One Woman’s Powerful Testimony

Being a mother of four kids (ages 17, 15, 13, and 11) has motivated me to eat better despite the fact that my children don’t want to hear about healthy eating most of the time. I started to have some health problems after my last child was born. I had migraine headaches every day. My doctor wanted to put me on medication and gave me free samples. One time I seriously thought about it as I sat and cried over the pain which also took my attention away from my children. I read about the side effects and threw the samples away. They sounded worse than what I was already dealing with.

Deep inside myself I knew that my body was lacking some nutrients. My hair was not growing well and was turning gray while I was only 30. At that time a friend recommended to me a diet of fruits, vegetables, and brown rice. This helped tremendously. After about a year, I decided that I was “healed” and went back to my old way of eating. To keep myself awake I drank a lot of coffee. To relax in the evenings I would drink a couple of beers. The headaches came back right away, accompanied by varicose veins and a lump in my breast. I was extremely tired all the time and my hair had gotten thin. I started to develop problems with my blood sugar level. I often became irritable, sweaty, and panicky. Life just wasn’t fun.

At that time I began working at the health food store where I began to receive answers to some of the questions I had about my problems. Alternative health practitioners told me that I had no hydrochloric acid and terrible digestion. They said I was in cancerous condition and extremely toxic. I also had dark spots on my face. At this time I began to read books about raw foods and started incorporating them into my diet.

At first it was very hard. I lost a lot of weight and was told I was too thin by many people, including my family. My friends asked if I was doing the right thing. The most difficult thing was to cut coffee and beer. I switched to herbal coffee and only drank beer on Saturdays. This ended up feeling like torture. It was extremely hard to focus on Mondays because I would be tired from a bad food weekend. It took until Wednesday before I would feel better again. The body would have three days to heal before I put in on the roller coaster ride again.

One day I realized I needed to get off beer and coffee entirely. I got a dog so that we could jog together. This was very helpful. I could really tell when I wasn’t eating well because I simply couldn’t jog as much. I asked my husband not to drink in front of me. That was hard. We used to always have a beer together when he got home from work. It took me six months to get over drinking beer. Now I don’t care if someone is drinking around me. I don’t crave beer anymore.

After being completely raw for a month I would sometimes lapse into letting myself have some cooked food, usually popcorn. Only then would I be reminded of the taste of beer. I feel once you have done wrong it is as if you have let yourself down and then you get into a pattern of punishing yourself and let all the good intention go. I began to rely on a number of raw food books as a personal support system.

It has been three years now since I first got started eating raw. After being thin for a while I have miraculously returned to my ideal weight. I am at the weight I was when I was a teen, only more fit.

One of the most important things I learned was how to deal with the healing crisis that I would experience on several occasions. I am glad that I had read about them in several books otherwise I may have been turned away from the good I was doing for my body. On three occasions my tongue turned charcoal black, which I learned was a result of a deep detoxing. I had many strange things happen. My breasts expelled dark green stuff. I refrained from calling my doctor despite the fact that I was a bit worried. Then the lump in my breast started to go away. I went through a time where I had such extreme gas that my family avoided being around me. I understand that this was a result of the awakening of my digestive system and luckily this period went away quickly. On another occasion I had a strange boil come up in my mouth that lasted for about four months. As I drank more greens it went down and now it is gone. I have learned not to worry when these strange healing events happen.

I learned how to grow greens like Ann Wigmore and made energy soup according to her recipe as much as I could. It didn’t taste the best and it was a little hard to staywith. Then I heard about green smoothies. I tried it and it was good. They tasted so good that I got my son to start drinking them even though he hates vegetables and greens. He felt so energized from them that we have made them a regular breakfast.

Now one of my daughters is drinking green smoothies and loves them too. I have three more in the family and hope they will try them someday soon.

I feel better than I ever have before. I’ve learned to like greens. They satisfy me and now I feel more content with my diet. When the body receives what it needs the cravings go away and you start to focus on the things that make you feel better. You truly do get in touch with your body if you choose to listen t