Gene’s Blog

Hello Visionaries,

You have chosen to take charge of your own health and that’s a good thing. It shows vision and foresight on your part.

Thank you for checking out my blog. I am a ‘virgin blogger’. This is my very first entry to my very first blog.

My intention is to share from the heart about what’s going on in my life.

Right now my major focus in my personal life is on nutrition.

Let me share what’s going on.

Even though proper nutrition was a central topic during my training as a certified vision educator, up until now I have given nutrition very little emphasis with my clients.

I confess that I did not teach about nutrition mainly because I was not ‘walking the walk.’ I was not setting a good example with a good diet and nutritional program. I was still eating the ‘all American diet’ and consuming things not beneficial to good healthy mind, body and eyes.

And I’ll admit that I have tried to change and made some advances always to fall back to the diet I had grown up with.

With the old standard ‘all American diet’ I did not have enough energy and suffered from general aches and pains most of the time.  I always seemed to get fatigued in the late afternoon and did not feel like going out at night much.  My immune system was not up to par and resisting or getting over colds and minor illnesses was difficult.  When I tried to change things, like getting off refined sugar, it was always an uphill battle.

I bought an expensive juicer and began juicing fruits and vegetables for a while.  It was a lot of work and did not solve my problem.  It may have made it worse since it gave false hope of getting better.  It certainly did not slow down the cravings I had for certain foods and certain substances.

Little did I know that I was addicted to food!

My addition became evident when I learned about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  I asked my friend, Garry Renschler, a nutritionist at the local YMCA, why I could not break the sugar habit.  He showed me report after report of research that indicated that high fructose corn syrup is a ‘non-food’ and very highly addictive.  HFCS is in almost every processed food on the market in America today.  Not only that, but it is widely used in soft drinks and in food prepared in restaurants and fast food outlets.

HFCS, according to Garry, gives our body false signals and leaves a person hungry no matter how much food one actually consumes.  This sugar substitute then stores itself in our body cells as fat.  It is put into food to make it more palatable and create an appetite for more.  It is cheap to manufacture and much sweeter than refined sugar.

Garry teaches his clients that just removing most of the HFCS from ones’ diet is the first step to breaking the sugar habit.  And I found out that it is not enough.  So I began reading labels and doing my best not to buy anything with HFCS as an ingredient.  My previous training as a Drug Abuse Counselor told me that if HFCS were addictive it would take strong measures to rid oneself of this substance.  And I probably could not be successful by myself.  I would need support.

It is true that ‘God always supplies our needs according to his riches,’ as it says in the Bible.  I sincerely wanted to change my diet and nutritional program.  I tried and failed many times and was very frustrated with the process.  My prayers were answered when a close friend of mine invited me to watch some DVDs by Victoria Boutenko of Ashland, Oregon.  Victoria told about how her family, also known as the Raw Family, embarked on a diet of entirely raw foods in 1994 after they became seriously ill.  Victoria had arrhythmia and edema and was obese and depressed.  Igor suffered from painful rheumatoid arthritis and had severe hyperthyroid.  Sergei was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and was supposed to go on insulin.  Valya had asthma.

At first I said, “Raw food: YUK!” I could not imagine myself eating nothing but salads, raw vegetables, fruits and raw nuts all of the time.

But as she talked, Victoria demonstrated how easy it is to make ‘green smoothies’ and other delightful raw food dishes.  I began right away to buy fresh organic greens and fruit and blend them in my blender.  It is quick, easy and very tasty using her formula.

To make a long story short, this led to my being invited to a weekly raw food potluck hosted by Thomas and Gabrielle Chavez.  At the potluck I met some very radiant folks who ascribe to the raw food diet.  They told me more stories of how eating raw food had changed their health and their life.  When I attended their potlucks I witnessed firsthand that raw food can be prepared quickly and is beautiful and delicious.  Gabrielle says that it is less expensive over the long run to eat raw as they were able to cut their food bill by one third, and eventually to less that one half of what they had been spending.

After several potlucks and reading Gabrielle’s book, ‘The Raw Food Gourmet, Going Raw for Total Well-Being,’ I am hooked!

Now my diet is changing rapidly to raw food and I have planned a spring garden in a community garden plot nearby.  Next time I will give you an article from a well respected vision educator on this subject.

Stay tuned and I will keep you posted on my progress with how this big change in diet affects my health and well-being.

Gene Younger

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 4:20 am and is filed under Eyesight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.