My raw vegan diet change – BIG updates!

July 4th just passed… and as I renewed the domain for this site, I realised it’s been 3 years since The Wellness Explorer was officially formed. I purchased this domain on the 4th of July 2013… I couldn’t even walk during that time but the desire to start up a blog was still there. My intent has always been to share my wellness journey, to share what I’m learning, to inspire others to thrive and take control of their health & diet. That intent remains the same to this day, 3 years later. I love that I get to share through this platform – it’s through sharing that we help others and create positive change in the world.

And so, I wanted to share with you some big changes that have happened in myself recently, that most definitely will reflect in the way I blog and the direction some of this site takes moving forward.

Where do I begin?

For me, the turning point started at the beginning of this year. It was just a few days into 2016 and I was noticing that my digestion was not feeling so great. I felt sluggish and bloaty and just very off. That seemed puzzling to me because (I thought) I had been eating so well. Lots of veggies, berries, winter squash and farm-fresh eggs; I was culturing my own raw dairy, eating warm kitchari & buckwheat dishes, lots of healthy coconut oil and raw butter, free-range meat or fish once or twice a week. I was eating a nutrient-dense diet. And I felt SLUGGISH.

I have learned to ask for help from the universe, from my guides and angels when I’m feeling totally stuck, and I remember going into meditation then and putting out a plea for guidance. I said, “I give up. There’s something I’m doing that’s still not making me feel right. Please guide me towards the foods that are best for my body, that are healing for my body.” And I added this line: “And please make it SO clear to me that there’s NO question about it whatsoever.”

Over the next few days I noticed that I started developing an extreme aversion to animal products. I had all these wonderful pastured eggs, raw organic butter and yoghurt straight from a local farm, grass-fed meats in my fridge… and I felt oddly repulsed by all of it. Not only that, I just as suddenly developed an intense craving for… dandelion smoothies! If you followed me on instagram this past winter, you might have noticed all my green smoothie pics – that was just a small display of what went on in my kitchen earlier this year! The craving was so intense, sometimes I would have a green smoothie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It went on for months, through the whole rest of the winter, and I never got tired of them. And it was always the same recipe base: dandelion leaves, mango, avocado, spirulina. Topped with sliced banana, goji berries, raw hemp seeds, and raw cacao nibs.

I felt a big craving for raw foods in general, which I started making in abundance – all in the middle of winter which is normally a time when I would never incorporate something like this. Talk about receiving guidance!! This is just one of the many reasons why I LOVE having a regular meditation practice.. It feels so much easier to connect with a higher guidance outside of myself and get intuitive hits.

You can probably see where this is going… with this guidance, I began feeling a deep sense that my body needed to go raw vegan. Even though my mind was not quite yet there! I didn’t stick with it completely but I kept up my daily green smoothies and incorporated a few raw vegan meals into my week… little did I know this was just the beginning.

This actually wasn’t the first time I felt that this kind of diet lay ahead for me. I’ve sensed for a while that a raw vegan or close-to-vegan diet was in my future simply because of how often I meditate. My meditation practice has evolved in big and beautiful ways for me over the years and has become far from a casual thing; for me, it’s a daily necessity. It’s the glue that holds everything else I do in life together.

And the more I meditate, the more sensitive and attuned I become to how different foods affect my energy.

Over the past year or so I’ve noticed distinct energetic shifts in my body when I eat certain foods. I’ve found that there are most definitely foods that make it naturally easy for me to get into a high vibrational state… and foods that instantly drop the vibration. It’s subtle but definite. Those foods for me personally are meat, dairy, grains, and sugar. (**Please note that I am not saying these are unhealthy foods that no one should eat (with the exception of sugar that is; processed sugar is just not good for anyone!) Nor am I promoting a vegan and grain-free diet as the end-all-be-all for everyone. I am just relating my personal experience and the subtle energetic shifts I’ve felt in myself over time.**)

I doubt I would have noticed any of this if meditation had not become such a huge part of my life. Over the past year or so, I’ve learned to refrain from eating the above foods before any deep meditating I planned to do and saved much of the denser meals for afterwards when I needed more grounding.

I wish I could say that these food revelations were powerful enough to propel a diet change for me then and there… but no, there was still more learning to come…

This past April I traveled to Germany for a chakra training and let my normally gluten-free diet slip just a bit while there… and was promptly hit with a mass of health issues! Skin problems, gut problems, candida problems, a whole host of issues that I hadn’t experienced in years and years sprang to the surface – issues that I had thought were long gone and healed. That’s when I began suspecting that the true culprit was in fact still there in my body lying dormant – it just simply hadn’t gotten “triggered” by a big lapse in diet to show itself on the surface. I put out another request in meditation to help me find the answers.

More spiritual guidance and reveals – the final series of events that solidified BIG changes for me

This past May I received guidance from two separate healers that literally changed my life. Both of these healers have the unique gift of receiving information from spirit guides, information that no one else may know. I realise that many people are skeptical of this kind of stuff but for me personally, I have learned to trust guidance from outside forces implicitly – whether you want to call that guidance the universe, guides, angels, spirit, intuition – I personally live my life utilizing and trusting in this kind of guidance on a regular basis. I believe there are SO many things we don’t yet know in this world and we also have to acknowledge the fact that there are many things regarding health that we just won’t discover yet for possibly a long time to come. Auto-immune conditions for example… no one knows what causes these things. We are simply prescribed medications to cover up and deal with the symptoms as best as possible. But no one knows the cause or cure.

