Hi friends, This month marks about 10 years that I have been fruit based raw vegan. I feel like I am not as active in the raw vegan world as I would like to be, and although I don't consider myself a raw vegan "expert" by any means, I guess I have a good amount of experience under my belt now that I could share. I don't know if my experience as a raw vegan will be of any interest to anyone here, but I figure if I can help or inspire just 1 person it's worth it for me to share. I was raised eating a largely whole foods vegetarian diet, but I did eat a lot of dairy. I first became aware of raw foods when I went to university in Montreal and lived for 2 years with a professional chef at Montreal's biggest raw food restaurant. He wasn't raw or vegan himself but he did have lots of books about raw foods in the apartment. At this point I had already been struggling with anorexia for about 6 years but for the first couple years of my degree I managed to maintain a healthy weight and overall good level of health. When I went to live with Barry the raw food chef ,it coincided with me slipping back into a relapse, and I was very preoccupied with my body and calories and losing weight. These books ( don't worry Doug, your's wasn't one of them) unfortunately only exacerated my downward spiral by planting seeds in my head about "detox" and cleansing my body. I started dabbling with raw food meals but my weight was simultaneously decreasing very quickly because I was drastically undereating and when I flew back home for Christmas I narrowly avoided hospitalization by agreeing to let my Mom take charge of my food intake. Despite her good intentions, this involved a "refeeding" diet consisting of lots of cheese and eggs, nuts, starches and many other high calorie but hard to digest foods. I slowly gained weight and was allowed to return to university with supervision, meaning I had to move out of Barry's place and rent a flat with Mom, therefor continuing with the high fat, high protein vegetarian diet. I felt horrible but distracted myself with my studies and the belief that I was doing the right thing. One day I was watching some video on youtube about something totally unrelated and vegan activist Gary Yourofsky's "best speech you'll ever hear" pops up in my "recommended " sidebar. For those who don't know what I'm talking about this is a well known speech about the realities of how animals are treated in animal ag. I clicked on it of course and watched the whole thing start to finish in one go. By the end I was in tears and told my Mom I have to go vegan. After the initial shock she watched the video too and couldn't help but agree, so we started researching" how to gain weight on vegan diet". And of course what we found was "eat lots of nuts", "eat lots of grains, legumes, tofu, peanut butter!" ...

My diet is so great in that I mean that my body's ability to provide bio feedback is greatly enhanced. One continuous improvement after another! So I thought more about my breathing frustrations and came to one realization: if my hypothesis of digestion is the cause of my breathing difficulty then some meals I must be improperly food combining and/or some complex salads with 6 or 7 ingredients like I've had previously would make my stomach feel upset or knotted up while simpler salads would not make my feel this way (I've been doing 3 ingredients for 2 weeks so far) because they are so easy on the body. For the past 6 months I know I've been carefully food combining so I know that is not the case. The knots I felt in my stomach seemed to occur no matter if I had a simple salad with 3 ingredients or one with 7 or 8 I always felt the same. Last day in the gym I got to thinking: so sometimes I feel I cannot get a deep enough breath and I'm running out of oxygen which is a horrible feeling to have. When I get a deeper breath I usually have to crouch down or hang like on a pull up rack to get that full breath. I began to think: maybe I'm breathing all wrong then at work day before yesterday and yesterday I watched a lot of YouTube and did quite a bit of searching. I came to realize that I am a "Mouthbreather" not that I'm stupid as the name can imply. I never realized after all of these years that this was a major problem. So to get full breath which was overbreathing and all in my head I had to breathe so deeply to get a breath I was unlikely to ever get. Interestingly, I only began to do this practice about 10 months ago when I initially began raw vegan 80 10 10 with lots of mistakes and screw ups for the first few months. Ive learned to breathe through my nose only at all times other than when exercising, eating, or talking. So with a meditative focus on breathing through nose I haven't in over a day tried to breathe too heavily through mouth so the soreness I felt under right rib I'm convinced was my lungs crying out from me overstressing them now that soreness is no more. The knot in stomach I think was just the messages I kept telling myself about my digestion still trying to straighten itself out. Next step I messaged a couple of breathing coaches to learn how to breathe because I've been a chronic mouthbreather my entire life and always thought that whether I breathe through mouth or nose it doesn't matter. I still have a lot to learn about breathing but I do understand that mouthbreathing can be very unhealthy. The science is interesting saying that mouthbreathers can cause dental issues (disrupts the mouths ph balance), respiratory problems, changes in fascial structure - a longer face with mouthbreathing, nostrils can become constricted because of non use so to expand have to be used more often, reduces nitric oxide production which affects cardiovascular and brain health, and more (i found good blog post on this subject for anyone that wants to learn more: https://feno.co/blogs/news/the-hidden-dangers-of-mouth-breathing-a-scientific-deep-dive?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21919780221&gbraid=0AAAAA9WBXt4QGiCKf94X_MPI2FPTr5HLt&gclid=CjwKCAjwiezABhBZEiwAEbTPGKSbWinxgbdZAYruQ5-gza66l2KzYg35gEUJzOI8NdXroYw28StPQxoCLqQQAvD_BwE

