And, as I mentioned last week, I feel strongly that there is not one diet or one way of eating that works for everyone because each of our bodies are different.

So with that, I want to share that I have recently changed my diet and don't feel that the "plant-based" label fits anymore, even though I'm still eating a ton of plant-based meals. When I found my way to being vegetarian in 2006 and plant-based in 2007, I was at a complete breaking point with my health and found myself rushing in and out of ERs due to gallbladder attacks. Being plant-based changed everything for me.

However, for the past year and a half, something has been feeling off in terms of my health and I finally decided it was time to switch some things around in my diet. This was really hard for me to consider because I had always believed that being plant-based was what my body wanted. In January, I began adding eggs back into my diet and last month I started eating small amounts of poultry and seafood. To my surprise, my body responded really well to it and I noticed I was feeling a lot better.

If I am being completely honest with you, then I have to share that I went through a period of time where I couldn't talk about this with anyone because I was an emotional wreck. Even though I had found my way to this diet for health reasons, along the way, being plant-based had become an immensely spiritual and emotional decision for me. I felt strongly connected to this earth and all of the creatures and beings on it. I never liked eating meat or eggs growing up and I didn't have any cravings for them. I certainly never thought I would go back to including them in my diet. I'm still coming to terms with this in a lot of ways because it's such a huge change for me, but I feel really strongly that this is the right decision for me at this time.

I am so grateful for my journey and everything I have learned on it. Over the last seven years I've learned the importance of eating real, whole foods, eating seasonally, and choosing quality food. I am excited to continue this journey through this blog and keep inspiring each other to live a healthy, happy life that we love.

So, even though I'm ditching the labels around my food choices, I'm excited to continue sharing my recipes with you that will always focus on real, whole foods, and seasonal veggies. Here's what you can look forward to:

• More creativity around grain-less meals. (If you're gluten-free or grain-free, I've got some recipes for you!)
• Lots of seasonal veggie recipes! We're heading into summer soon (my favorite season) and I can't wait to share some of my favorite summer dishes with you.
• More "how to" tutorials. (Including how to soak and sprout legumes and some dairy-free cheeses!)
• More posts exploring DIY green beauty remedies and ways to live a healthy, sustainable life. 
• And eventually, even a few recipes here and there including eggs or meat.

As I mentioned in my post on my three philosophies around food, health, and life, I'm not here to tell you what's best for you and I've never been the kind of person to be preachy about my diet. I think we all need to make the right decisions for ourselves and trust our guts when it comes to our health.

Wishing you the best in health and happiness,

Sonnet

Vulnerability is not a weakness

This post is part of a series based on the personal development work I have been doing in Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map. To read the previous posts in the series, click here.

Thank you to all of you who commented on my last post on abundance and shared how it impacted you. I know that this series is a bit different than the recipe posts I usually share, and to be honest, I was hesitant about sharing it. The internet can be a scary place sometimes and being a blogger means that I am constantly putting my personal life out into the public. (The thing that lets me sleep at night is imagining that this blog is still only being read by three people and possibly a cat!)

Thinking about this willingness to be vulnerable inspired me to write today's topic on courage and vulnerability. I recently watched Brené Brown's TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability and Listening to Shame. (If you haven't seen these before, I definitely think they are worth watching. The first time I watched them I was so memorized by her message and her presence that I watched them twice.)

After working through my Desire Map, I realized that one of my core desired feelings is courage. I desire to feel courageous and bold. I desire to stand in the face of fear, push past it, and continue to grow. I desire to speak my truth, even when it's not easy.

I think where some of us go wrong when thinking about courage is thinking that courage is the absence of fear. Being courageous doesn't mean you aren't afraid. Being courageous means that you have the inner strength to embrace being afraid and still move forward.  

CLICK TO TWEET IT!

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Choosing Abundance

I've decided to start a new series here on For The Love of Food based on the personal development work I have been doing in Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map. I mentioned The Desire Map a few months back at the end of the year as I was working through some changes around the direction of my business and life in general.

As a result of that post, I have received numerous emails from readers talking about how The Desire Map changed their perspective and helped them to shift focus in their life. I hope to use this series as a way to share things that I am working through at the moment while also connecting us as a community for those of you who are also working through your Desire Maps.

In case you are unfamiliar with The Desire Map, here's what you need to know: The idea behind The Desire Map is that most of us plan our lives around achieving certain goals. After we spend years working to reach those goals, we often find ourselves feeling empty when we finally get what we thought we desired.

Instead, The Desire Map helps you to discover your core desired feelings and use these feelings to gude what you want to do, have, and experience in your life. The idea is that when you set out to achieve a certain goal, it's not actually the goal you want, it's the feeling behind the goal, so, traditional goal setting is actually backwards.  Instead of focusing on the goal, we need to focus on the feeling we want that is behind the goal. This may sound simple, but this stuff goes deep.

One of my core desired feelings for 2013 is ABUNDANCE. Last year I began to realize how I mostly focused on what is lacking in my life -- it's "the glass is half-empty" mentality. This perspective often made me feel competitive, tense, and anxious because I constantly felt the sense of scarcity that surrounded me.

Is this how I wanted to feel in my life?  No, absolutely not.
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