In November 2006, I once again went into a hospital emergency room with horrible stomach pains. They did an ultrasound and said my gallbladder was bad and needed to be removed. I was excited about this, thinking that maybe it was my gallbladder that had been making me sick all those years. I was sure once it was out, I would feel a lot better. Three weeks later, I had it removed. Instead of feeling better, I soon found out that I was even sicker, so sick that I could barely get out of bed. This went on for months before the surgeon’s nurse told me to stop calling and said if I still have problems after a year to call back then. I hung up the phone knowing I would not last a year.
I had many hours that I would lie in bed at this time. I knew I wasn’t ready to just give up and die, and I made a conscious decision that I was going to figure out how to heal my body and live. Around this time, I was lying in bed watching TV when an infomercial came on. It caught my attention right away. There was a guy on the show named Kevin Trudeau talking about his book Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. I was very skeptical—after all, it was an infomercial. I liked what he had to say though, such as “We need to get to the cause of illness” and “We don’t get a headache because we have an aspirin deficiency.” So I ordered the book. It basically said that we need to not eat fast food. Instead, we need to be eating whole organic foods.
I had never thought of the food I was eating as the cause of my being sick. For some reason, I was under the impression that if it was that bad for us, the government wouldn’t allow companies to sell it. I was very naïve! I started eating home-cooked organic food and felt a tiny bit better. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that I started paying more attention to food. I read everything I could get my hands on that talked about food. Most of my life, I had lived off fast food and soda. No wonder I was sick!
One day, I read an article about eating raw food. I thought I would give it a try. I spent one day eating nothing but fresh fruit, which I thought tasted horrible. The next morning, I woke up feeling better than I remember feeling for years and years. I knew I was onto something.
I spent the next six months eating raw for a day or two, but I would get so hungry. So I would cook up an organic meal. As soon as I would eat the cooked food, I would feel so bad that I would have to go to bed for the rest of the day. I got tired of being in bed when I knew that I now had a choice. I decided that I was going to eat just raw and that I was going to eat it until I wasn’t hungry. So I started eating and eating and eating. I would eat a whole watermelon at a time. I was constantly shoving food into my mouth and eating more than I ever remember eating in my life! Meanwhile, I was losing weight and had incredible amounts of energy. I felt like I was a kid again. All my health problems completely disappeared, and I started riding my bicycle everywhere. It was amazing to me that nothing in my body hurt.
Six years later and 100 pounds lighter, I still am following a lifestyle of raw fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ve had ups and downs. I had gone back to eating cooked foods at times, but my health problems always start to come back. I tried the gourmet, high-fat raw way of eating, with lots of pâtés, nuts and seeds, which also brought back a lot of my old health problems. I find that when I stick to fresh fruits and veggies, I thrive. I make sure I eat enough that I always feel full after a meal. I average 3,000 calories a day.
My life is incredible now. I live by bicycle only. Instead of being broke all the time, I now have a savings account and love to travel. With a clear mind, I can accomplish so much with my life. I set goals and love completing those goals. Practicing nonviolent communication has helped me learn to communicate effectively. It seems like everything I set my mind to I am now able to accomplish.
I feel better at 41 than I felt when I was high school. I met a man who gave the fruitarian lifestyle a try. He fell in love with it, too, and we recently got married. I look forward to growing old and having a healthy, vibrant future! Eating foods that are nothing more than vitamins and minerals—alive and bursting with positive energy—is so much fun. 🙂
Wow, what a wonderful and inspirational story. Thank for sharing, I have been reading lots of testimonials on raw food experience, and its beginning to get me ready to at least make half my days food raw. It’s a start.
Kind regards
Rhonda D