DO WHAT YOU WILL: It is your experience, after all

I’ve been chatting with a marvelous man over the past few days… (oh! you sigh! she’s in love! Well, if a close alignment of minds counts, it is so… as it is, we are both electronic entities to each other, and that is likely the way it will stay… doncha just love our world?)

Never mind!!! I have been chatting with this electronic soulmate over the past few days and there has been such a meeting of the minds that I just must tell you, without revealing the object of my devotion.

We both share an interest in Ann Wigmore’s work and focus. Oh! That does make my heart sing!

The best thing is that he agrees with me that gurus are to be taken at face value (I think he has come up through the ! Surprise!!!! You are your own mystic!!!! school, as I seem to have done.)

Here I am talking about raw food gurus…. We may run into several raw food gurus in the course of our search for raw food information. I consider myself blessed that there simply were no raw food gurus when I started being raw by accident. Heck! There was one “cookbook”.

I survived. I did well, and I kept happy. Even more important, I have managed to stay on a raw track for several decades. One of the ways I have done this is that there has been no one to tell me what to do or give me rules. In the late 70s, I picked up on Ann Wigmore’s teachings and began doing what seemed sensible to me along those lines.

The next book I found, years later, in 1999, was Rose Lee Calabro’s Living in the Raw, which made me aware of all the benefits of owning a Champion juicer and a dehydrator. That book got me started making new kinds of meals (yippee!)

Over the years, as new books have appeared, I have read some of the gurus’ works, and I have adopted ideas that seemed to make sense to me. My simple guideline has always been does it make sense? I would hope that this is the guideline everyone uses because it makes everything so easy, and it makes it much easier to keep on keeping on.

Things that don’t make sense to me are programs that tell me that I must follow their ideas exclusively, and to the letter. I have found substantial health benefits without following any one program to the letter.

I pick and choose among ideas that come to me. I think natural hygiene is a pretty good idea, and I have a chart on my refrigerator to remind me. I think 100% raw vegan is a good idea, but I know that humans are human, and I think that any raw is better than no raw…. Everyone has to start somewhere, and, unless a person is suffering a life-threatening challenge, such as cancer or MS, which, I think, will respond best and most effectively to a totally raw regime, I think that people should do what they can as they can. I also think that if you insist on 100% compliance, many people will lie to you (and I believe that many of the so-called gurus are probably not 100% raw/100% the regime they espouse 100% of the time. I did believe in Gypsy Boots, but I would not be devastated to learn that he, too, deviated from the straight and narrow. I know that T.C. Fry did, but I do not believe that detracts from the ideas which he espoused.)

In my nutrition counseling practice, I work with all sorts of people. Many of them are on a SAD diet. I work with them to change their diet to a healthier one, but I do not insist that they go raw, or vegetarian, or even organic…. I simply work out a plan that they will be most easily able to follow if they want to achieve the results they say they are after. If they ask me how I have achieved the results I have, I tell them, but I help them find ways that they can use. Some of them eventually come to me for more raw food information, and some of them succeed on an improved SAD diet. I think that all of this helps me be a more powerful counselor for people who are looking for help with a transition to a raw food lifestyle… I have more information, more tactics, more leeway to offer. I know what works for me, I know what has worked for my successful clients, I know what has worked for some of my friends, and I know what doesn’t necessarily produce results, although it looks good. Viva diversity!!!!

I have quit groups which proclaim a one-regime focus. That may have been a loss for me in the area of social contacts, but I think it is better that I not sit quietly and bite my tongue and inwardly sneer at their insistence and their claims, when I know that, for me, those things do not work and/or might be dangerous.

My focus is, as always, on long term positive results. I have maintained this weight relatively easily for more than 5 years. Yes, I am vigilant, but what makes the vigilance easy is that I am raw vegan and I eat a substantial amount of protein each day and restrict my carbohydrate intake (do not gasp too loudly!!!! Your shock comes from your SAD background, not from the reality of fruit, vegetables, and nuts.) That just means that I mostly eat low glycemic fruit and vegetables. Go look at the low glycemic list of fruit and vegetables and re-assure yourself that I have plenty of variety and plenty to eat.)

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WHY DOES DIABETES DISAPPEAR? Why are medical professionals stymied?

I’m just slightly amazed or even disturbed right now as I enjoy the uncommon luxury of watching daytime TV…. Just now, on the Montel Williams show, two surgeons have been discussing gastric bypass surgery and showing morbidly obese people, and film clips of their operations (I imagine we may see the post-surgery people and hear their testimonies).

What so disturbs me is that one of the surgeons has just said that the medical profession has no idea why , in patients with diabetes, after the surgery, in 85% of the cases, the diabetes disappears…..

They have no idea??? How come I know then??

The reason the diabetes disappears is that one of the side-effects of gastric bypass surgery is that patients can tolerate only very small amounts of food, and they cannot tolerate sugars and starches easily. With only a few ounces of food at a time, and without the sugars and starches, and the junk food, of course, the diabetes vanishes. What is so difficult to understand here?

I have often worked with obese diabetic clients who, as they eliminated starches and sugars from their diets, found that their insulin requirements decreased or even ceased. This is one of the major selling points that Atkins used for his low-carb regimen, and it remains right-on!

The Atkins Diet recommends reducing carbohydrates to such a daily low that it is virtually impossible to eat even a slice of bread (which exceeds the daily carb limit for the Induction Phase). Atkins derivatives, such as 40-30-30 and the Zone limit the carbs by requiring that any eating be done in a regimented combination of 40% carbs with 30% protein and 30% fat (it is very hard to eat enough protein to justify the carbs in a Twinkie, and it is boring to go searching for protein just to justify a handful of potato chips).

Although most raw foodists hold that simply adopting a raw food diet will bring about noticeable weight reduction in those who need it, the Atkins system can be followed by raw foodists, as well. Eating low glycemic index vegetables and fruit in the early phases of raw food diet can help satisfy the psychological desire that many beginners have to keep eating.… 2 cups of raw spinach have only 4 grams of carbohydrates!!!!

Eliminating high glycemic fruit and vegetables at the start of a raw food diet can help with other health issues (such as candidiasis, arthritis, candidiasis, hypoglycemia, menopause-related issues, and even cancer), as well and eating raw nuts and seeds can also help to stave off cravings. As a matter of fact, the Atkins diet Induction Phase very closely mirrors the Phase One Candidiasis diet (which is very low-carb), and the vegetable, fruit, nut and seed sections of the Phase One Candidiasis diet very closely conform to raw food recommendations as to suitable diet inclusions (yes, of course, raw foodists are supposed to ignore the animal products listed in the candidiasis diet).

Adoption of a low-carbohydrate diet, low in sugars and starches of any kind, is key to reducing insulin dependency. Added side effects include (but are not limited to) the amazing fact that weight reduction will more than likely follow (although the connection here has the allopathic medical profession puzzled), and healing or amelioration of a number of medical issues (which the medical profession tends to view as unrelated to weight issues, and prefers to treat as independent issues, rather than as symptoms).

BEFORE & AFTER – so you know

I have just found an old picture (from a family reunion in 2000), and a picture of me now. I was a cute round girl, but I like myself now.

I’d like to make this so you can see it when you first come to my blog, but, until I learn how, here are the pictures.

this is me in my old britches.

I got here on low carb raw.