Day 8

Thoughts: I use lemon for deodorant. I believe what you put on your skin is just as impactful as what you put in your mouth. Kevin Tredea, the amazing author of 'What They Don't Want You To Know' says "If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin". I totally believe there is a natural 'earth' alternative for everything, for lotions, moisterisers, deoderants and cures. For example I use lemon for deoderant. And it works sometimes right, but the times it doesn't is when I have just had a huge binge and consumed chemicals and it has to come out of our skin somehow! So then I smell. But I find when I am healthy, I don't smell. There's no need to, I don't have copious amounts of toxins coming out! I have been smellier for the past week I must admit, if you get grossed out because of smells and visuals then stop reading now! But its true, I have been smellier. Its like my body is getting rid of toxins after so long of holding onto them. My poos are really smelly, so I am monitoring them, and Im sure once my body gets cleaner it wont smell as much! haaa! So today I was in a seminar, and its 9am and I can smell my underarms and while I quite like the smell of toxins coming out of my body, I thought of the other people in the seminar, so I went to the chemist and bought a Rexona roll on, and as resistant as I was, I filled my arms with aluminum. Aluminum is the ingredient in deoderant and one of the biggest hidden secrets of all! Its unfortunate the amount of people that are unaware of the health hazards of deoderants. Beyond the synthetic fragrances and toxic ingredients found in deoderant and most personal care products, are loaded with aluminum compounds that have been linked to Alzheimer's disease and brain disorders, respiratory disorders, and possibly cancer. Aluminum is one of the most common elements in the environment and the world's most common metal. It is used in cans and aluminum foil, as lightweight sheet metal in airplanes and other machinery, in electrical wiring - and in personal care products such as underarm deodorant and antiperspirant. In a culture where being well groomed and smelling nice is essential, its like a must to wear deoderants, but what you don't know is that they are powerful astringents that close pores, stopp sweat and odor from escaping the body. So it may leave the outside of the body smelling fresh and clean – but inside, the toxins that would have escaped the body in the sweat have nowhere to go. For this reason, antiperspirants have been linked to problems with the sweat glands and lymph glands in and around the underarms. If you want to smell nicer, than get healthier instead of clogging your underarms with aluminum! So to be safe: If you can't eat it, don't put it on your body! It does soak in! (you can buy aluminum free deoderant from health food stores!)

Read more: http://naturalmedicine.suite101.com/article.cfm/aluminum_in_deodorant#ixzz0Vby2OAQ5

Challenges: Well actually today I was having lunch with 6 friends at an asian place, I packed my lunch of course and brought it along (raw brocoli, strawberries and nuts), and actually asian was my favourite food, the curry, and the rice and the noodles mmmm so that was the first time in a week that I felt my body go mmm yum, but still in no way was I tempted! I am however looking forward to creating my own curries from scratch, from herbs and spices mmm mmmm! Then at dinner, I ate with my sister and a family of four, and my sister cooked this beautiful pasta dish, so im getting now that I want to include more variety in my Earth Diet! So you count on me for experiementing and creating variety and I will post recipes! It's atually easier than you think to eat from the earth! The aboriginals were doing it for hundreds of years before we came along!

Triumphs:So today was officially THE LONGEST I have been without bingeing, eating chocolate, junk food, processed foods, foods with chemicals, in 5 years! I would always say ok this week I will go for 8 days being totally healthy and then I would get half way through the week and give in and let my 'voice' win. I feel so empowered, so proud and am present to how I love myself and respect my word and my being!

What I ate today:

Breakfast: 1 apple, handfull of strawberries

Lunch: raw brocolli, strawberries, mixed nuts (brazil nuts, cashew nuts, almonds, hazelnuts)

Dinner: one sweet raw corn on the cob, raw brocolli (I never thought I would enjoy eating raw,but I actually do!)handmade sushi (rice, advocado, flattened seaweed), salad (green lettuce, advocado, spring onion)

Dessert: no dessert

Snacks: no snacks

Cost: $6 on a packet of mixed nuts :)

Exercise: 25 minutes walk and I walked up the stairs instead of the esculator!

