For me, raw food is an essential part in staying eating disorder free. There was honestly a time when I knew the eating disorder I was struggling with was dangerous. Not only did it have physical consequence, but also it kept me from maturing emotionally. I would be stuck in the same place until I pushed myself to heal. Being thin was much more important that my physical and emotional health. I could read articles about how dangerous anorexia and bulimia are, but the importance of my health wasn’t enough to bring me to my senses. So what’s the point in spending a lot of money and time with a counselor or psychiatrist so they can tell you that you are damaging your body when you already know that, but aren’t ready to do anything about it? I spent years unraveling my past with several different counselors, but in the end, I still obsessed over what I ate. Maybe it wasn’t only my past that was giving me issues with food.

There are so many aspects to eating disorders and dieting. To name a few: the food we eat, beliefs we hold, what we have been told about food, and society’s expectation of how we should eat or what size we should be can all make an impression on us as we go through life.

I came to understand how much the food we eat affects our emotional state when I started to eat more raw foods. If you have browsed other raw food sites or downloaded materials written by other successful raw food enthusiasts, you are already familiar with how eating raw food can free emotions. This is so true, and I want to help you look further into this truth by sharing my own personal experience.

I didn’t know anything about releasing emotions through changing the way you eat when I started with raw food. I really knew nothing about raw food. No one suggested it for me and I had no one to guide me. I was a bit secretive when started preparing raw food because I didn’t want anyone to think I was dieting. Being secretive about food was nothing new for me. Part of this urge to hide my feelings about food comes from the pressures my parents put on me when they were making me gain weight after being as low as 88 lbs. at the age of 16. I know that their fear for my life instigated these pressures, and they encouraged me to eat anything that would make me gain weight. Who cares what it was as long as it had a lot of calories, right? This was not really effective because of course I was making the choice of eating banana crème pie and ice cream and hating myself afterwards. Maybe these foods make you feel good for a short time while you are enjoying them with a friend and the sugar is sending off temporary “feel-good” signals to the want-to-be-happy part of your brain, but the continuous consumption of sugar makes your feel rotten. If sugar can rot your teeth, think about it what it does to the rest of your body! Sugar also grows diseases so how can you be happy and healthy from eating enough cheesecake and chocolate covered cherries to make you gain weight? Out bodies instinctively DO NOT want this! I was gorging on bad foods full of calories to appease my parents, but running myself to death in secret trying to keep from letting food get the best of me. I know that poor food choices do poor things to our bodies and this makes us want to constantly look for a successful diet to follow. In my opinion, constant dieting is an eating disorder. Our bodies do not want to feel bad. They want to be well, beautiful, and full of life. We choose diets and eating disorders as an attempt to bring us back into the balance we desire. This is not the way to find it. A way to begin to find balance again is through the right food choices. Now I know a lot about eating and emotions. Have you downloaded my Go Raw and Let Go! Ebook yet? This 40 page book goes into detail about how we can prevent ourselves from suffocating our emotions with food and stop emotional eating for good. Because we have a soul and a spirit, we naturally have emotions that need to arise and be set free. If not, we will continue to eat in response to these feelings’ attempts to be felt.

I cannot say that if I had been raised on a raw vegan diet, I would not have had to battle eating disorders for such a long time. It is not just food that played a part in this game. My personality is inclined to succumb to something like this. Some individuals are not as affected by the things they eat as others. My husband, for instance, knows that Doritos make him feel like crap, but his outlook on it is different than mine. He typically doesn’t eat them because of that or if he does eat them at a Super Bowl Party, he doesn’t freak out about it. Me on the other hand, I know that Doritos are bad for me, but in the old days, that would make me want to eat them. Then after eating them, I would panic and find some way to purge them from my system. That is nothing more than self-hatred. If I had learned to eat in a way that was healing to myself physically and emotionally from a young age, maybe I would never have hated my body, my feelings, or myself. But I am not sure this is something that can completely be taught by someone else. This is something that is learned through experience once having been on the other side. The side where we eat what our culture suggests, and we are constantly in search of a way to escape from this unnatural, unbalanced way of feeding our body and soul. Eating disorders are our attempted escape.

A high raw vegan diet will not work for everyone. We are created to be different, and what works for one may detriment another, but coming back to our origins and eating more fruits and vegetables will benefit everyone. “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” ~ Genesis 1:29. Truly, there is a way to eat and be well. I know this because after I started eating more raw foods and my mind began to clear, I had a wonderful vision. I quickly had a glimpse of a man sitting in a lion’s den. The lions were leaving him alone (faith). I was sleeping, but I knew my vision was of Daniel. I remember the children’s version of the Bible story from my childhood, but it was not until I mentioned this dream to a friend that I remembered the rest of the story. Daniel ate only vegetables instead of defiling himself with the King’s food. After 1O days he was stronger than all of the King’s men. This vision had a purpose for me. I was healing and I was beginning to understand why. For so many years of my life, I had been defiling myself with the King’s food; rich, over served and overeaten amounts of food. When really all my body needed was some vegetables to help me come to my senses. Too much food and drink could still throw me out of my peaceful place with food if I were to engage again. We are beautiful because we were made to be beautiful, and we want to love and be loved. Food that causes us to over consume and feel lousy makes it easy to forget that.

Knowing this now, I easily keep myself well by eating so many fruits and vegetables. I am able to stay in touch with my needs and feelings. Stress doesn’t win me over anymore because I am solid and strong from the way that I eat. But, this healing journey has had some bumps and bruises along the way. It took me some time to find the confidence I should have in myself and over what I eat. Once I could get to this place the healing was exponential. I am well, and I am equipped to begin sharing healing with others. I am still healing, and I think I will always be. I surprise myself each day that I am more well than I ever thought I would be. In life, comments and actions may occasionally knock us down, but we can be strong enough to get right back up where we left off.

Remember to smile when you are preparing beautiful, healthy food. Food as it should be. Be thoughtful and thankful for your choices and desires. Take joy in sharing and teaching others how to feel good and be well.