The Raw Brides Weight Loss Plan
The 8 Week Wedding Diet
By
Denise Duffield-Thomas
Copyright 2010 Denise Duffield-Thomas
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Other titles by Denise Duffield-Thomas
The Raw Brides Weight Loss Plan
7 Secrets to the Wedding Day Body of Your Dreams
Planning a Green and Ethical Wedding
The Natural Self-Care and Beauty Guide
The Healthy Groom Guide
What women like you are saying…
"Denise has an amazing ability to make you feel like one of her friends instantly and the whole book is written in a familiar, supportive, empathetic way". Angela W, London
"I would like to say to anyone who is curious about raw food. It’s not overwhelming or an extreme sacrifice. It’s so worth it to have someone come up and say you look 10 - 15 years younger than you are. It’s so worth it to eat and get fulfilment from the foods you eat, actual nourishment rather than feeling heavy, bloated and guilty. Give yourself 30 days and you will feel the difference, and if you keep it up you’ll change your life – that’s a guarantee!". Candy Tolentino, Actress, California.
"Essential reading for all brides to be. Not only is this programme for ones 'special' day but for life thereafter. Filled with top tips, fun tasks and accessible in every sense of the word". Emma Schade-Stylli, Wales
"Denise has a very deep understanding of what’s going on in a woman’s mind. This plan is the best support you could wish for to guide you to being a radiant and confident bride. By sharing her own story in such an honest and authentic way, she shows you that it’s totally doable to make a huge transformation". Sabine de Cock, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
"When your big day arrives, you will be glowing from within with radiant skin and your dress will look stunning on your new svelte body but it really is the inner confidence you will have that will make you feel like you are walking on clouds and that will carry you on your most amazing journey through life from this way forward". Blanka Priddle, London
"When I found out I was getting married I decided to give raw food another shot. I must admit the results were amazing and I lost all the weight and more, in fact I lost a little too much for my liking but it certainly suited the wedding dress!" Katie Kann, UK
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Preface
To the gorgeous bride-to-be,
Congratulations for your upcoming wedding and double congratulations for making your health and well-being a high priority by joining the Raw Brides programme.
I know first hand the pressure on a bride to look amazing for her big day. As a lifelong failed dieter, I put myself under even more stress, because I figured if I wasn’t skinny for my big day then I should give up for good – obviously I was meant to be fat for life!
You and I know this isn’t only about your wedding day. It’s about you living your best life, feeling slim and confident and knowing 100% that you deserve it.
You may worry that you’ll never be slim – like there’s a secret hidden code that everyone has cracked except you. But, if you follow the Raw Brides programme, it WILL work for you. You just have to believe in yourself and above all treat your health and happiness as though every day is your wedding.
See me as a friend – someone who is walking a path just a little ahead of you and can take you over some of the rough spots. Knowing you are out there keeps me motivated to spread the message that painless and permanent weight loss is possible without “diets”.
I confess - it’s a total high to walk down the aisle feeling beautiful and totally accepting of yourself. But it doesn’t fade after one day and it gets better and better. That’s the wedding gift you are giving to yourself which will benefit your whole life and everyone else in it.
Raw Brides stands for strong, happy and healthy women and is unlike any other weight loss programme on the market today. Being a Raw Bride is a state of mind, not a diet plan. This is a journey of transformation. A transformation of how you nourish your body and a transformation of how you think and feel about yourself. The results you will achieve in the next 8 weeks will last a lot longer than your wedding day and will add immense value to all aspects of your life and marriage.
This programme is designed to be used in any 8 week period leading up to your wedding but it’s also a blueprint for living and loving your body, no matter what your goal is. You can repeat the steps over and over until you’ve achieved what you want. It all depends on what results you want, how much time you have until your wedding and how much you immerse yourself into your personal transformation.
If at any time you feel you like you need additional support, contact me immediately and I can help you figure out what options you have through Raw Brides for getting the best results. You may find you need a one to one coach to keep you accountable, or a group of likeminded women to support you. You might want to do it yourself but need something like the fun Raw Brides Transformation Day to kick-start your programme.
Don’t spend another year, month or even one day feeling powerless about your weight. TODAY can be the day you change it all for good. It doesn’t have to be a formal declaration – just a small hope in your heart and the dream of a gorgeous wedding dress is enough!
What you can expect from me is total honesty about my successes, failures and mistakes. I’m not perfect and I don’t have all the answers. I’m no guru!
