Feel Lighter and More Full of Energy

Bonnie Grubbauer, Culver City, California:

“The bottom line is that I feel lighter and more full of energy…”

I’d been happily vegetarian for two years and never missed meat. I was, however, a confirmed cheese lover. Or at least I thought so. On a trip to Central and South America I stopped eating dairy products due to their association with stomach distress and it was easier than I’d feared. When I returned home, my mother asked me about the diet I’d fallen into and handed me a copy of Vegan Fusion World Cuisine. Opening the book made me realize the benefits of adopting a vegan lifestyle and offered mouth-watering ways to make the change. Thus began my delicious and reaffirming search into the why’s and how’s of becoming vegan.

My initial physical reactions to the transition to a vegan diet passed quickly and all signs of detoxification are long gone. If anything, I feel better than ever; I’d chalked up my morning stuffy nose to allergies and assumed that it was normal. The bottom line is that I feel lighter and more full of energy. As soon as I realized that it was merely a question of getting past that routine, of reevaluating those tempting, comfortable habits and letting go of the idea that I’m a cheese lover, I was ready to start eating consciously. Once I just committed to take the step, the rest was simple.

The health reasons for staying away from animal products are staggering. I don’t want any part of the antibiotics, hormones and other unnatural oddities (like cement!) given to commercially raised animals these days. Animals act like filters - the pesticides and other toxins that animals unwittingly ingest just continue to build up in their hosts until they’re packaged and sold at the local deli. The irony is that most health reasons to eat animal products are based on outdated information or a lack thereof.

People can easily get the protein they need from a plant based diet without those saturated fats and bad cholesterols tagging along. The body actually uses up more energy to break down animal protein than plant based protein in order to get the amino acids it needs. And dairy products simply are not a good source of usable calcium. Most people are some degree of lactose intolerant by the age of three anyway. Human bodies prefer a finer grain of calcium than that made for baby cows and their four stomachs. Dairy calcium is tied up in milk protein, casein (a top ingredient in glue) and therefore largely un-assimilable anyway.

Thus there are plenty of reasons to stay away from animal products and largely misinformed reasons to consume them. Most animal products either carry toxins along with them, release toxins when cooked, or are toxic themselves. I don’t want to weaken my immune system by having it battle the food I’m supposedly eating to nourish my body; I’d rather have it in top shape to ward off assailants beyond my control.

Looking at the global effects of a vegan diet is even more impressive and once I began looking, I couldn’t turn back. Only one meat eater can live on the amount of land that can support 14 vegans! It takes 4,000 gallons of water to produce a day’s worth of food for a meat eater and only 300 gallons for a vegan diet. Over 80% of corn and 95% of oats grown in the U.S. go to feeding livestock, 16 pounds of grain go towards producing 1 pound of meat. These and other heart wrenching statistics began filling in some factual gaps that had been missing for me.

While traveling in the rainforests of Central and South America I had heard horror stories about the devastation caused by bringing in livestock. Tales of forests being cleared for grazing, land being stripped and washed clean of its nutrients, whole species disappearing and peoples being displaced, came streaming back to me as I flipped through Vegan Fusion World Cuisine’s pages. I had been confused by the amount of starving people in countries with such agriculturally rich land; suddenly I realized where the food was going. Reading the numbers in black and white behind the colorful nightmares I’d heard about made the situation devastatingly more real.

Seeing statistics exposing the habits of waste and misuse that we are notorious for completed the picture of the situation that I do not want to contribute to. It made my own decision and the little bit of difference I could make, that much more clear. Oh, what a wonderful vegan world it could be.
Vegan World Fusion Cuisine

Reading Vegan Fusion World Cuisine and the books that have followed has completely convinced me that a vegan diet is the next step in our collective evolution on this planet, with this planet. I think my mother gave me the book because she knew that I would take the time to get into it and report back to her with a highlighted version. Recently she has been undertaking a slow but steady evaluation and makeover of her diet, with a vegan diet as the end goal. So now I’ve turned around armed with facts and recipes and soak/sprout times and am supporting her in taking the next step, too.

My body reaffirms my decision daily by feeling lighter and more energized than ever. I’ve been trying more of the lotus flower live recipes in the book and am feeling more empowered and hopeful with each one. I’m meeting more and more people who see the transition to a vegan diet as the logical move to make. The choice is ours and therein lies the power. It’s truly inspiring what we can make of ourselves and our world when we set that good intention. Our future is in our hands - we’ve got to dream it big.

Walking Up is filled with beautiful testimonials and recipes to help you feel lighter and full of energy in body, mind and spirit.

Waking Up, our new ebook is now available. This testimonial from Bonnie Grubbauer is an excerpt from Waking Up.