Welcome and thank you for stopping by 
Whether you got here by deliberate intent or happenstance, I guess you’re interested in raw food and possibly detoxing. Or maybe you want to release some weight or feel more energetic. Whatever your reason for being here, I’m glad you came and I hope you find something hepful here.
You might be wondering who I am and what gives me the right to have a blog about the raw diet, so here’s a bit of background: …
Raw in the City
Back in 2000 I was working in a high-pressure job in the City of London, commuting 4 hours a day, overweight and burned out. I can’t remember how I first found it, but I ended up in a Yahoo group (at least I think it was Yahoo) of people who were in various stages of raw eating. I always throw myself into new things and this was no different; within a week or two I’d started my first fast and was on the way to 9 months of raw veganism.
During that time I learned a huge amount from the group members (hardly surprising when you find out who they were), sprouted everything that looked vaguely sproutable, learned to dehydrate in my airing cupboard, had many failed attempts at making Essene bread and generally had a great time, lost weight and felt amazing.
Then it was winter …
Not quite so much fun eating nothing but cold raw food when it’s freezing out and you’ve just got home at 8pm and you want COMFORT! Anyway that was my excuse for gradually introducing cooked food and then feeling a failure because I was no longer “pure”. Not that anyone in the group ever made me feel that way deliberately … but they were raw (and still are!) and I wasn’t and I felt bad. So I quietly slipped away, the veganism because vegetarianism and the weight went back on.
Blame it on Atkins
And then there was Atkins … and how do you do that without animal protein? I remember my first chicken breast in about 5 years … I stared at it for ages before I could bring myself to eat it.
Fast forward 4+ years and here I am surfing around organic gardening sites when I come across something called “Green Smoothies” and coincidentally a couple of days before International Green Smoothie Day. I had to try them, I was hooked, and my new raw journey began. I started journalling it just for myself so I would have a record of any changes that happened and that evolved into this blog and the rest is not history, but present
Name-dropping
As for my previous listmates … that list was the beginning of what is now the FRESH network. The owner of the list was called Karen and one of the most entertaining and prolific posters was a girl called Sharon who documented HER raw journey on the list and then on what was one of the first blogs. Of course “Karen” is Karen Knowler and Sharon is the amazing Shazzie. It was a real thrill to come across them again last week and realise just how influential they’ve remained in the raw food world.
So you got this far and you never, ever have to read this again! Have a green smoothie on me to celebrate
xxx