My name is Lydia, and this is my journey

Hello and welcome to my Blog! 

Here I share tons of delicious, healthy recipes for you to enjoy whilst knowing you’re being kind to your body. My journey to eating this way has been long, but it’s by far the best thing I’ve ever done for my body. 

Here’s a quick summary of my clean eating and how I came to running a health food business…

I gave up gluten, dairy and refined sugar over two years ago now. Previous to this, and unknown to me at the time, I was suffering with chronic IBS. I never understood why it was happening as I’ve always eaten healthily, but for two long years my digestive system was not playing ball. It did not occur to me that anything was majorly wrong, over time I just grew to accept that it was a part of my life.

I was tired in the afternoons, I would often nap, I rarely felt energised, I’d get regular stomach cramps and my bowel movements were all over the place. Yet I was ignorant enough to accept that it must just be normal.

After about a year and a half of suffering somebody said to me ‘surely you’re not obtaining any nutrients from your food if it’s passing through your body so quickly’. I hadn’t even given that a thought. Granted it was a nuisance having to run to the toilet suddenly and it was painful getting stomach cramps but I’d never thought that it was doing my body any damage. It was the ‘lightbulb moment’ I needed to realise that what was going on in my body was not normal and certainly was not healthy. At this point I began researching, and I tried all-sorts. But it wasn’t until summer 2014 I got myself muscle-tested and was told to stay off of gluten, dairy, and refined sugar for 3 months to get it all out of my system, and then go from there.

I kept a food diary, and made notes of how I felt every day. I must add that I was helping my gut by also taking pro-biotic supplements (even though I had tried these on my old diet and they did not help). Six or seven weeks passed, and although I didn’t feel or look bloated anymore, there was not much dramatic improvement… but after the eighth week suddenly I felt like a new woman! I was having regular bowel movements, my stomach cramps were no longer and I felt energised throughout the whole day (I don’t remember the last time I had to nap).
 Needless to say that after those three months I never looked back. Over two years later and I’m still gluten, dairy and refined sugar free as much as I can be. I’m only human and have bits on rare occasions, but I never crave anything anymore and actually glutinous, dairy and sugary foods never taste as good as I thought they used to. 

I am not a trained chef. But eating this way has given me a new passion for cooking that I never had before. I have spent the last two years experimenting in the kitchen determined to keep enjoying exciting, varied and tasty meals.

And needless to say – I do not think that this lifestyle is for everyone. I eat this way because it’s right for my body. The most important thing is to listen to your body and be aware of how certain foods may make you feel. This way if  you adore ice-cream but you know it can make you feel lethargic, treat yourself in front of a film of an evening when you don’t have much else on… (but eat an energising quinoa salad when you have a productive day ahead of you!)

I hope that by sharing my recipes, others can create themselves happy, healthy, energised lifestyles ? x

 

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