How I Transformed My Life, One Meal At A Time

Almost ten years ago, I weighed about 230 pounds. I was a couch potato, and my daily diet consisted of McDonald's, Doritos, and orange soda. Whenever I was out in public, I was filled with anxiety. 
Food was a means of numbing my emotions; it was an easy way to avoid dealing with the present. And so I stayed home most nights, and I ate. I even had a stash of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups right by my bed for late night indulgences. 
During the summer I was about to enter high school, I decided I was way too young to give up on my life. I knew it was worth so much more than what I'd settled for. 
One night I stumbled across an infomercial about "mono meals," the idea of eating a clean, whole foods diet that was specific to one fruit or vegetable. I decided to give it a go, and figured I had nothing to lose. The next day I stormed into the local grocery store, and bought a box of heirloom tomatoes and began to eat mono meals of tomatoes. 
Suddenly everything made sense: if I ate a natural diet, my body would crave less junk food. I ditched the orange soda and began to hydrate my body with fresh spring water. Soon my moods began to shift: I had more energy, and so I started exercising. First I started walking in my neighborhood, then I began jogging, and eventually I joined the gym and ran everyday. As I began releasing all the old toxins from my body for the first time in my life, I felt nourished. My skin glowed, and my weight decreased. As you can imagine, my self-confidence grew. 
Friends, classmates, and family began to take notice. (Some even asked if I'd had gastric bypass surgery!) More and more I became connected to my intuition and my body. I realized how different foods could alter the way I felt, and functioned. I'd completely reversed my old symptoms of acne, lethargy, and depression. I never felt so great in my life, and wanted everyone to experience this. 
It's been eight years since that summer of transformation, and I have reclaimed my health, and continue to keep off the weight. I still wake up everyday to run three miles. 
Every day we can make a choice to become our healthiest selves, and we can all start by practicing one self-loving act per day. Slowly we can create a miraculous change.
As I transformed by own attitude toward health, I began to see all the misinformation in the media, and decided I needed to help spread the wealth of information on holistic remedies and natural living. In 2011, I started my blog in hopes of empowering people of all ages to reclaim their health. 
It’s never just about the food! Struggles with weight also have to deal with our relationships, and forgiveness. Throughout my own health journey I realized that "health" means looking at the body, mind, and soul connection. Over the years I grew to understand that our thoughts create our reality, and changing my negative self talk to self-loving thoughts has healed me tremendously.   
We all have various forms of addictions, be it food, or sex, or drugs, or sour relationships. And it all stems from our relationship with our higher self. Do we sabotage ourselves? Always get in our own way? The trick is to get to the bottom of understanding why.  
Many of our blocks come from childhood issues we never dealt with, and the first step in doing this is forgiving ourselves and loving our inner child. I find that practicing forgiveness, self- love, and meditation reconnect me with my higher self, which is unconditional love. We are all just mirrors of each other; whatever we are projecting we will see reflected back at us. Looking back, I realized my life would never have value if I did not reclaim my own health. I would not have the mental clarity, compassion, and consciousness to do things with love. 
Everyday I am blessed to be alive, to be able to offer value to other peoples lives, and enrich the universe. Health is wealth, without a healthy physical form, we would not be able to navigate throughout this life, and do the things that we are passionate about. Next time you are about to self-sabotage, ask yourself: will this raise me up or drag me down? Remember: it is not selfish to have self- love! If you are not self-full you will not be able to offer anything of value to others. Imagine a world of healthy beings, all vibrating at high frequencies doing what they love. The paradigm is shifting and now is the time. 
Reclaim your health and change the world! 
Love, Charles

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