We first heard of ‘Bio-individuality’ during our Institute of Integrative Nutrition classes. In simple words, it means that everyone is a little different and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all when it comes to health (especially diet). This is why we always have said and always will say: do what works for YOU and what makes YOU feel good! Sarah Ranawake from Sporteluxe talked about it this week too!
As you all know we follow a paleo lifestyle, this works for us! Now, there isn’t a one size fits all to paleo either but that is a whole other blog post on it’s own (get back on track merrys). We eat paleo because it just feels right (read about the benefits here). Our general interest in health and wellbeing means that we find it super interesting to hear about other people’s health and diet choices… especially when they are extremely active and healthy (because they must be doing something right… right?!). This is where we welcome our vegetable crunching friend, Grace Gill!
A few months back we enjoyed a delish paleo and VEGETARIAN dinner with our beautiful friend Grace (see, we all do get along). We met Grace at our gym, these are the first things we noticed about Grace: she has legs up to here (*points at our shoulder mark) and is just lovely! All the necessities to be our friend (WE KID… we love all leg lengths).
She is crazy as fit. She is a soccer superstar and plays for the Canberra United W-League (yup… superstar). She also works full time, plays AFL and does a lot of CrossFit (which she is damn good at!), phew! We are exhausted just listing her talents! So as you can tell, a vegetarian lifestyle definitely works for Grace. Naturally, we wanted to know more. Why? How? When?!
“At the time I didn’t make a decision and say okay from now on I’m vegetarian it was more of a progressive thing where I learnt about the production of meat and animal testing. I felt as though it was a space I didn’t want to be contributing to. That idea stuck and here I am nearly four years later – and no, I’m not iron deficient!. I’d consider eating meat again if my health was compromised. But it would only ever be from an ethically sourced and organic provider. Maybe I’ll cross that bridge if I ever come to it…” Grace Gill.
We 100% completely agree with Grace’s views on the production of meat. This is why we gave ourselves the goal to be eating 99% organic everything by the end of 2014. (Lucky our friend Frankie is opening a butcher shop in a couple of weeks #FranksMeat This means we can get the best meat in town. In fact, we want him to open the back door on Saturdays for a big BBQ cook up… with sweet potato chippies as well, for our vego friends! Please and thank you!).
Anyway back to Grace!
Our vegetarian dinner with Grace helped us to see how everyone has there own bio-individuality when it comes to food choices and lifestyles. PLUS it was super delicious (we made a huge veggie salad and even tried out some dehydrated veggie bread… mind you, we’re yet to perfect this recipe so you won’t find it on here, Grace was kind and said it was yum!). There’s no one way or the highway. Each and every person has their own path, their own journey and it’s important to recognise and respect that.
Our individual paleo diets are always changing and evolving, especially as we learn more from others (like we did from Grace). We just have to look back at old recipes to see this (yes, 1/2 cup of honey in sweet treats is a little too much!). Not only did we learn about Grace’s vegetarianism but we were super inspired to hear about Grace’s amazingness with her sport! Grace has travelled all over the world playing soccer, proving that hard work, commitment and passion really does make dreams come true.
She is a great ambassador for girls and women in sport and we see only more amazing things coming her way. Grace also loves twitter (yay! Social media!), so if you’re a vego or love sport, soccer, CrossFit, hand stands (she is very good at these too) then why not follow along and say hello!
To go with the theme here’s a few delicious paleo and vegetarian recipes: paleo carbonara and the perfect crunchy sweet potato chippies. Drool!
Always merrymaking,
e + c
p.s we told you she was good at hand stands!