357 days to go!!!

Day 7

Thoughts: I had a great day today, and I was sharing with my sister how at peace I am with myself and my body now that I have created this challenge. She had no idea that for 5 years I had a battle going on in my head about food. I realized that in my head it seemed like such a big deal, but really, it was a tiny problem (looking back at it now I can see it ws tiny, but actually being in it seemed like such a big dramatic deal), and as soon as you tell one person, the problem sort of dissolves out and has less impact on you. Once you can start talking about it, then the identity starts to lose power, its when you keep it to yourself that it boils and boils and the identity is winning. Because its just an identity right, its not actually you. You are love, peace, joy and would never self harm. So now I get that I choose to eat to nuture myself, instead of living to eat. Living to eat is a nightmare! And today I spoke with 2 amazing friends, both who have had eating disorders, Bulimia. We all shared authentically how it was to have an eating disorder, and how it controlled our lives, and I never thought it would be possible to be free of it. I realized how similar our thoughts were, and I actually never thought anyone else thought the same way I did, which is why I didn't tell anyone. One of my girlfriends said how she would have a shower and throwup in the shower because no one could hear it then, she could hide it, and she learnt that if you stick a toothbrush down your throat far enough she could purge, and then one night in the shower looking down at the food she threw up all over the shower floor and all over he legs, she brokedown, and said thats enough. No more! She declared it over. She had had enough of the pain. And unfortunately more girls than not suffer from a kind of eating disorder. But thats how powerful you are, you really do have the power to choose, and to have control and to say no more. What I am getting from this Earth Diet is that you don't feel the urge to overeat, to binge, you don't think 'im going to binge now, im going to eat 4 packets of carrots'. And there's no room for feeling guilty either, I feel so much love and appreciation for myself when filling my body of earth foods!

Challenges: I had a thought today (well one in particular haha), and to be honest my 'self' felt challenged by it. And the thought was 'what if i go back to bingeing on junk food? what if I can't keep this up and what if i just fail, and can't control the urge?' not an empowering thought I know! So thats what came up, and I guess my biggest fear is that I am not in control of what goes into my body.

Triumphs: Today was day 7 of the Earth Diet!!! After tomorrow, it will officially be the LONGEST I have gone without chocolate, sugar and processed foods in 5 years!!! This is a huge breakthrough!!!!So tomorrow, day 8 will be an exciting day ;)

Food I ate today:

Beakfast: 1 pear, mixed nuts (walnuts,hazelnuts,cashe nuts and pittachio nuts)

Lunch: raw broccoli, strawberries, my homemade sushi roll that I made last night (rice, advocado, carrot, lettuce, flat seaweed)

Dinner: pineapple, orange, lemon and ginger juice, raw brocolli and carrot, strawberries

Dessert: mixed nuts

Snacks: no snacks

Cost: I spent $7 on juice (fresh pineapple, orange, lemon and ginger)

Exercise: 30 minutes walk in Perth city

358 days to go!!!

Day 6

Thoughts: I'm not sure what to call what I was going through before this challenge. An 'eating-disorder', an addiction, controlled by food, a food obsession, bingeing, a pain addiction...but you get the point. That's what it was...now its totally gone! What I actually thought would never shift, has shifted! Finally! 5 years of 'it' just declared complete and gone!

Challenges: Because I declared 'it' complete when I started this challenge I haven't had major challenges,cravings,and I'm not resisting it at all. I'm actually really enjoying this whole process. I guess my biggest challenge that I may face would be boredom. But with that being said, since I am the creator, boredom will only set in if I set it in, so this will be however I want it to be. This blog may even be boring to you because it does not have drama or challenges but you can count on me for another 359 days to write an honest blog about my Earth Diet and share authentically about whatever comes up for me.

I reckon if you have a weight problem, if you are overweight,or have created an eating disorder in your life, than you just don't have enough going on outside your life. If you did, then you wouldn't have time for an eating disorder, and you wouldn't have the space for it. Like I was caught up in my own little world. But now I remember that im just a tiny little dot in the whole universe and my eating obsession was tiny and not worth me having! You know like a problem I created and it's not worthy of my life! So now I get there is no need to have an eating disorder,no need to have a food obsession,no need to create extra drama!

