Hi, I’m Lisa Murphy. Welcome to my cosy Internet home. Pull up a chair, throw a few logs on the fire, and let me fill you in on how I got involved in this whole Rawfood thing.
I first discovered the joys of rawfood back in 2003, while sailing from San Diego to Hawaii (I have a theory that you can’t visit the magical archipelago of Hawaii without having at least one life-changing experience).
I was working as a singer on a cruise ship at the time, and eating a fairly mainstream kind of diet – although I’d been vegetarian for several years by that point.
Singing on the high seas
I was in the restaurant having dinner with the band, and there was a guy at our table who seemed to be eating nothing but a huge plate of leaves.
This seemed really weird to us, so we asked why he should be restricting himself to only salad (after all, one of the main advantages to cruise-ship travel is the never-ending supply of every type of food known to man).
He proceeded to tell us all about the raw food diet; how it was the most natural way to eat, and how it was healthy and beneficial in so many ways.
Learning about Rawfood
The others quickly wrote him off as some kind of oddball, but for some reason I was really fascinated by it all. I bombarded him with dumb questions (“Can you still eat crisps? Don’t you miss toast?… Surely you could have a baked potato every once in a while?” …etc, etc… if you’re a fellow rawfoodie I’m sure you’ve heard them all), which, to his credit, he answered with complete patience and kindness.
I was particularly impressed when he showed me photos of his kids, who he’d raised completely on raw food – I didn’t believe it was possible, and had been expecting to see a couple of skinny malnourished urchins – I was therefore amazed when the pictures revealed two bright-eyed bonny children, both looking a picture of health.
I don’t know why exactly, but something inside me just ‘clicked’ and I decided to give the rawfood thing a try. At first I imagined it would be a temporary detox that I’d get fed up with pretty quickly – but within a short while I started experiencing such amazing benefits that I just didn’t want to go back to ‘normal’ eating.
Hawaii – where it all started
The first thing I noticed was that my immune system grew really strong, and I stopped being plagued by the colds, coughs, throat nodules and loss of voice that had troubled me throughout my career. This was a highly significant benefit of course, considering I relied on my voice to earn a living.
Vocal benefits
Even better still, I soon noticed that the chronic back pain that I’d suffered with for years simply vanished. This was an absolute game-changer for me, as I’d previously tried every therapy out there to heal it. I couldn’t quite understand how changing my diet could cure back pain, but I didn’t care, it worked, so I wasn’t complaining!
A new lease of life – pain free
And those were just the physical benefits. Emotionally I also felt transformed; it’s hard to put into words, but I felt a sense of lightness and freedom that I’d never experienced before.
The raw food diet also brought its challenges, however. I look back at that time now and wonder how I coped – for one thing I was living on the road (or more accurately, ‘at sea’), without any access to the raw equipment (blender, juicer, etc) that I now consider so essential to this way of life.
I also had NO idea what I was doing. I knew noone at all who was on this type of diet, and had very little internet access to find online groups and support. Back then the internet wasn’t the information superhighway it is today – I hadn’t even heard of Facebook, and I didn’t own a laptop, so I had to make do with the odd visit to an internet cafe while I was in port, to research this novel way of eating.
So it was a pretty steep, and lonely, learning curve. I had to learn from my own mistakes, and believe me, I made many…
Throughout the next few years I think I went through just about everything rawdom can throw at a girl – the physical and emotional detox, the highs, the lows, the cravings, the juicy deliciousness, the social pressures, the falling away of old relationships and patterns that just didn’t ‘fit’ any more, the blissful (re)unions with like minds and soul mates, the crazy life-shattering exhilaration of it all, and above all the JOY that comes from living a healthy, vibrant, natural life.
These days I’ve settled into my own raw groove and it’s simply a way of life to me now. I love sharing my ideas and recipes, both on this site and on my social media channels.
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