I was born and raised in Czechoslovakia, which later became the Czech Republic. Ever since I was a child, I have learned to be aware of what you put into yourself. Soft drinks and sweets were not for children. Cakes were to be baked at home and it was always read on the packaging that the food did not contain glutamates, because even then, in the 70s, it was known that it was dangerous for small children. Where did that knowledge go then? I was a big city kid, but since we had a big summer house, where Grandma lived the entire growing season and where we spent all summers, I learned early on that our own fruits and vegetables were the best. We also raised rabbits and got eggs from our neighbor. We were a rather poor family, so we only had meat few times a week. We had different fruit trees and bushes, nut trees, grew a plenty of different vegetables. So even though at that time there was a shortage of fruit and vegetables in shops in the winters, we always had lots of our own from the summer farming. Jams and compotes of strawberries, cherries, apricots, peaches, jars and currants, raspberries, plums, pears and apples. Pickled vegetables in lard, which then was just to take a few spoons off and make sauce or soup. Potatoes, onions and carrots in the cellar. Everything that was not eaten fresh in the summer has been saved and stored for the winter. So even though a lot of white flour was eaten for economic reasons, I still dare to say that I grew up with the awareness that what you eat is important. And I have never learned to eat fast food, sweets, semi-finished products. Sometimes it is beneficial to grow in a culture that does not know fast food and can not afford to buy takeaway food and luxury goods.
But despite this, I have fought against obesity all my life. I remember my mother's strict "do not eat this, you get fat…" admonitions. I have not seen so many pictures of myself since childhood, but even though I do not look overweight on any of the pictures I have seen, I have grown up with that constant reminder that I am fat and should not eat so much. I do not know how many diets I have had to try while growing up, so it is no wonder that I developed a yo-yo effect that is out of this world. I have always been so afraid that my mother will think that I am fat, that I hardly dared to take a piece of chocolate or a cake when, for example, I was visiting my grandmother and great-grandmother. I still remember when my great-grandmother offered me a chocolate cake and I said no. She left it in my room if I wanted it later. I had nightmares that I ate it and became very fat and my mother got angry. I did not dare to eat the piece of chocolate and my great-grandmother got mad at me for being ungrateful not wanting it. No matter what you do, there is always someone who does not like what you do, you just have to learn to live with it.
When I moved away from home, I first became a foodie. I ate everything I could access. Like a fox that ends up in the hen house. I could not believe that I myself can now decide what to eat. I had a very hard time controlling myself and after a few weeks, I became so disgusted with myself and so shocked by my weight gain, that I became really depressed. What luck that I never liked alcohol very much, then I might have started drinking. But instead, I pulled myself up and promised myself that I would show everyone that even if no one controls what I eat, I will be able to keep the weight at a reasonable level. At that time came an era of light products and unfortunately for many years to come, I have fallen into that trap. Keeping the weight off meant being constantly hungry. So I alternated periods when I ate with periods when I lost the pounds I gained when I ate. For 25 years I have been doing this. I can literally survive weeks on 500kCal and I can literally gain a pound from one day to the next. I have always weighed myself every day and depending on what the weight looked like, I dared to eat different days. My weight has fluctuated between 62 and 72 kilos and I have never dared to eat as I wanted. I knew that if I let go of control, it would slip away beyond all rescue. I've seen what my relatives look like. No good genes here? And with high weight comes discomfort, limitations, and health problems, which I did not want.
Life got better when the LCHF movement took off. For the first time in my entire life, I could somehow eat myself full and not gain weight for every bite I took. I have even lost weight and it was easy to keep the weight around 65 kilos. I have always loved to cook and since childhood, I love the so-called healthy food, so skipping flour products and sugar was not so hard. I ate vegetables and meat and cheese and even though I was still slightly overweight, I felt quite satisfied. Because I am physically active, had a farm with a large riding business, I have danced several days a week for many years and had a heavy, physically demanding job with horses, so I was glad I did not have to feel hungry anymore.
With increasing age, however, the body has begun to show signs that not everything is right. I started having severe headache attacks and no examination could show what was wrong with me. I started to get pain in my breasts during menstruation. I became stiffer and stiffer in the body and the skin began to show signs of aging. I really did not want to look old as a 45-year-old. In that crank, my husband and I started watching the Youtube channel Thehealthylife. It is Markus Rothkrans and Cara Brotman who have it. We called Markus the maniac. He's not just vegan, he's raw vegan and actually completely crazy 😀 We have always totally dismissed veganism as a lifestyle, and we still do. But we could not ignore that the more we learned about raw food and how it affects our body, that it actually sounded so sensible, that we just had to do more and more research. For several months we have been looking at Markus and others and finally, we said that we will test it for three months. If it does not work for us, then just go back to regular food.