I put my heart and soul into this programme because I truly believe anyone can transform themselves. And now it’s your turn! Good luck and enjoy the journey to the wedding day body of your dreams!
Denise Duffield-Thomas
Founder of Raw Brides
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Table of Contents
Introduction: The Raw Brides Weight Loss Plan
The Seven Secrets to the Wedding Day Body of Your Dreams
How to Get Organised and Track your Progress
Where I Started
My Wedding Countdown and My Set Backs
My Big Day and Final Results
Chapter 1: Raw Food Can Change Your Life
The Food - What Do I Eat?
Frequently asked Questions about Raw Food
Shopping List
Love Your Big Fat Failures
Starting Anew - A Fresh Slate
Holistic Health Assessment
The Law of Attraction
Your Inner Journey, Big Why and Writing a New Script
Creating Your Dream Board
Affirmations and Afformations for Easy Weight Loss
Acting “as if” You're Already There
Parallel Universe Hopping
Move Your Body
Extreme Self-Care Makeover
Dealing with Breakdowns
Introducing… the New You!
Reinvent Yourself on a Budget
Wedding Shopping!
Your Wedding Countdown
Healthy Hen Party
Healthy Wedding and Honeymoon
Chapter 8: Celebrate Your Success
Tally Your Results
Your Next Goal as a New Wife
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Friendly disclaimer: This report will not automatically make you thinner just by reading it.
The information contained in all Raw Brides publications is provided as an educational service, which can assist you in your personal research of health and wellness.
Your personal results may vary. It is not intended to diagnose or cure any illness.
If you have any concerns about your health, you should contact your healthcare professional immediately.
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Introduction: The Raw Brides Weight Loss Plan
The Raw Brides Philosophy
This programme has everything and nothing to do with getting married. On one hand, you might be totally motivated by the thought of fitting into a smaller wedding dress. On the other, it seems so … vain? …girly? ... bridezilla –ish?
If you feel like that, I can totally appreciate where you are coming from. Although I had secretly been obsessing about weight for years and was constantly on a diet, I rarely spoke about it. I didn’t want people to think that I cared – that I was so incredibly superficial as to be on a constant diet – especially since the ridiculous ones I was trying gave me zero results to show anyway. I was sick of being overweight but constantly on a diet. All pain and no benefits!
However, when I got engaged, suddenly everyone was asking me if I was doing anything special to prepare myself for the wedding. Everyone assumed I was obsessed with getting fitter, with the special white dress and the huge expectation that I was going to be this crazy Bridezilla princess. How scary!
So, you can relax. You are completely allowed to want to lose weight to look amazing on your wedding day. It’s completely reasonable to use your wedding as the perfect excuse to finally put those years of dieting misery behind you and crack the code once and for all.
Having a wedding date in the diary is a wonderful, motivating goal and the rewards can be spectacular if you take the time and effort to do this programme.
The better news is that nobody will question your new lifestyle. Most people will accept without question that you are on a “wedding diet”. I guess it’s like being pregnant and people feeling like they have complete freedom to rub your belly. When you are getting married, everyone feels like they can mention the incredible stress that supposedly awaits you before you take a trip up the aisle.
Let me tell you. It doesn’t have to be stressful and you aren’t under any pressure at all. The Raw Brides philosophy is all about you the person, not you the Bride. If you are in any way worried that the stress will make you put on weight – then you are not alone. It’s a very common fear and it doesn’t have to be your fate. In fact, let’s avoid any additional stress for you all together.
There are plenty of tools and techniques in the programme but there isn’t a list of rules telling you what to eat. After all, you are an adult and probably know what’s good for your body – all the programme does is educate you about raw food and how it can totally improve your health and well-being. The essential compliment to the programme is the personal development part. Why? Food alone is not the problem; otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this book.
The most important advice is not to give up. You can beat this, not matter how many times in the past you think you have “failed” to lose weight and feel happy in yourself.
The programme is designed for a life shift. You don’t have to starve yourself for eight weeks, nor do you have to do anything unpleasant. The programme is designed for you to feel better and better everyday up to and beyond the wedding day. Nobody wants you to suddenly go into bad habits the day after and go back to your old lifestyle. If you want that kind of result then join one of those meal replacement diets and feel horrible!
