My friend Sue tagged me to be part of a 5 day black and white photo challenge. Prior to this, I hadn’t really taken many photos in black and white or added a black and white filter. I tend to be the type of person who sees all the shades of grey and colours in the spectrum. Anyway, this challenge brought with it some deeper musings about nutrition, memories and metamorphosis in the way I look at my work with plant-based nutriton and food intolerances. Nutrition – especially when you deal with plant-based diets and food intolerances – isn’t black and white.
Memories: Day 1. This is a photo of my friend Karina’s microscope. Karina is another naturopath and she’s the co-creator of Bodhi Cleanse. 20 years ago I was doing a Bachelor of Science degree at Flinders University where I first learned how to use one of these. Later, after my degree while I was a higher degree candidate I also had part time work as a laboratory skills demonstrator to the new science students. So looking at this pic of Karina’s microscope brings back a lot of memories.
Memories: Day 2: Back in my much-loved kitchen cooking some pumpkin soup for the family. I’ve been working on a HUGE project for the last 3 years. Ever since I created the Lisa White Naturopath facebook page and my original website, I have been working on this project. It’s almost time to share it with the world, but for now, this is where it all began. My lovely little kitchen. Creating some recipes for my kids and clients with food intolerances.
Musings: Day 3 Looking at nature up close is a bit like a Rorschach ink blot test. What do you see? I see 3 pairs of little feet all facing each other:-) I find Naturopathy is about 3 things. Looking at the details of my client’s lives, and then being able to step back and look at the big picture, and then lastly being able to see how all the bits fit together and which are the most important things to work on to help the client optimise their health.
Musings: Day 4. We love strawberries. Unfortunately they don’t always love my kids. I find if they have too many their behaviour goes a little wild. We did a low salicylate diet a few years ago and fortunately salicylates in general are not a problem for my kids, but in addition to our dairy intolerance, there are a few other “random” food reactions we have and these are one of them. Fortunately though, they’re intolerances rather than allergies so most of the time the kids still get to enjoy them, they just don’t eat loads of them and we mix them with other fruit. This is probably the only pic in the challenge that I think actually looks better in colour. But I love how the black and white makes it look abstract and more like a heart while the centre looks like the cross section of a blood vessel (or a rocket…. if you tilt your head to the left;-).
Musings: Day 5. I’ve been thinking a lot about how things work. The mechanics of all the moving parts. And I just love this pic of my mums mouli. This one’s clocked up a lot of kilometres over the years:-) Mine’s somewhat shinier as (confession time) it’s never been used. Something I’m hoping to rectify over the next week:-)
Metamorphosis: It’s interesting, although these pictures are all black and white, I don’t think the answers to health and nutrition are. Especially when you’re dealing with food intolerances and plant-based diets. It’s taken me a little while to realise why I my diet doesn’t look like the textbook version of a typical plant-based diet that the experts I respect and look up to suggest.
It’s because there is no text book – not for the combinations of diet-styles and food intolerances I help people with. It’s not cookie -cutter or black and white.
It’s hard to have a purely plant-based diet when you react to foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, grains or vegetables.
It’s even harder when you react to more than one of these or combinations of various foods within each group.
Do you find it hard to find nutritional information or recipe books relevant to your dietary needs because of the combinations of food intolerances you have?
What combinations of food intolerances are you cooking for? Do you also follow a plant-based diet? I’d love to hear your thoughts, email me at lisa@lisawhitenaturopath.com.au or share your thoughts or experiences in the comments below. I want to create more resources for people like me, where there isn’t a text book for our diet style.
Acknowledgement:
Thanks Sue from @suesownpics on instagram for tagging me in this challenge.
