Personal HomePage for Amanda Waldner
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Beautiful, live food, for a beautiful, live you!
My story begins back in my early teens when I remember suffering numerous bladder infections. My mother, knowing no better, took me to the doctor every time where he prescribed antibiotics after antibiotics. There were many times that I was on a dose of antibiotics 2 times a month and didn't even think about it, because I knew nothing else. A few years later I started suffering in my gut and didn't know why. Things actually got so bad that a lot of the time I wasn't up for going to school, and so for half my grade 11 school year I had a tutor. During this time I started suffering from yeast infections and other numerous problems, too many to number. Over the years I could feel that my health was not as it should be! I noticed little things such as my eyes being sensitive to light and my ears being itchy, being very tired, my mind not being clear and always feeling foggy. I found myself emotionally frustrated and drained. I fought with this for years and years, trying to be the person that I wanted to be but never being able to find her it seemed.
In my early twenties I moved to Calgary Alberta, where my search for the truth about health really started on the course that has taken me to this point today. In Calgary was where I first learned the truth about dairy products and the negative effect that they have on the body, and about sugar and how it can be one of the most seriously dangerous substances to put into your body. Now granted, their are those people who have very strong bodies and nothing seems to affect them, at least that they can see, but I was not one of those people.
At age 22 I went on my first Candida diet for six weeks, and it was a great success. I noticed huge improvements in my body and my mind and really got to see first hand how living without dairy and sugar made me feel truly wonderful. But it seems that once you get feeling better, it is easy to slip back into eating the way you did before. However, one thing I didn't do was over eat on dairy, and in fact I did cut out most dairy.
As I learned more and more over the next seven years, I made more and more changes. Cutting out more and more foods and learning about what vitamins and herbs I needed etc. It seemed complicated to me a lot of the time though and so I would often cheat, or just go back to eating poorly again. But I am thankful that along the way I did keep some of the changes I made, often feeling that I took five steps forward and three back. Always falling back a ways, but never being able to keep up to my knowledge of where I knew I should be.
Then in 1998, I had the wonderful pleasure of working for a chiropractor in Drayton Valley, Alberta. It was at this point that I really got a taste of what it was like to live a more healthy life style on a constant basis. Ray & Verna welcomed me to live in their home and it was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. We ate healthy food every day and I felt really great for the most part. Though the last few months of my long distance relationship with my husband, I started a lot of emotional eating and over eating, because the distance between us was becoming more and more difficult.
At the age of 29 I got married to my wonderful husband Glen and we were immediately pregnant with our first child. During this pregnancy I had numerous bladder and yeast infections, but other then that I felt a bit light headed and sick but never experienced morning sickness.
Then just over a year after our first one was born, we got pregnant with our little Nickolas. That pregnancy seemed a bit easier and I didn't suffer bladder and yeast infections quite like I did with Vincent. However, I did not eat well at all and by the end of my pregnancy I was suffering from numerous yeast infections and feeling not so great.
About four weeks after Nickolas was born I had a reaction that I thought was an allergic reaction. My face swelled up and I was itchy like crazy. But then it got worse, and when I found it hard to breathe we went to the hospital. They gave me medicine for an allergic reaction and sent me home. Then I went back again and they gave me a different drug. Then the third time they finally gave me something that actually worked, and it was the strongest thing they had other then the life saving adrenaline.
The next day while taking a shower I looked at my arms and noticed a rash and immediately I remember having had that rash years ago when I was told I had a severe overgrowth of yeast in my body "Candida". "Of course!" I said to myself. I had figured it out! "Thank God!" I was so scared that something terrible was wrong with me and that this might be it and I would soon meet my maker. The fear that had been in me disappeared! I vowed at that moment that I was going to do whatever it took to become healthy and allow my body to function as it was meant to function.
Now, since about 10 months earlier, I had started researching all the information that I could on the "RAW" lifestyle, and the more I read, the more intrigued I was and the more sense it made. In fact in my 12 - 13 years of looking for answers to being healthy naturally, I had never come across anything that made more sense than the "RAW" lifestyle.
So after my reaction, that at the time seemed like a near death experience, I vowed to myself to get a hold on my eating and change my life. I made the decision and there was no turning back. Was it easy? The anxiety over not eating foods that I loved was the worst part, but actually I would have to say "YES, it was easy!" I knew what needed to be done and I did it and I not only don't regret it, but I absolutely love it! I have cheated a few times and I suffer when I do, but I would never want to eat any other way. It will be the way I eat for the rest of my days. Why? Because of the way it has changed me! I feel like a new woman and it just keeps getting better and better. And the whole entire experience has been wonderful, because I have found the woman I used to be. The woman I am!
The process for me isn't over yet! I am still changing in my heart, my mind and in my body! It is wonderful to experience wanting to be good to the earth and to other living creatures. My views are making me into someone that I love and that hasn't happened in a very very long time.
I believe if we can get our lives back to what I label as "Simplicity" then we can avoid so many health conflicts that come our way. Our bodies were not created to have diseases, but rather to be healthy and full of vitality! Our beautiful earth was created to sustain us, not to slowly be destroyed by mans innovations. Let us all do our part and then not only will our bodies be healthy, but our world also.
To all of you who are even thinking about adapting this lifestyle to your way of living, I can only say this. "It is a wonderful ride, and one that will bring about in you the best parts of you! Allow yourself the opportunity to become the best that you can be, the best you that God created you to be!"
I wish you abundant health and true happiness!
Amanda Waldner
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