Important Info to Share (For Once!)

For those of you who don't know my background and haven't read this first post of this blog, I'll give you a run down.

If you don't really care about my life story, go ahead and skip to the end. My feelings won't be hurt.

From age 5 on, I was a ballet dancer. Not just for recreation, I loved it and wanted to make a career of it. From age 13 on, I trained professionally. At 14, I started wanting to be thinner, because I compared myself to my best friend, who was also a dancer. We both had our strengths and weaknesses, but I ignored my strengths and focused on my weaknesses so I could "improve more". That turned into self deprecation. By age 17 in 2009, I had tried calorie counting and "eating healthier" and could never lose more than 5 lbs. Then I went to Austin that summer, and ended up losing between 5 and 10 lbs. I had brainwashed myself and told myself I had gained weight that summer. Everyone was concerned when I returned home. I started running that summer, and had to stop when I resumed dancing professionally with a company. I began to eat less. I began to go to the gym after long days of rehearsals. I started getting thinner, all the while telling myself I wasn't thin, I wasn't a good dancer, I wasn't even a good person. I spiraled so far down inside myself that my family didn't recognize me. There were interventions, threats, the whole 9 yards. I had changed. I cared about nothing but getting as thin as I could, because I didn't believe I deserved happiness in any way. I started self harming. I had lost so my muscle that my dancing had suffered greatly. I couldn't recover from injuries. I was wasting away. I left the company that February 2010, at the urging of my parents. I knew it was over. I had twisted and perverted what I had loved my whole life into a form of punishment.

I thought after I quit I would be free of my self hatred. I wasn't. I stayed thin, kept self harming, and even got worse. I would eat the bare minimum, calorie counting to stay under 800 a day, while exercising, and not counting those calories burned. I would go as long as I could eating deli turkey, 100 calorie packs of microwave popcorn, and diet Dr. Pepper, then binge on chocolate chips when I felt I was going to pass out. Then I would feel guilty and go back to minimum calories for a week. What kept be minimally sane was getting closer to Max, who had become my best friend. He planted seeds of thought, and showed he cared even when he didn't have to. That summer of 2010, we realized we had fallen hard for each other and got engaged. We were married in October 2010.

I thought my self worth would be improved after I got married. It was, but not much. I actually found new avenues of self hatred around the pillars of our relationship. Lots of things improved, and I believe getting married has been the best decision I've made in life so far. But, my sickness was relentless. I continued to self harm, barely eat, and I even began having thoughts of suicide. We were living on Lean Pockets and frozen pizza. Cheap living. In late January of 2011, Max and I didn't know what to do about me. I was miserable, suffering from panic attacks every single night. I would be frozen in place, shaking for at least an hour. People at work started asking about the scratches on my arms. We turned to prescription SSRIs as a last resort for me. They changed my mood for the better, and took away some anxiety about eating, which is what I needed at the time. Months later, I had gained quite a bit of weight, and the self hatred crept back in. In May, I decided that I couldn't handle depending on a pill for my so called happiness, so I weaned myself off. The withdrawal was terrible.

I got promoted at work, a much needed boost, but my feeling about food were still in the back of my mind. I even worked to heal a long sacrum injury, by going to the chiropractor and swimming. I eventually was healed to the point where I could start running again. This was when I found Matt Frazier's blog about running, via my StumbleUpon app for my iPhone. I read and became inspired, and started This Fruit Thing I'm doing about 3.5 weeks ago.

Since then I've detoxed a bit, gained more energy, experienced more mental clarity, been more in touch with my intuition, and inspired my family. For the first time in my life, they're not worried about me. They're even trying out a mostly raw diet right now, too, and I'm so proud of them.

What This Post is Really About

Max found this documentary called Food Matters. It's about the benefits of raw foods, the weirdness/badness of the pharmaceutical industry, and tons of other great information. It really inspired me, and felt kind of like a little confirmation that my experiment is a step in the right direction. I encourage anyone reading to watch this, soon. It is only free until October 8, but honestly, I would pay to see it. It is eye opening. If you think all the raw foodists/vegans/vegetarians/naturopaths are just crazy kooks who are malnourished and like to rant about how crazy society and the government is, then please watch it. At the least you'll get an hour of ammunition with which to ridicule them. At the most, you'll hear things you didn't know, and see different perspectives. Might I add, those perspectives are coming from not only naturopaths and raw foodists, they're also coming from M.D.s and medical journalists. Here's the link to the film's website, with more information about the film. The first link is to the film itself.

Even though I feel that not many people read this blog, if I can encourage ONE person to watch this and they learn something, it's worth it.