Raw Fruit Diet Family Who Surf
2019 June - Newsletter Archive
LEAD STORY
MEET BILANDRA CHASE
Raw Vegan healthy living surfer talks health, fitness, family & E3Live superfoods
Bilandra Chase is a raw vegan, healthy living, surfer, and lifestyle model from Southern California. She is a single parent of two beautiful girls, aiming to role model healthy food choices and habits not only for her children, but also for the community. A long-time lover of E3Live superfoods, she shares tips on eating to thrive, how to make eating healthy effortless, and what this lifestyle does for the overall health of mind, body, spirit. We check in with Bilandra about health, fitness, family, and E3Live superfoods.
Tell us about yourself
I am half Indonesian and half American. I was super fortunate to have grown up overseas. From Saudi Arabia, to the middle of Sumatra, to the Dubai, I was afforded a remarkably spectacular first-hand education of the world, that in hindsight, kept me particularly grounded. I came to America to go to high school in Southern California, super focused on schooling and athletics, knowing what my parents had sacrificed to send me to school in America. I was a highly competitive student, speech and debate nerd, varsity distance swimmer, always striving for perfection.
Right before the start of senior year, I got really sick, went from 111lbs to 90lbs in the course of a few weeks. As I was starting to recover and gain weight, what had happened mentally was worse than what had happened physically. And just like that, I was swept into the whole superficiality of body image and appearance and drowning in what would become a decade long disease battling anorexia and bulimia.
When and why did you become interested in a healthy lifestyle?
I was at UCLA, taking 22 units to stay on course to graduate in 3 years with a 4.0 (the perfectionism runs deep), railing lines of coke in between class, starving most of the time, binge eating when I crumbled, and forcing myself to throw up when I did, masking it all. Obsessive compulsive everything, to the extreme. If you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have straight faced told you I wasn't going to make to 21. A. anorexia, b. bulimia or c. cocaine. Take your pick.
I met a guy across the hall, his name was Brooks and we quickly became best friends. His family lived on the bluff in Leucadia [in North San Diego County], and we used to cruise down every weekend from school. He quickly became my boyfriend, and his family took me in as their own, taught me to surf, basically took me traveling wherever they went, weekend trips to Cabo, luxury trips to the Maldives. And as ludicrous fantasy life as that even sounds, the biggest thing they actually did was save my life. I had this epiphany at 21, when I was learning to surf, that I loved this so much, and I was so determined to become good at it, that I wanted to live, and as healthy as possible, so that I could be doing this for as long possible.
Around the same time, I had met a friend, Jenna, surfing Blacks in La Jolla, one of the three females that surfed Blacks at that time. She was going to school to become an acupuncturist and was reading this book called Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford, and I had sort of stumbled a little bit on Food Revolution by John Robbins (the heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune). I had started doing Bikram Yoga religiously and tinkering with veganism, juice fasting, cleanses, etc. And that was the impetus to send me on this food journey, the beginning of healing my relationship with food, and viewing food as a means to health.
I was by nature, inclined to vegetarianism. I occasionally ate meat, but very rarely, maybe a few times in college, a huge pot of chicken curry to feed the flat, but generally, vegetarian.
I was pretty much vegan on this second epiphany. For a good few years, I was travelling, surfing, and this way, exercising had really broken me free from the body image dysmorphia issues. Until I got pregnant at 27. For anyone with a history of eating disorders, gaining weight without end in sight is a psychological challenge. But a beautiful transformation happened here. The woman's body meant more than just physical appearance to me; it was now capable of sustaining life. It was a pivotal shift in the way I viewed myself, my worth and what I was capable of.
The bottom line is I feel and look better now at 38 than I did when I was 18, and I hope that by sharing my experience, it somehow maybe helps young girls victim to the calorie counting and the nightmare that disease is, not only to them, but everyone that cares about them, there's a way out, and it's much better.
How do you keep your kids interested in healthy foods?
When the babies were born, I took great care in making sure I was eating the best foods possible to create the most nutritious breast milk for them. And when they began eating foods, I would spend hours making all their baby food from scratch. Food began again to have more meaning to me, because of what I wanted it to be for them. The next step in my journey was raw vegan, about 9 years ago now.
When the girls were little, they were kale salad eating, green smoothie drinking, superfood cookie ball snacking dreams. That's all they had ever been exposed to, and they loved it. They didn't know the alternatives existed. As they become school-aged, and started swapping out their superfood balls for Oreos, I had to learn again to let go of a little control. I just stead the course, I knew for a fact, that telling them "No", was only going to make them want it more.
Here's my approach:
1. Offer a healthier alternative. You can have acai instead of ice cream, these raw chocolates or non-dairy chocs instead of Snickers. And they LOVE it, because they are still treats and taste epic.
2. When they do eat crappy food, pizza, ice cream, etc. it's usually at birthday parties, and school functions. I want them to be able to participate in these and not feel weird or ostracized, so I let them eat whatever they want. I then ask them how that food makes them feel. Children are super intuitive and very aware of their feelings. They need a little guidance in connection what those feelings are to the related behaviors. My older daughter will say, every single time, "I don't like cake, it makes me feel sick" and she's been saying that since she was four.
