In May of 2004, I hit a crossroads in my life - I had serious health issues that needed to be addressed! I had heard about The Hallelujah Diet way of eating four years prior, from a close friend whose husband had been diagnosed with cancer. This friend and her husband had embraced The Hallelujah Diet and her husband recovered from his cancer after adopting the diet. I knew it was the right way to eat, but I wasn't willing to give up my comfort foods at the time. I guess I just didn't hurt badly enough at the time to be willing to make the diet change.

Four years after I first learned about The Hallelujah Diet, I was hurting so bad I had a decision to make. Were my taste buds and comfort foods going to control my health and life, or was I going to take control of what I ate? When my daughter learned that I was going to adopt The Hallelujah Diet, and eat a vegan diet comprised of 85% raw and 15% cooked, she challenged me with this question: 'If people were getting great results eating 85% raw vegan foods, what would happen if I ate 100% raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts? I was horrified! Now, not only was I supposed to give up my meat, dairy, and eggs, but now she was asking me to give up all cooked veggies as well. I thought about it all night, and by morning I had let go of my addiction to cooked foods and began a journey into all the raw fruits, veggies, seeds and nuts that I could or wanted to eat!

That decision was made two years ago, and 30 pounds ago, for the easiest weight loss I have ever experienced. My adult acne of 23 years went away! My monthly PMS cramps, which I had suffered with every month for 32-years, disappeared. Constipation gone! Pre-cancerous skin cancers gone! Achy knees I used to experience while jogging all gone, along with many other symptoms!

During these past two years, while on a totally raw Hallelujah Diet, I have been active in triathlons, 5K's, power walking, horseback riding, dancing with my husband, etc. I never would have believed that I could be this athletic, eating this kind of food, at almost 50-years of age. After researching protein, and learning things like mother's breast milk is only 5% protein during such an important time of building the body, and that major athletes in America eat this way, I realized I was getting my protein from the same source the cows get their protein - directly from the living plants! Now I had living proof in my own body that all the protein my body needed could be found in the living plants, and I realized that all the protein hype was just that - hype.

I now look the best, and feel the best I have ever looked or felt in my life, and I am excited about turning 50 years old. I had tried to be a vegetarian years ago, but now as I look back on it, I realize my diet really wasn't vegan. Now I have found a way to be pill free, pain free, and disease free!

I had been looking for a book to show me proof that this vegan diet was the best way to go, and I recently found that proof in a book titled The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. This book stops all nay sayers. But besides the proof found in this book as to the truth of a pure vegan diet being the best way to go, my body gives me all the proof I need every day. I am now eating to live, rather than living to eat, and will continue to eat this way for the rest of my life! God is so good to His kids to give H.A. as a way to find & experience life & health!!!!