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My Story
Hi, my name is Alejandra Hernando, I live in Mexico City and I am a Raw Vegan. Four years ago, I didn’t know anything about raw food, but my daughter knew better. She was born with many food allergies, but nobody believed us because doctors said that you can’t be allergic to something you haven’t eaten. She has been breastfed since day one, but when she was 1 month old, we knew something was wrong. She couldn’t sleep, she was very colicky and she had what the doctors called “reflux”, but I was in contact with La Leche League in Mexico and they told me that my baby could have an intolerance (allergy) to cow’s milk that I was consuming. I started my journey to raw food even though at that time I didn’t even know it. I took off of my diet all dairy products to see if this was affecting my child, and guess what? She started to sleep better and she even stopped throwing up. We couldn’t believe it but in 2 weeks, she was another baby, but something was still getting her stomach upset so my Leader from La Leche Group told me to make a food diary and I make sure to put everything on the list.
I found out that what I eat takes about 6 hours to turn out in my milk, and I also found I had a very sensitive baby. The first reaction was at 6 hours, but after 8 hours the reaction got worse. She is allergic to cow’s milk, sugar, soy, eggs, meat, fish, poultry, wheat (gluten intolerant or celiac), food colorings (yellow 5 and caramel color were the worst), food additives (monosodium glutamate gave us a very hard time, almost everything has it ), before she was three she couldn’t have any citric fruit (oranges, tomato, lime, tamarind, etc.), nuts or almonds (but she could have sunflower seeds and sesame seeds when she was about 2 years old), she couldn’t have honey until she was past 3 years old, pears gave us a hard time because the doctor recommended that we should give her cooked fruit because of all the allergies, but I think this made it worse.
Our daughter couldn’t eat many things because of her allergies and with some of them she goes into an anaphylactic shock (her throat swells and she stops breathing), we decided that we were not going to have that food at home. So we ended eating a lot healthier. Everything a mom eats goes into the milk, so I had to be very careful not to eat anything that could make my daughter get very ill. This makes me think about all the things that they give cows, like hormones, that we get to consume in a glass.
She started solids until 9 months old and we took a long time until she was eating most of her nutrients from food instead than my milk. In Mexico we are used to wean our babies between 6 and 9 months at the most, so I felt a bit weird when my baby was 2 years old and was drinking milk almost every 2 hours. She is a very tall and healthy girl, but nobody could believe that she didn’t drink cow’s milk or eat meat. I had to buy organic or pre wash all my vegetables and fruit in magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts) with water to eliminate pesticides and fertilizers. (1 teaspoon Epsom salts for every liter of water, soak for 1 hour, then rinse and ready to eat, this really changes the taste and they last longer. Give it a try!) I went on a trip to Texas and bought some books when she was about 15 months old and found allergy cook books which helped me to cook without milk, wheat, soy, eggs, well all allergens and helped me prepare nice things because I was having a hard time not eating milk or wheat. So this started my transition to raw food. I was a Vegetarian, but I did consume dairy products and eggs. We did consume rice, tortilla chips and fried potatoes.
When I understood my daughter’s way of eating I realized that everything she couldn’t eat, we were not supposed to eat, so my husband and myself made a commitment to ourselves about what we were going to consume. My La Leche League group was of a lot of help. I sometimes felt so frustrated I didn’t know why, up until now that I realized the horrible addiction I had to bread and milk and how hard it was on me to not fall. The group helped me go on breastfeeding my baby and not eating the things that made her ill, and then I found out I was healing myself doing that.
My daughter liked to eat uncooked pea shoots, and broccoli when I was preparing a stew before I put them in the pot, she liked everything when I was preparing it, so when the soup was ready, she wasn’t hungry. I let her, I just didn’t realized she was eating raw food until one day my mom asked if the girl was going to eat something at the table, and I just answered, “No, she ate while I was preparing the food”. That’s when I went and started to read about this on the internet and I found many things and recipes. I found Gone Raw website and there someone talked about a raw pregnancy ebook at The Garden Diet website. There I contacted Jinjee about my daughter’s allergies and raw food and she gave me some guidelines on what books and bought them. Soon after that all I could think about was this family which were doing extraordinary things with their lives and kids and I wanted to be like that. So that day I told myself that I would be like that. I didn’t know how long it would take me but I needed to eat raw, I needed to experience that for myself and I did it. Now I have a Raw Vegan Family. My husband, my daughter and myself now are giving testimony of this way of living. This lifestyle has changed us all and now it’s the time to touch others the way I was touched. It’s my turn to give back what has been given to me and this is what I am doing right now.
My daughter is almost 4 years olds and thriving on raw food. My husband has not used inhaler for his asthma in many months now and I forgot about migraines, dandruff, heartburn, feeling tired, pre menstrual syndrome, obesity and pain in knees for which I had an operation. I was told to not be able to go up or down any stairs, but I can even jump rope. I feel more energetic, want to exercise, happier and healthier. I thought my life was ok, now I know my life is SUPERB.
I thank God for the best experience he could offer me and I would love people all over the world to live it for a day and feel the difference. Feel his/her love in every thing around us.
Email me if you want to know how to introduce a wide range of raw food to your everyday life. You don’t have to eat only raw food, you can improve your health and well being just by adding raw fruits and vegetables to your actual diet.
Now I just started the first website in spanish, the first one of its kind, about green smoothies and how to increase the amount of raw organic fruits and vegetables in your diet. Visit us at www.comefrutasyverduras.com.mx
I also launched a campaign using green smoothies. You can see pictures and videos of the campaign on our site at www.comefrutasyverduras.com.mx/videos.html Come join us and spread the word.
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