I try to remember from my experience, that food is one of the only things you can control, as a child. The last thing I want is for it become a power struggle. I just continue to model for them what healthy food choices are, and have been watching it unfold in my children, as they come to their own understanding of food, when they are ready. Pressuring anything, whatever it is, never feels good, to anyone involved.
What is your go-to healthy meal?
I'd say I rotate through a handful of three to four salads and dressings that I was able to make in 20 minutes or less. A lot of the reason people fall off the raw food bandwagon is that so much of the raw food recipes are daunting, have a bazillion expensive ingredients and require a ton of foresight and time in the kitchen doing food prep. It was fun in the beginning, but with a job and child-rearing, in order for me to stick with it, I narrowed it down to these. And I just rotate through:
1. Butter lettuce/collard green wraps with hummus, sprouts, avo and tempeh (and any other fave veggies)
2. Kale salad with homemade tahini dressing and assortment of veggies, sprouts, sauerkraut, nutritional yeast and cayenne
3. Sweet broccoli salad with raisins, walnuts, red onion in a veganaise dressing
4. Crudite and raw hummus spread, olives, and sprouted crackers
What E3live superfoods do you take and how/when/for what?
Over the last ten years, I've rotated through a variety of the E3Live supplements and other raw foods supplements, but I always come back to my tried and true favorites. Bang for buck, I think E3RenewMe! is a product that is affordable to be used long-term by practically anyone. I use a teaspoon in a water jug, with a drop of citrus oil, and try to drink up to three to four jugs a day. I feel it's pretty remarkable for recovery from exercise, immune support and cognitive function.
I regularly take a shot of BrainON, first thing in the morning. Before I even drink water, upon waking, I take a 1 oz shot. It is the single most reliable mood-boosting body-awakening food I know of. It's as if your brain is operating on high. It's epic in a smoothie as well, but I just love it at full potency, on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning.
What is the difference in your overall athletic performance since you started incorporating E3live superfoods? What did you notice first/overall and the most?
I think the most noticeable immediate difference was the shift in mood and positivity. I was going through some pretty heavy life circumstances, and yet still capable of maintaining a loving, patient and happy outlook, when typical me would have been crumbling. When I used any of the E3Live products before surfing, it feels almost as though I have cat-like reflexes, and my response time is next level. And bottom line, is it's even more noticeable to me how effective it is, when I stop taking it, and feel off. That's when I know how much my body needs it.
What are your #1 health and fitness tips?
Find what form of exercise it is that makes you happy and brings you joy doing it. Then do it regularly. Try to feed yourself foods as close to their purest form as possible, eat from the earth, and as large a variety of foods as possible. The color of the rainbow. Put intention into your food, your actions, and be conscious that the food you are feeding yourself is to nourish your body.
A more practical tip is to meal prep. I try to have a cooler bag filled with at the very least a giant jug of my E3Live water and my supplements in small sized containers so I can make things on the go. And a few snacks, cookie balls, and an ice pack.
Also, I'm a huge proponent of essential oils, Epsom salt baths, deep breathwork, acupuncture, pretty much doing any of the things that keep your mind, body and soul in alignment. When you are treating your whole self that way, it makes it much easier to see clear and listen to what it is your body needs from you.
What's next for Bilandra?
I continue to share on my Instagram @ourlivingfood. I was teaching classes at one point, and probably will get back into that, as time permits. But I kind of have a lot of different things on my plate, spreading the E3Live love wherever I go.
I also have a Young Living Essential Oil business, and love teaching classes on emotional release with essential oils. It's a very powerful tool everyone needs in their arsenal.
I'm surfing a ton, getting the kids in the water, focused on being present with them during these critical ages before they become teenagers and are off doing their own thing.
I also work for a publishing company, am designing a couple of surf line collaborative things with friends, brand ambassador/model/promote all of my friends amazing projects, from jewelry, to bikinis, to wetsuits, surfboards, basically all of our healthy living surfing lifestyle necessities.
And lastly, I started a product line, that launches in July 2019. It's a line of skin and self-care needs for the beach babe, a line for him and for her. Things I've been making and using forever. Face oil, face mist, muscle rubs, and the like.
"Try to feed yourself foods as close to their purest form as possible, eat from the earth, and as large a variety of foods as possible. The color of the rainbow. Put intention into your food, your actions, and be conscious that the food you are feeding yourself is to nourish your body."
"The bottom line is I feel and look better now at 38 than I did when I was 18, and I hope that by sharing my experience, it somehow maybe helps young girls victim to the calorie counting and the nightmare that disease is, not only to them, but everyone that cares about them, there's a way out, and it's much better."
"Bang for buck, I think E3RenewMe! is a product that is affordable to be used long-term by practically anyone. I feel it's pretty remarkable for recovery from exercise, immune support and cognitive function."
"I regularly take a shot of BrainON, first thing in the morning. Before I even drink water, upon waking, I take a 1 oz shot. It is the single most reliable mood-boosting body-awakening food I know of. It's as if your brain is operating on high."
"When I used any of the E3Live products before surfing, it feels almost as though I have cat-like reflexes, and my response time is next level."
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Raw Fruit Diet Family Who Surf
Source: https://www.e3live.com/s-743-2019-june.aspx
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