Purple Ann's Wake Up Call

My Birthday Memories

I just had the most excellent birthday. I chose to spend it watching Red Kites because I had seen one flying down our valley a couple of months ago and it had blown me away it was so spectacular.

A beautiful bird that has a wing span of 5 to 6 feet, they are huge. I believe that the conditions were perfect. It was overcast and slightly drizzly, which meant that they were flying low and we were wrapped up in light weight waterproofs so we could sit down on wet benches with no problem. We had driven to Watlington because I had read that this was where they had been reintroduced after their virtual extinction.

When we arrived in the car park and got out of the car there were five or six red kites circling over head. Because the weather was overcast the birds remained low flying and were so close I was buzzing all day. Every where I looked there were Red Kites looking like teredactals. We followed one of the walks outlined on the Watlington website which lead us through some lovely country side where we saw a black cap. The route was really easy to follow and at just before 1pm we arrived  at the Fox and Hounds at Christmas Common. I had booked ahead because it was Easter Sunday and I wanted to make sure we would have somewhere to eat.

As a raw vegan I needed to be happy with the choices they were going to offer me especially as it was my birthday. They did very well for me especially as i had only told them that i am a Vegan I had not specified the raw side of it. I suppose I assumed that with it being Easter Sunday it was more extra work than necessary to cater for me if there was no prior knowledge which i felt was most likely.

I chose the Green and White Apsparagus with baby Cress. This was served with lemon mayonaise which was felt might contain egg so it was left out and an interesting green light flavourful oil was drizzled over them.  This was really tasty and it had evidently been steamed which is a good alternative to raw.

Then next course was fussli and toasted pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes, although the fussuli was white instead of whole wheat the flavours were excellent and the service was friendly and courteous and we were made to feel special as it appeared was everyone else, which was nice.

We rejected all of the puddings because they were either based on dairy or sugar or both, I had packed a raspberry sheeze cake and a chocolate Galleta each and so David and I walked down the hill back into Watlingon, where the nutrient filled mind expanding super food goodies had perfectly defrosted to be in just the perfect mouth watering state to thrillingly wash through and revitalise us. This is a picture of them the raspberry one being the red one.

(If you would like to taste these rather than just drool over them then go to my website and I will tell you how you can.)

As we sat in the car park so many of the red kites flew around over head my memories are filled with amazing images that I will hold forever..

I will write more as the coming weeks go by because there are some really exciting things that I will tell you about that will enable you to sample for free some amazing drinks and foods that will transform your life. They have transformed mine, come and see for yourself.

My Raw Story Part 2

I had used my juicer so much that I had burnt out the motor which gave the perfect opportunity to by a masticating juicer that I could make super healthy green juices with and my blender was so old that it used to take me a good 5 to 10 minutes twisting it one way and the other just trying to make it connect so I used that as the perfect excuse to buy myself the top of the range blender a Vitamix 5000. I was so swept away by the information I was gathering and it all made so much sense to me that I went fully into it, booking myself into a week long course at the UK Centre for Living Foods in Ludlow in the first two months of starting my raw food transition.

I had been mostly raw for about 2 months at this point and as I arrived the night before the course was due to start I had to take myself out for dinner. I thought that I would be safe eating at an Indian Restaurant as I had eaten in them for many years, so I ordered my usual of Vegetable Korma, Tarka Dahl, Mushroom Bahjis, Pilau Rice and a glass of red wine, and started to eat at about 6.45pm. I walked back to my lodgings feeling really bloated and heavy inside and really uncomfortable. This got a lot worse over the next half an hour so by the time it was 8.15pm I had to take myself off to bed as I was feeling so wretched.

This was an amazing insight to have preceeding the course as it showed me exactly the effect that eating that sort of food had been having on my system over the years, something that I wouldn't have noticed had I not been eating so well over the previous 2 months. I was really and truly ready for a radical change in my life.

At this point in my life I had already made some major changes as I had walked out on my religion and my husband several years previously and had sold my house, given away most of my possessions and asked the universe how I could best be of service to it. So I was living in what I perceive to be an idyllic situation in the middle of the countryside so I had free range to implement my new life style.

Bizarrely enough I had been living in this idyllic situation for several years and despite the fact that I was living with a beautiful man who adored me I was still insecure and overly possessive and was running the risk of driving him away with my jealousy.

Since adopting a raw life style I have discovered that there is so much variety in the foods I can eat now that I will have to live to be at least 200 years old just to try them all out. My weight has slowly but surely dropped off without any effort at all so that I am now down to a size 10. My sinus problems have disappeared since I cut dairy products from my life and delight of delights my acne has virtually completely cleared up and all without medication. My relationship with the beautiful man in my life is now so loving and warm and I never lose my temper with him so I’m now so secure he feels safe with me and I feel safe with him.

As I work with a project that has been making a positive difference in the lives of people with long term mental health problems through working within a cafe I realised that I could make an even bigger difference in their lives by improving their nutrition. I have been teaching them how to make raw cakes and chocolates, soups and flax crackers and they have become so adept at it that they can make all of these now without any direction from me. Some of them have had their children in to sample these super healthy options and others have transferred their knowledge to the home environment which is making a positive impact on the lives of their families.

