A Long Time Coming part 2

Ok so hopefully at this point you have all had a chance to sit and read Part 1, about my past and where I came from health-wise.

I am going to back track just a little to about 2007, towards the end of the year, I couldn’t give you an exact date as I was pretty messed up then… and I don’t remember too many fine details about dates and things, this unfortunately was another of the issues I was having... short term and long term memory loss/ issues.

It also wasn’t a split second decision nor something I jumped straight into, so I think it would have been over a period of several weeks that I came to a massive turning point in my life, on a lot of levels.

Firstly I decided that I had had enough! I was tired of everything, tired physically, mentally, emotionally and also spiritually.. I was just absolutely weary to the bone from everything.

I had had enough of being told that there was nothing much I could do about my situation apart from taking more and more medications, and possibly surgery.

I was tired of constantly going on radical diets and getting no where in an attempt to alleviate some of the issues created by the massive weight gain from the lack of mobility coupled with the crazy concoction of medications I was taking.

I knew I had to do something, myself... something, anything.. because no one else who was meant to care about my wellbeing (ei. Doctors, physicians care givers etc.) Seemed to have any answers much less any interest in getting me better apart from treating me like some interesting specimen in a petri dish, simply because my “case” was “so unusual” and they wanted to study me!

I was sick of the side effects of the drugs and sick of being mis-diagnosed and given drugs I shouldn’t even have been on.

I was soooo disillusioned with medical practitioners, even the specialists, no one seemed to have a clue about what was really wrong with me and then what to even do about it apart from throw more tablets at me.

I was also sick and tired of constantly being in financial distress because of massive medical expenses that I simply couldn’t keep up with.

So it was time to take matters into my own hands, I started to research into things. First I found out as much info as I could about the illnesses and issues that I already knew I had.

And then I did more research, and some more, I read sooo much stuff about all of it, and one common thing I kept coming up with, was nutrition. I read an article about sugar and how it can cause all kinds of health problems as well as exasperate existing problems and make them worse. I read so many articles and watched so many videos, and documentaries. I found out that 85% of the worlds illnesses have a basis in nutrition.. I read that todays doctors and physicians only get about 4hrs of training/study in nutrition in their whole entire 6yrs of study, if even at all.

I started looking at labels at the supermarket… I was taken aback to find that half of the ingredients list of just about every product I picked up was just a bunch of numbers that I had no clue about, that’s even if I could read the rest of the names on there anyway much less understand what those things were… When I looked into them, I found out that the majority of the additives or items that were just “numbers” were substances that came with warnings and had significant side effects if consumed regularly or over periods of time, which in most case is a given when eating our every day supermarket items.

I decided that in order for things to change for me I needed to change.

So I decided based on everything I had been reading that I needed to remove some things from what I consumed on a day to day basis, and if what I was reading was correct, I should feel a lot better!

So I did three things, very simple on some levels, but in some ways quite drastic and not that easy.

I decided to stop eating sugar, bread & pasta.

That’s all I did. All of a sudden I discovered just howwwww many foods (what I classed as food back then) were just FULL of sugar! And full of gluten.

One of the biggest things that totally floored me, was the misconception about low fat or fat free food items as opposed to the full fat option. The fat free or low fat items had soooo much sugar in them!!! I couldn’t work this out at first, ok so our body turns the sugar we eat into fat especially when the sugar is excess to what our body needs to use immediately.. so what on earth is the point of the low fat or fat free diet foods? Our body is just going to turn all that sugar into fat stores… back to square one on the dieting!

So I decided from then on to never go for anything that was “diet” or fat free/ low fat… I was just going to have full fat items.. for example full cream milk etc.

I started to watch everything I ate, in the sense that unless it was the sugar naturally occurring in fruit or veg, I wasn’t going to touch it.

The hardest one was not having sugar in my coffees anymore, but it wasn’t long before I actually enjoyed my coffee more, with no sugar.

I figured that if I didn’t know what was in my food and I couldn’t ascertain whether it had sugar or gluten in it (I had found out pretty quick from cutting out bread and pasta that I was gluten intolerant) then I didn’t want to eat it. No more processed foods for me!

I also decided that I was going to give myself the choice to have or not have something and not beat myself up about it if I did have something with sugar or gluten in it, or anything that was really bad for me. But with that choice came the knowledge of what it would do to my body and my health if I did have it. So it wasn’t so hard in that light to say no to things.

