healing through diet, my personal adventure

Food is a touchy subject. I actually don't like talking about it much, because people frequently respond rather negatively. That said, I hope this post doesn't offend anyone, and please understand that these are my personal experiences and opinions.

A human being is a system. That system includes everything about the person, inside and out. It all matters. Everything from the spiritually transcendent level down to the kind of shoes you wear, the colors you like, who your friends are (including their state of physical and emotional health, which several recent studies have indicated strongly affects everyone in the same social network), and of course, your environment.

A system can be affected at any point. Take a person and change their environment, and you could change the way all their interrelated systems work. However, some sub-systems have broader implications for the whole system than others, and affect us in more fundamental ways.

Very little has greater impact on a person's health than the food one eats... but that is conditional. We've all heard the famous story about the relative who lived on 2 hotdogs, a pack of Marlboros, and 2 shots of whiskey a day and lived to be 104. That's often the way many people end a conversation about the importance of diet. And it's a true story, too... I lived across the street from a woman like that in Baltimore.

Generalities can be made about groups, and trends within groups... nothing really definitive can be said about an individual. For instance, myself, I'm 5'5", and I started smoking at about age 13... if I hadn't, might I have been 5'10"? If my parents hadn't yelled at me so much, might I have been 6'? Could my IQ have been higher? Nothing definitive could ever be said about that. It's personal, individual, and inscrutable.

So, personally, at about the age of 39, my health really started to go down the toilet. I had a stressful, demanding job, (occupational therapist working with special needs kids) and even though I was highly physically active, and had a daily spiritual practice, many of my health habits were not so good. Especially my diet.

Though by this time, I had experimented with many alternatives, vegetarianism, veganism, fasting, and Taoist dietary approaches, I still reverted to eating crap for emotional satisfaction, probably as a direct result of a very unhappy childhood. I took comfort and refuge in food, especially garbage. A lot of meat, too much alcohol, lots of fried carbs.

So by 39, I had gone up to about 160, and was bloated, miserable, and felt uncomfortable most of the time... and that's an important point I'd like to make. This is my subjective experience of what was happening to me. A person with greater strengths than me in other areas might have compensated in other ways, and the whole situation, for them, might have been a relatively small problem. Myself, I felt that my whole system was crashing. I was decompensating. It was starting to affect every area of my life, particularly my work. I knew I had to do something.

So I tried raw-vegan. If you are unfamiliar, this is where you eat nothing but fresh, preferably organic fruits and vegetables, some nuts, things like that. But nothing cooked, and no animal products of any type, at least if you are doing it 100%. Most teachers in the raw food community recommend slowly getting into it, because it's a radical change for the body. When you start taking in lots of healthy fibrous fruits and vegetables, you detox like crazy. Too much too fast can even be dangerous. ( I EMPHASIZE THAT THIS IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS AND NOT RECOMMENDED) However, being me, over spring break I just went for it, and made a complete change. I fasted for 2 days, and went 100% raw.

It was like having a really bad flu for four days, and I went through pretty intense discomfort. However, after that it was like some kind of incredible drug, in the best possible way. I felt euphoric. I had tons of energy.

WARNING: THIS NEXT PART IS GROSS.
Some kinds of food pass more easily through the digestive tract than others. Fruit nearly dissolves in your saliva (which is a digestive juice). It assimilates and converts to energy and usable raw materials in minutes... on the other end of the spectrum is a well-cooked steak. Meat like that can sit in the colon for 4 days or even longer. The problem with this is that it will start to basically rot, and the organisms that are part of that process and thrive on that process are not good for us at all. It has the potential to severely disrupt our internal ecosystem.

In a worst-case scenario, the body will respond to this untenable situation by coating the offending matter with mucous, and it can end up permanently lodged in the folds of your colon. This can cause a long-term toxic condition, where small amounts of toxins slowly leach in over time. It also mechanically blocks the passage of other material, which makes this worst-case scenario much more likely to become even worse.

So when you switch to raw food, all this stored waste starts to break down, and releases the toxins all at once (which explains the 4 days of flu-like symptoms I experienced)... needless to say that what comes out you at this point is gross beyond anything I'd care to describe. (I did warn you). Poison, basically. But, as they say, better out than in. Some doctors have stated that more obese individuals could contain several pounds of such material.

So, suddenly liberated of all this poison, my subjective experience was one of high energy and euphoria. Then, over time, of course I lost a lot of excess weight very quickly... this was fantastic. People around me were blown away by the change... and you know what else? When you drop so much weight, your joints feel much better. I felt like I was on springs. Also when you remove so much toxic material, your skin changes, your hair improves, your overall energy-field changes radically. I was accused by several people at that point of glowing.

I did raw food 100% for about a year. it was a transformative experience... why don't I still do it? Number one, it's pretty expensive. Good quality produce is not cheap, especially organics (our government basically subsidizes the meat and dairy industry. There's no way average people would be able to afford it if they didn't, at least not 3 meals a day.) Number two, it is quite time consuming. Making tasty, balanced meals of purely raw foods takes a lot of learning, and also time (there are some people, though, who follow what is know as 'natural hygiene', who are even more radical, and don't believe in eating anything not in a natural state. It certainly would cut out the food-prep time!). Number 3, and most importantly, I've found what works for me. I do still eat lots and lots of raw vegetables and fruit, nuts, and seeds, but I find that being so religious about it isn't so necessary for me. On the down side, my appearance, energy level and overall health may not be as optimal, but my diet is for the first time in my life satisfying, comfortable and workable. I never would have gotten to that point without that extended, disciplined period of eating raw.

There are far more people than I can even begin to tell you about that I met while in that community who have beaten back severe, life-threatening illness just through diet. This includes cancer, mental disorders, liver ailments, and chronic fatigue. A lot of them would never even consider anything but raw food. They think everyone else is crazy, based on their personal experience... and who can argue with that?

Hope this info has been helpful. I'll include links.

http://store.rawreform.com/rawreform2.php
http://www.rawfamily.com/