Been a while

I know it's been a long while since my last post, but it's been a very hard couple of weeks. I took my family to get Vega testing done, and our world has spiraled out of control since then! OK, so I exaggerate  but it has been hard to learn new ways to eat! What is Vega testing you ask? Well, it is a machine that reads what your body needs more of, or what your body can no longer tolerate. It's very easy to do, and requires no needles (a prerequisite for my youngest son), all you do is hold a wand like end in your right hand, while the person running the machine gently presses what looks like an embossing needle (rounded tipped metal thing with a plastic handle) to one of two pressure points on two of your left fingers. Seems strange, and unreal, but sometimes it is dead on to what you already know is true that you know it works! (For more info on what it is and what it does, look here: http://www.wholisticresearch.com/info/artshow.php3?artid=80 ).

We are very lucky to have a person in Williams Lake that does the testing, or we may never have gotten it done (time travel and planning are sometimes too hard when you include four peoples schedules)!  Body Connection by Joe offers a wide range of holistic therapies, and help. Our tests for the four of us took just under two hours, and told us some things we did not expect! First being that we all suffered from an overgrowth of Candida (Candidiasis), which is an overgrowth of the yeast bacteria that naturally occur in your stomach and throughout your intestines. When it really gets out of control you can get what is called "Leaky Gut Syndrome", which is where that candida is VERY overgrown, and is growing THROUGH the intestinal wall. Then the Candida can "leak" undigested foods and toxins into your bloodstream, thereby causing your body a multitude of symptoms and stressing your body. (for more info on this, check here: http://www.holistichelp.net/candida.html ).

How can something that your body produces on it's own to protect your body become overgrown? Sadly the answer is simple: the american diet combined with antibiotics. You may say "Wait a minute, I'm not American, so why would I have it?" Well, the American diet is a generalized statement of the over processed and high in sugar diet that is become more prevalent in North America. Believe me...I LOVE the taste, and instant gratification of the American diet, so having to give up quite a few things and do a "diet" hurts me, especially since I have lived my life opposed to "dieting" having seen first hand the stupidity of yo-yo dieting. Most of the time people wind up right back where they were BEFORE they started the diet if they were lucky, others wound up WORSE for it! Either ill because of improper diet that starved their body of vital nutrients, or wound up heavier because they had not fed their body enough food so when they WERE off the diet their body screamed "Keep excess fat for emergencies!".

I know, I am trying to lead a greener life, but giving up wheat is REALLY hard for me! I often would have an artisan flat bread for a lunch meal, with other things, but the exciting part was ALWAYS the bread for me. With the testing my family also found that wheat was in our body's does not need more of list, along with nuts, and cows milk. So we have had to make alot of changes in our diet. Eating local is still important to us, so we are still buying our meat and milk locally, our produce locally as much as possible, but now we have had to get more inventive for other things. Now we are looking at wheat free, yeast free, starch free, sugar free, and cow's milk free. At least goat's milk is ok, in small quantities, and my youngest would die if we hadn't found goats milk cheeses, and tofu cheese slices! Bread is now buying Squirelly bread (made from sprouted grains, making it ok to eat), while I figure out how in the heck to bake in this style.

It used to be that I could make something out of the "nothing" that my kids and hubby saw in the cupboards, now I am wrestling with it myself. We have so far spent two weeks slowly getting rid of foods that our bodys cannot take anymore of, and now we are trying to be on the strict diet section of the candida diet. Nothing that can promote yeast growth. So most fruit is out the window, and what little we can have is limited because fruit has sugars that can help the candida live. Potatoes have starch in them, carrots have sugar!  >_<

You get what I'm saying, we have been busy learning about this, and I've been searching for recipes for snacks and treats so my kids have some when they go to school. I think the best thing to come out of this is that now my kids are learning how important it is to read the labelled ingredients on all food, and that the choices we used to make were not very healthy to begin with. So what started out as a change in our mindset on garbage and how to dispose of it, and the costs of buying things outside of our community actually cost more for the environment has now turned into an even bigger lifestyle change. I guess that when I make changes in my life it winds up being "go big, or go home"!  :)