Plantbased, Not Perfect Mentality.

April 14, 2018
Greetings from Nicaragua. I’ve been thinking about this post for awhile, but today I was in a car for 5 hours, riding through towns and cities so different than what you and I are used to, it really gave me time to think about the purpose of haute & healthy and the mission behind it. I hope that my blog inspires you to live a mainly plantbased lifestyle, but also to not be so hard on yourself to be so “perfect” where you only eat organic fruits and veggies and freak out when there are no other options. I hope it motivates you to seek answers for your health issues and take your healing into your own hands. I hope it inspires you to be curious and open minded beyond mainstream wellness information. When I first discovered a plantbased lifestyle I took it to the extreme because I felt so passionately about it. I became so strict it interfered with my everyday life, which is really no life at all. A few years later, I have now really found a balanced lifestyle that works for me and it keeps me mainly plantbased instead of crashing and burning like I did the first time around. As humans, we want to have a bad list and a good list, we want everything to fit into boxes and make sense in our heads, but food shouldn’t be so strict. Life shouldn’t be so strict. It should be this simple:

Eat real food, mainly plants.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Real food means whole foods in their most natural state. Aim to eat these as much as possible and you are doing better than 90% of the U.S. population. Then – gasp- if you eat a piece of cheese at a party it doesn’t mean you aren’t “plantbased” anymore or you should just give up and go back to a S.A.D. diet, it means you had a piece of cheese. We are not perfect vegan robots who start all over from day 1 when we eat something off our “list”. At least I don’t want to be that. I am imperfect – sometimes I get carried away and have 4, ok maybe 5, margaritas (and dance all night until my shoes break), sometimes I eat a slice of pizza with cheese on it because I’m in a group and don’t want to be difficult. Or like today, I’m in another country and asking about every ingredient in my meal is just ridiculous in the scheme of life. It doesn’t have meat in it so I am good. I take the victory and don’t sweat the small stuff. If these moments make up 5% of my life I am good with it.

This is what plantbased, not perfect means to me.

The most questions I get through Instagram are on what I eat and how much, what times, etc. I feel that people are really asking for a model to follow and I don’t want to mislead anyone to think I only eat acai bowls. I certainly could lol, but that is not always achievable. I am not 100% vegan. I work a 9 -5 job, I don’t eat dinner until 8pm at night, I rush in the morning and don’t have time to make perfect instagrammable pictures. Sometimes my best day is grabbing a ready made salad at TJ’s and picking off the cheese – and THAT’S OK. Anyway, that’s my rant. I hope it resonates with you in some way. Today I thought a lot about the fact that even being able to argue raw vegan vs plantbased vs whatever is a privilege we should all feel so blessed to even have. xx, Beth
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