- What’s your name? (a little personal info about yourself, age-if you want, job- also optional)

My name is Jessica Al-Absi, I am 39 years old. I have 2 children, one is 10 and one is 7. I’m a working mother, with a very busy schedule.

-With this busy schedule, how are you able to maintain a healthy lifestyle?

You have to make a choice to maintain a healthy lifestyle, you have to be absolutely convinced that this is what you want to and once you really make that choice it is very simple and there is so much information out there the is readily available. and now everyone is really up in all the homeopathic treatments and different things that are good for you such as herbs and spices and they are all available everywhere. so once you make the decision that you want to turn your life around and lead a healthier lifestyle than its pretty simple.

-Have you ever been on a diet?

I have. I have never done a full on diet where it is a strict regimen of this is what you can and can’t eat. I have kind of done my own combination of what I think is healthy for me and what i think isn’t, whats good for my body and what isn’t. But i do believe strictly that any diet that cuts out an entire food group is not a healthy diet. 

-How would you define diet, and the purpose of one?

I personally don’t like calling it a diet, I think once you say I’m on a diet, psychologically it affects your behavior I think thats why saying I just want to change the way I eat and change my lifestyle and change what i put in my body. you know the saying “you are what you eat” and its true, if you have healthy skin its because of the healthy foods you eat, if you have a good figure its because of your healthy food choices. 

I didn’t do much of a diet, it was more for Lent, and the way we fast for Lent is by being on a vegan food diet. The experience was interesting, it was a bit difficult, especially for someone like me who loves meat and chicken and fish. But once you make the decision to do a ‘diet’ you can’t really back out, and in my case it was for a religious reason, meaning that there was no way for me to cheat. I think its the healthiest lifestyle to follow, but i can t say that i could ever become fully vegan, but i could say that its a good thing to become maybe for a few days a week. it goo for your system and flushes it out, you’re eating all the healthy foods and when you go on a vegan diet you should be very conscious of the load up on oil, because a lot of the vegan foods have a lot of oil and are soaked in them. 

-Did this really open your eyes to all the foods that are bad of you and made you change your mind about the food you eat?

absolutely, because when you decide you want to change our lifestyle you have to make the effort to do the research on whats good for you and whats not. You may come to realize that white sugar is pure poison, white flour is bad for you and when you really look into it there are so many alternatives. Cutting out white sugar doesn’t mean that you can’t have anymore sweets, i have jam thats made with agave syrup which is a natural sweetener. There are so many sweets made with natural honey you can even buy cereal thats organic an made with cane sugar, staying away from the white processed sugar and flour. for those who love pasta as much as I do, you can replace the white flour pasta with gluten free pasta which could be made with rice and corn, with mullet, with buckwheat, in this day and age there are so many options. you can even find vegan cheese if you really wanted to, you need to stay away from dairy because currently the research shows that milk was never meant to be consumed by humans its meant for baby calfs, its loaded with growth hormones. so dairy is something that you should try to stay away from.

-What advice would you give a person who wants to start a healthy lifestyle?

you need to commit, if you’re not ready to commit then don’t do it. and you need to do it far beyond reasons of “i need to lose a couple of kilos, or i need to lose 10 kilos” you have to ignore the weight issue but to a certain extent and think of it as an added benefit. you’re eventually going to lose weight the moment you become healthier. Its a mindset, the most important thing is that your mind needs to be made up that i really want to be healthy, it shouldn’t need to be about dropping a few kilos because when you come obsessed with that then every time you want to go on the scale and you realize that your not losing any of the weight after being healthy is a bit discouraging so the best way to do it is by saying i don’t care if minot losing the weight of not at least i know that I’m not putting bad things into my system; processed foods, anything that is in a jar or can. Control the quantity of red meat that you eat, and portion control is very important not just for losing weight but for being healthy. If you over eat its not good for your system to have what you would calla normal sized portion. Im not saying have half our plate, have the full plate but don’t necessarily go back for seconds, even though you feel like you may be able to go back and have seconds, load up on fruits and vegetables instead. This isn’t something new, we all know this information, it is just a matter of making a commitment to do it and actually  go through with it. 

-Do you work out, and have you always been active as a child?

Yes i do work out, and i was an athlete my whole life then i stopped for about 15 years and i started feeling like my body was completely falling apart at sometimes my arms, my legs, i was flabby all over the place but i made a decision to go back to exercising because i wanted to look good not to lose weight. i felt like i needed to have the energy to get up in the morning and play with my kids. sometimes if i can’t workout on a specific day, to make up for it, i would drop down and do 50 squats while brushing my teeth in the morning, and another 50 at night, thats 100 squats right there, you get your heartbeat up and you workout your lower body. you know its simple, a 1 minute plank or 45 seconds and there you have a core workout. if you really want to be healthy its easy but you need to make a mental commitment to care about your body if you want that body to last a long time.