I have made a commitment to going 100% raw vegan...again. A few months ago I wrote the story below (in hopes of one day sharing my story with others) and successfully went 100% raw vegan for 11 weeks. I had never felt so amazing! I lost 16 pounds, my stomach lost inches, my energy level increased and my mind was clear, however, I treated myself and my son to a San Diego vacation mid-August and fell back into a SAD diet. I'm paying for it. I am back to feeling bloated, extremely tired, my stomach is ikky after every SAD meal, my sugar cravings have returned and my gut is back.

To help me get started again I finally joined this forum after months of only just reading. I'm going to write about my success and share it with hopes of helping others, especially newbies that are reluctant.

Please enjoy my story below...even though its a work in progress! Happy RAW return!!
Serena

"I’m not a doctor. I’m not a nutritionist. In fact I don’t even attempt to act like I know all that much about nutrition. I’m not out to make a ridiculous amount of money selling you ridiculous miracle diets. Quite frankly I don’t care if I make one dime. I’m writing this because just a short time ago I was a 28 year old mom sitting in the driver’s seat of my car when my six year old son asked me “Mom, can we go to the water park” and I couldn’t say a thing back. For the first time in my life I had an epiphany. Only 7 weeks ago I lost my grandma, an amazing woman full of life and humor who was the nucleus of our tight knit family, but she lost her battle with diabetes after living a life fighting her weight and love of food. Now I don’t know a whole lot about diabetes, other than the articles I read and working with disability claims at work, but in the little I know it is a heart wrenching disease that robs your entire body of its freedom to be healthy. I bring up diabetes because it goes hand in hand with the terrible way I have allowed my life to be ruled by food and weight. The epiphany I speak of was this…..I am 28 years old and I won’t even take my son to a water park because I am ashamed of my body. My son deserves more, he deserves a mom who not only takes care of her own body but also teaches him to take care of his. He deserves to have me around for years and he deserves those years to be healthy. I will take my son to a water park, and not only will I take him, I will do it in my bathing suit.

Like many of you, I have allowed my food addiction to rule my life, I have limited who I date, what I wear, the activities I do, the way I talk about myself, the way I let a man touch me, the way I allow my son to hear me talk terrible about my body, the way I look at myself in the fitting room, ok..ok…I could go on, but right about now you more than likely know exactly what I am talking about because you are at that point in your life. You know how it feels to have weight come up in every conversation, and you know how it feels to be ruled by dissatisfaction with your body.

Food addiction is real. Nope, I’m not a physiologist either, but it doesn’t take a mental professional for me to realize I have a genuine problem with food. Like I mentioned earlier I have a very tight knit family, and like most families we find every reason to gather around enough food to feed 12 Armies. At work food is the center of meetings, conferences, birthday parties, and found by the pounds in bowls nestled on top of cubicles. Truly I think candy and ice cream know me by name (and actually scream out my name sometimes!), bread and tortilla chips play games with me, restaurants are fun and inviting, and I could eat buttered popcorn by the bushel (who can’t right?). My point is that I am fully aware of my own problem, it just had to come to a point that I was serious about doing something about it. The bowls of candy at work and the family gatherings are not going away, neither are the movie theatres and dates at restaurants, or the holidays. July 9, 2008 was the day I had to take control or I was going down the same unhealthy and sad road that I watched Grandma go down.

Last year I bought a house. Never in a million years did I think that meeting a real estate agent would change my life in more ways than one. My agent became my friend, and after a few talks about health and weight (see, I told you weight becomes the topic of every conversation) he introduced me to a book called Green For Life, written by Victoria Boutenko of the Raw Family. Truly at this point I wasn’t ready to make drastic changes, so I listened to what my friend had to say, took it as interesting information and never really thought about it again. After a few weeks, and after learning more about his healthy lifestyle I became more interested in his diet, so, I ended up getting online and ordering a copy of the book for myself. That is when my entire life changed."

Welcome.

Welcome! Make changes at a slow pace that can be continued indefinitely. Make the small changes (with timetables) that are right for you. Consciousness blooms when we make a goal and keep it. THAT brings health and vitality. If you set 3 small raw goals a day....and DO them....you are MUCH more conscious/healthy (in my opinion) than someone who set ONE goal to fast for a week. Heh...heh.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com