Hmmmm, for someone who is meant to be blogging about making vegan simple, there has not been much cooking and blogging about food lately. I do have an excuse though – I have had a stomach virus thingy, and cooking and eating are not high on my priorities right now. I feel awful when I eat, so I figure fluids are it for me until I come right. Which nicely leads me into the topic for today – listening to your body when you eat! (see how I did that?)

I have been reading a lot lately on various websites and forums about which diet is the best, and what people should be eating. Should you eat meat, dairy, carbs, protein, grains, high fat, low fat……..the list goes on. It becomes more and more clear to me (and others of course, I can’t claim this theory as my own although I would love to) that we have simply forgotten how to listen to our bodies to get the answer.

In days of old we humans knew what to eat – we had to in order to survive. We ate what we needed to stay alive.
These days we have become overwhelmed by bright lights, pretty packaging, diet books and theories, TV shows, additives and preservatives, and we have seemingly lost the ability to know what our bodies need and like.

But don’t panic !

Deep down, underneath all of the confusion, that knowing is still there – you just need to listen and feel.Your body tells you what it needs.

Now before you run to get that packet of chips because that is what your body is telling you to do – STOP
I don’t mean giving in to cravings, I mean listening and noticing how you feel after you eat something. I still crave sadly enough a Big Mac sometimes, but when I eat it – I feel like crap. So I don’t eat them.
Food is meant to be fuel for our bodies as well as one of life’s biggest pleasures, so after eating something you should feel ready to take on the world, light and full of energy. You should not feel sluggish and weighed down and ill like I do after junk food!
I am not officially allergic to dairy, but after I eat it I feel sick, and my eczema flares up. Too much bread and my stomach swells. As an extreme case Mark can’t walk properly a couple of hours after ingesting gluten or too much alcohol (and that’s not due to being drunk by the way, or maybe it is………………)

So my suggestion for the day if you are wondering about dietary changes, is to take the time over the next while to just notice how you feel after you eat. Maybe note it down, although I am not a fan of obsessive food logging. You may see a pattern that could change your life.

*please note I am not suggesting self diagnosing allergies. If you have serious symptoms or reactions to food please see your medical specialist.