Every step of the way you can customise the programme to suit your needs, your lifestyle and your goals. I’m here at any time you need extra help. You can book a 1-2-1 session with me, or join one of the group programmes. If you aren’t ready for that yet, then find a friend who will support you, not the friend who will subtly sabotage you (you know the one!).
So, the last piece of advice as we go into the programme. If you have any hang-ups about spending this time or money on yourself – please don’t. This is the best investment you’ll ever make in your life. Working on your health and wellbeing gives you life long benefits, isn’t that worth it?
You are likely to be spending an obscene amount of money on your wedding (even if your budget is tiny, it’s still a lot for one day, isn’t it?). The money on the wedding is totally worth it – the memories will be priceless.
What is also priceless is your health and well-being. The changes we are making in this programme have the potential to be permanent. The Denise writing this to you is very different to the women I was when I got engaged. She was so happy to be engaged to the man of her dreams, but so very unhappy with other aspects of her life – her weight and the way she felt about herself. The Denise now is far from perfect, but so many things in my life have changed for the better, and I’m so happy I took the time and effort to look after myself – the whole person – not just the soon to be Bride.
I can’t explain how I feel now. The wedding and honeymoon is over, but I really feel like things have changed. The world feels brand new and the security I feel in myself and my relationship makes it even sweeter. I know I did it for me – not just to have amazing photographs for one day, but because I wanted my life to be wonderful every day.
I want that for you too. I want you to feel like life is getting better and better.
Get Organised
The best thing to do straight away is to print out the whole programme and put into an attractive folder. The font is big enough to print two to a page with enough room to write your exercises. Buy yourself a beautiful journal and ensure you have enough nice pens, so you can get started straight away.
Each week you will be able to go deeper into each secret until you’ve really mastered the lesson. To get the most out of the chapter, go through one week at a time and do each exercise right then. As well as the exercises contained in the chapter, the end of each chapter also gives some additional actions or homework to complete.
You can high-light anything in the book that resonates with you and scribble all over it. This will be a living document where you track your journey and it will serve as a reminder of how far you’ve come.
Even if you want to read through the book in one go, still tackle a week at a time. This will give time for you to absorb each week in order and make it easier for the lessons to stick. If you fall “off the wagon”, just start again or pick up where you left off. Whatever you do, don’t let your programme languish on the shelf (or worse, on your computer) because you are too scared, or “busy” to start. This is called resistance, and it’s a powerful force because for some reason it really starts to work whenever we try to do something that is good for us. This programme is nothing less than a total transformation and resistance hates that. It wants us to stay where we are – complaining but comfortable.
Be gentle with yourself. There are no mistakes; there are no brownie points for finishing first because this isn’t a race or competition. Go into the programme with the mindset that if you follow the steps, it will work for you. This isn’t a test of worthiness – you deserve to get the results. You just have to put one foot in front of the other and try.
The 7 Secrets That Will Change Your Life
Underpinning the Raw Brides philosophy are the 7 Secrets. All of my programmes – this DIY ebook, the coaching programmes and my conferences are all built around these foundations because they really have all the ingredients necessary for success.
That’s why most diets fail. They usually have one or two components. “Here are all the things you can’t eat” and “go to the gym”. But that’s why a high percentage of people will either not complete the diet or they will get through on sheer will power which isn’t sustainable over the long term.
Raw Food will change your life: nutrition and eating in a way that truly supports your goals. The very best food on the planet and how to incorporate it into your lifestyle.
Own your story: getting clear on where you’ve come from, identifying why you’ve failed or succeeded in the past and putting that old story to rest.
Dream your dream: identify what you truly what from this programme and what your goal is beyond the wedding.
Make it real: easy and fun ways to make your goal stay with you daily, as well as excite you beyond belief. This makes it seem real and achievable.
Walk the aisle: ramping up the pace a little, doing practical actions aside your nutrition to turbo charge your results in a fun way.
The big unveil: showing off your results, making over everything else in your life so your outside exterior matches with the new glowing interior you.
Happily ever after: ensuring that your lifestyle supports you up to and including the wedding so you can make these habits yours for life.
Track Your Progress
It’s really motivating to track your progress and see how far you’ve come. Often you don’t notice when you are losing weight, and the people who see you every day might not notice at first either. It’s such a gift to yourself to document and track your achievement. Here are some ideas for you – try them out and use what works for you.
Simple tracking
A simple way to track your progress is to keep a diary (or excel spreadsheet) record of your weight loss. If you are doing it with a spreadsheet you can also make a chart of your weight loss to show your achievements over time.
