If you are vegan, vegetarian or raw vegan and not feeling as good as you feel you should be, then check out this podcast as i might have the answer for you!!!

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“Hi!  Welcome to another episode of naturally you radio, helping you create a nourished life. I am your host Leah Salmon, the naturally you coach.  You can find me at www.thenaturallyyoucoach.com and today I am sharing with you why the vegetarian, vegan or raw food diet that you are on could be making you sick.

I became a vegetarian when I was eleven years old.  I went to a school trip on a farm where we did camping and all these types of things and there were goats and sheep there.  When I went back to London and went shopping with my mom, my mom took me to a butcher and she was about to buy some chicken and I saw proudly hanging up in the butcher’s shop, the same caucuses of the animals that I was playing with just the other day, so I declared very loudly and probably quite embarrassingly to my mom in the shop, that I didn’t want to eat those things because I was playing with them last week.

So my mom agreed for me to become a vegetarian and through my teens, I was a vegetarian, however, I was what I refer to as a junk food vegetarian so I had soy and junk food filled teenage existence where I basically lived off soya in all shape and forms and soy milk and things like white pasta, white bread.  I barely ate vegetables, I did not really eat a lot of vegetables.  I really did just kind of survive on carbs and soy products and things like chocolate and juices and pizza that was made from vegetarian cheese, basically anything that didn’t have meat in it, that’s what I was eating now.

This life style resulted in me developing a condition called metrorrhagia which is where you bleed between your periods.  I lived with the condition for about two years before I eventually went to the doctors to get it checked out.  They basically disregarded the condition to be anything particularly serious and told me to come back in six months if it got any worse, and in my opinion it was already in a terrible state.

I then was empowered by their lack of enthusiasm to do anything with me.  I thought at the very least they would blink and try to drug me or operate on me or do something, do something to show you care.  One of my fears was that they would actually dismiss my condition entirely and that was exactly what they did, they basically dismissed it.

That whole process is what actually sparked my career in natural health because it inspired me to find a resolution to this condition myself because I was like okay, if you guys are not going to do anything about it, I have lived with this thing too long, I need to go ahead and help myself.

I have been a student of my master teacher, Dr. Malachi Z.K. York for a long time and even at that time as a young teenager I have been reading his books for a long time.  One thing that he really impressed upon us is to go back to nature because the answers to our health are in trusting in nature and following the example of our ancestors who lived a very clean and natural life in accordance with nature.

I started studying herbs and aromatherapy oils and nutrition more and put together an herbal blend for myself and aromatherapy oil blend and I basically managed to reverse the condition myself.  As I did more research in the condition after I manage to get rid of the vast majority of the symptoms of it, I was able to identify that my diet was a large contributing factor in how I developed the condition.  It was a lot of research I did into swear pointed to it having quite a disruptive effect on your hormonal levels and it was an imbalance in hormone that was causing the bleeding between the periods.

Also, the junk food and the general perception that as long as I was not eating meat, I was okay.  So when I decided to become a vegetarian, it was mainly for those fuzzy humanitarian reasons because I had just been playing with these animals but then when you change a lifestyle, even at eleven years old, when you make a change in your lifestyle, you do kind of seek information that validates your decision.  Even as young eleven years old, I managed to come across things that were helping me to validate my decision to become a vegetarian, so I came across a lot of information about animal testing, animal welfare and these sorts of things; people testing lip sticks and rabbits eyes and the poor conditions that animals are kept it.  So all of these things made me just not want to eat meat any at all.

Also, there were people saying, you know the vegetarian lifestyle is a very healthy lifestyle for you so that encouraged me to do it as well and stick with it.  Now, I continued my journey and eventually realized that the soy aspect and the junk food aspect of what I was doing, even though I had taken meat out of my diet, that wasn’t the be all and end all.  That wasn’t the defining thing that I needed to focus on, and that was all I was focusing on.  My only concern was as long as I want to maintain health and not harm animals, all I needed to do was to remove animal products from my diet.

Now obviously, I have grown and changed and developed and evolved and learn a lot more since that time and now I still don’t eat red meat or chicken.  I do eat eggs.  My diet kind of fluctuates between vegan, vegetarian, raw vegan and being a pescetarian.  Just a brief breakdown of what those different classifications are.  There are a lot of subdivisions of diets out there and titles and all these types of things.

