This the story of how it all began..

guess the back story is in order ...well, this is the story of how I became raw. :)

I grew up eating fairly healthy. My mom wasn't all crunchy-granola, but we did not eat alot of junk, didn't drink soda, and we did not eat much red meat, sugar, etc. Despite that healthy eating, I grew up with a VILE sweet tooth and a nasty sugar addiction. I also became an emotional eater, and ballooned up to 175lbs on my 5'6" frame. I ate to feel good, and I ate candy to feel even better...for that brief amount of time it lasted. I was miserable.

The summer before my Junior year in high school, I decided a change was in order. I decided to become a vegetarian. I also became interested in triathalons. I read a bunch of books on both subjects and switched my diet that summer. I also started running and biking daily. By the end of the summer, I lost 30lbs. I was beyond thrilled. FINALLY, I felt better...or so I thought. I still had my sugar addiction, but thought as long as I ate 'fat free' candy I was good to go. Plus, my calorie intake was pretty low, and my output higher, so I was ok for a while...Then it all started to spiral out of control.

I became obsessed. I was running 8-10 miles a day, and living on less than 1000 calories. I kept this up through my freshman year of college, suffered 2 stress fractures, stopped getting my period, was tired, grumpy, and weighed 118lbs. Not anorexic by the numbers, but I was definitely living the life and I was miserable. I transfered my sophmore year and gained some weight back, ran less, but was not healthy by any stretch as now I was a poor college student living on ramen noodles and eggs...and smoking.

Fast forward through many years not worthy of rehashing, and I reached a point where I was in a decent place. I was running on a local team, eating fairly well, and maintaining a reasonable weight. I still struggled with some disordered eating issues, but overall I was ok.

Fast forward again...now I am married and having babies :).I was fortunate to marry a fellow vegetarian, so that has never been an issue. I was vegetarian through all 3 pregnancies, gained about 35lbs with each baby which was increasingly harder to take off with each baby. Throughout my years of being pregnant and nursing, I tried several diets. I wanted to be as healthy as possible for my babies, and not be carrying around any extra weight. I tried the Eat to Live, which I seemed to stick to the easiest, as well as vegan, juicing, Master Cleanses, etc.

During this time, (though this was a good 5-6 yers ago) I heard about Raw. There wasn't much out there, but I ended up buying a book by Juliano called Raw that I had seen on TV. When I got it home, I was very interested...until I started reading. Sprouts? Dehydrating? Seaweed? What the hell are all these wierd ingredients? Everything seemed complicated, time-consuming, and just plain wierd. That was the end of that.

Fast forward again, (I am sensing a theme) and now I have 3 beautiful kiddos, and we are a mess. I am depressed and tired, everything hurts and I am sick constantly. My kids are sick all the time as well, and are varying degrees of psychotic- tantrums, manic behavior, uncontrollable raging, etc. I was at a complete loss. I thought I was doing everything right, I nursed, feed them whole, organic foods, healthy snacks...so I sought out a Holistic Dr. to help. Turned out all of us had Candida, food allergies, and I was dx'd with Lyme Disease. We had every test under the sun done, and I was told I had to put the kids on a very restrictive rotation diet, and avoid all the foods they were sensitive to. I was devastated. So were they. Being a research freak, I decided there had to be something we could do, some way we could eat that would be better than what we were doing.

I somehow stumbled upon raw again. Raw had come a long way in 4 years. There was a ton of info out now, lots of books, websites etc. I read until my eyes bled and decided this was what we were going to do. I put myself and the kids on a high raw diet the next day. I got rid of all foods not conducive to our new diet. (except hubby's foods as he was not convinced to try this yet...)The kids and I basically ate raw all day and ate an allergy-free cooked dinner. I ate raw all day. We had smoothies, puddings and lots of fruits, veggies and dips. I did this with them for 6mo. They improved. Their skin cleared up. The circles under their eyes went away. They slept better, behaved better, tantrums almost disappeared, and were generally happier.At the end of 6mo, I started carefully trialing them with some of their old foods and...they were fine. Sadly, I succumbed out of sheer joy that they could eat 'normal food', to going back to a cooked vegetarian diet with them, though I stayed predominantly raw. And ate candy. This is an important fact. Throughout all of this, my sugar addiction was alays satisfied. I never gave it up for longer than a month.

Now to the recent past...I started getting sick at the begining of last summer...really sick. Everything hurt, more than normal. I was tired all the time. I was a good 20lbs heavier than I wanted to be, having never lost the weight from my 3rd child. Though I was running, working around the house, etc I was constantly exhausted, yet I had insomnia. By September, I could hardly stay awake during the day. I was freezing all the time wearing jeans and sweatshirts on 75 degree days. I was nauseaus all the time, and could hardly eat. I spent my days bundled up on the couch, watching my children play, thinking it would be better to be dead than live like this. Finally, I went to the Dr. My Dr. is wonderful and is completely open to my philosophy. After MANY many blood tests, a visit to an allergist, and much research it was determined that I had been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Immune Defficiency Syndrome- CFIDS. I believe this went along with the Lyme disease. I was also allergic to shellfish, nuts and honey bees, along with dust, mold, all weeds, all pollens, grasses....yeah. Good times. Then I was later dx'd with Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune thyroid disorder. I knew I had Hypothyroidism, but when my thyroid kept getting worse despite medication, they decided to test further and this is what we found.

I was devastated. My Dr. told me there was no cure, only hope for a remission which I had been in before, and was now in a very bad flare. She wanted me to be vaccinated. On medications. I tried going the 'natural' route. I tried herbs, vitamins, fasting...I wasn't getting better, and wasn't sure how long I could deal with this. I read every book I could get my hands on regarding CFIDS and Hashimoto's and one thing they all said was to eat a whole food diet with as much RAW as possible. Light bulb...I immediately went completely raw. No cheating, and FINALLY quit sugar. I drank green smoothies daily, ate salads, raw desserts and flax crackers. I did go on 2 meds after MUCH research, as I was willing to do anything at that point to get better. And it worked. Slowly but surely I started to feel better. I had energy. I was sleeping better. I could actually keep food down, which I wasn't able to before. I lost that last 20 lbs. for good.

Presently, I feel fantastic. I eat a raw diet that consists of green smoothies, salads, and of course DESSERTS! I am predominantly raw, close to 90% most of the time as that is how I feel the best. I am currently running 6 days a week most weeks, and training for Ultra marathons(that is races in which the distance is MORE than a marathon, which is 26.2 miles) I have completed several 50 mile trail races on raw food and green smoothies. I have more energy, sleep better, recover from training easily, and best of all have not been sick- not even a cold- in over a year. I am on no medication for the CFIDS or Lyme, I only take something for my thyroid. I take very few supplements, and I owe my health to raw foods!!!