CASEY RALIE
Hi, I'm Casey Ralie. I just joined and would like to say a few worlds about myself. I'm m/35/5'11"/single and I live in Toronto, Canada. I moved to Canada this summer and I don't have any friends here yet.
I lived in Moscow, Russia, previously and I had my small real estate brokerage there. After I came to Toronto I decided to change my career and I became an insurance broker. I passed the exam and all but because the cool guys from Canada Post have been on strike for a week or so, I can't get my license!
I became a vegetarian in 1994 after reading the Diamonds's book (Fit for life). I was fascinated with the idea of changing my diet so radically and I went all-raw. I stuck with it for a few months, but because I didn't know I had to do cleansing, I felt very week and exgausted all the time and had to start adding cooked foods to my diet. I switched to usual vegetarian meals of cooked whole cereals, beans, fresh nuts, fruits and vegetables. I would eat meat or white flour products ocassionally. Bread is something that I miss most, because I was fed so many donuts, rolls and cakes when I was a kid.
This summer I had somewhat of a crisis: I had splitting headaches and I could hardly eat anything. It all began after I decided to boost my calory intake by mixing whole cooked cereals with lots of dried fruits (I wanted to try this to combat my permanent fatigue). As a result I heavily clogged my system and headaches followed (headaches were actually one of the reasons why I became a vegetarian: I constantly had severy migranes. No wonder: I ate tons of white flour stuff and cheese!). I lost plenty of weight and was afraid I could hardly eat anything ever again. Thanks to God, my caring mother, lots of fresh juices, sprouted wheat kernels and colon cleansing I managed to survive.
For the past four months I have been trying to stay on the all-raw diet. I don't want to go back to usual meals, but ocassionaly I just grab a piece of cooked meat or a bun. I still get tired fast and my complexion is pale. After I got some notes from raw-foodists via e-mail I now know what to do: I'll stay as far away from cooked foods as possible; I'll cleanse the colon and the liver; I'll drink plenty of green juices (during this elimination period at least). I was happy to know that there are lots of people who live on raw foods and feel much better than they did with "usual" foods. It means I can do it too! I feel now as determined as never before! I plan to get back into the same kind of shape I had when I was 25 (I jogged for 2 hours every second day and rode 35 km on my bike every week-end! I also did plenty of bodybuilding.)
Yours,
-Casey
PS: I was in the Toronto Zoo to see orangutans recently and I found out that although fruits (especially figs) are their main food, they also eat young leaves, flowers, bark, eggs, young birds and insects, when they found them. I read somewhere that approximately 1% of their foods are from the animal kingdom. Do you think we could eat these things ocassionally too? I mean birds' eggs mostly.
when you leave!
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