The Vegan Within… Happy to Save The Cows, but I’m NOT Wearing Tie Dye…

So; I recently started trying to make myself more healthy, thus leading to me becoming more motivated and changing my ‘devil may care’ attitude to my body… Around a year ago I was told I’ve most likely had an eating disorder for a long time, because I’d be living off a combination of coffee, sugar, tobacco and beyond without actually consuming any food, sometimes until the evening around 7 or 8pm… NOT healthy!!

Meanwhile going around sharing my mental health story with over half a million people and trying to inspire others to change, but living a lie on the inside, my mental strength pushing me through the trauma I was putting my body through.

Now, I haven’t turned full hippy, because as Robert Downey Jr. would say, if you’re a fan of Tropic Thunder… “You don’t go full hippy!” but I’m certainly looking at how I can live a healthier lifestyle.

And, as I love adrenaline sports, motorbikes, skiing, climbing, martial arts and generally anything that requires a different type of skill level to the average human if you’re going to avoid potential for death, my thinking is, surely with a healthier approach to body dynamic, I can do more of the aforementioned ‘crazy’ stuff and elevate not only the pleasure in doing so, but the capacity for it as well…

My fiance is very into health and fitness and very well educated as a fitness instructor, dancer etc. so through her research and passively educating me in elements of veganism, when I’d listen, I came to learn that when an animal, like a cow or pig is slaughtered, they release hormones due to anxiety, these anxiety hormones are then trapped in our food as it’s processed and it travels into our bodies…

Now, this to me is a more tangible argument, than eating fruit that’s fallen from a tree because it died of natural causes (Notting Hill reference)! So I thought, hey, I’m not so married to the almighty steak that I can’t have a go at stopping and genuinely see whether it works for me.

Sausages and bacon I thought would be much harder, because I’m a connoisseur, but I’ve probably had one sausage and egg muffin from Pret in that period and I leveled it our with a vegetarian muffin so I covered my bases there.

And to my surprise and delight I’m feeling very very well indeed. I’m not having any aches or pains, I’m not tired all the time, sometimes annoying if you’re brains on a rain-man run; but, all in all, it’s really stabilised my mood and my relationship with food.

I’m eating regularly, I can count the amount of fast food I’ve had during this period using only 1 finger and I feel buoy’d by my progression.

I even had rice and veg for breakfast this morning, which may sound odd, but considering I’m a lifetime martial artist and Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world, it’s not as mad as you might think… Ironically they have the highest suicide rate in the world too, but that’s one for another blog…

My focus now is to improve on the feeble form that I’ve developed since letting myself slip and I will be religiously adhering to this little beauty of a workout Monday to Friday twice a day:

So… my challenge is still evolving and I’m not the end result I’m looking to achieve yet, but I’m there’s no medication, no drugs, no nicotine, barely any beer (lets not go mad) and a totally new respect for food and how I keep my legs working…

Prior to all this I was always going to ‘start tomorrow’, or on the 1st of next month, or in January and all that bullsh*t we tell ourselves so we never have to lift a finger… but in feeling sick at the man I’d become I don’t want to lie to myself any more…

I can handle failure, I can handle a leaner physique than Arny might adhere to, but I can’t handle not trying, not pushing myself… Before today if I failed it was down to my own laziness, my own ambiguity and frankly the times ticking… My son is here and it’s only a matter of time before he see’s who I’ve become and it’s not going to be that guy.

My life has a future now, but it’s driven by me, no more excuses and no more wasting it!

“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention. To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

And if we save a bunch of cows along the way then so much the better!