Triumphs: today I got something huge and it was because of a comment my friend Matt posted on my blog, and that was that I truly have transformed my old way of being in just one declaration. I got how powerful our words are, and if we say we are going to do it, we will. And if we say we aren't going to do it, we won't. I feel like 'it' is no longer part of me,and 'it' is no longer in control,and when I look at it now,even though it's been just six days,I can't believe i let it control my life for so long!I have now expanded my plate,and I don't mean plate full of junk food,plate full of raw brocolli hehehe!Suffering is optional,and once I declared my eating-bingeing-obsession-pain-addiction-whatever-you-want-to-label-it complete,I feel like a big fat brick has flown off me and flew far into outer space!iam left feeling calm,peaceful and relieved! I feel so amazing because I have finally honoured my word,after 5 years of saying "as of tomorrow I will not binge,as of tomorrow I will love myself,as of tomorrow I will never binge again" I am finally honouring that. For 5 years I could not be my full self expression because I was not living with integrity.I was not being true to my word and so was depleting my true self!

What I ate today:

Breakfast: green apple, bowl of oats boiled in water

Lunch: mixed nuts (macadamia, cashew, pitashio, almond, peanut), a pear

Dinner: homemade sushi with rice,advocado,carrot and lettuce,and seaweed!

Snacks: peanuts in a shell

Dessert: no dessert

Recipe: sushi: cook rice,chop lettuce,advocado and carrot.wrap the raw ingredients and cooked rice in flattened seaweed!easy peeeeseey!and did you know sushi that you buy at a restaurant has sugar and vinegar in the rice!

Exercise: Walking in Perth city for 40 minutes! Oh and I walked up the stairs instead of taking the esculators!

Cost: Today I spent $22 on fresh fruit and vegatable, broccoli and carrot for tomorrow, sweet corn, mixed nuts, free range organic eggs.

359 days to go!

Day 5

Thoughts:I was eating the sweetest pineapple I have ever had tonight at the airport, and they paged me for the plane. Ooops hehe. I wonder if it was super sweet because I haven't had artificial sugar for 5 days and the natural sugar now stands out to me.

Challenges: Making time to prepare meals from scratch. And Bryan just bought a doughnut in front of me. Now I'm remembering the time I ate an organic doughnut in Byron bay mmmm.Nut nah i get more energy and peace from eating pineapple instead of a doughnut.

Triumphs: I was craving red liccorice and ate pineapple instead!I also got today that for 5 years,for way too long I made food and eating and body image into such a big problem,a burden,an issue,when really if u create a problem bigger than you, there is no time for an eating 'disorder' as such. So I have taken on starting a new business, spreading I Love Earth around the world, taking on challenges like this, creating an online art community, getting new headshots so I can start auditioning again, and what I am left with is no time for drama, no time for an eating disorder, no time to make food into a big dramatic pain addictive controlling habit. Just Living :))))

What I ate today:

Breakfast: Herbal tea leaves, orange, two eggs fried in olive oil with peanuts.

Lunch: Raw brocoli, 4 tablespoons of peanut butter (pure crushed peanuts),chamomille and mint tea leaves

Dinner: Salad with green lettuce, celery, advocado, and French fries (potatoes cooked in olive oil), fried eggs.

Dessert: fresh pineapple at the airport mmmmm

Exercise: 90 minute bikram yoga class

Cost: $2.50 on pineapple.

360 days to go!

