Sisterhood Spotlight: Meet Lyn Wright. She’s Making it Go Right on Raw Food

Hi!  My name is Lyn and I’m soooo excited to be a part of this group. (I’ve recently come onboard as the new director of the Raw Diva website!)

I’ve been a fan and follower of The Raw Divas site since it first came out.  It has helped me a lot and I love telling others about it.  I love how it’s actually a community and that things are kept FUN!

I’ve been interested in nutrition for a loooong time (yes – I’m old!) because I was very motivated to find a better way to handle my health problems.

I didn’t get off to a very good start.

As a toddler I had severe asthma which also led to catching anything that came along.  My mom was a chain smoker but no one back in the 50’s thought to tell her not to smoke around me!

For fear that I’d miss too much school, my doctor put me on ‘desensitizing shots’.  This seemed to stop the asthma during the 5 years while on the shots, but it caused weight gain and after the shots were done, the asthma, while far less frequent, would flare up at times.

My ‘teen rebellion’ was to reject the food I’d grown up with, reject the idea of using medical drugs to handle health issues and start trying to eat right and exercise so as to control the asthma without drugs.

At that time there wasn’t all the information there is now, and I’d barely heard anything about a vegetarian diet, much less a raw diet.

My ‘big changes’ were things like using ‘whole wheat’ flour, eating less meat, and using honey instead of sugar. Can you imagine – that was radical in my world back then!  My mom hated whole wheat bread and purposely sought out the whitest bread she could find!  My brothers still tease me about my first whole wheat/honey cookies that they decided were perfect for their sling shots!

I had pretty good success.  My tactic was to improve the removal of toxins – with running and exercise, while at the same time increasing my nutrient intake.  This helped prevent the asthma and helped control my weight for the most part.  I also handled PMS by observing what I would crave, usually chips, and realizing that the very foods I was craving were the ones that caused extra bloating and therefore extra pain.  Once I stopped eating the stuff I was craving right before my period, I had no more PMS. I felt great most of the time.  I thought I was pretty hot stuff.

I had a rude awakening during my pregnancy.

I got really sick!  And I mean REALLY sick!  Not just morning sickness.  I couldn’t hold anything down, hurt everywhere, had heart palpations, asthma back with a vengeance and I had a ‘glaucoma’ attack and lost some of my vision.  Not only did I feel horrible, I worried about my baby and it also hit my pride.  Here I’d thought I was eating so much better than everyone around me and knew what I was doing.

Once again I found nutrition served me well.  An acquaintance ordered me (love her!) to go get Adelle Davis’s book and do her anti-stress program – NOW!  We went out and bought a TON of vitamins and everything we needed for her ‘protein’ drink.  She had you sip on 4 oz. of the drink and take a huge handful of vitamins every 3 hours, around the clock, if awake.

It was amazing.  I went to feeling like I was on my deathbed to back at work in 3 days.  As long as I continued on it, I did great.  And funny thing was, it was a milk based drink.  I know now that I’m allergic to milk! It’s still one of the mysteries of life how in the world it helped me so much.  My theory: I think I was absorbing about zero nutrition, and that it threw so much in, that even if I only absorbed 10%, it was enough to start improving things.  And I also know now that my adrenals were shot and that it was a program designed to help the adrenals.

So, I recovered from that ordeal. Nursed my son (for a loooong time), determined to reduce his risk of developing allergies.  (which worked!)

In the many years between then and now about all I’ve struggled with was weight.  Occasionally the Asthma.  I was semi-vegetarian.  I didn’t eat meat all the time, and more like a seasoning when I did. Not as a main course.

When Fit for Life came out it moved me closer to being a vegetarian.  And somewhere in there I found out some of the foods I was allergic to.

Age, Pre-menopause and Menopause have brought a lot of new challenges. Weight issues, eyes worse, more aches and pains, nails getting weak, moods not so great at times… I started reading more and more and looking for more answers.

I discovered the raw food movement about 6 years ago.  I didn’t jump in fully but I did at least eat more raw foods, made green smoothies daily when they came out, and ate a lot more greens.

Then about 3 years ago, I went to a nutritionist and through hair analysis found out my minerals were low, adrenals low and soon after thyroid low.  Then thanks to the Gianni’s recommending doing blood tests once in awhile and a program by Dr. Rita Marie, I found out my vitamin D levels were low and verified the thyroid is low.  Taking the vitamin D made a huge difference in how I felt.

Then at a free test I also found out I had some osteopenia.

Yikes – I was getting horrified.  I thought I was one of the people taking good care of myself.  How could this be???  What isn’t falling apart?!