The information I received from these spirit guides was both astounding and unlike anything I would have expected. The underlying issue for myself, I discovered, is a sluggish liver – made sluggish by the accumulation of heavy metals, pesticides and DDT(!!) passed down through generations of my family. And one more thing – a viral infection of epstein-barr, also passed down through birth that results in a multitude of health issues. This made a lot of sense to me as the entire side of my mom’s family, for example, has struggled with all sorts of health issues. Epstein-barr apparently resides in most people these days as it is so easy to catch and automatically passed along through family lines. But the virus only shows itself if it gets triggered – by stress, by trauma, by poor diet or lifestyle, etc. Otherwise it’s possible for this virus to remain dormant in the body forever.

So many things clicked into place for me with this information. The reason why I repeatedly suffered from strep throat over and over, year after year, as a child was because of epstein-barr and its cofactors. The reason why I inexplicably could not walk for months in 2013… was epstein-barr inflaming my joints. None of the doctors I went to found this because medical communities are not yet even aware of how prevalent this virus is, nor how to treat it. Nor how to even accurately test for it! I have done so much self-healing over the years, made so many huge leaps and bounds, and through it all have truly discovered an inner strength and fighting spirit in myself. The reason why I am walking today, the only reason, is because of the energetic healing I did on myself 3 years back. And now it’s time to wipe the rest of this out for good.

The healers stressed the need to eliminate grains, eggs, dairy, and almost all sources of fat from my diet for the time being – including meat, oils, nuts, etc. The overall emphasis is low-to-no-fat and plant-based. This is to deeply cleanse the liver and detox from heavy metal, pesticide & virus overload. You might be wondering what’s left to eat once all of the above is eliminated… and that’s basically FRUITS & VEGGIES!

And that was it for me – the final push that solidified my decision to go fully raw vegan.

It’s been about a month and a half of committing to this lifestyle (and it is definitely a lifestyle!) and I just have to say… the way I’ve been feeling in my body these days is a new level of high vibration. Even with everything else going on right now (if you subscribe to my newsletter, you know what I’m talkin bout!). Even though I know I’m in heavy detox mode right now. I am feeling SO energetic, so clear-headed, so alert and vibrant and light and just really good about where this is all going. I am extremely grateful for all the guidance and revelations I’ve received this year – from sources that I never would have even considered several years back!

Obviously this changes the slant of my blog just a bit food-wise, as I feel so excited to create and share really delicious raw, low-fat vegan recipes & posts, as well as more of what I’m learning about health-wise from all this. I have to say, much of this has been quite hard for me to accept, as I come to grips with the idea that a lot of what I’ve learned about nutrition and healthy eating is not correct. My nutrition training, for example, did not encourage a vegan diet – it was actually quite against eating this way and gave many valid reasons why. Then again, it’s not yet known in the medical or nutrition world that so many people are carrying a virus that’s responsible for dozens of auto-immune conditions… and an anti-viral protocol (low fat, low protein, no sugar) is what’s ultimately needed to heal. Yes, my ego as a nutrition coach has taken quite a beating these past months. But it’s ok 🙂

**Again, I want to say that this is just my personal opinion that some of the information and health recommendations I learned in school is wrong… I am well aware that my saying this is going against tons of research and trends out there. However, my inclination and gut feeling is to trust my intuition and guidance from spirit MORE than what the medical and nutrition experts out there say. I hope that makes sense and is at least understandable, even if you don’t agree.**

Time will always tell if anything is ultimately healing. But every fiber of my being, every intuitive spark in my body, is telling me that this is what my body needs – this is where I need to go right now.

I hesitated about putting this post out there because I’m sure it will create a stir and ruffle the feathers of anyone who’s either strongly against veganism or strongly distrustful of anything that’s not science and research-based. Then again, I’m not sure how many of those people are regular readers of this blog in the first place 🙂 I’m not looking to condemn or judge diets out there or proclaim whether certain ones are right or wrong. However, I want to be honest about where I’m at right now – and I also want to share this knowledge in case anyone else out there is struggling with their health and looking for answers. Maybe, just maybe, your issue is ultimately Epstein-Barr and heavy metals/pesticides as well.

It’s a big change for sure and I’ve had many people ask how I’ve been able to do this. My answer is – pain is our GREATEST motivator in life. When you get to a point where your health is totally crippled and you’re unable to even get by like a normal person in the world, you will do virtually anything to get better. I’ve experienced several rock-bottom health lows like this in my life – I will never forget them and I never want to end up back there. Diet change, for me, is the smallest of small prices to pay for a life of energy and radiance and freedom in the body! This I feel so strongly about.

And so we move forward on this wellness journey! As always, thank you for being here. I hope this was helpful and informative and if nothing else, I hope some of this inspires you to take charge of your own health! This is what I MOST hope you get out of my posts and this blog in general. No matter where we’re at, we can all take steps to move forward, to empower ourselves, to choose joy over fear, to thrive.

This post celebrates 3 years committed to NOURISH, DREAM and DISCOVER.

With so much love & excitement,
Diana, the wellness explorer xx

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