uti,
your smile is as beautiful as your soul.

My Diet Story In Pictures
I was a photographer from the age of 10. I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee and began coming out to California in 1973 for photography workshops with Ansel Adams. I left Tennessee for good in 1983 and settled in San Francisco to be closer to my photography extended family and Ansel. I didn't often find myself on the front end of the lens, so there aren't many pictures of me around. I set photography down about 3 years ago after 42 years. I kept a few of my fine art prints and burned all my negatives, prints, proofs and snapshot albums. I found a few things that escaped the fire and here is a portrait transition from my overwieght, SAD (southern style) days to the present Raw diet based on Doug Graham's 80/10/10-RV.

This is me as Brad (my birth name) in 1972 at age 20. I quit college and became a newspaper photographer. My diet was caffeine, lots of donuts, and I loved African-American style southern barbeque. I used to hang out with the old black men who ran the smoke pits to learn their secrets. I wore size 38 waistline pants. I did not date and was uncomfortably self-conscious around women unless we were doing photography or some type of outdoor activity.


Brad at age 22 in 1974. After attending an Ansel Adams photography workshop, I was invited back to Yosemite to be an assistant for the workshop program and work in Adams' gallery. On this day we were working outdoors with nude models and everyone got naked. I was terrified at first, I did not want all the women to see my fat body, but got over it when I realized no one cared what I looked like. A new experience for me: I got hit on by one of the ladies for the first time in my life. I was staying with a family of vegetarians and got my first introduction to a health oriented diet. I lost weight from the vegetarian food and all outdoor and social activity that summer. My self-esteem got a jump start and all of a sudden I began to experience people being attracted to me.


1978. I was back in Tennesse, married with a step child to raise, had turned into workaholic museum curator, unhappy and eating a lot of the old southern stuff with alcohol added. The woman in the pic was a fellow photographer from the Yosemite workshops, to which I would escape for a few weeks of happiness and comradery each summer.


1980 With my guru Ansel Adams, who I assisted for the summer. He was a wonderful teacher and friend, but as you can see he was not a good role model for healthy eating. He had a triple bypass 5 months before this was taken. He died in 1984 from heart disease. No doubt for me that his diet killed him. The following year I topped out at 227lbs.


1985 found a much happier me. I had quit my job, divorced and moved to California for good at the end of 1983. I cut my fat and junk food intake way back, added lots more veggies and salads to my diet and started running - eventually building up to 30-40 miles a week before my knees gave out. I shared a studio in S.F. with a food photographer friend and was introduced to healthier gourmet cooking. I lost 60 lbs, but couldn't keep it off unless I ran.


My birthday in 1986, age 35. Too much fat and alcohol in the diet!


1989. I married again in 1989. I'm in my state-of-the-art darkroom. Still hitting the gourmet food scene in S.F. and gaining weight, having candida overgrowth symptoms, energy highs and lows. It took caffeine to get me going in the morning and alcohol to put me out in the evening. This is right as the wake up call was in progress and I began to deal with the candida problem.


2003. I had moved to Garberville in 1996. My partner and I had started a successful crafts business a few years before and were doing well materially. I don't have any pics as I transitioned to vegetarian along with some wild caught fish (I was an avid fly fisherman). I was doing a lot of activism around river/fish restoration and corporate rule issues. I started yoga classes in 1998 to help with repetitive motion and back problems after trying various mildly successful alternative healing modalities. I think I had just turned vegan in this pic. This was on a canoe trip with my yoga family. My weight was dropping and I was getting a lot of healing body work. I had developed a very stiff humped back and forward hunched shoulders (heart shakra protection), but they were just starting to unravel here.


In our yoga group everyone is vegan (with an occasional revisitation to old foods), some eat a lot of raw and 3 of us are 100% 80/10/10-RV. Bryan is my yoga brother and was the first person I experienced who was having success with a raw diet. I took 2 years to transition to Raw and have been 100% Raw for just over a year. What had started out as a search for pain relief from work related injuries became a spiritual path for me. My partner and I separated, closed our business and sold our 80 acre homestead in the redwoods. She is also part of my yoga family and remains a close friend. I have divested myself of most of my material belongings (fancy fly fishing gear, classic 4wd vehicles, photo gear, art collection) and now earn my living doing building and repair work for homesteaders in my community. My raw diet is closely intertwined with my yoga. I feel myself in the highest state of overall health of my adult life, mind-body-spirit and am starting to experience this process as a never ending exploration. The hump in my back is gone, my spine has totally realigned towards a normal s curve and is becoming more flexible, but there's more to go. After 8 years, I am starting to be able to sit in full lotus - when I started yoga I could barely touch my lower shins. My present weight is around 130, pants size 29. Since starting yoga I've grown over an inch in height and my shoes went up one size. This is me again from yesterday. I just turned 55 last month.


Wishing You Love and Life - Light and Delite,

What a journey...good for you! Thanks for sharing! And working with Ansel Adams...impressive!!!

Hello Uti! Thanks for your story and pics. What do you eat? Just fruit? And what is your height? What a wonderful story and happy for your back healing.

Such a great story Uti!
And I must say, working with Ansel Adams, amazing! When I took photography courses he was always my favorite, every paper I wrote about any artist I always chose him

____________________________________

~Christi~
Natural Living Info
AP/NL mama to Jacob 10/25/2006

Peace everyone....sending much love & blessings from Miami.

[i149.photobucket.com]

00oops...did it wrong

Rawrrr! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hello Uti! Thanks for your story and pics. What
> do you eat? Just fruit? And what is your height?
> What a wonderful story and happy for your back
> healing.