A vegan is somebody who basically does eat any type of animal products at all and some very strict vegans won’t use animal products; like they won’t wear real leather, they won’t wear wool, they won’t eat honey because it is a by-product of an animal.  Some other less strict vegans are people who simply who don’t eat direct animal products so that’s mainly dairy, eggs, meat, fish and poultry.

A vegetarian is somebody who doesn’t eat the flesh of animal, dairy product and eggs.  Raw vegan is somebody who will not eat any dairy products, or meat, or poultry, or fish, or eggs and their food is raw.  This is a distinction because there are some people out there who are raw foodist and a raw foodist is someone who will eat anything as long as it is raw.  So there are raw foodist who eat raw chicken and raw eggs which is a little bit more acceptable because a lot of weight lifters and people like that, sports people who eat raw eggs.

They will eat raw beef and raw fish again which is a bit more acceptable because people who eat sushi and those types of things, which is raw fish.  There is a difference between a raw vegan and a raw foodist.  I am sometimes a raw vegan and I have a whole book with raw vegan recipes called … but I am actually in the process of revising right now and it looks gorgeous, I must say, adding 25 new recipes to that book, so as soon as that book is out, then I’ll be making a big song and dance about it because it’s really lovely.

Sometimes I am a pescetarian and a pescetarian is someone who eats fish but doesn’t eat poultry or meat products and I do my best to avoid cheese as well, like dairy products as well.  I definitely don’t drink milk, I really don’t like milk, but yes, sometimes I will have cheese but it’s something we don’t kind of have in the house and it’s definitely something that the children don’t eat, that’s kind of where I am now.

Now, I can fully understand why people don’t want to eat meat.  I can fully understand it.  Like I said, when I was doing research when I was a vegetarian.  I am saying this to say, I know why people don’t want to eat meat, however, I want to really impress this on your mind from now, when you are a vegetarian, or vegan, or raw vegan or pescetarian, please do not think that just taking meat out of your diet is the only thing you need to focus on, if you are trying to do that for health, you can end up actually ruining your health by solely focusing on that.

If you are doing it for other reasons; like conscious reasons and social reasons, you can still end up negatively impacting your health by only focusing on removing meat from your diet.  You can basically end up with as many health conditions as somebody who is eating a very carnivorous style.  If you are trying to do it for social good then your ability to be able to impact your environment and your community positively is going to be impacted if you take meat out of your diet for social reasons but then you develop health conditions, that mean that you can’t be of service to the world the way you want to.  So I know why people don’t want to eat meat.
Most meat is commercially raised and it’s commercially raised in filt.  So you will see those battery chickens or the battery hens, sorry, who are living, twenty of them are living in a four foot square enclosure.  They are living in there with chickens that have passed on.  There is excrements, there is vomit, there is disease, there is disgustingness, they are raised in filt, I understand that entirely.  The same things for farmed fish and livestock.  A lot of them are not raised in very clean conditions.

This is also inhumane, the way that they are treated and the way that they are raised in very inhumane ways.  Again on a conscious level I can understand why people don’t want to eat meat and give money to farmers and people who are raising these animals, these creatures of nature in a very inhumane way, simply to make money.

Most commercially raised animals are fed and injected with crap and you then take in everything that they have been drugged with.  In order for them to withstand the daily conditions that they live in, they are given antibiotics, they are given hormones to bulk them up so that they grow a lot quicker, so that they can be sold a lot more quickly.  They are, and all of the things that they are pumped with and injected with and the medications that they are given when they do develop illnesses and things like that, all of those things you are taken in, it’s not like when the animals die, they leave the animal’s bodies; they become part of the animal flesh and then when you eat them, of course some of them get peed out and pued out and things like that but a lot of them remain in the flesh and the tissues of the animal that you end up going ahead and eating.

