Staying healthy is very important

 Staying healthy as a vegan is, in some ways, similar to how you'd stay healthy on other diets. Principles of a solid diet include, but are not limited to:

• Obtaining the majority of your calories and nutrients from. 
• Ensuring adequate (such as nuts, coconut butter, seeds and certain oils)
• Drinking plenty of water and staying hydrated
• Avoiding and limiting overall sugar intake
• Staying away from processed, wrapped and packaged foods
• Obtaining your nutrients and dietary pleasure from a variety of whole food sources
• Allowing yourself a bit of wiggle room so you don't become orthorexic
• Focusing on a variety of foods and a variety of colors
• Eating foods from local sources and in season, whenever possible
• Supplementing the (hopefully rare) gaps in your daily diet
• Emphasizing darkly-colored (these are the foods that are jam-packed with nutrients)

Consume A Variety Of Foods And Colors

Foods like kale, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, blueberries, Swiss chard, carrots, purple yams, apples, eggplant, strawberries and squashes all count as great examples of a variety of foods and a variety of colors.

Can you enjoy foods like guacamole and pico de gallo? Sure! While these are more properly considered "food items" rather than whole foods, both pico and guacamole are so close to their original form that they count as real foods. Guacamole is simply avocados with a few flavor additions and garnishes added, and the same can be said of pico de gallo. It's common to see chopped tomatoes and some balsamic vinaigrette on a salad, both of which add to the flavor and nutrition of the salad. It's really no different with guac and pico. 

Should you generally be mindful of overt sodium and sugar intake? Yes. You shouldn't be making food choices that are always based on taste over nutrition. But the point here is to be able to reasonably enjoy your food while still nourishing your body and creating lifelong habits of health and wellness. 

Enjoy Your Food!

Like I shared above, it's critical to enjoy your food! You aren't going to love your days, create long-term habits and want to share your food discoveries with others if you don't enjoy your meals. Variety, spices and self-involvement are three extremely powerful components to enjoying your food more often, and more deeply. 

Stay Real With Fat Intake

Consuming healthy fat is critical to an overall healthy Fat is the prefer source of fuel when your body is at rest or utilizing low levels of movement. This is because fat can be broken down best at these levels and converted to glucose when necessary. Also, your cell membranes are composed of 50 percent fat, so healthy dietary fat is essential for helping your body replenish itself with functional cells.

Be Mindful Of Carbs

Being mindful of carbs simply means not consuming too many. Placing yourself on the train of too much carb consumption moves your body from fat-adaptation to glucose-burning, which you don't want. Consuming too many carbs raises your blood sugar and creates insulin resistance, Generally, you want to consume 150 grams of carbs or fewer per day. The instances in which you can and should have more are if you're a professional athlete or you're going about your day with much higher levels of physical activity and intensity.

Maintain Protein

Maintaining solid levels of protein is another critical component to health, as protein provides the literal building blocks of your body. It's a myth that you need generally, no one needs as much as we're culturally conditioned to believe we need. I've even recently learned more about protein requirements. 

Most people only need 0.25-0.5 grams of protein per lean pound of body mass. This is extremely easy to get. Next time you're at the grocery store or even out eating, take a look at the Nutrition Facts or what's on your plate. Chances are you'll have a minimum of 10 grams of protein, if not more for a great starter on vegan protein.

Stay Away From Sugar

Sugar is just bad news, Yes, our bodies are designed to use glucose and yes, sugar that occurs naturally (such as fruit sugar) is totally fine. Other than this, added sugar in pretty much any form is worth staying away from.

Now, is it a problem to grab a protein bar that you love and use instances like this for snacking? No, these scenarios are totally fine. What you want to be avoiding are the typical American (and sometimes elsewhere) indulgences such as candy bars, milkshakes, cakes, cookies, pie, candy, fruit snacks, fruit strips, gummy bears, licorice and all things similar. Even purportedly "healthy" foods like granola bars and most cereals can have way more sugar stocked up than you'd think. Always take a look at nutrition labels. 

Sugar really doesn't have anything beneficial for your body, and it can actually become quite addictive. It's dangerous stuff if you don't keep it limited, and it can slowly kill you from the inside out.

Enjoy a "sensible indulgence" from time to time, but don't go overboard! :)

Supplement When Need Be

As you may have been wondering, yes, supplements are beneficial and sometimes necessary. Supplements should be used as exactly that - small additions to your diet that balance out deficiencies. You should strive for a lifestyle that is free of major deficiencies.

For example, it's totally acceptable and even recommended to supplement with Vitamin D in the winter, when sunlight is not readily available. However, when it comes to iron, Vitamin C, potassium and other nutrients that are easily obtainable from regular food, there's a problem somewhere if you're supplementing too heavily for these. 

To illustrate further, Vitamin C is one of the most, and can easily be incorporated into anyone's diet with some simple flexibility. One can for instance try to keep the body healthy-by following the 'guidelines' and 'rules' set by doctors and health therapists - like 'eat vegetables and fruit', do exercise, don't eat too much sugar, etc -- however, within this, we are not actually really listening to what our body really specifically needs, we are in a way forcing our ideas/beliefs about 'what is healthy' onto our body, in the belief/hope that we will not develop disease.

Yet, what is not being looked at is the question "why is it that i would treat my body in an 'unhealthy'/'unsupportive' way in the first place?" --- we are not investigating our starting point in the things we eat and do and how they affect our body.

Within this, it may seem very difficult for individuals to make the switch from a so-called 'unhealthy' life-style to a so-called 'healthy' one - as we try to fight our desires and cravings for certain foods and habits. But this switch from 'unhealthy' to 'healthy' in itself doesn't have much to do with our body, but more with our own ideas/ideals/fears/desires that we try to impose on our body within trying to 'have'/'reach'/'experience' a certain 'state'/'shape'.

For me, being 'healthy' and maintaining a 'healthy body' implies firstly dealing with my starting point in what i am doing with/to my body and why --- by disengaging any desires/cravings or emotional connections that i have made with eating specific foods or acting out specific habits, wherein i had basically been 'imprinting' my 'mind' onto my 'body', disabling me from actually being able to listen to my body and giving it what it needs in the moment - to in this way actually develop a healthy RELATIONSHIP with my body where i am not the oppressor/dictator that try to force its will onto the body as the slave, but where i am the body's equal and consider that it is a living organism, and just as any organism, it will react to how i react to it and for instance create disease/unbalance as a reflection of my dysfunctional relationship with it within and through my mind.

So, to answer the question - this is a difficult journey to walk as it requires self-honest introspection --- but once the realization is HERE that the body is my equal, maintaining the 'healthy relationship' with it isn't so difficult, as it becomes a living breathing expression of who i am.