I’d recommend not weighing yourself more than once a week – preferably at the same time and day every time. Please don’t weigh yourself daily (I’ve been a culprit of this myself), because your weight can fluctuate a lot naturally and it can be demotivating to feel like you are not on track. It can also lead to obsession and the Raw Brides Programme is about self love, not self criticism. Weight can be misleading too. I used to tell myself “muscle weighs more than fat” to keep myself motivated. If you are doing more exercise then you may not see results on the scales but you will look and feel different.
You may consider getting rid of your scales all together and just measure by how you feel. It’s great to have a pair of jeans or another item of clothing that you can try on every now and then to test how much weight you’ve lost.
Photo Diary
Throughout this journey I’ve kept a constant photo journal – pictures of my face, my tongue, my mood, things I’ve eaten, raw food restaurant visits, pictures of me in gym clothes and a bikini! People have commented on how brave I am to post pictures of myself losing weight, but I’ve done it for myself. Posting pictures gives other people motivation and I’ve gained comments about things I didn’t notice for myself – people saying that my skin and hair is better, that I look younger and happier. I’m so glad I took the time to document my journey!
Take your photo and then put it away. Or you can print it out and post it in this book. You don’t have to show people until after you’ve lost your weight and then you’ll want to show everyone how you used to be!
Tips
Keep it safe: Most of the photos I’ve created online have a copyright symbol on them. I don’t want to scare you but I’ve heard of cases where great before and after pictures have been stolen and then used to promote all sorts of random health foods. You can edit the photo by adding text in Photoshop, Picture Manager or in PowerPoint.
Keep it modest: there are photos I’ve taken that I don’t post online. One of them was taken in my underwear and then I noticed that if you blow up the photo size you can see everything! I decided that wearing yoga shorts and a sports bra was ok for me, but you might only feel comfortable if you are much more covered up. A reasonably close fitting t-shirt and trousers will be fine.
Don’t hide: this is the most important one. Take a photo of yourself full length and in decent light. Don’t try and make yourself look thinner by sucking in your stomach or trying the most flattering angle. Let it all hang out. You don’t have to smile if you don’t feel like it because it’s a snapshot in time of how you are really looking and feeling. Most important of all – no Photoshop!
Please send your before and afters pictures to me at denise@rawbrides.com, especially your wedding photos – I love to see them and with your permission I could showcase you as a “Bride of the Month” in Raw Brides Weekly.
Blog Your Way to Health
A great way to keep yourself motivated and on track is to keep a blog. A blog is an online diary that other people can read on the internet. I definitely recommend Typepad.com (it’s what I use), but there are many others you can use, most are free.
A blog is a really easy way to track your thoughts and feelings, post pictures, ask for feedback and connect with people all around the world.
Again, keep it safe. Don’t post anything on here that is really private. Remember it’s in the public domain. Don’t write any personal details like your address or phone number. Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want your family, friends, colleagues and bosses to read!
Millions of people have blogs and new raw food blogs are springing up everyday.
Virtual Tools to Help You
If you want to get really organised you can take advantage of some of the online food tracking tools such as Daily Plate or My Food Diary.
The good thing about some of these is that it automatically calculates the nutritional information for you, so if you are worried that you are not getting enough protein or other vitamins then it can be an easy way to track this.
I don’t advise you use these if you are prone to obsession or if it will lead to procrastination to other things in your life. It can become very time consuming tracking and analysing every little thing and it’s not healthy to live your life on a computer (we spend enough time on it, don’t you think?).
The Raw Brides Philosophy is about using your common sense and eating as much healthy food as you want. These sites are written primarily for people following SAD lifestyles and don’t take into account other nutritional factors – such as how a particular food makes you feel, rather than just how many calories it has.
Food tracking does not work for me it leads me to become very obsessive about my food and nutrition. It also creates a cycle of bingeing and denial. I personally don’t believe that calorie counting is a productive or motivating way of losing weight.
Online Tools and Trackers
Weight Loss trackers from Ticker Factory are a cool little gadget – you can enter in your current weight, the date and your weight loss goal. You can customise the colour and style. You then get a little bit of code that you can post on your website or blog, Facebook page or forum. When you update it with your new weight, it automatically updates it everywhere that you’ve posted the code and shows you how far you’ve come.