Day 4

Thoughts: Sugar. Sugar is sweet poison. True! You can keep eating sugar without feeling full . In the space of of 150 years, we have gone from eating no added sugar to more than a kilo a week . You would need to run 7km everday of your life just to not put on weight as a result of eating that much sugar . The natural sugar in one glass of unsweetened fruit juice per day for a year is enough to add just over 2.5 kilos to your waistline . The more sugar you eat, the more you want. Food manufacturers exploit our sugar addiction by lacing it through non-sweet products such as bread, sauces, soups and cereals . You are poisoning yourself . The human body having evolved in an environment of a largely wholegrain, vegetable and (occasional) meat diet was ill-equipped to deal with the highly processed sugar and refined flour diet of the 20th century. Back in 'the day' (so hundreds of years ago!) the only other way to get a sugar hit in nature was honey .Sugar makes people drowsy and dumb .Why don't they teach this stuff at school? And so why do they keep selling the stuff even though its making us sick, and fat and die? Well one, they want to reduce the population anyway OR 2 , they make soooo much money off us eating products from the supermarket. So unless we stop buying it, they will keep making it! Now with that being said...i wonder about cane sugar? and brown sugar? and raw sugar? I mean that comes from the cane plant right? That's natural? Hmmm I must enquire! How long can I go without sugar?

Challenges: Oh I miss chocolate. I have been 4 days without chocolate or sugar. I really want to make chocolate, but it is so time consuming and I haven't made time for it yet.

Triumphs: 4 days without sugar! Sheeesshhh! That's awesome! The longest I have been without sugar in 5 years is 7 days!

Today I ate:

Breakfast: 1 orange, peanuts wrapped in 2 scrambled eggs cooked in olive oil, and a beetroot, carrot, cellery and beetroot juice.

Lunch: Strawberries, purple grapes, peanut butter (pure peanuts crushed), dried apricots. My body has never endured that kind of combination before, and it quite liked it!

Dinner: Raw vegetables, brocoli and carrots. At least the carrots are sweet, but the brocoli raw tastes like im eating trees. Well I suppose they are mini trees ;)

Desert: No desert.

Snacks: Brazil Nuts and Cashew Nuts oh and Peanuts!

Recipe: Ok I will give you the dinner recipe today...take the brocoli and carrot out of the fridge, wash it with water. EAT.RAW. haha

Cost: Today I spent $2.40 on peanut butter (pure peanuts crushed), $4 on dried apricots and himilayan mineral salt $2.00 (to go on my potatoes). Usually when I got into the organic shop I buy $13 worth of chocolate coated almonds, and $4 worth of white chocolate slab, but oh no, not today, today it was all about the peanuts, apricots and mineral salt!

Exercise: 30 minnutes walk in morning, 15 minutes walk in the park soaking in the beautiful oxygen in the afternoon.

361.. days to go!!!

Day 3

Thoughts: 40 years ago it would have been a challenge to find foods with chemicals, with preservatives, additives, added flavours and colours. Now, today unfortunately it's hard to find foods that don't have these things! People have never been fatter then we are today. And it's because of what's in our food. Even in things you wouldn't even imagine, like today I wanted to put salt on my potatoes and i read the back of the container and it said Ingredients: salt and anticaking agent (554). Any additives with numbers is bad news! So I didn't use the salt as that would be inauthentic with this challenge. I will buy rock sea salt that comes in chunks and grind it myself. Our world is so fast paced that preparing all of our meals is time consuming. I am certainly learning this with this challenge. Tonight I didn't have dinner because I ran out of time, well I didn't make the time, and when I got home it was 9.30pm and I didn't feel like preparing a meal. Before this challenge I would have stopped at a service station and picked up Nando's or a chocolate bar.

Another thing, Dennis a friend of mine mentioned that if you want to improve the earth through the diet, than cut back on meat as the animals take up more resources than plants. Good point. We just keep consuming and consuming and consuming and consuming meat! I think humans have become selfish and indulgent and we consume more food than our bodies need and can handle. It's a myth that we need to eat meat a certain amount of times a week, and it's a myth that we need to eat 3 times a day. He also mentioned buying locally grown food "Much of the damage that is done to the Earth is done by transportation (greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, etc)", I shop at the markets once per week for organic local grown fruits and vegetables. Its cheaper, healthier for you and for the environment! So you can't go wrong at all! And I love it when I find a worm in my brocoli or strawberry because it shows that they didn't use pesticides to kill the bugs! The supermarket has a negative influence on people's eating habits. It's designed for us to spend money, and what do we spend money on most? Junk food. I went to the supermarket today to buy eggs, and when I was standing in the line to pay, the whole cubicle was filled with chocolate bars, cakes, tarts, cookies to tempt people to spending more money on quick and easy impulse buys, and its all junk food! My friend Jane said "why don't they fill the line with healthy foods?". We wouldn't but it.

