My Story ~ Part 1 ~ How I came to learn that what you eat matters.

I grew up being fed good food with plenty of vegetables grown in the gardens my parents planted every year, and lots of fresh walleye, bluegills and croppies that my dad would catch on a regular basis, as well as the occasional deer, rabbit, squirrel and pheasant.  If he'd liked to hunt duck, we'd of had that too.  We didn't get Coke, store bought sweets and hotdogs as daily fare like my cousins.  Soda and candy was for the holidays, and foods like hot dogs were served only occasionally, especially when we were young.  There were desserts, but the not store bought kind. The pies, cakes and cookies we ate were all made from scratch and sometimes, even our ice cream.  My mom and I share the same birthday in June, and my mom always loved to have home made ice cream with fresh strawberries on our birthday. 

I always loved to go over to my cousin's house and indulge in the hotdogs, the Oreos, and the soda, but looking back, I am glad I didn't grow up having that kind of food as regular fare.  My cousins all grew up to be overweight, and their petite, thin, coffee drinking, cigarette smoking mother, my aunt, died a sad death from cancer, and from not being able to withstand the treatment.  I believe the treatment killed her faster than the cancer would have but either way, her path was pretty much set. 

This happened after I had gone through my own health issues, and had learned the importance of putting healthy foods in your body, and at the start of my belief that the body can heal itself of anything, given the right conditions.  So when I learned that she had cancer, I sent a bit of information to her on some good foods to try and eat, and why good nutrition was so helpful.  I was told by my cousins after she had passed away, that at the end, if she would eat anything, she wanted "Cindy's food" as she could tell it made her feel better. Unfortunately, she got too little of it, too late.

One thing that I learned on this journey, is that pharmaceutical medicines, are for the most part, a double edged sword, and often times do more harm than good, and can easily be misused.  For an acute infection, you can be sure I will happily take an antibiotic.  But I won't take it blindly, and I won't take just anything.  I want to know exactly what it is I am taking, and I will look it up online so I am clear on how it works, and what the side-effects are so I can either ask for something else, or at the very least, be aware of what kind of damage I have to mitigate and repair.  Most all pharmaceutical medicines are hard on the body.  Mainly the liver and the kidneys, as they are saturated with them through the blood.  But also, even more importantly, is the effect on the healthy balance of bacteria in the intestinal system.  These are the issues that I personally know.  There are many other issues encountered with the use of pharmaceutical medicines, and I do not take more than the increasingly rare antibiotic.

 My mom raised us on good homemade food and we were for the most part healthy, though my brother did get sick when he was in the 8th grade and I used to get strep throat on a yearly basis.  But no one at our house, not even my parents, not until they were in their 70's, took any kind of regular medications.  And even then, in their later years, it was only one or two.  Not the handful of pills many people seem to be on, once they get on that path.

I am not interested in taking medication should my blood pressure be off.  If my blood pressure is too high, then it means my lifestyle and my diet are out of balance.  I need to stop sweating the small stuff, get outside and walk more, eat better and just generally relax and have more fun.  If I need more help with it, I take herbal remedies which work, and do not have the toxic load on the system as well as unwanted side effects.

If my blood sugar levels need to be controlled, I am more than happy to stop eating the Snickers bars and ice cream, to stop drinking even the 'natural' sodas.  To eat more fresh leafy greens and salads.  To eat fresh fruit for a treat, a snack, dessert. Get outside and walk more. As again, my system is out of balance.

If I have acid reflux, heartburn, I know that I have gotten out of balance, and my liver isn't happy.  So I eat a liver friendly diet, take some liver supporting herbs, and stop doing the things that caused me to get out of balance in the first place.

If my weight is more than I like, I can think of only one solution to lose it, and that is to tighten up my daily food routine (I'd much rather think of it as that, than to think of it as a 'diet'.) and to get outside and walk more, to go to the gym.  At this point in my life, eating a 100% raw vegan diet is the best and easiest way to get the scale moving.  Not to mention how great I feel when I eat this way.  My energy and my mood go way up, mental clarity is improved. 

The more out of balance I am, the more I tighten up my diet, which has resulted in alot of bad habits being dropped over the years.  I used to eat Snickers bars occasionally.  I doubt I will ever eat another.  I used to eat ice cream.  It is a rare event now.  Not even non-dairy ice cream.  And it is not because they are good, or that I don't like them.  I just don't need the extra sugars in my system.  For me, sugars are an issue.  I can eat fruit all day long, but do much better without honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, etc.  I can still use stevia, but it's not for everything.  You can bet I have looked at all of the 'diets' out there.  I have never done a commercial weight loss program, no Weight Watchers, no Jenny Craig, as I have never been more overweight than I am now, which is 20-30 pounds.  If I weighed 20 pounds less, I would look good.  If I weighed 30 pounds less, to my eyes I would look great.  I fully admit to falling for the thin look is best mindset, but I have never leaned towards extreme things to achieve it.  I have sometimes tried to make myself throw-up after eating too much food,  with no real success, and I have on occasion taken herbal laxative capsules to move food more quickly through my system, but overall, especially now that I am in my 50's, the only way I can lose weight is when I eat a vegan diet, one that is mostly, if not 100% raw.   For me, that works.  That along with regular exercise.  I love to get in a good workout ending with a nice session in the steam room 3-4 times a week.  And outdoor walks and hikes.  My husband and I went on a wonderful 3-4 mile hike last weekend in the lower foothills.  Enough uphill to get a good workout, but with plenty of level walking to make for a pleasant hike.  And lots of rock, trees, plants and wildflowers.  I was walking on this trail last fall and the wildflowers in bloom were awesome!

I grew up eating a healthy version of the S.A.D. diet ("Standard American Diet"), and then fell into eating an even healthier version of it after I left home and became sick and basically had to find my own way back to health.  I read and followed Adele Davis, Paavo Airola, Dr. John Christopher, and others.  I started eating more vegetables, making soups that were chock full of red cabbage, carrots, onions, celery, I don't know if I knew about the wonders of kale at that time, I started eating Brewer's yeast for energy as my body seemed to crave it and it was one of the foods mentioned for increasing your health and energy levels.  I took therapeutic doses of Vitamin C, and at lots of plain yogurt (I definitely had a yeast imbalance to overcome).

I had also stopped eating all fruit, yeasted breads, and anything made with any type of sugar added to it.  Salad dressings, alcohol, etc.  I didn't do it because I was following any particular program, I just knew that these foods, even in small amounts, made my issues worse, so I avoided them.