I was cleaning my room of lots of old clutter and put up lots of pictures of my daughter got a frame for 12 photos and put up some of her art. Before i had these pictures and art shoved in a couple of drawers sadly brushed aside and most not considered worthy of a frame. These were when she was little she's now 20 years of age. She's told me after I recently asked her if I was a good dad that she wishes she could of spent more time with her when she was little. The 80/10/10 Raw Vegan diet is prompting my to ask such questions being more connected to my emotions than at any time in my past truly this is an instance of living my best life now! After my divorce I talked with parents and agreed to give over custody so she could have good health insurance and a better home in my opinion. Parents and me only live about 15 miles apart yet with my struggle with depression, SAD diet, working shit jobs, and spending more time with a girlfriend I neglected spending any more than one day a week with my daughter. I'm a much better Dad now and she has lived with me for the past 6 years. To look at old pictures and letters she wrote me it makes me cry some good tears but others more of regret but for the first time I can feel the regret without thinking selfishly and justifying myself when I was in the wrong just accepting responsibility. I've since apologized to my daughter and she forgave me. I'm thankful to be able to feel these emotions even though they are difficult. One of the great joys of 80/10/10 rv! I think I'm going to show her what I did to my room. She may not think much of it but I sure do. I'm trying to help her eventually get off of the SAD diet and on to 80/10/10 RV. She has had non-hodkgins lymphoma which is a form of cancer of the lymph nodes a few years ago but now is recovered but with her bone health and the pain she still goes through because of doing chemotherapy (wish I knew about 80/10/10 at the time and what it could do for cancers of all sorts perhaps she would have another option besides chemotherapy) she is very obese and continually has issues with her joints and bones so I'm hoping and praying she will change for her health. I'm not pushy and her but I do tell her words of wisdom from time to time and I'll keep on because I want the best health for my daughter because I love her.

I've had some trouble with my breathing and while it is getting better I'm trying to narrow it down and get better. I did find out through food sensitivity test that granny Smith and pink lady and other kinds of apples I'm very sensitive too so I'm going to avoid eating those. The other parts of the food sensitivity results I'm having trouble making sense of. It does say I have inflammation in regards to gut health but so many medical terms it gets confusing to make heads or tails of it. I'm wondering if anyone can help interpret?

I posted about breathing issues a while back and I'm happy to report those are much better now. I think between my anxiety and switching from whole food plant based to raw vegan 80/10/10 caused me to struggle with my breathing. I can get a full breath in now but still struggle sometimes and im 97% oxygen rate according to Doctor. Now I actually think that the knot feeling by my stomach is the reason for my breathing. Going from WFPB to raw vegan 80/10/10 is quite a shift and I think my body digestion needs more time to get feeling good and for that knot like feeling in my stomach to go away. Everyday I have a big salad loaded up with avocado and lime dressing with some tahini and flax seeds on top it tends to be around 600 calories, and my other 2200 calories comes from fruit of course and I have Dr. Graham Reference Guide to follow that way I am making sure to always combine the proper foods. I'm starting to think that my body needs to be cleaned out and I know what I'm eating is doing a good job of that. I don't want to take supplements or prescription pills if I can get around it but I would like to know if any other community members have had a knot feeling in their stomach that seems to get in the way of breathing too? If so, I'd like to know how you made yourself better? I found some ideas with Shane from Raw Vegan Rising about cleaning out with 40 day juice fast but upon reading Dr. Graham book I learned that juice will imbalance the body and also I'm not getting near the amount of fiber and many other nutrients that are degraded with juicing. Well I'm looking forward to hearing what smart community members come up with for advice. Love you all, Derek