Challenges: I realized how time consuming this is, and that I need to plan ahead, as tonight I went without dinner because I didn't 'plan'.

Triumphs: I was so happy today to learn that I could make my own chocolate! I absolutely love chocolate, the feeling it gives my body, however I don't like the 'guilty' thoughts associated with eating it, and eating too much of it. I got today that if I make my meals from wholesome natural foods, then I don't actually feel sluggish, or that I over ate on too much gluten, or chemicals, so I don't have those thoughts of 'this food will make me sick and tired and bloated',or 'iam destroying my body with this crappy food','you suck because you obviously don't care about your body if you eat this' and bla bla bla so now its like aaahh freedom at last! I love it! So i purchased some cocao beans and a grinder to make the chocolate! wow I am so excited to see what my very own home made chocolate tastes like! Today I tried a raw cocao bean, and it was very sour, and had a dark, rich, thick consistency. I imagined what it must have been like for the Egyptians..I mean they worshipped these beans, and it is said that they would have 30 cocao drinks a day, and they even used them for currency! The food back then would have only been natural and wholesome, with no added anythings, i mean they didn't have to add anything did they, they didn't have supermarkets! So i can imagine when they first discovered the beans, how rich in flavour they must have been. Human beings tastes have certainly changed over the years, it seems we are less satisfied and are always adding new flavours to our foods.

Today I ate:

Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs fried in olive oil.

Lunch: Same as I had last night for dinner! hehe i loved it that much! French Fries (2 sliced potatoes in olive oil), with salad, green lettuce, strawberries, red onion and advocado.

Dinner: No dinner. Oops need to plan better. I mean the women 60 years ago must have just cooked! It takes so much time, effort and planning!

Desert: No desert.

Snacks: corn on the cob (i ate it raw for the first time, it was sensational!so sweet and ... raw!), cammomile and spearmint tea (the actual loose tea leaves), and peanuts in a shell, walnuts, strawberries, blueberries, cherries. (wow I ate a lot of snacks today!)

Recipe: To see the lunch recipe see "Day 2" blog.

Cost: $30 for the grinder to grind the Cocao beans...im sure I will get plenty of use from this is the 363 days left! $10 for a bag of cocao beans, and $5 on free range organic eggs.

Exercise: 15 minutes running on the treadmill, 5 minutes doing ab work and 10 minutes in the sauna.

362.. days to go!!!

Day 2

No I am not doing this Earth Diet because I think i'm fat. In fact I don't even like using the word 'diet' because it implies 'something is wrong' or 'someone is fat and needs to be fixed'. So whenever I write Earth 'Diet', I simply mean an Earth lifestyle. I am adapting a healthy, balanced and moderation eating wholesome foods from the earth! That is such a sexy sentence don't ya think? So healthy! Hehe. And I don't think I am fat at all! However I am looking forward to having my butt get tighter and higher! hehe! I am a size 10, I am not stick thin, and I am not overweight. I am healthy. I am however sick of my unhealthy choices when I binge on junk food. My body doesn't deserve that. I know it's only day two, but I feel alive and energetic and my body feels healthy and clean and I can actually 'bé' with my body. When I eat junk food I do not enjoy being inside my body.

Today I wanted chocolate and felt sad that I chose not so have it, and like I was missing out. I have to look at it not like im 'missing' out on foods, but i am gaining more...more energy and vitality!

I also really enjoy eating with my hands, and feeling and connecting with the food. One of my good friends is an Arab and they eat their main meals with their hands, I love going over to their place and touching the food, feeling it, feeling its warmth, feeling the sensation of the food on our hands...i wonder why we invented knives and forks???!!