Here’s what mine looked like at the time of writing:
My Virtual Model
This is one of the coolest tools I’ve come across – My Virtual Model lets you create a 3D virtual model of yourself. It’s customisable with your height, weight, colouring, build, hair, skin and eye colour. It won’t look exactly like you but it’s close enough, especially if you are not brave enough to take a real picture of yourself (although I encourage you to!). After you’ve finished you can download the picture but you also create an account so it saves all the information for you. You can play around with the dimensions of your model at any time. This website is completely free to use by the way!
I created three different versions of myself. The first was at my current weight (then 71kgs), the second at a midpoint goal, and the third at my goal weight. At first I noticed that my goal weight model looked way too thin and that was useful information. It showed that I was being unrealistic and unnecessarily harsh on myself so I adjusted my goal. After all, most of us have no idea how we could actually look – we just have a vague idea of what we should weigh and this is based on incredibly unfair criteria – like the weight you had in high school when you were a teenager, your friend’s weight, or even a celebrity you want to look like. This model helps you to create realistic and motivating goals for yourself.
This is the coolest part – you can dress up your 3D model with outfits from real stores! Because you can rotate your model 360 degrees you can see what you really look like in different styles of clothing from all angles. It’s quite accurate and after seeing how I looked in certain outfits, I actually went through my real wardrobe and threw away outfits that I didn’t realise were incredibly unflattering.
It’s really fun and motivating to dress up your “ideal” virtual model with all the clothes that you wish you could wear in real life. I used these models in my dream boards and had them printed around my house. If you still have junk food in your fridge and cupboards, then posting your ideal model around the kitchen might help your resist temptation!
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Denise's Story: My Results
We seem to think that everyone else has it together except us and as you read further, you’ll realise that that’s NOT TRUE for me. I’m sharing my results before we get into the details of the programme because I want you to see my journey and where I started from.
I shared my story in the free report about how I spent most of my life feeling like a failure around my body and never feeling like I deserved to have the body of my dreams. To say I struggled is an understatement. If you want a recap of that misery, then you can read it in the 7 Secrets free report because I want to tell you about when I first got engaged and I was looking for a solution. I was introduced to raw food about a year and a half before I got married. So let’s start there to the present day and my experience creating and then following the Raw Brides programme.
My Introduction to Raw Food
I’ll be forever grateful to my friend Claire, because she was the one who introduced me to the concepts of raw food and she is still a cherished friend today.
Claire started working with me back when I was working in consulting and not really enjoying my job or the people I worked for. The coolest part of that job is that we got free lunch everyday, and trust me, at that time of my life I loved free food – no matter what it was. I would sometimes go to networking events just for the free food! My company would order a weekly shop from the supermarket and we made whatever we wanted every day. I noticed that although we got this free food, Claire would bring her own lunch in – salads and homemade bread. Sometimes she’d bring in some chocolate pudding, chocolate cake or strange green juices. Her meals looked fresh and colourful, but I was happy with what I was eating. Most days, there would be a salad or pasta – but also luncheon meat, cheese, chicken drumsticks, pita bread, tuna, etc. One of my favourite snacks was to load cheese, ham and chutney into pita bread, and then zap it in the microwave until the cheese was bubbling. After lunch, there were always tea and biscuits. Every Friday when the office fridge was bare, we’d go to the local Chinese restaurant for a cheap lunch. My favourite was either satay chicken or BBQ pork ribs – both were massive portions of greasy MSG, oily fried rice and cheap meat. But for £5 each, I thought it was a bargain! Who cares that I was comatose for the rest of the afternoon?
One week we took Claire to Chinese, and she was horrified! I was offended at first that she didn’t appreciate our weekly Friday ritual, nor did she get excited over the incredible bargain that we were getting. She decided to stay in the office on Friday lunchtimes!
During regular lunch times, we would ask Claire what she was eating, and sometimes one of us would venture to try one of her “concoctions”. They tasted good, but I thought they were a bit strange.
Bit by bit, Claire started having a positive influence on the office. Our salads got bigger and brighter. My other friend at work Angela saw a programme on TV about farmed chickens, and so the nasty cheap meat and chicken drumsticks went next.
Claire started lending me books, and telling me about raw food blogs. The great thing was that she slowly drip fed me information, so I never got overwhelmed. I never felt like she was judging the way I ate (maybe except for Chinese Friday!), but instead I started getting really curious and everything I read made total sense to me. I especially loved reading transformation stories, and seeing pictures of “before and afters” (who doesn’t?). My first thought was it was too good to be true. The first book I read was Shazzie’s 'Detox your World' which I thought was wonderful. It made me determined to change my diet.