I realised that the transition from a very unhealthy western fast food diet to a super healthy raw food one can be quite challenging if you don’t have any support or guidance. I wanted to be able to offer the best quality support and guidance to make the transitions as smooth and delicious as possible which is why I decided to train to be a raw food coach. So somewhat later in my journey I enrolled in the very final raw food coach training programme that was being offered by Karen Knowler. I was really lucky to get onto it because it was already over subscribed when I applied but because I believe that the Universe gets fully behind all actions that benefit the whole I was accepted. I met some truly fabulous people on the course all of whom will become Raw Food Coaches, it was a truly international group. There were three people who flew over from the States, one flew all the way from Sidney Australia another from the idyllic island of Granada, one from Germany soon to move to London (I'm excited about that) one from Belgium, one from Denmark and only 4 from the uk; Hello to all of you wonderful people.

I aim to offer training to any groups of interested people who want to learn how to make simple and nutritious soups and smoothies, sweets and nut mylks and juices.

I so believe that the present situation of rising food intolerances, obesity, massive mood swings and diabetes is caused entirely by the poor diet that we in the western world consume I proved this to myself with my own problems. I have healed myself of all of my problems by transforming my diet to one with living enzymes, I believe that most of the health problems of the western world can be solved through adopting a mostly raw vegan diet and I aim to wake people up to their true potential.

my raw story part 1

I thought that some of you might be interested in hearing a bit about my journey to raw foods so here goes;

My Raw Story part 1

I grew up at a time when milk bread and potatoes formed part of basic diet and as the granddaughter of a dairy farmer I certainly had plenty of those in my diet. When I was 15 I became a vegetarian and my family were so unable to think in those terms that when I went to stay on my aunties farm the only thing that they could think to feed me was brown sauce on white bread.

I continued to eat a vegetarian diet that was very short on vegetables and consisted mostly of tea and toast, pizza and chips and as a special treat a whole package of "Cheddars" with creamy coffee.

I suffered every winter with such painful sinusitis that I couldn’t move my head from the vertical without being in agony and to make matters worse every summer I had such bad hay fever that I would rub my eyes so much that I had big red rings half way down my cheeks.

As an adult I hoped that things would improve, you know that I would grow out of these childhood ills but no instead I added rampant acne to the equation. Then I got acute constipation so extreme that I ended up with an anal fissure which I can assure you is one of the most painful conditions imaginable that along with kidney stones which I also had. To top this lot off I suffered from reoccurring bouts of depression, self doubt and extremes of self loathing along with such insecurity that I drove most people away from me.

It didn’t occur to me that all of my problems could be caused by the diet that I was eating so I end up at the doctors being subscribed copious amounts of anti depressants, steroid creams, anti histamines  none of which worked.

I was working at the time as a dance and drama teacher so I was pretty active however when I took a more sedentary job the weight began to pile on until one day in 2006 when I took the opportunity to have a complete medical examination to my horror discovered that not only was I spotty and in pain but I was nearly obese with raised blood pressure and high cholesterol. That made me so horrified that I said enough is enough I have got to do something before it is too late and I end up old fat and falling to pieces.

At that time the juice master, Jason Vale, had a book out called "7lbs in 7 days" which I thought sounded a really promising start so I bought myself a centrifugal juicer and stuck religiously to the plan and lo and behold I not only lost 7lbs in 7 days I lost 10 lbs so I continued to do the 14 day version and found that I had lost 16lbs. I was delighted so I went out and celebrated and found 2 days later I had crept back up 3 lbs.

I tried so many different diets, the low carbohydrate one, the low GI, I even tried the Special K diet. Although I lost some of the weight with a few of these I couldn't stick at them long term as they were just too restrictive and so I found that I was slowly but relentlessly creeping back  up to the obese marker and my acne was getting worse.

I was really feeling my age, aches and pains, shortness of breath none of my clothes fitted me and I so needed to do something about it again.

I had got a booklet through the post which mentioned a super food "E3 Renew Me" that apparently could turn back time so I investigated it on the internet and found it on a raw food site "Total Raw Foods". Now I had come across the concept of raw food some 10 to 15 years previously through Lesley Kenton's book and at the time I had thought that it made complete sense the notion that a living body thrives on living foods. At that time I was in such turmoil with my marriage on the rocks, no job and two young sons to bring up that I didn’t make any progress with it and there was very little support  back then to help me to achieve it.

This time I discovered that there is a mass of information and resources and guidance and I became insatiable for knowledge. Whenever I discover anything that resonates with me as making sense or the truth I research it deeply to find out as much as I can and then I implement it in my life because I believe that there is nothing as powerful as personal experience.

I will write more later in the week as from here onwards it gets really exciting as I discovered that there is light at the end of the tunnel and there is a really powerful way to regain your youth and find your real body inside all of the fat.

I'm curious, have any of you taken up the water challenge yet?

Till next time

love and light from Purple Ann