Thoughts: Today was awesome! Well it is only day 2 after all! Haha! I had a chocolate craving but it was so nice to know I had control and could make a choice to eat fruit instead! I was actually so excited to make dinner tonight! I had french fries with a juicy salad! And it was so fufilling, and I don't feel sluggish at all, I still feel energetic and alive! And for desert I am going to eat some fresh cherries and blueberries. I would usually have an icecream!

Challenges: I had a thought around 11am...I would really love to munch on some chocolate. I had kiwi fruit instead. It was actually just as satisfying...really sweet! The earth provides us with all sorts of natural flavours, sweet, spicy and sour!

Triumphs: I made it through day 2 eating only natural foods from the earth!

Today I ate:

Breakfast: two fried eggs in olive oil. (I scramble the eggs in a bowl first and then fry in olive oil, they come out crisp and soft mmm mmmmm!)

Lunch: Left over vegetable stirfry from last night. Brown rice with vegetables.

Dinner: French fries (and by that I mean I sliced potatoes and deep fried them in olive oil! Homemade chips are the best chips in the world! I think I forgot what a real potato had taste like, it had been that long! So french fries with rock sea salt, and a big fat juicy salad with green lettuce, advocado, strawberries, green onion and olive oil drissled over it for a dressing (lemon juice from a lemon with the olive oil also makes a yummy dressing!).

Snacks: Two kiwi fruit and peanuts in a shell.

Recipe: Dinner: 1. Slice Potatoes (I like to keep them thick and potatoey). Heat the olive oil in a deep fry pan. Fry the potatoes in the pan, make sure the oil is covering the potatoes. Take them out when they are done to your liking! I like them soft with a crunchy outside! Put rock seal salt on them if you like and sit them on paper towel to drain the oil out of them (olive oil is very good for you did you know? Any other oil is actually toxic when it is heated, especially vegetable and canola oil, so olive oil is made from olives and is the best for you). To make the salad take lettuce leaves, cut strawberries, slice a red onion, chop advocado, add it all together and top it off with olive oil for dressing (add lemon if you like).

Cost: Today I spent $25 on food. Oh and get this I bought 32 rolls of toilet paper for $6...haaa whaaa?!!! 32 rolls...thats a lot of toilet paper! I guess my body knows I will be pooping a lot after all this food!

Exercise: A 90 minute Bikram Yoga class (yoga in a room 45 degrees!)

363 days to go!

Day 1

So today was my very first day of the Earth Diet! Eating only wholesome foods from the earth...

Challenges:I shared with one of my friends about this challenge I am taking on for 365 days and she was worried, she said "Just make sure you don't get an eating disorder". The thing is, I feel that the way my eating habits were, is an eating disorder. From extremely healthy to extremely bingeing on junk food! This is so tiring on my body and vitality! 'Eating Disorder' in the dictionary means a severe disturbances in eating habits.What I did to myself for 5 years was unnatural and unhealthy. I am not taking on this challenge to create an eating disorder, or to get celebrity skinny, I want to create a healthy, balanced and wholesome lifestyle.I want to feel that deep seeded love for myself and my body again like I did before I started binge eating 5 years ago! When I told my uncle today he said 'But they put chemicals in everything these days'. Have we been eating chemicals for so long now that healthy wholesome earth food tastes bland and boring? So day one is over, I feel good, 364 days to go!

Thoughts: Dinner was bland, I would usually add soy sauce, which I love! But i'm not sure whether or not that is a natural earth product? On the back of the jar it says its made from whole soya beans, sea salt and water. They are ingredients from the earth with no added chemicals I cannot pronouce. What do you think? Is soy sauce an earth product or a by product of a man made invention? Can I live 364 days without soy sauce? Ahhh I probably eat it with my food at least 3 times a week! Oh another dilema I came across tonight was that I looked in my fridge and sitting right there, shining its lovely-ness at me, was my two favourite curry pastes, Green Thai Curry and Tikka Masala. Both of these contain chemical additives. So I suppose I will be creating my very own curry pastes! I mean the asians created their own curry paste before it was available in jars right?