You're welcome.
Fruit, Greens, some carrots,seeds and nuts for fat and protein.

If I am in the city I will go to a raw food restaurant and indulge in gourmet raw. There's a price to pay for that as it's usually high fat and spicy, but I love the stimulating energy of the restaurants (especially Cafe Gratitude in SanFrancisco's Mission District) and all those rawies. I'm a stimulation junkie, but I believe in indulgence with awareness as a consciousness expanding practice.

I am not good with tracking the percentages on the 80-10-10 diet. I'm trying to do this intuitatively just like our raw prehistoric ancestors did. I fully support those who want to do this from a more scientific quantative approach.

Not just my back was healed, shoulder rib cage, and pelvic girdle too working it's wqay out through the extremities.....it's all interconnected, you can't do something to one tht doesn't affect the other if what I'm learning from the experiences I'm having of my body healing.

Wow, what an amazing story uti! Thanks so much for sharing all of that with us. Isn't yoga amazing? It does so much for people. I am so glad you are doing so well.

HIYA!
Yeah, cool cool story Uti. There is something to your face that reminds me of someone I knew in the past. I have no idea who though! So you and Bryan both live on an ashram. That explains a couple of things.

The reason I asked is that I plan to be back in Cal later this and will want a place to call home. I've looked around on the internet for Buddhist temples, and, for intentional communities with a strong spiritual practice. When I get to Cal I'll visit some places. Do you all accept new people? If you do, what are the requirements for becoming a resident there? I mean, for someone who'll make the ashram their home. There's a Korean Buddhist temple in Tehachapi way down south that I want to visit, and there are a couple of intentional communities in the Santa Cruz area that are either forming, or already formed, that I'm interested in.

soulrebel, the picture's great. Smiles are happy things. What did you do wrong? Looks pretty "right" to me.



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

Yeah nice job Uti!!

Also-soulsrebel-very nice pic indeed.

See you at the top!!

my brother uti,

i still have goose bumps from your
beautiful story

hope to sit together someday in jyana yoga

and then eat some mangos and melon

love, fruitgirl

Thanks for your story and pics, Uti, I would not have recognized you to be the same person! It's very interesting that you gained an inch in height. I wish I could do the same. I have always had a fully erect posture but on the short side, a bit shorter than what I'd prefer.

arugula - you can have some of my height. I am 5"10" tall.

Hee hee, I will take three inches. That will make us even.

Loved the story Uti. Very inspirational!!! Thanks for sharing.

What a beautiful pair Soulrebel.

Pretty cool, I'd like to gain an inch in height from yoga.

Here's a new one of Jamie (jamielor) and me.

biking. my favorite thing (other than fruit)

uti-that was a glorious story and loved all the pics.thanks-so cool!!taylor

if i could get my password and user name-i could post pictures of me-i e-mailed them to get it and they did not respond.i could get them from photo bucket.maybe i will contact them again.taylor

OK here goes my first attempt with a photo have many more. Everyone looks beautiful as all the stories.

Adrianne

Uti,
Beautiful story,man.You look great.All the best.

Brian

Thanks for all the feedback friends.

Someone asked how tall I am: 5',7 1/2". Why the height change? Take the weight of the world off your shoulders and open your heart and you will grow. I saw life as a burden, a series of problems to be solved. I changed my viewpoint; life is a mystery to be unfolded. I don't have it handled, but I do see a little light on the path now and that gives me a place to take another step. I believe everything in the body reacts to the way I do my life. I was contracted and folded inward to protect my heart, my spinal column compressed from my burdens. Yoga has taught me to set these things down, stretch upwards and downwards at the same time to connect the earth energy with the energy of the heavens and open my heart to let the love flow in both directions at the same time.

Please don't think that what I did was anything special. I'm very ordinary; which means that if I can do it, others can too. When we make things special we put them out of reach.

A message I recently read from the wisdom of the Hsin Hsin Ming [written in 606AD by Third Zen Patriarch Chien-chi Seng-ts'an], says what I just wrote in another beautiful way:

Quote

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and hell are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

I'm deeply moved by the line about heaven and hell being set infinitely apart.

Finally. All these words are bullsh*t, the experience of the words is something else entirely. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it, have your own experience.

I like that quote, cheers.

Narz and jamie - you two are adorable together.

fruitgirl and violetpetals - you are so adorable as well!!!

uti,
I am so touched by your story...Thank you for all your love and also for sharing with others.

Cynthia

Uti, I wonder if you know my friend Marc who lives in Garberville.... he's into fly fishin'

;o)

Judy

JGex Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Uti, I wonder if you know my friend Marc who lives
> in Garberville.... he's into fly fishin'
>
> ;o)
Probably would recognize him if a saw him since this is such a small town, but no, I don't know him. I've been so inwardly focussed on my healing that I was pretty reclusive for a while and set aside my hobbies more or less permanently.

hey all

what wonderful pictures and inspiring stories!
After about 5 months of not really eating very well I am feeling very excited about getting myself healthy again. I was 90% raw for 6 months and it strenthened my system so much, i felt strong inside, now I'm ready to feel the raw buzz again.

I don't post very often - but I lurk about : )

Here is a pic of me in the summer when I was raw and lovin' it

uti,
with all the "opinions" we hear here, i find your words
essentially nourishing and mature. thank you. fruitgirl


"I'm trying to do this intuitatively just like our raw prehistoric ancestors did. I fully support those who want to do this from a more scientific quantative approach."

" the experience of the words is something else entirely. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it, have your own experience."