Mind Meal: I Never Thought I Would Say This But . . . .

I am healthier and more energetic now in my 50's than ever before - even when compared to when I was sixteen, twenty-one or twenty-eight. I have experienced clearly improved health over the last six months due to changes in my vegetarian diet.

Over the last fifteen years, even though I was vegetarian, I was an unhealthy vegetarian foodie. As long as it was not animal, fish (or insect), I would eat it - deep fried food (absolutely!), bread, cheese, butter, pasta, white rice and noodles. My weight gradually crept up to 87kg.

Strangely though, I held on to the idea in my head that I was pretty healthy since I was not eating any meat or fish even though I felt lethargic most days and sometimes felt very fatigued. I would feel tired even after a full night's sleep and would need some caffeine to wake me up to the day.

Not any more - nowadays I am up at 3.30 a.m. and feel refreshed. I sleep much better and my everyday energy levels have increased significantly. I am also a lot more mentally alert and physically active. Walking up the hilly slopes around here is not the breath sapping task it used to be. And most of the time, I don't feel the need to have a post-lunchtime nap.

Needless to say, my spiritual practice has benefited from this - brighter, lighter and happier.

As for my weight - the kilos have also come off over time to stabilize at around 75 kg in about 4 months.

The whole thing started with a 28 day Arise & Shine Cleanse in August 2011. After the benefits of that cleanse, I decided to experiment with my diet and try to drink more fresh vegetable juices and eat more that 50% of my diet raw. Deep fried and fried foods, however delicious, were avoided or reduced to a minimum.

Despite having a cool ('han') body type according to traditional oriental medicine, I've not experienced any negative side effects of raw foods and juice drinking even during the winter. Conversely, I have a better tolerance to cold these days. I found that adding a thumb-sized piece of ginger during juicing helped to offset the coolness of the raw vegetables.

In my research, I found some very helpful and knowledgeable people who have are healthy (in their late 80's) who have been on a predominantly raw vegetarian diet and juicing: Charlotte Gerson (88) and Jay Kordich (88) (cured of bladder cancer).

The discipline of the 28 day Arise & Shine Cleanse is, in my opinion, pretty hard to stick to and do properly if you have a full time job. Our group of six who did it in August were kept pretty occupied by the demands of the cleanse schedule and doing all the shopping, food prep. etc.

In my search for a more practical way of maintaining my new found health, I came upon juicing.

Why juicing? Because it's a terrific way of supercharging the way of giving your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself and stay healthy.

I now try to juice at least twice a day following most of the recipes in the videos below.

Here are some really helpful videos on juicing that can get you started to better health and truly add life to your years. They are from Jay Kordich - also known as the 'Juice Daddy.' :-)

But, don't just take my word for it - just do it and experience it for yourself. Then you'll know exactly what it is be healthy in body and mind.