Back in 2018 I had just moved countries and was questioning why I still felt off.

With ample time to adjust to my surroundings, I had purposely created an environment of minimal stress coupled with the luxury of time on my hands, and yet I literally couldn’t garner the energy to get excited about anything.

I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t thriving in the peak of health and happiness!

Everything I did took effort – physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I recognised there was something profoundly important going on for me, and in consultation with my doctor, I began digging.

And sparked the flint that would set my world alight.

In my journey of truth, my first big lesson in unlearning had begun. I also knew I had to listen to my body, so I took a deep breath, continued with my research, and possibly for the first time in my life, began REALLY questioning what I thought I knew to be true.

And ultimately changed my life by a 180 degree turn – because I had to.

I was so ill because I was deep in burnout. I couldn’t walk for more than 20 metres without becoming completely breathless, had no sense of who I really was, and couldn’t make sense of basic ideas because I was depressed and fumbling around in brain fog.

And on top of that my research findings kept smacking me upside the head – talk about a dose of cognitive dissonance!

Not just the personal development “What’s-it-all-about?” type questions which I had done for years, but some fundamental “Is-this-really-true?” stuff.

Questions whose answers had once formed the core of my identity and my beliefs, having lived as a vegetarian for nearly 40 years.

Questions whose answers had guided the narrative I lived by, believing that I was well informed and ‘on the right path’.

And oh, the moral high ground!

Questions whose answers I discovered – much to my later amusement – actually tasted quite good as humble pie!

Blinkers you see, have a way of focusing our perception in a particular direction, but they also preclude us from seeing the multitude of possibilities that actually exist. 

Everything I held to be true, everything I thought I knew, swept away when I finally opened my eyes and allowed a new sense of objectivity to enter.

So that from March 2019 when I started my zero carb carnivore journey, my body, mind and soul finally began to heal.

As the brain fog started to lift and I opened myself to the possibility that my former health path was not the ‘only’ or ‘right’ one, I realised I had been given an enormous set of gifts:

• the ability to admit I had been wrong (on so many levels);
• the recognition of how furious I was at being lied to, at the expense of my physical, spiritual and mental health;
• the ability to self-correct and begin to heal the multitude of ailments (both seen and unseen) that I had accumulated;
• the ability to acknowledge that I (like so many) had simply been doing my best with the information I had at the time;
• and probably most importantly, the awareness and compassion to forgive myself in light of all of the above.

I learnt I had to unlearn so much of what I held as truth.

I learnt I had to rethink the world as I knew it.

And eighteen months later I appreciated how profound the resulting shift was – in the most disarming and delightful of ways, because the shift gave me brilliant new insights and a brilliant new life.

The shift reminded me that integrity, resilience, kindness, self-care and compassion remain valid to my very core.

The shift reminded me stay curious and question everything with an open heart, and an even more open mind too.

The shift reminded me that there is always another way.