Superfoods For a Super You 

Like all people that fall into a raw food lifestyle they all have their stories. Mine is no different. Can you believe I use to be well over the 200 pound mark? When I now say that I look and feel like a completely different person with a whole new outlook on things, I'm not lying. 

As of now I've come to believe most of my issues with my weight gain, which began in my mid-childhood stemmed near the time frame my family moved from Ontario to Alberta when I was around 9 years old and the fact I grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father and the feeling I just never fitted in at school, along with being very shy and emotionally sensitive which all didn't do wonders to the low self-esteem issues I was facing growing up and bouts of depression in my teens.

It wasn't like I really had any major problems with food growing up, I had grown up with my mom working in restaurants, there was farming culture in my families background along with gardening. We ate mostly homemade meals over the packaged or fast food, including a lot of farm fresh products. But like most standard households we still had the standard junky processed goods in our fridge and cupboards when it came to pop, chips, condiments, bread, etc. 

My journey to where I am today began in my early teens, I gave up meat and would begin a 9-10 year long journey of being a vegetarian and off and on vegan, it was partially for the animal welfare and partially because I seemed to be getting sick every time I ate meat products. But with recent events, I've come to think that was my body reacting to what was in the meat, as I do also face environmental and chemical sensitivities. But during that time frame I would hear about David Wolfe through a television program (Mad Mad House) and later on began seeing raw foods popping up here and there through the internet. At first I thought that was crazy, who could eat only raw food. Like most vegetarians I was what I like to call a starchatarian. I ate tonnes of pasta, bread, potatoes, cereals, etc., which was mainly white grains, along with the soy and highly processed faux meats and products for the first couple of years. Though I would later go onto homemade, organic and artisan style whole grain products or even gluten-free products, give up the store brought faux products, and through out the years would also eliminate pop, anything highly processed, soy (unless fermented), most packaged goods (cereal, chips, condiments, etc.), and so forth, with a emphases more towards using whole foods and mainly made-from-starch items, after all I'm about the do-it-yourself.

I really began to take the reins on my health by the time I was 18, around the same time my mom split from my father, but there would still be major emotional and health issues to come, which is a very long story to be getting into and not going there.  But by then I was beginning to open up more to finding out about health and well-being, coming from a punk/hardcore lifestyle I was into the politics and always was into the environmental aspects (my hippie side), so I was getting into a healthier lifestyle, food issues and even more into environmental issues, along with the local and or organic foods. My interest was also sparked in the raw food aspect too and about three years ago I was trying to do one meal a week that was raw and I got onto the green smoothies.  It wasn't until I was desperate at seeing if it would help with knee issues and pain from an old injury I had been dealing with for over a year before that I would go high raw in 2010, I still deal with the knee issues, but to a lesser sense. 

It wasn't until I saw programs for a introduction to raw foods and green smoothies at the library at the beginning of 2010 with Tonya that I would really get into the raw food movement. I was already doing green smoothies, but in a food processor as I didn't have a blender at the time, and I already knew about raw foods. I went as I wanted to maybe meet new people, plus work on one of my goals to break free of my shyness. And with such decided to start going out to the potlucks, along with my mom, that Tonya and Cody put on, which sparked my interest even more and with such both me and my mom increased our raw food intake at home, and I was learning more new things each time to add to my knowledge about health and nutrition. 

I started to see improvements slowly come about, not only in the way I carry myself and my self-esteem, along with my mood swings,  and letting go of body issues I carried emotionally, I was also becoming more outgoing around people. I've always had issues with my skin, and was seeing improvements there with it clearing up, along with improvements with my skin firming up in spots, like my stomach.  I've seen improvements with my eye sight and with the pain and knee issues. I now also have a whole clearer outlook on life, though still have my moments, but that's what being human is all about, as I continue to work on letting go of past happenings and things in my life both physically and emotionally as I work towards a more holistic simplified life. I've always had a passion for being out in nature, having grown up in the country most of my life, but that has flourished even more. So it's no wonder I'm really into gardening, and since I'm into experimenting, I like to see what can grow in Alberta's climate or in containers.

Along with a passion of learning about food systems, I've gotten into wanting to learn more about edible and wild plants, mushrooms and herbalism and among other things such as beekeeping. With my creative and artistic side, I began to let that flow into my food and became more experimental with what I could do. I got over my fears in the past year and started to become huge on sprouting and fermenting. And have gotten into living a more organic and simplified life free of materialistic objects. Those are just some of the many changes I've seen in myself as I continue my journey with not only health and well-being, but how I live my life and working on getting back to the land and a passion at bringing about accessible and sociable changes when it comes to food, health and the environment. 

I continue to flourish each day, and I'm grateful for getting onto the path I'm now walking and continuing to be true to myself and keeping my eyes and brain open and learning new experiences each day.