WRR-WRR ...

I tried to jump in and do The Garden Diet's 21/ 28 plan but found it a bit over whelming to start with.

Then Jinji came up with her:

Wild Rapid Raw Weight Release Rumpus!!!

I joined in that journey on December 2, 2013 and have been using this plan as my basic outline so far. It seems, for me, that this was the platform that I needed to start me down this path. It seems to have been a great help to others as well. As of December 11, 2013, according to my doctor's scale, I am down 10 pounds from my prior visit in October. I tend to think that most of this 'loss' came from following this menu.

To learn more about the WRR-WRR, and maybe even join in the journey, go to: http://jinjeetalifero.com/?p=3069

Back Tracking...

I grew up knowing that a diet heavily mixed with raw foods was the best. My mother used to own a health food store and being a book worm, I grew up immersing myself in the books she had in the store. I had come across a number times that eating more raw food was necessary for health, and though I have maintained a vegetarian lifestyle all my life, I never fully made the connection to doing a raw lifestyle until I got really sick while under a doctor's care for a growing pain I was experiencing in my side. I ended up with iron overload for 'borderline' anemia and antibiotic side effects for what proved to be non existent (but still possible - according to that doctor) kidney infection (only because she couldn't figure out why else I was in pain).

This started me on actually looking for alternative ways to deal with this now exacerbated health crisis. So, I went back to my roots, my own self induced childhood learning, and started fasting and cleansing. One of these was doing (with much success) the liver/gallbladder flush. An on-line search for something entirely different lead me to a link about it that reminded me of this (instinct has a way of drawing you to 'goggle' what you need to find sometimes). I grew up reading about liver/gallbladder flushes, but until this episode in my life, I never felt I needed to do one personally. This is when I made the real connection to what pasteurizing and homogenizing dairy does to dairy products, for this is what I surmised was the root of what was causing my side pain - an inability of my body to properly digest such foods and storing the 'fat' from it in my liver ducts and gallbladder.

This led me to questioning what heating does to other foods we eat.

While researching more fully into this, I came upon the garden diet web-site. It was another one of those light bulb moments for me, with that 'PAY ATTENTION!!!' voice sounding in my inner ear. Then the journey of 'knowing' what is best for my health and actually 'doing' what is best for my health really began.

 

I did meet the Talifero's on one of their retreats and for a time was raw. Storm Talifero was actually one of the first people I met that made me realize that someone could actually be raw and healthy...for life. With these lifestyle changes, I dropped weight, felt better, and looked at life very differently. 

 

But with a raw diet, cleansing also occurs - on many levels. Sometimes one is ready for such cleansing and sometimes it can be too much. I have learned such a journey takes a life time. It also can have many detours along the way and that those detours, though sometimes difficult, are not necessarily a 'bad' thing.

Since then, there have been times where I could do the raw lifestyle with more ease than at other times. More stress, without fail, always led me backtracking to the old comfort food cravings. Life is never really without stress though. So, it really becomes an issue of how to deal with it...or how to adjust how I have not been successfully dealing with it.

My life is so different now than when I first started discovering raw foods though. Back then I was Massage Therapist and a Breema practitioner, who occasionally did a bit of acting on the side. I was focused on healing and led for the most part, a solitary introverted life. A car accident, along with the financial housing implosion in 2006, changed all of that for me. Now I work in a stressful job on trains, with a body that I have never been able to get truly out of pain since that accident that same year.

It has been 7 years of learning first hand now how many of the people who used to come see me for stress and pain relief felt. I have been learning empathy first hand.

With empathy comes understanding but it takes focus to make something more useful of it. Focus...and practicing what I used to preach it seems.

 

On October 8, 2013, I hurt my back at work.

It is interesting how the body will often 'give' at it weakest point. It is even more interesting that it sometimes takes our body 'giving' in for our consciousness to follow. 

 

When I had my car accident I used to say that the universe was telling me I needed a knock up side the head to get me to change course for some reason. This time my back told me it was at its breaking point. That, along with the headaches slowing growing into almost constant migraines, I needed to buckle down and do everything I can to better manage 'THE pain' I have been in now for so many years. That as much as I was trying to ignore it, it was not going to just go away.

I am reminded from my Breema training: How can I be more comfortable? What adjustment, no matter how big or small it is, can I make to be more comfortable?

Good question...

Finishing Is Beginning

This is my 'finishing' photo. My finishing not taking enough care of myself like I need to. It was taken on November 2, 2013 at the Run or Dye event in Santa Rosa. I was feeling so-so that day, with one of the constant headaches I have been dealing with for years now since my car accident in 2006. The accident that derailed me from the path I was on and started me in a completely different direction. Personally, I hate this photo. It is not how I see myself. But, it is what it is and it is time for me to acknowledge that...and know that nothing is ever stagnant. That I can be much more comfortable with myself. That there is ALWAYS something I can do to be more comfortable.

Part of this is to do more raw living...and less cooked dieting.

I am pictured with my loving husband. He loves me no matter how thick or thin I am...on any level of being.  I love him back in the same way.

My challenge is to show that sort of forgiving love for myself. Sometime we are our own harshest critic.

This is also my beginning photo for this blog. My RAW journey. I have tried this journey many times, have had 'success' as well as overturned apple carts along the away. I guess like many journeys...there is really no beginning or end...just the next page and new chapters. I have no idea how it will go, but with the word 'raw' in it - I expect it will be just that. My focus of this journey is to incorporate more awareness and care into my life. I don't expect it will be easy, but it should prove to be ... interesting.

After many years of dealing with weight consciousness, self loathing and overcoming bulimia, I decided to 'ignore' the scales. I don't use them anymore, if I can help it. The last time I weighed in was at the doctor's office. That was on Oct 10, 2013 @ 220 pounds. I have no idea how much I weigh here, but I suspect it is pretty much about the same. Give or take a few pounds, this is pretty much the 'heaviest' I have been in my life. I think I am ready to let go of some that extra 'baggage' now. It is not my goal though. My goal is to be healthy, more self aware and loving.

End of story...and a new beginning.

Santa Rosa 'Run or Dye" November 2, 2013