I can understand if you don’t want to eat animals because they are bad for the environment.  There is a documentary called Cows spiracy that you can find on Netflix, I don’t know where else you can find it.  I know they have got a website; COWSPIRACY.  It basically talks about the fact that if you are changing your light bulb to long life light bulbs and you are conserving water and you are recycling and you are composting and you are going to work on a bike instead of going on a car and you take short trips in your car and you do all these things to reduce the carbon footprint, one of the biggest things you could actually do to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce the amount of animal that you eat because the raising of livestock and dairy and eggs and chicken and these types of things actually have a massive impact, a massive negative impact on the environment that a lot of people don’t want to talk about but they go into a lot more depth in that documentary.

I can understand if you don’t want to eat meat because their blood of red meat can attract to disagreeable beings to you and if you want to learn more about that, you can go to WUNUWAUP.COM.  We know that on a spiritual level things are attracted to different energies that you take into you and when you take into you red meats, the energy from the blood can attract disagreeable being to you, so I can fully understand why that’s the reason a lot of  people don’t want to eat meat.

Most meat is about 80% rubbish anyway, it’s not even all real meat, a lot of meat is full of wheat and flour and fillers and pumped with water.  You maybe gluten intolerant and you are wondering why the meat that you are eating is giving you the same type of digestive issues as you get when you eat wheat and it’s because a lot of these; like the burgers and the nuggets and all these types of things, sometimes inadvertently but not obviously.  It’s not things like nuggets because obviously you can see the bread crumbs that they are wrapped in but some other meats are pumped with things and are stuffed with things that are not meat.  They are just fillers to make these things make more money and allows food manufacturers and food companies to basically sell you rubbish.

I understand if you don’t want to eat meat and you want to go on a raw vegan diet because raw food is so energizing and being on raw food does allow you to avoid a lot of the junk that is put into vegetarian foods and vegan foods.  Many vegetarians because of all these reasons, think that all they have to do is remove meat, and they will be happy and healthy and fine. This isn’t always the case because you may know, I know, and I know that a lot of people who are on the vegetarian diet or vegan diet and who are motivated to go on this diet because of their health are not actually healthy and it’s not because they are just getting into the diet and they are just getting into the swing of things and they have not been vegan long enough, people who have been vegan or vegetarian for years are still suffering from health problems.

So, why is this?  Vegetarians and vegans will get confused themselves as to why they are still sick and out of balance in some way when they are following the vegetarian or vegan diet because we are not always following it in a holistic way.  If you only focus on one aspect of it instead of living life in a holistic way then you are likely to get un-holistic results and results that create an imbalance in you.

Here are three of the reasons why your diet could be making you sick, why you could still be sick even though you are on a raw vegan, or vegan or vegetarian diet.  Again, like I said, you believe that meat is the only problem.  I have already spoken about this a lot, but just as an example, there are people again on their search for health when they start to change their diet; they look at documentaries and read books and all these types of things.

Most people who promote a particular diet or lifestyle will sometimes focus your attention on what it is that they are doing and make you think that, that is the whole story.  There was a documentary that showed a group of people who are not healthy and then their experts will work their magic on them and then all of a sudden they are healthy.  One such documentary showed a group of people who were not healthy and what they did with these people was that they got them to exercise more, got them to drink more water, got them to remove things like soda, reduce their sugar, reduce their intake of processed food, if they were smoking, they would stop smoking, they got them to get more sleep and they got them to remove meat from their diets and other animal products and dairy from their diet as well.

Now even though, as a result, they were monitored as they made all of these changes and they kind of introduce these changes in a slow way.  As they were doing this, it also meant they were able to reduce the amount of medication that they were on because as they were doing all of these things, their body needed the medication they were on for the serious condition that a lot of them had less and less and less.  By the end of the process they were off a lot of their medication and they had implemented all these other steps.

What the documentary focused on and tried to kind of leave you with at the end was, all you really need to do or the most important thing was that they left the meat.  That was the most important thing that they did.  They stopped eating fish, they stopped eating chicken, they stop eating meat; that’s what they focused on and it can be very confusing because they didn’t focus on, they didn’t pay any attention to or they didn’t highlight that they had to do a lot of different things.  They got more sleep, they got more water, they stop medication, they did a lot of different things and all of those things contributed to them improving their health, but they focus on the fact that they stop eating meat because the people that made this documentary wanted to push a vegetarian and vegan life style and a low fat lifestyle as well and you may know that, that is something I don’t agree with, I don’t agree with that; reducing your fat level or having a low fat, no fat diet as something that’s healthy, because historically and biologically it’s not something we’ve done culturally, it’s not something that many people have done, to have a very low fat diet and still be very healthy.