Triumphs: I shared my challenge with my friend Kara, and guess what?!!! she is taking this on as well! So now there are two earth-dieters! wooo wooo! Her inspiration was 'lets increase our vibrations!'. Following the law of attraction, we are all energies vibrating at a frequency. At Agapi one day a woman stood up and said she went 'raw' for 5 months!!! Nothing but raw foods! sheeshhhh! And she said she felt so alive and that she was vibrating at such a high high frequency. I bet she felt so clean and alive!

What I ate on Day 1:

Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs. Beetroot, carrot, celery and ginger juice.

Lunch: crushed peanuts (to make peanut butter put peanuts in a blender and waloaa fresh organic natural peanut butter). kiwi fruit.

Dinner: Brown rice and vegetable stir fry. Olive oil, shallots, garlic, brocoli,spinach leaves, mung beans and snow peas. I'm not a vegetarian but I like to eat just vegetables sometimes!

Desert: no desert.

Snacks:almonds

Recipe: Boil bown rice. Fry the chopped shallots and garlic in olive oil. Add the brocoli and snow peas. Let them cook through then add the spinach and mung beans for a few minutes until they become soft. Mix the rice and vegetables together and you have a 100% natural earth stir fry!

cost: I didn't spend anything on food today because I already had the ingredients at home.

Exercise: No Exercise.

364 days to go!

The Earth Diet begins....

The Earth Diet begins!!!!

Tomorrow I will take on the healthiest and most demanding challenge of my life!

Who: Me!!!!
Let me know if anyone else out there wants to give this a go too!  We can do it together :)

What: I will eat only natural and wholesome foods provided by the earth for 365 days. The Earth Diet challenge! No processed foods, no artifical anythings, no sweetners, no additives, no enhanced flavours and preservatives!

Name: The Earth Diet

Where: Where ever I am in the world, under any circumstance I must say no to any processed food!

When: Starting tomorrow Sunday 25th October 2009 for 365 days until October 25th 2010!

Why: To empower myself and others in choosing what we put in our mouths. To create a healthy, balanced eating lifestyle and look and feel vibrant!! I believe that doing this I will begin my healing process, achieve weight loss, I will feel beautiful inside and out, have peace of mind, tone up, tighten up, be healthier, gain confidence, have control, restore self love, have courage, self confidence, be free from resentment, guilt and regret on myself.

Biggest Fear: I am afraid of failing. I am afraid of finding out that I do not have control over my food addiction and that I will live with the pain and suffering of the binge eating for the rest of my life.

I declare: I declare my binge eating and addiction to pain complete as of right now!

Inspirations: You!! If I have a craving for junk food I will think of you. Whether anyone actually reads this  it will keep me accountable. I will have to be true to my word, because I will think oh no I’m not eating that because I will check in at my blog tonight and I will not write ‘today I failed’ or ‘I couldn't do it’. I’m sick of my ‘I can’t do it’ attitude when it comes to food, it’s now time for ‘I CAN’. Control over my eating experiences.

Rules:
Yes: Whole natural organic foods from the earth; fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs, meat, fish. Anything that comes from a tree, a plant, the ground, the ocean I will eat.

No: Refined and processed foods, anything with chemicals, preservatives, additives, GMO's or anything ingredients I cannot pronounce this includes:  Soft drinks (soda), lollies(candy), chocolates, chips, cakes, cookies, bleached flours, breads.

If you want to hear my “story” and more “whys” for my Earth Diet challenge then read below. I will check in every night and post a blog about my day doing the Earth Diet!

I wasn't joking when I meant that this is going to be the biggest challenge of my life!  Because I’m afraid of failing. For five years I have battled with finding a ‘balanced’ eating lifestyle. My weight constantly yo-yos, as does my energy, vitality and social activities. Basically my whole life revolves around food. I let it get out of control 5 years ago. I was 17 and modelling, I was energetic, fit and healthy, I didn't worry about food, focus on it or put attention or energy on what I ate, I basically ate anything and everything but in moderation and balance. Then something ‘happened".  I got a disappointing grade during my final year of school for one subject. I got this underlying feeling of guilt and thoughts of ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I can't do it’ and ‘I’m not in control". I would scoff down on ice cream and chocolate and not even remember what it tasted like. I was totally unconscious, then I would feel so guilty that I was ruining my body with toxins, then I feared I would get fat and ugly. This experience felt like a vicious cycle and that I was punishing myself for not being good enough. This guilt I created inside me would create a resistance in my body and that would make the food hard to digest and excrete. Now I have bowel issues, and if I am stressed, it just doesn't work at all!

