My Journey

I have been invited to join the "Raw Food Transition Carnival" and I was thinking about what type of article I would contribute to this forum.

I have decided, that just like Nathalie at Raw Food Switch maybe it would be a good article to write about how I started with Raw Food, and what changes have occurred in my life as a result. I found it co-incidental that Nathalie began her raw food journey on a quest after a tragic event in her life. The same can be said about me, but for different tragic events. Things happen in life for a reason, and we need each stage and excitement and disappointment to carry us on our journey and to learn and grow from and ultimately make us the people that we are and will become.

I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at an early age, but it wasn’t until I went to a Naturopath that I realized the correlation between what I was eating and what I was feeling. Seems pretty easy to understand, but when you put your faith in the medical community, sometimes you lose your common sense. I knew that I couldn’t tolerate wheat/gluten or dairy, I was tested for Celiac disease and Lactose intolerance. Both turned up negative and I was told that I could continue to eat those foods, which I did for years. It took a naturopath to take out the food groups and introduce them gradually for me to realize that a piece of paper with a test result on it didn’t matter. I even remember telling her that I COULD eat dairy because I was tested and I wasn’t lactose intolerant. It was the lightbulb moment when she said "but why would you want to if you know what it does to your body, regardless of what the test results showed".

I had been experimenting with food for a number of years, I was also experimenting and questioning my spirituality. Much of this was happening during the later years of my marriage. At the time, things were bad at home and I believe that I was "looking" for something I could put my faith in and then it was what I clung to after my marriage fell apart. It gave me something to focus on and learn about.

I discovered Raw Food by doing an internet search about detoxing; After about two years of being a vegetarian, eating whole grains and making healthy diet choices, I was hospitalized with a bowel obstruction and told that I would have to eat meat, white rice, white bread, basically anything that was "processed" because it was easier for my system to digest, no more "raw" veggies or fruit, everything had to be cooked. I was devastated. How could a medical community that I had put my trust in be telling me such things? They also put me on prednisone.

While I was searching for a "detox" to get the drugs out of my system from that week in the hospital I came across The Raw Divas’ Detox Program . I had never heard about "Raw Food" before..... this discovery changed my life, my diet, how I viewed the world and everything in it. That week in the hospital changed my life, be thankful for everything in life, even the "bad". Sometimes we don't see the forest through the trees.

I hope to get to write another article about the benefits that I have experienced on a Raw Food Diet.... I’ll save that story for another day.

Happy Carnival,
Kathy