One important thing for us we had learned, was that raw food does not just mean cold salads and smoothies. We did not want to live with just such food. Partly because I love to cook and partly because I'm so tired of living on a diet. I want the feeling that I am eating real food. Otherwise, I know it will not last. You just constantly yearn for real food. But thanks to our research and various Youtube channels, we have learned that as long as you do not heat the food to more than 45 degrees, you can do whatever you want. You use a drying oven instead of baking, and then you just heat up vegetable soups without cooking them. Since we started our trip on the 1st of February, it was very nice to be able to eat at least lukewarm food. And since I LOVE kitchen appliances, I got a good drying oven, a high-speed mixer and a sous vide cooker, which you can set the temperature to a maximum of 45 degrees and then keep it for several hours. What is better than just being able to go to the kitchen at any time of the day and enjoy a good soup, which just lies there and just gets better and better? ?
How was the transition then? Surprisingly simple and smooth. It took several weeks before I came up with all sorts of tricks around cooking. Discovered how important it was to plan ahead. All new approaches took a long time to get a routine on and so you had to learn new principles for how to easily "swing" a meal. It's a more complicated journey than just cutting up a bowl of vegetables for a salad, but oh so much fun! I just love it. It is as if a new world has opened up to us. We were overwhelmed by all the fresh and unique flavors, and we should not even talk about the colors. It is unbelievable how much of the colors and flavors disappear when you cook the food. Why do we do that? Apart from literally killing the food and nutrition, you deny yourself the fantastic taste experience and the joy for the eyes. It's like my beloved husband says: Who cares that it's so nutritious when it's so incredibly good… And I agree 😀 So after about two weeks we got stuck and the planned three months have been changed to "As long as we want". We literally lack nothing of our old eating habits. Least of all, we lack meat, which I still have a hard time understanding. We loved meat before and now you almost get disgusted by the thought of putting it in your mouth. Not for any concrete reasons, just pure body feeling. Our bodies do not want it, period. We have everything else left but in a much healthier raw way; bread, butter, cakes, chocolate, yogurt, cheeses, soups, hot and cold dishes. Everything homemade from scratch and all raw vegan. What is there to long for back to? Nothing… There is an exception to this and that is eggs. We have the world's tastiest eggs from our own free-range hens and we love to eat them from time to time. Our food is not our religion and we have not signed a contract that we will never put anything in our mouths other than raw cucumbers. So we do not mind eating our own eggs.
How were the effects on the body then? After 3 months I lost 10 kilos in weight and since then I have had the weight that I do not even remember that I ever had as an adult. And that despite the fact that every day I eat myself satisfied from the food I love. I have now reached 56kg and can imagine losing a few more kilos, but that is not important to me anymore. The important thing is that for the first time in my life I like what I see in the mirror. I love my new body and now started exercising regularly, because I actually want to. It feels wonderful to feel that you can and then it will be fun to train and see what you can achieve more. At my age, it is important to start thinking about maintaining muscle mass and not losing weight too fast, so the skin does not become flabby. So yes, I enjoy the opposite problem - not losing weight anymore or doing it very slowly. I'm so glad I saved the clothes I bought, but they were too small back then. Now I could put on those nice dresses or shorts that I did not want to throw away, because "one fine day I might be able to wear them". But which is even better - the terrible headaches are gone, the chest pains are gone, the joints and back pain are gone. And the best thing about everything? The wrinkles on the décolleté and on the face have been smoothed out. I do not know how much of it is just the merit of the food, as I have also become very careful about taking care of the sensitive skin (age panicking maybe? :-D) but since the body is a complex mechanism where everything is connected, I'm sure that everything we do matters. I have always been a healthy person and so has my husband, so nothing has changed there - we never suffer from flu or colds, so we continue as usual 😀
So to end it all - discovering Raw food has become a great thing for us and I'm so happy it's just ridiculous, I realize. But I do not care. I have finally made peace with my body, my appearance, my aging, and my limitations. I get to eat absolutely fantastic food, which makes me happy already during cooking, while I eat it and even afterward. No more guilt or a guilty conscience. I became incredibly aware, humble, and grateful for what nature gives us. Eating live food gives a strange feeling of elation and gives special energy. You have not killed anything over being fed yourself and now I mean both figuratively and literally. Even if empathy for the animals was not really what was the beginning of our journey, it almost becomes like being so affected by living on raw plant-based food that it begins to feel unacceptable that any animal will have to die for us to eat, when it is clearly not necessary. I have no problem serving meat to my dogs, but I simply no longer want it myself. It just so happened, my body says thanks, but no thanks. So feel free to join and be inspired by the tastiest and healthiest food. It does not matter if you do not want to be raw, even one raw meal a week is better than nothing and if I can entice you to try, so I have achieved what is the goal of this site.