I spent the earliest years of my childhood in the city of San Francisco. My father was a resident doctor completing his education at the local medical center. At this time we lived very modestly and every evening my father would take my mother, my younger brother and I to the hospital cafeteria to have our dinner. As a young child of 4 or 5 years old, I did not demand any certain foods. My generation ate what we were served or we did not eat. For me that meant I ate very little. I remember eating so little that my mother told her friends I was an "incorrigible eater." I was like Mikey, the child who hated everything foodwise. I do not remember ever feeling hungry or resentful about food, I just did not eat what I did not like. The institutional hospital food left me with very little to look forward to when it came to meals there, but that was normal for me back then. It was all I had known.
At home we were fed eggs and bacon, white bread, frozen orange juice, hamburgers, hot dogs, peanut butter sandwiches, casseroles, canned vegetables and iceberg lettuce salads with greasy dressings that made me gag as a child and the school lunches were not any better. I just could not eat some of these things. I did not take pleasure in eating. In fact, eating was a source of dread at that age for me. As young children, my brother and I were usually constipated, so we were given suppositories to move our bowels. We both frequently had upper respiratory infections and the flu and we also had chronic allergies and runny noses. My mother tried to make things appealing for us at meals, but she was a child of the depression and a product of her time, so processed foods were what we were served.
At age seven, my father bought our first house and we moved to the suburbs of the East Bay across from San Francisco. My father planted fruit trees and we had beautiful summer gardens. It was then, living in that house, I began to actually enjoy eating fresh fruits and vegetables. I felt better in many ways and my parents noticed I was more relaxed. I do not remember receiving suppositories any more either. My mother made soups, which I enjoyed, and the standard mid-western fare, pot roasts with gravy, noodles or potatoes and lots of frozen or even fresh vegetables, boiled, but not too overcooked. But my favorite dish to eat became salads. I ate raw green beans right from the garden and I enjoyed real vine ripe tomatoes for the first time in my life.
I got very interested in fresh foods and learned how to make them myself at a young age. I remember preparing all by myself a multiply course Chinese meal for one of my father's dinner parties with his doctor friends and wives and I was only twelve. I would read the labels of prepared foods from the store to learn what was in them and started to make everything myself from scratch. It wasn't long before I was preparing most of the meals for the family because my mother was ill. I also became interested in health because my parents were overweight and they did not want us to have the health problems that they did, including diabetes and hypertension. In teenage years I was eating what most would consider a "healthy" diet of meats, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables with minimal sweets and fried foods. By the time I was in my early twenties, I got married and began a family of my own. Then I developed kidney stones and epilepsy and it all happened in the same year that I gave birth to my first child.
I had serious health problems to deal with at this young age and with a husband and child. I went the route of prescription drugs and surgery because I was talked into it. I trusted my urologist professor father and his referral to see the best surgeon he knew. I knew nothing about natural healing to say the least. I was put on long-term medications for my epilepsy and had surgery to remove the kidney stones. As a young person, married and with a child, I was always tired, depressed and exhausted all the time from the epilepsy medications. When I complained about it to my neurologist, he gruffly said that I had a responsibility to take this medication because I had a family and my baby to take care of.
I had two different surgeries to remove stones and for 15 years thereafter the stones kept returning. I had various medications and procedures to manage these conditions, which never went away. When I asked about diet, the doctors said food has nothing to do with it and food cannot help me. Years later, still with these underlying conditions, I found myself divorced and a hard working single parent of three young girls. By this time I was into fitness with a gym membership and I made almost all of my own organic vegetarian foods for my daughters and myself. I also had a daily meditation practice because I had relationship with a meditation teacher. I felt better than ever before, but was tired after my long workdays and frequent gym workouts.
One evening a friend and I were at a small gathering and our host was preparing some wheat grass juice. I had heard of wheatgrass juice and wanted to try some. We also tried some live enzyme whole grain home made dehydrated crackers, which were delicious. We talked about many things that night and when I looked at the clock and realized it was 5AM, I was surprised. I had worked all week, taken care of my children, been up all night, and was not even tired. What had given me all this energy? There was only one variable to make that possible. It was the RAW FOOD, especially the freshly made juice and the uncooked crackers.
I noticed from that moment on that when I ate raw food, I had endless energy for my 18 hours plus days. When I ate any cooked food, I noticed I felt tired afterwards through the following morning. I wanted to have energy to enjoy my active lifestyle with my children. It meant a great deal to me. I thought I had discovered something new, but this information is as old as life on this planet. I just had to re-read Genesis from a new perspective, especially chapter 1 verse 29. I started to read everything I could that was about this healthy lifestyle of eating raw foods, including books about juicing. I learned a great deal and then re-examined my life to understand why I developed these illnesses that had plagued me for so long. Despite a long term disciplined meditation practice, eating organic fruits and vegetables with very little animal products, while exercising quite a bit, my journey towards authentic health was just beginning.
In the past I had no idea I had any control over these conditions. I did not know I had created them, but that is yet another story. I attributed my health problems to a genetically weak constitution, I was taught this. At the physical level, I later learned that my history of eating cooked dark leafy greens, which I very much enjoyed when I was younger, contributed to my kidney conditions producing oxalate acid crystals, which showed on my pathology analysis reports as the type of kidney stones I had suffered from. When I switched to eating a raw diet of unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables, including those same dark leafy greens, which were uncooked in simple combinations, my 15 years of suffering from kidney stones receded faster than the tide changes. I had not had any seizures for years perhaps because I still took prescription drugs for that condition and no doctor would help me to see if I still needed the drugs, or even if I still had the problem.
So I took that on myself and was slowly able to get off my medications gradually and safely. My dietary changes together with daily meditation practices helped me develop an awareness of my own body on a more profound level than ever before. I could distinctly feel if I had any deep fluctuations relating to my nervous system. As these symptoms slowly subsided, I very slowly cut down on my seizure medications and after a few years I stopped them all together. I kept the meds in the medicine cabinet for one year after stopping completely and then ceremoniously disposed of them. I have been medication free with no problems for over 15 years and I feel so thankful. I was told that I would have to take these medications for life.
At 58 years of age now, mother and grandmother of three wonderful grown daughters, I weigh the same as I did in high school, lean then and lean now too. I have many interests including a deep love of nature, a passion for my work as a professional Massage Therapist and a trained Pilates' instructor, with a lifelong interest in nutrition that continues on a very fascinating journey finding out more about the true nature of mind/body health and awareness. I still have the constant love for creating and sharing delicious mouth watering foods to eat, foods from nature, with my family and extended family of friends. This uncooked planetary food plan I wish everybody knew about because it is for all loving souls who are on the path of embracing a healthy and radiant life for our minds and for our bodies. This natural plan gives us all the energy we need to enjoy this life.
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