My Typical SAD Diet
SAD stands for Standard American Diet – although I’m not American, it pretty much means a typical Western diet. Nobody would blink an eye at the following diet, because it’s pretty normal for most people. Unfortunately – it’s also normal to feel lethargic, suffer from hundreds of petty little ailments and to be overweight.
Breakfast: Porridge or toasted muesli with milk and honey, boiled eggs and toast with butter and jam or vegemite.
Lunch: Salad with feta cheese and hummus, chicken drumsticks, pita bread with chutney, cheese and ham (microwaved), half a packet of Ryvitas with hummus and olive tapenade
Tea with milk, sugar and a biscuit
Dinner: Tuna pasta: white pasta (not the cheapest kind, but pretty “decent”), a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of tuna and various vegetables, mainly onion, red pepper and a tin of sweet corn. Processed grated cheese on top. Served with salad.
OR
Home made pizzas on pita bread. Nasty bits of salami from the local deli, grated processed mozzarella cheese, and either mushroom or red peppers sliced on top. Served with salad.
Dessert: Yoghurt (the kind that looks healthy but really isn’t because it’s full of sugar) with honey and nuts
Favourite snacks: Crudités and hummus
Fruit – apples, bananas or stone fruit
Crisps (especially sweet chilli crisps or Pringles)
Guacamole dip and Doritos
Japanese rice crackers
Nuts and dried fruit (especially the pick and mix type)
I thought I ate mostly a decent diet – except for my occasional blow outs and addictions that I indulged in a couple of times a week. You might think it’s an ok diet. The point is that anyone can survive on this kind of food – but not many people would thrive, let alone live the life of their dreams. Eating this way gave me no energy, lots of excess weight, constant mood swings, bad dreams, bad B.O, anxiety and a dull outlook on life. Yes – I blame my diet. After all, you are what you eat!
“Special” Occasions
My idea of a fun treat was to go to all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut and you might think I’m exaggerating but I could sit there for hours. I actually went there to celebrate my 26th birthday! I absolutely loved pepperoni pizza – couldn’t get enough and I would eat and eat and literally never feel full. I could eat much more than male friends, and would come out with my stomach straining, but always feeling like I could fit in just one more piece…..
This was something I’ve done since I was a kid, I can remember vividly when Pizza Hut stopped table service and introduced the buffets! It was a regular thing with my friends and family to have eating competitions there. No wonder I was a chubby kid! To make it worse, my two friends from high school who could almost match me for Pizza Hut challenges were both extremely fit and had no weight problems whatsoever!
For my 28th birthday, I went with some friends to have afternoon tea at the Ritz Hotel in London. It’s a beautiful and memorable experience that I would recommend to anyone. You are seated in a gorgeous golden room. It’s an expensive afternoon tea, but it’s beautiful and the service is just impeccable. You get a glass of champagne and a choice of many different types of tea. Out comes a tiered cake stand with scones, cake and sandwiches. It’s also a fancy kind of all-you-can-eat because the waiters top up your scones and sandwiches for as long as two hours! Well, none of us could stop. We were the last people left in the dining room and kept taking more and more. I went beyond what was comfortable for my belly. I hobbled to the toilet and could barely peel off my Spanx! Thank god for sarongs and wraps because I looked pregnant when I left so I had to cover my little food baby belly!
I’m ashamed to say that later that night, I was physically sick and I had the gall to actually write the Ritz a letter to say that there must have been something wrong with their tuna sandwiches!
I also had a McDonald’s addiction. Because I knew that Mark (my now husband) disapproved, I would only eat it when I knew he was working late or away with a work trip. I’d be coming home from work at Waterloo station and like a magnet; I’d see the sign and say to myself, “not tonight”. But even if I was full, I would find myself gravitating towards it and ordering a triple cheeseburger meal that came with fries and a fizzy soda drink. I’d eat it all the way home feeling ashamed and disgusted with myself. Some days, even though I was full, I’d also buy a packet of crisps on the way home.
Why the gluttony? I thought I just liked food and that I was greedy. But I know that I ate to make myself feel numb and to deal with areas in my life where I felt uncomfortable, such as work. My eating resembled a form of self-harm. Making myself fat also let me stay in those situations because I didn’t have the energy to change it.