Its amazing how much your perception of things changes when you become educated on the truths about things, and become very frank and honest with yourself.

So all of a sudden, with next to no exercise, weight just started to drop off of me, I wasn’t even dieting, or restricting how much I ate, in fact at times I ate much more than I previously would have.

I had my full cream milk, the skin on my chicken, butter on my potatoes etc etc. And still the weight kept dropping.

Of course this helped my back as I wasn’t carrying so much weight anymore, as well as that my self esteem rose too. Within about an 8-9 month period I lost a total of about 50kg (110lb)

For the first time in a long time I started to believe in myself again.

I knew that I was headed in the right direction. I gained back my social life, a renewed energy for the things I had always loved to do but had put aside because I was too sick to even care about them.

For the first time I had the brain space to actually deal with and sort through some of the things that had happened to me which I hadn’t been able to deal with because I was so clogged up with everything else, and so caught up with simply surviving from one day to the next. Finally I was starting to be at peace with myself about a lot of things.

I was feeling good about myself again.

Moving forward a few years, even though I had lost all the weight, I looked better, felt better, was better able to cope with things and was back in the social scene, my back was a lot better, but I was still on so many prescription drugs and still in and out of hospitals and Dr. offices because even though I was much better for having lost the weight and changing my eating habits, and I seemed to never get the flu anymore or stomach bugs and common ailments etc.. I was still essentially very unwell, i was still suffering from some massive illnesses. I was just managing myself better and doing just ok.

Being that I was constantly looking into things, I would spend a decent amount of time online, researching, looking into my illnesses, trying to find ways to cope better or make my life easier for me, or less painful.

And that’s pretty much what I did, I  managed my illnesses and I managed my pain, I tolerated it because I simply had to. I didn’t get a choice in that one. The pain was always there to a certain level no matter what I did.

So I managed to cope.

Last year all that changed.

A pretty monumental discovery had me doing what I would never in a million years have considered, and had you told me the previous year that I would be disease and illness free & medication free in 2012, I would have laughed at you.

So during one of my “sitting on my laptop checking out stuff online” sessions… I quite accidentally came across something I had not heard of before. It was something called “Raw Vegan”  at this point I didn’t even know what the difference was between vegetarian and vegan, simply because it was not something I was into nor looked into.

What I read and discovered about the raw vegan lifestyle totally blew my mind. I just HAD to try it… surely it was going to help my situation, even if was just a little bit, surely with everything I had learned about nutrition and also already put into practice, surely if that helped then this would too.

When I decided to jump head first into the world that is “Raw Vegan”

I had no inkling of just HOW massively this was going to impact on me and totally transform my life and way of living.

So I had done my due diligence and like I do with everything these days, I thoroughly researched the Raw Vegan lifestyle, (for about 3mths!) and on the 16^th of October 2011 I jumped off the deep end…

I had removed everything from my kitchen and pantry that did not sit in line with a Raw Vegan way of eating. It was actually very liberating.

So began a new chapter in my life, a truly amazing one.

I have learnt so much its insane, about not only my physical health, but also my emotional, mental and spiritual health. Its all linked together.

One thing is certain... I was very wrong, changing to a Raw Vegan lifestyle didn’t just help me a little bit, it not only eradicated all of my illnesses one by one, but I am officially not on any medication at all anymore, and these were things I was supposed to be taking for the rest of my life! Even my misshapen pupil from the iritis has corrected itself!

From day one I felt a shift in my energy levels, and I just kept feeling better and better. I was getting so much energy it was crazy! It’s been a great adventure of discovery and renewal.

I have never felt more alive and awake. My body feels “clean”.

I sleep like a baby, I have such mental clarity its unreal… and that’s just a couple of the massive positive changes. Absolutely every aspect of my life has improved, from the Physical, all the way to the Emotional, Mental & Spiritual etc.

I will never look back, except to draw from experiences and move forward, I’ve got a totally new perspective on life, a new hope, a new drive, my future is a bright one, full of promise, hope, love, peace…

My whole focus in life has changed, I still love to do those things that I enjoyed over the years, and in some ways am even better at them now than i used to be, but mostly my drive now is to help others, I want to be able to give back to the world where I have gained.

I believe everyone should have a chance to live life to the fullest, to be educated in truth, to understand and to know what is real.

~ namaste ~