Happy, Healthy New Year!!!!

I am starting the new year off with the intention to heal myself through my diet. I am pretty good at doing this already but I have a few pesky health issues that are putting up a good fight so I am making some monumental (for me) changes to my diet. It might not be easy for me but I am determined to be my own first success story, well second really. Paul out lived the given prognosis of 3 to 6 months by a lot. He lived, well, for 2 1/2 years with stage IV , metastatic pancreatic cancer. Diet, a positive, healthy lifestyle and attitude were how we did it. It took a lot of self determination, studying and strength but it made a miracle and now it is time for me to do it again for myself with my knew and improved knowledge. Studying to be a Holistic (mind, body, spirit) Nutritionist is tough, time consuming, rewarding and so satisfying because I am learning the most fascinating things about our physiology and how we are made to work in the natural world. We are truly amazing beings that exist in partnership with every living thing on this planet. We are the natural world it is not separate from us and we need it to survive. We must clean it up and start giving a damn for real.
I am no longer a vegan but remain a vegetarian for now. I have no plans or desire to eat animal flesh but am so strongly considering a bone broth once a month for 1 week. I have already added raw goat cheese, duck eggs and pasture butter into my diet. I am fortunate because I live in food heaven. It is easy to get raw, local dairy here as well as local, pastured, organic animal products. I happen to be volunteering for and learning from an amazing chef that prepares foods in their traditional ways and this includes bone broths. She is known for the bone broths she makes and I am glad to be able to get them from her so that I do not have to make them at home. If I am going to try to eat it I can't, in all honesty, bear the thought of making it myself at home. Although I have helped her with it once so far and did not go screaming out of the kitchen.
These decisions on my dietary changes have resulted from hours of contemplation and study. Everything in my studies tells me to do these things and get the healing wheels rolling. If I have learned anything in the past few years it is that my health is my number one priority and I have much influence over it. We all need to realize this. What we put into our bodies, on our bodies, our mental attitudes, our emotional sense of well being and exercise all play a role in our physical health. These things are of the great importance and should never be made low priority.
I do want to make an important point: Animals food products must come from organic, pasture raised sources in order to be healthy. If they don't it is a safe assumption that they are not healthy. Preferably these farms are local and of course they should use humane practices.
Also, please avoid, at all costs, vegetable oils and refined sugars. Olive Oil is good to finish a recipe or make a salad dressing. Coconut oil or pasture butter to cook with. It is that simple but these two things are in just about everything that is prepackaged, precooked and fried so be a label reader and ask questions when ordering. There is vegetable oil (safflower oil) in many rice milks on the shelves. Evaporated cane juice is a refined sugar and it is in most prepacked things at all grocery stores. Vegetables oils are corn, soybean, canola, sunflower, safflower, grape seed and cottonseed oils. If you would like to read a fascinating nutrition book that will go into depth on these two health bombs check out Deep Nutrition Why Your Genes Need Traditional Foods by Catherine Shanahan, MD
You will most likely have to order this book from a site like Amazon.
Happy, Healthy New Year!