Let me be really honest here. I still have addictions which occasionally overcome me – now to crisps and home made popcorn. But I know that these too will fade and I will be able to laugh at them – just like I can laugh about how completely ridiculous it was that McDonalds and Pizza Hut had such a prominent place in my life!
Making my First Commitment to Health
I can remember the day clearly when I decided that I was going to commit myself fully to a raw lifestyle experiment and give myself the chance to change for good.
Mark and I were on holiday in New York. On the holiday, I decided that I was going to be vegetarian for the first time and not drink any alcohol, just to see how I felt. Visiting my friend in New York was a bit of a trigger for me, because she’s thin and gorgeous and gets up at 5am to run in Central Park – how can I compete with that? Next to her I always feel lazy and fat! When I let myself feel like that, it always made me want to eat more.
I know now this was part of my limiting beliefs around my weight. Other people deserved to be fit and healthy, but somehow I was different.
I knew from researching raw food that there were some raw restaurants I needed to visit. I had seen the cook book 'Raw Food, Real World' and wanted to visit their restaurant Pure Food and Wine. It was my first time eating at a completely raw food restaurant and I was blown away. Even the waitresses looked amazing – completely glowing, and all the food was fresh and delicious. For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed my meal but didn’t feel gluttonous or uncomfortably full.
While at One Lucky Duck – the sister café of Pure, I bought David Wolfe’s 'Sunfood Diet Success System' book and my life changed forever. I remember we sat in Central Park on this gorgeous sunny day while I read through the book and hoped that the information contained in it would work for me. I hoped that finally I would get the information I craved and the self belief to change my body. It all hinged together for me. I felt that if I could “fix” this, then I could change the rest of my life too.
My Starting Point
In the book, David Wolfe suggested that you take a photo of how you are today and make the commitment to change.
This was the photo I took in our New York hotel room. I know I look miserable, but I honestly didn’t realise exactly how miserable I was until later – when I saw the changes that raw food bought me.
Here’s what was going on for me at the time:
Physically, I was at my heaviest weight at 71kgs (156.5lbs) and wore a UK size 14 (US size 10). I know there are a lot of people reading this who may be heavier, but for my height of 162 cm this gave me a BMI of 27.1 which is classified as “overweight”. I didn’t feel comfortable in myself, and didn’t want to buy any nice size 14 clothes, so I wore dull colours and second hand clothing.
I had recurring problems with my knees and back, so I was going to the physiotherapist all the time. I suffered from anxiety at work, which gave me itchy fits and constant sweatiness and bad B.O. My skin was dull and you can see from the picture my eyes were dull too.
I had been hospitalised two and a half years earlier with pneumonia, and I still felt like I was physically weak. I would get puffed out climbing stairs, and if I got a cold I was worried that the pneumonia would come back. My body felt heavy and I knew I wasn’t healthy.
Energetically, I wasn’t great either. I constantly felt stressed and tired. Mark would try and encourage me to exercise with him, but I couldn’t muster the energy. I just liked to lie around reading on the weekend. Work was grinding me down and I found I was getting really negative, constantly bitching and complaining about work and my colleagues.
Emotionally, I can honestly say I was a mess. I had been worse – in fact in the summer of 2006 I had been virtually suicidal, and it had been building up for a number of years. I just didn’t feel excited about anything and my relationship with Mark was going through some rocky patches. When this photo was taken, I was fine most of the time, but in a second, I could be on the verge of tears. I had been to counselling but nothing seemed to help. I was like a giant leaking bucket, threatening to spill over at any time. Worse, I was always going through the angst of “what should I do with my life?” but doing nothing serious to make those dreams a reality.
My First Raw Food Challenge
After coming back from New York and experimenting with some raw food recipes, I decided I needed a little support. I decided to join an online community, Raw Fu run by the bubbly Bunny Berry, and joined their 100 day raw food challenge.
It was really fun, and having that support from other women helped me too. It was the first time I had ever really stuck to something, and the results were good – I started losing weight and my hair and skin improved a lot. Here's a photo after my first couple of months.
During this time, Mark and I went on a holiday to the south of France. We stayed in a friend’s holiday house in a remote village. We still ate cheese and bread, but we also picked our own salad and vegetables from their organic garden. This photo was taken on our return in September. It’s only 3 months after the New York photo but you can see the difference in my skin and eyes. I look vibrant and happy.