So, that’s one of the reasons why you could be sick.  You could just be focused on, like I said, only removing meat and doing anything else.  Another reason why your diet could be making you sick is because you have fallen into the trap that soy is your saviour.  Soy has a replacement for every single animal product out there, whether it’s a soy egg replacer, soya milk, soya custard, soya cheese, soya cake, soya everything.  Soya bacon, soya chicken, soya chicken fillets, soya turkey rashes, soya everything.  Like myself, I was eating soya every single day, probably two to three times a day, I was eating soya.

Soya doesn’t just come on its own as a soya bean, so the soya bean itself, the fresh green bean is called a Nadame bean and you can actually buy those in a supermarket, you can snack on them and those types of things.  There are a lot of different variations of soya out there but a lot of vegetarians are pushed and sold the types of soya that are very highly processed and come along with a lot of other junks.  Most of the products I just mentioned; they soya burgers, the soya chicken, the soya rashes, the soy cheeses; they are packaged with tons of MSG, white flour, rubbish oils, rubbish salts, sugar, preservatives, flavourings; all these artificial additives are added to a lot of the soya that we are eating.  Again, because we are thinking that soya is being promoted to us as a healthy food, I was sold into the notion that because I wasn’t eating meat and chicken and fish as a teenager, I needed protein to grow so that my growth wouldn’t be stunted, so that’s why I was taking it.

I was taking so much of it because you need to make sure you are replacing all this protein you are losing from not eating meat, so, I saw soya as my saviour.  Women who are in their menopausal years may see soya as their saviour as well because a lot of people will promote that soya help to keep your hormones stable when you are menopausal, so it’s good to have a lot of soya.

Again, I have not found this to be the case and a lot of research and anecdotes with evidence shows that actually soya, taking soya can actually have completely the opposite effect, it can actually disrupt your hormone levels to the point where you develop a lot of conditions.  So that could be another reason why you are not well as a vegetarian or vegan because you are relying very heavily on soya.

Another reason why your vegetarian or vegan or raw vegan diet could be making you unwell is that you are not actually eating enough real food, therefore, you are not actually getting enough nutrients and again this is because as a vegetarian or a vegan or even a raw vegan you can actually eat a lot of processed foods.  Not so much as a raw vegan but as a vegetarian and a vegan you can actually eat a lot of processed foods but still be able to proudly wear the badge of being a vegetarian and a vegan and a strict vegetarian and a vegan, because like I said, I barely ate fresh fruits and vegetables but I also didn’t eat animal products.

Actually, there was a period of time when I was a vegan, it wasn’t for very long but there was a period of time during my teens when I was a vegan, I wasn’t even eating a lot of dairy and eggs things like that, but I was still a vegan and I was eating a lot of processed junk foods and I wasn’t getting a lot of nutrients.  I was a teenager also, so I wasn’t supplementing, I wasn’t buying natural supplements in any way, shape or form.  I was probably quite dehydrated as well, so I wasn’t eating enough real foods.  That probably also contributed to the conditions that I develop.

It wasn’t just the metrorrhagia, it wasn’t just the menstrual condition that I developed.  I also had dry skin and dry scalp.  I didn’t have the energy level that I probably should have for my age, I had kind of skin condition; not massive ones but I did have skin conditions going on.  So, I had quite a few health imbalances that all rectified themselves when I start eating healthier diets.  Even though I didn’t start eating meat and chicken and red meat and those type of things, I made adjustments that did create a better level of health for myself.

If you are a vegetarian or a vegan or a raw vegan and you are sick in some way, you’ve got some type of imbalances, then you could be missing something in the execution of your lifestyle.  So I am not actually saying that being a vegetarian, or vegan or raw vegan is not a healthy way to live but you just need to be doing it in a balanced way.

Healthy vegetarians or vegans or raw vegans are just like all other healthy eaters.  These are the things you need to make sure that you are doing, no matter what diet or lifestyle you are following to ensure that you stay healthy.