For 5 years this has gone on, until tomorrow. Tomorrow I will commit to 365 days of process free food and only eat foods that the earth provides naturally.  For 5 years I have struggled with bouncing back and forth from extreme organic healthy person, to a junk food binger. I would hide this from my friends and family. I would only want them to see me as a healthy person, so if I was in binge-mode by myself, I would silence any phone calls I received and reject any social offers to go out or meet with anyone! One week I would detox and have a colonic, along with beetroot juices, and all natural foods, and I would feel great, and clean and vibrant, and once I got to this feeling I would sabotage it and binge on as much junk food as I could in one day! This became an exhausting vicious cycle! I learned that I had an addiction when it got to the 5 year mark. In the dictionary an addiction is described as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming” and I felt I had no control over what went in my mouth and that I wasn't able to go for longer than a week without a binge. I had no power or integrity around it at all, I would have a thought ‘I should eat some chocolate’ and then feel I would have to go and eat it, that I had no choice but to just do it. Once I learned I had an addiction I realized I was addicted to the pain of this experience. Each week my moods would change with the foods depending on the amount of chemicals I would consume. I always seem to be more calm, more relaxed, happy and peaceful when I eat wholesome real foods as opposed to a nervy, yoyo moody stress head when my body is full of toxic foods. It is very hard for me to feel good and live my dreams when I am eating soo much junk foods. The last ‘binge spree’ I had was today, I started the day with white bread with peanut butter and vegemite, a small packet of special k (cereal), a piece of chocolate fudge (loaded with sugar) a ham and egg wrap, a white chocolate and macadamia chunk cookie, a packet of gobstopper candy, 2 scones with butter and vegemite, a picnic bar (chocolate) and a chocolate freddo frog, a kit kat and another freddo frog, French fries and a chicken wrap. Then another chocolate bar ; snickers. I didn't enjoy any of this, I felt tired, drowsy and dizzy.

I believe that doing this will empower me – so I will have a deep confidence of knowing that I do have control and I can choose what I eat, instead of feeling like a victim to a food/pain addiction.

I also hope this empowers you to want to be healthy and to know that you can choose health.
I’ve tried so many things and ways to get rid of this over the past 5 years. I've had colonics in the hope that it would wash out my craving cells so I wouldn't crave sugar – didn’t work, I tried detoxing with beetroot and ginger juice to get it all out of my system, I tried yoga, meditations, I was even hypnotised, I’ve tried ‘starting again’ hundreds of times! I would have a massive binge and say ‘this is definitely the last time, I’ve had enough, tomorrow I will start, tomorrow, tomorrow’, Tomorrow never came until NOW!

I believe that the earth provides us with all the natural resources we need – including food. The aboriginals lived off the land for hundreds of years with a natural lifestyle.  I am hoping as a last resort that by me taking on this Earth Diet challenge, and eating wholesome foods from the earth, my bingeing addiction will totally disappear and I will be able to maintain a happy and healthy balance when it comes to food and health!

I’m actually starting to freak out now. I just realized what I have created and that tomorrow I will not be able to eat an ice cream, how will I know how to be? How do I ‘be’ without an addiction? It’s been part of my identity for 5 years.

I told my friend about the challenge and after a silent pause he said “That sounds crazy. That sounds full on. Yeah totally crazy. Liana that’s crazy. You know go for it, but it’s going to be expensive.” That’s something I had not taken into consideration. Will it be cheaper eating earth foods or processed foods? When I told my other friend about my new Earth Diet challenge he laughed and said “But why?”.....I guess we will see.....