Blog This - Challenge 60 - Vegetables saved my life

Challenge 60 is to share with everyone one of those lessons that you had to learn the hard way, and that you therefore won't forget!

Challenge Starts: Friday, 29th October
Challenge Ends: Wednesday 3rd November 8 pm
Voting Starts: Friday 5th November
Voting Ends: Thursday 11th November 8pm Sydney Time
Winner Announced: Sunday 14th November

The Hardest Lesson I learnt!

I am 30 and the hardest lesson I have had to learn is how to eat vegetables.

You might think it is strange that I had to learn to eat vegetables but I did. I used to only eat: Peas, Potato, Carrots, Corn and Green Beans, nothing else! I had always been a small and fussy eater as a kid and teen. My diet consisted mainly of carbs and meat with very few vegetables. When I turned 28 it all changed, I had put on 20 plus kg. It was all because hadn't eaten a salad until I was 28. 

I began a diet by Tony Ferguson, which consisted mainly of vegetables and meal replacement shakes. I did this diet knowing to be successful I'd have to force myself out of my comfort zone and eat vegetables (those nasty and icky ones with no taste or looked horrible). For almost a year I was on this diet. I introduced zucchini, broccoli, broccolini, avocado, spinach, watercress, shallots, cauliflower, squash, snow peas, lettuce, tomato, celery, sweet potato, asparagus, olives, pumpkin and many more colourful and weird looking vegetables into my diet. 

Now I can't imagine going back. Not only have I introduced vegetables but many other foods I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I now eat prawns, fish, scallops, oysters, sour cream, duck, sushi & shashimi. (I am sure there is more I have forgotten) 

I now love exercise; in my 20's the only exercise I did was walk around University or the shops. I would not have ever thought I'd regularly ride 20km on a Sunday morning, or run 5km and enjoy it. I do weights and cardio of a morning and follow it up with 5 - 10 km of walking around my workplace. 

I have changed my diet and lifestyle and lost around 25kg to become a healthier and happier person. I didn't want to die of bowel cancer or a heart attack like my grandparents.

Over the past two years:

• I have learnt to try new things
• I have learnt in order to become healthy and fit I've have to learn to like things I would never have thought I'd like in my lifetime
• I have learnt because a vegetable may look or sound gross it most probably won't be once you try it.
• I have learnt to love cooking with new and different ingredients
• by trying new things I broaden my taste-buds
• I have become easier to please with food choices (I now can go to a seafood restaurant and not worry about what I am going to eat)
• I have become less irritable
• I have become stronger
• I have become healthier
• I have become lighter
• I have become a better ME!

What lesson have you learnt?