All of my life I felt sick. I remember especially at age 12 I started having IBS in the form of chronic diarrhea. Also at the age of 12 was when I started having severe depression and mood swings. During the lunch hour at school I would sit in a corner by myself in a state of extreme depression. As I grew older I continued to slowly gain weight and continued to feel worse and worse. In my mid 20's I started taking anti-depressants, which would help temporarily but then I would after a while I would have to take more in order to feel their effects. By the time I was 34 years old I felt so sick all the time that I was sure I was dying and my depression was worse than ever even though I was on the highest dose of effexor that they would allow. I was also at my heaviest then, weighing 250lbs, eating fast food three times a day and guzzling a 6 pack of pepsi daily. I went to doctor after doctor only to be told over and over again that it was all in my head and nothing was wrong with my body. Finally in one of my emergency room visits after getting an ultra sound I was told that my gal bladder was full of stones and needed to be taken out. Surgery was scheduled a month out and I wasn't sure if I would survive another month. At the time I felt I would get better if I could just make it to surgery. I was sure that my gal bladder is what had been causing all of my health problems since I was 12. After the surgery I went straight to Sonic and got my favorite breakfast burrito. I immediately broke out into a sweat and the pain in my body was even worse than before surgery. I was devastated and called the surgeon only to be told by the nurse that some people don't get better right away and it could take a year before I got better. I didn't think I would last a year.

Somehow I was determined to survive. One day I was so miserable and in pain laying in bed when this infomercial came one. I felt too bad to even bother to change the channel. The guy on TV was talking about how the food we were being fed was bad for us and that we could heal our bodies by changing our diets. He was selling a book "What they don't want you to know" by Kevin Trudeau...or something close to that. I was so sick and desperate that I ordered the book, thinking it can't make me any worse! A few days later the book arrived and I dove into it. It talked about all the preservatives, chemicals, pesticides that are in our food and how the food was making people sick. I thought...I've got nothing to lose...so I changed what I ate. I started cooking at home instead of heading to McDonalds or ordering pizza. I started to feel a little better but not great. Just feeling a little better though made me realize that changing what I ate could make me feel better. I started reading more about food and one day came across an article that talked about raw food and living enzymes. Ah-ha...I thought, maybe I am not producing my own enzymes and I should eat food that has living enzymes in it. So I switched to eating raw fruits and veggies. I immediately felt fantastic within a day. I had no idea I could feel so good since I had never felt that good at any point in my entire life. I went on a roller coaster for about 6 months where I would eat all fruit and veggies for a few days and feel so good but then I would feel so hungry I thought I would starve to death and eat some cooked food. As soon as I would eat the cooked food I would immediately feel horrible..literally within a few minutes of eating the food. After about six months of this cycle I decided that I was done feeling bad and I went 100% raw. I felt so good and had great energy. Not only that I seemed to think quicker and clearer. I decided to quit taking my anti-depressants since my depression seemed to be gone. I quit taking effexor cold turkey...which is a very very bad idea...I went through 3 months of horrible drug withdrawls. After coming out of that horrible experience I felt even better, so I decided to quit smoking cigarettes..which was hard, but nothing like getting off effexor.

So here I was eating all raw fruits and veggies and feeling amazing, losing weight like crazy while having endless amounts of energy. The only think missing was other people who ate like me. I started searching for other raw foodies who lived in Boise and I found them. They introduced me to a whole different world of raw food eating. I was shown how to soak nuts and seeds, how to make raw brownies, raw pies, raw crackers...etc. I started making all of these great recipes and eating tons of prepared raw foods. I didn't really even need to eat fruits and veggies anymore I could eat all this other food that tasted just like to food I was "used to", the food I grew up eating. After about 3 month of eating like this I started to feel bad again. I started to feel depressed, gain weight, have mood swings. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I was eating "the best diet in the world", why was my health failing again?

It was around this time in my life that I met a lady named Michele who was attending a raw food class I was co-teaching. Michele told me about a book called 80/10/10 by Dr. Doug Graham. She said that maybe I was eating too many fats. I was skeptical but I read the book anyway. The book made logical sense and I thought I should at least try what Dr. Graham was suggesting. In the book he was saying that our diets need to be made up of mostly fruits and veggies with very little nuts, seeds, avocado's or any overt fats. 80 percent carbs, 10 percent fat, 10 percent protein. So I started eating fruits and veggies again and immediately felt better, just like before when I started eating them.

So this is where I am at. 2 years later I am still eating 80/10/10. I do slip up now and then and even eat cooked food at times but I always regret it and feel my very best when I follow 80/10/10 a hundred percent. I continue to struggle with my food addictions, but my life is incredible over all.

In another blog I will share how I made a connection to the earth and how that changed my life in such a way I got rid of my truck and am now a year round cyclist. Also this year I planted 14 fruit trees around my neighborhood.