I read a few things that gave me a wakeup call.  One talked about not procrastinating when it came to handling any health issues.  It’s so easy to put off an exercise program, to lose the weight you need to lose, to really lose the bad eating habits that are hurting your health.  I think it was Dr. Berg.  Then he also had a post about how it’s wrong to think just a little bit won’t hurt – it can!

I realized, I had all this information, but I had never really broken free of all the cravings and bad habits that prevented me from really eating an optimum diet.   It was great I hadn’t eaten the SAD diet all my life.  But I’d never really done enough to fully address all the harm that had been done early on.

So, I decided I really needed to step it up.  Really get off of chocolate and sugar this time.  Truly stop eating any foods I’m allergic to (like gluten!).  Not even a little bit.  No more food samples where I work.  No more thinking, ‘It’s just one bite.’

Then Raw Divas to the rescue!

Even though I send people there a lot, I hadn’t really participated for a long time.  I did the 3 day green smoothie challenge and then went right onto the 21 day cleanse. It has really made a huuuggggge difference.  I have been doing so much better – and for longer – than any other time I’ve tried being high raw.  I’m off of chocolate and sugar and not craving them.  I’ve been completely gluten free for over two months.  Completely milk free for two months.

I’ve finally lost some weight, aches and pains reduced to almost nothing, no headaches, more energy, sleeping a lot better, a lot more cheerful and playful ….

I feel empowered!  When there are bad foods around, I haven’t been the least bit interested in cheating.   It is so freeing to just do it and get to the place where you are not fighting with yourself.  Trying hard to resist, then failing to resist, then beating yourself up over it!

I should have stayed connected up 3 years ago when I did my first Raw Divas program!

Here’s a list of some of the things I think really helped me. Maybe it will help you.

1. Get connected up to like-minded people – like Raw Divas – and do the programs, access the online community and connect!
2. Keep reading – you never know when you’ll read something that will help you understand your situation better or give a tip that moves things forward. Do like Tera says, observe for yourself what is working or not and trust that you can figure out what works for you better than any ‘expert’ can.  You can get the help of a nutritionist or health oriented doctor, but don’t make them responsible for your health.  You be the captain.
3. Really decide – no more procrastinating. Why not have great health now, before things have gotten so bad that now you have to take action.  It’s never too late – but don’t wait for a heart attack, diabetes or cancer to decide it’s time to take action.
4. Get rid of the idea that a little bit doesn’t hurt. The foods you are probably tempted by are the ones that are VERY addictive – meat, cheese, chocolate, sugar, salt.   Or, they are foods you are allergic too.  And, if they are a processed food they will also have additives to make them even more addictive – like MSG, sugar and salt.   The more you eat of them, the harder the ‘addiction’ and the harder to stay away from them.
5. Use Fit-day! While on the cleanse Tera introduced us to Fitday.  This was a real eye-opener.  I saw that I wasn’t getting enough calories during the day, which was why I was over-eating at night.  And, I could see that I was eating way too much fat!   It was amazing to see how just a little bit of nuts could take me from 15% fat for the day to 30-40% for the day.
6. Journaling. Telling other people in the group what I was eating, how I was feeling, how I was doing, seeing how they were doing, sharing tips – really is a big help!  This really helped me to sort out issues that made me reach for the wrong foods or overeat.
7. Decide to make life more fun! Finding things that gave me pleasure – like great music, great conversations, activities I enjoy.  Don’t let food be the main entertainment.
8. I didn’t do this intentionally – but somewhere in there I stopped watching TV for an hour each night before going to bed.  I think getting busier with things I enjoyed or wanted to work on made this happen.  It was part of the ‘put more fun’ in my life decision.

Here’s my recipe that I used when weaning myself off of chocolate.  By making my green smoothie a ‘chocolate smoothie’ temporarily, I didn’t become a rabid chocoholic later in the day.

‘Get me off of chocolate Green Smoothie’

Ingredients:

• About 2 cups of water
• ¼-1/2 cup frozen blueberries (or other berries)
• 1 heaping T of raw chocolate powder (once I was out, I just continued with the carob and didn’t miss the chocolate)
• 2 heaping T of raw carob powder
• A big shake of cinnamon and big shake of Kelp powder (optional)
• ½ – 1 avocado (optional – I don’t usually add avocadoes, but I wanted this one creamy like a chocolate shake)
• Huge amount of spinach – 3 – 4 big handfuls until the entire top of the blender was full.

So, that’s my story!  A BIG thank you to everyone at Raw Divas!  I love you all!

Xoxoxo,

Lyn Wright