December 2007 Archives
A big part of my personality has always been a deep
concern for my physical health. I didn't really begin
to understand what makes me healthy, or unhealthy,
until about two and a half years ago. My partner and
I began a deep exploration of many different types of
health fads including diets, exercise routines,
nutritional
supplements, and a whole cadre of methods
for weight loss.
Since I was about twelve
years old I have been a Yoga
practitioner. Since then I have taken all of my health
cues from the ancient scriptures as my view on each
new health philosophy. The philosophy I have taken
out of these texts is the extreme importance of
complete purity. This to me means that we strive
through diet and exercise to purify the body. We then
use other means of self purification to cleanse the
mind and spirit. So within each new weight
loss
program or nutritional supplement regime I came
across, I have looked for the stressing of purity and
not intoxication. As our exploration of different
dietary ideas continues, my practice of purity becomes
exponentially more rooted within my everyday life.
While my philosophy has been rooted in one sort of
mindset for many years, my partner is quite the
opposite.
My partner has
always had an easier time jumping
from one idea or philosophy to another without much
effort. Where I look to the scriptures or meditate on
my own ideas, she may hear of a new regime and jump
right in to it. Though for her the exploration has
become quite limited since her diagnoses with diabetes
this past fall. Her diet now is quite limited, but
she still follows a Nourishing Traditions type of
diet. This is where our philosophies come together.
This diet is based around purity of the food you eat
and supplements you take, for the purposes of living
longer. Since her beginning this diet, she has lost
around thirty pounds in about seven months. Her
weight loss is so astonishing that we
all notice
changes in her about every week.
Our diets differ in only one
large way, I am a
vegetarian and she is not. At this time I have been
eating meat due to some complications of malnutrition
and protein deficiency. That aside I am morally a
vegetarian person and believe that eating meat is
impure and will naturally carry with it the pain of
the animal.