Have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables; this is where you get your nutrients from.  This is where you get the vitamins, the minerals, the fats, the trace elements, the micro nutrients, the phyto nutrients, the live enzymes, the natural fats, the proteins, the natural carbohydrates that you need to keep your body functioning.  Make sure that you have some raw foods, so you get all those nutrients in a raw live state where they are normally, typically more potent.

Your food is well prepared; you have well prepared whole foods, so you are cooking with the right oils, you are soaking and sprouting your beans and your nuts and your seeds where possible.  You lightly steam your greens instead of boiling them to within an inch of their live, so you don’t even like the taste of them, but you are scuffing them down anyway because you say to yourself that they are healthy.

Healthy eaters drink lots of water, instead of herbal teas all the time or freshly pressed juices or smoothies, all these fancy things, they get lots of water in.  Healthy eaters will have some fermented foods to help to re-enaculate their bowels with the friendly bacteria that helps their digestion and gives them more energy from their diet.

Healthy eaters, no matter what type of diet you are on, have enough healthy fats; and this can be something that is seriously lacking in lots of vegetarian and raw vegan diets, is enough healthy fats.
Most healthy eaters have limited processed foods instead of a diet that is almost entirely composed of processed foods and they chew all of those lovely things that they are taking in properly.  By and large, you can tell when someone’s being fuelled properly by their level of healthy, but if you are a vegetarian, or vegan, or raw vegan and you crave sugar, salt and fat all the time, or you can’t control your weight, or you’ve got a lot of mental and emotional issues or you have a lot of skin conditions, or you have low energy or you’ve got constant infections and colds and bugs or you just don’t enjoy your food.  You might want to review your foods, and I am not suggesting that anyone go and eat meat and I know the other diets can cause these symptoms too.

Some vegetarians became vegetarians listening to other long term vegetarians telling them that all their issues were with animal products.  They have never even think to look at changing their foods to address these issues.  There are vegetarians out there with these issues and I swear to goodness if you told them, these issues that you are having, these health complaints that you are having, could be because you need to change the way that you are eating.  They will not even have considered that and even if you suggested to them, they may think that you are just talking nonsense because like I said, they were sold the dread of the vegetarian diet, the vegan diet, the raw vegan diet being the pinnacles.
So remember, if your foods are not, or if your health is not what it should be; these are some of the steps that you need to focus on.  Look at your diet and see if any of these things need to be included in the way that you are eating right now.

Are you getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables?

Do you have some raw foods everyday?

Are the foods that you are eating well prepared?

Are you eating well prepared whole foods?

So, are you cooking with the right oils?

Are you cooking with mainly coconut and palm oil?

Or, are you cooking with things like canola oil or vegetable oils?

Are you soaking and sprouting the beans and the nuts and the seeds that you eat where possible?

Do you lightly steam your grains and your vegetables or do you boil to an inch of their lives?

Are you drinking enough water?

Do you have some fermented foods in your diet?

Do you have some sort of friendly, natural bacteria that you are taking into your diet on a regular basis to any degree?

Do you have enough healthy fats in your life?

Do you know where you are getting omega-3 fatty acids from?

Do you know if you are getting enough EPA or DHA or are you getting coconut oil in your diet?

Are you getting omega-6s in your diet?

Are you getting any healthy fats in your diet?

Do you take in too much processed foods?

Are you chewing all your foods properly?

Have a look at your diet and do some analysis assessment.  Be honest with yourself and if any of those areas are lacking, introduce them and see if that allows you to resolve some of the health issues that you are experiencing so that you can enjoy your vegetarian, vegan or raw vegan diet.

Also, remember and keep these three things in your mind, keep these three things in your mind.

1. Removing meat isn’t the only thing that can improve your health.
2. Soya is not your saviour.
3. Please do try not to fill up on processed foods.  Eat real foods.  Just eat real foods, as Jeff or my buddy over there, Shawn Crooks and an underground wellness says.

This is a word to raw vegans, again, there are some raw vegan experts who do really promote and push the raw vegan diet as the pinnacle of all health.  You don’t just have to eat raw vegan diet to a degree to experience full health, you have to go raw vegan, 100% for life.  That’s the only way that you are going to experience great levels of health.

