What is the most anyone has lost while fasting?

March 23, 2005

Thanks Molly for that sort of mini life testimonial about raw eating. It was encouraging and interesting to read!HaleyHawaii Vipassana <mollyokeeffe2001 wrote: I lost 15 pounds in one week while fasting and doing 1or 2 Bikram yoga classes almost every day a few yearsago, going from 108 cooked/ raw pounds to 93. I havenot kept the weight that low and have stayed prettymuch around 110 for the past year or so while eating90% cooked food. i'll start sprouting tonight and makeeffort to inch my consciousness and body back intomore raw. i had a raw intuition at certain times inthe past which i will access again soon. I didn't needraw recipe books but took pleasure in creating purelyfrom love, excitement, intuition and confidence basedon faith, backed by experiential understanding,memory and lots of hope. Way back in 1996 i ate rawmeals from The raw Experience in Paia, Maui and

thenwent raw in 1997, consuming huge quantities of rawfoodstuffs including banana, almond butter, avocado,mac nuts, veggie juices and dried fruits... tookmassive raw foods action, inspired by the then brandnew raw food book by the three young people who daredto say "cooked food is poison" many many many manytimes (they got their point across) in the book,''Nature's First Law: The Raw-Food Diet '' byStephen Arlin, RC Dini, and David Wolfehttp://www.rawfood.com/cgi-bin/order/index.cgi?id=54541214657 & d=single & item_id=0001 & c=Books & sc=Raw_Foods & tc=Stephen_Arlin,_RC_Dini,_and_David_Wolfeand the then bizarre yet unusually practical eyepopping book, ''Blatant Raw-Foodist Propaganda'' byJoe Alexander http://www.rawfood.com/cgi-bin/order/index.cgi?id=54541214657 & d=single & item_id=0013 & c=Books & sc=Raw_Foods & tc=Joe_AlexanderIn those days i was like, What is this all about?

itwas a revolution in food consciousness for me and thenwith raw resources, money, prepared foods and rawassociates, it was easy enough to at least try out attimes and then venture off on my own once i was hookedand stayed raw even in cooked environments. for some reason, i can't seem to re-awaken thatawareness and have really gotten into thoinking it isok to eat cooked food. i am not one to indulge in confusion and injoybelieving in my choices, which was probably the firstthing that attracted me to the raw food movement wasthe confidence and raw blatent self assurred attitudeof people who were of my general generation, birthedinto the very dawning of the video game super cablechanel hopping tv watching movie renting computerloving techno age. (i somehow ended up with a Vic 20-it may have been a brother's of mine who never usedit nor wanted it so I ended up using it- back around1979, a legitamate computer

with 20k memory! which ilovingly programmed to ask questions and lead the userin certain directions based on their answeres... thesheer power of such a logical tool blew me away!Little did i know where computers would go, nor did iever think about it and simply slided back into theiruse in 1988 when i used word perfect in college towrite a paper and fell deeply in love with things likethe auto thesaurus and spell check, dictionary, etc., it was like legitamatizing my writings which wereplentiful back then as i was almost a philosophy majorwith plenty to say especially considering all theintoxicants i was taking back then (i am long awayfrom that!).anyway, i was raw off and on since 1997 with a revivalof it around september of 2001 when i was actuallyintuitively guided to go very raw, clean raw withouteven whole nuts let alone jars of tahini, to eat forextreme streamlined liveliness, one handful of foodper

meal, say a few strawberries, an apple and a fewfigs or something... and go, not to linger over thefood, to need less and less to forgo force feeding,gulping things like this and sip only for it'susefulness... to be free of the time consumingobsession with enjoyment of food... well, i went withit on and off that fall... sometimes fasting here andthere, sometimes eating cooked, eventually clearingmyself of certain semi conscious insecurities andbasic average american mental derangements that looklike functional paranoia and schitzophrenia to thesensative observer (which i had become!). I do owe itto the independence training more than the raw food initself, though being 98% raw in 1997 is what actallyand clearly started me on the road out of averageamerican doledrums and "depression."I guess i have embraced the independence lessons overthe raw food lifestyle and feel almost no inspirationto go raw again other

than a little inner nudge, atiny spark of raw remembering that awakens in me everynow and then... enough for me to order extra lettuceand tomatos on my veggie burger... or to considerhaving my green peppers uncooked on my cheeze pizza...or to drink sugarless diet soda instead of regular...i know i know, degraded foods all the way! somehow ijust keep thinking it is ok. I have really switched mythinking to the mind over matter consciousness whichis possible but i intuit that it requires a phenomenaland full commitment to spiritual development and stillone will need to be prudent in ones eating... theamerican way of eating tends to be compulsive and,dare i say, careless... i am, by habit and by humannature to conform, one of them. i used to enjoyrebelliousness more than i do now. Enough! Still i am Original and that is the gift ofthis millenium for me. and, i hear, for many others aswell. -Molly, on the Island

of KauaiHawaii Vipassana PO BOX 2166 Kapaa, HI 96746Kauai: (808) 822-7985 fax # (801) 401-7385info International Website:http://www.dhamma.org 2005 courses 10 day, Kauai:April 13-24th, 2005Sept. 14-25th, 2005Online registration: http://www.dhamma.org/nonctrw.en.shtml#hi.us1 day, Oahu: May 1, 7:30am-4:30pm Registration: (808) 393-2168

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