Air pollution. Soil pollution. Water pollution. It’s a wonder China has any healthy people. Truthfully, the sheer number of people in the cities has to create almost an insurmountable pile of waste of every kind and to try and contemplate a retroactive clean-up – talk about overwhelming.

Carbon, we are told by “experts”, is the greatest component and source of pollution in the world. Of course, it also happens that it’s the greatest component of life in the world as well, so I’m really not in favor of eliminating it, and the only way I could see to actually do so would be something as drastic as blowing up the entire planet with nukes. Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet. Especially since I like the smell of things like baking bread and vegetation decomposing in the soil on a rainy day (even though one of my daughters says it just smells like dirt to her). It takes a release of carbon to create these smells and I think they contribute to my quality of life, so I’ll keep them, please.

Let me tell you where I would very much like to see some carbon offset: my hips, my thighs, my chin, my rear-end, and my arms. Even my feet these days could do with a little offsetting of some carbon.  When you are carrying around this much extra carbon on your body, other things start to go wrong. Lungs don’t work as well. The heart gets lazy or just plain tired. Eyes don’t see as clearly. Muscles complain – all the time. And doggone, the clothes aren’t looking as good either. Headaches attack, body cycles get all messed up and you find yourself in a vicious cycle of, “It hurts to move, it hurts to think, it hurts to do anything, where’s the chocolate???”

Well after suffering headaches for most of the last 6 weeks, and seeing my waist expanding in a frightening manner, I’ve settled on a plan to offset some of my extra carbon and do some retroactive clean-up of my own. It starts with a green smoothie every morning ala the Green Smoothie Girl.

My mid-morning snack is mate-peppermint tea. I brought the mate with me into the country – I don’t know if you can get it here, but you can get peppermint or lots of other stuff (but you might have to buy it at a pharmacy). It continues with something very salad-ish for lunch and an afternoon snack of mate-peppermint tea and maybe some carrot sticks. Dinner keeps the whole family happy with a salad and whatever the choice of the evening (Last night it was rice and beans, tonight it was hummus and homemade pitas). I’m off to a great start, I’ve been doing this one whole day! Already I’m feeling better.

Seriously though, my headache has finally gone. Not even the halo of it is left. I’ve known for a long time that eating this way helped me feel better. This is not the first time I’ve done this, but for some reason, it all felt so insurmountable to do here in China. I think my brain was just completely overwhelmed and disoriented by the sudden switching of cultures and environments that it went into a form of hibernation. Something inside seemed to wake up the other night when I sat in my misery and just started doing some EFT tapping and praying. I  even dreamed about being able to eat right and saw what my refrigerator needed to contain in order to succeed. When I woke up, it was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly I could actually use the resources I had and make eating healthfully work here. (Too bad this didn’t happen sooner – oh well, start where you’re standing.) I think in a day or three, I’ll actually feel up to exercising again.

So. This is me going green to offset some waist carbon, and some hip carbon, and some thigh carbon… Hahaha! I know some of you were thinking I had moved over to the dark side (or the light side, depending on how politically green you are).

End of Green Day 1. Time to go rinse my sprouts.

winner-winner, chicken dinner 🙂