There are some raw foodist that you can say that when you do start eat vegan diet, because cooked food is toxic, as soon as you start eating some raw food, sorry, when you do start the raw vegan diet, if you start eating cooked food again, you are going to get super sick.  That’s a real mind trick that you can’t play on people, raw vegan experts out there, you need to stop doing that because you are giving the health experts that care, like me, a really bad name.  People think that because I have a raw vegan recipe book, I am 100% raw vegan and I am really dogmatic about it and trust me, people if you know me and people who do know me, know that my main consideration is that you are eating, that’s my main consideration.

Do you get to eat enough food in the day?  Are you going hungry?  I am not just talking about hungry because you can’t afford to eat; I am talking about, are you of these people that no matter how much you are earning, you don’t even give yourself the time to

make sure that you are eating enough in the day.  You might be a super busy business person or a rush off your feet mom, or you know, someone who just, or even a student who doesn’t really think food is that important because you have to party and socialize and look cute and all these types of things.

My main consideration is, are you feeding yourself enough every single day.  The next consideration of the day is, now let’s look at the quality of what it is that you are feeding yourself on a regular basis.  Then we step up from there, you know, you are getting some raw foods in, you are getting some fermented foods in and you are drinking enough water.  I am not one of those dogmatic health experts at all but there are some real vegan health experts out there.  Health experts from all genres.

There are some real vegan health experts out there who are selling a false vision of what the raw vegan diet is.  Raw vegan foods and raw foods have got amazing amounts of nutrients and I highly recommend you take in as many of them as possible, but please, avoid the cocky experts who try and tell you that all you need to do is eat raw vegan foods; because that’s another myth.

Many people’s diet lack variety, even raw foodist and the famous expert, Victoria Boutenko, who started the degree in smoothie revolution she improved her and her families health by taking on a raw vegan diet but then their health started to decline again because it lacked greens and she was a raw vegan, so literally when I heard that, it completely baffled me because I thought raw vegans always ate loads and loads of salad.  She was basically saying, she basically maintained her and her family had loads and loads of fruit, they were kind of just living off fruits and it gave them great levels of health initially, and it helped to reverse a lot of their conditions initially, but when their health started to decline again, she realized that it was because she lacked high levels of greens on a regular basis.

Everybody’s diet can lack variety but raw foodist and vegans and vegetarians we can also get stuck in just eating a particular type of food, like I said, I was stuck on eating starch, carbohydrates like pastas and rices and breads and soya; that was the trap that I fell into.  Make sure you get variety and enough buried nutrients into your diet.  There are raw vegans who kind of survive on dehydrated snacks and a big dehydrated portion of something in their main meals and then a few of the same fruits and vegetables and un-soaked and un-sprouted nuts and seeds.  Having that type of diet can leave you depleted in certain things too.

Just make sure that, as well as enjoying your food and getting a nice natural healthy whole foods that you are adding variety to your life as well.  So, I do not want anyone else to suffer as a vegetarian or vegan the way that I did because of not being well informed.  So, I want to motivate you to enjoy your vegetarian and vegan and raw vegan diet, but just make sure that you are getting plenty of whole natural foods in there, you are not relying on soya, you don’t have the fake belief that only taking out meat is the only thing that you need to do and you are getting lots of natural healthy whole foods in.

I hope that you have enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to share it with your friends.  You can find me at the naturallyyoucoach.com where you can download the free recipe book with my top ten salads and smoothies and juices.  You can find me on facebook and instagram and twitter under Leah Salmon or the naturallyyoucoach.

Have a great day, take care and stay healthy.”

 

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Leah

The Naturally You Coach

About the Author: Leah Salmon, The Naturally You Coach, is a best selling author of 6 books, editor of The Naturally You Magazine, a whole foods and personal development coach, raw food workshop teacher and homeschooling mother of 6. Leah helps people boost their energy, beat their cravings, stabilise their weight, reverse symptoms of disease using personalised dieting planning with whole foods and her signature 7 step Naturally You Coaching program. Join her FREE mailing list in the yellow box on the right of the page to get a Free Top Ten Health Boosting Recipes Book