Linda’s Story
My name is Linda, I was born, studied, and grew up in Singapore. I’ve been eating mainly Living Foods since 2007, and I’m more alive than ever!
Contrary to what most people think & say in the beginning, my hands, ears, eyes and hair are still intact, my nose did not drop off, my finger nails are still here – in fact I have stronger nails, hair and more radiant skin than ever.
I had a somewhat unconventional childhood; while most kids are studying and playing, I was busy working. The story is that my parents separated when I was 14, I decided to bring myself up because I loved to study & really wanted a University education.
Working part time at every odd job that will employ young students, I successfully went through Secondary, College and University. However, I also started to smoke and drink and led a pretty delinquent lifestyle.
Even before University, I knew I wanted to get into a trade that can help me make the most money, and so I chose banking. Needless to say, I’ve only been in the banking & finance industry since graduation. That was one of the shortest routes to material success, and within 3 years I was making 3 times that of my peers who were in other industries.
No matter how much money I made, I was never happy, and I wanted more. And somehow the money was just squandered away on shopping, cosmetics, food, alcohol and other material stuffs. I worked hard, so hard that I’d go days without sleeping, surviving just on cigarettes, and junk processed food. My way of dealing with the stress, is to be drinking almost every other night when not working.
When I turned 26, I became really sick – both physically & emotionally. My periods started to disappear now and then, and then totally stopped coming. The gynecologist said it was natural, and prescribed hormone pills. After taking the hormone pills, the menses returned, but I developed horrible Eczema. The rashes were a source of torture and agony during many nights.
I went to 6 Doctors and they all told me the same thing – there is no cure, no reason, the only remedies are to take steroids and apply creams. However, the creams only worked once; my body developed a resistance to it the second time and it doesn’t work.
When the menses stopped coming, it was not enough to wake me up yet. Because I was all about looking good, I would choose looking good over being healthy. I used to eat a lot of slimming diets, pills and medications even though I know they are not the best things. But when the Ezcema hit, I knew I’ve got to change.
And so I began researching into the relationship between beauty, skin health and internal health. The more I discovered, the more I was convinced that diet is a super underrated component of beauty and health.
Ever since I discovered Living Foods, life took on a drastic shift. I saw how my skin mended before my very eyes, my radiance and shine coming through the hair, eyes and my energy levels shot up. I felt obvious shifts in mental clarity and consciousness.
In the interim, I did a huge amount of work on myself to resolve hidden emotional issues that started to surface. When the diet cleans up, the emotions have to clean up too.
I gave up using makeup, cosmetics and conventional skin care because I know they do more harm than good; and besides, there is no need to. I look better now than I was previously behind 6 inches of powder. Collagen drinks, synthesized supplements and slimming pills were all thrown out of the cabinet.
With an intelligent combination of Yoga & Living Foods, I believe that the Fountain of Youth does really exist, and it is every man & woman’s birth-right to know. This is the reason for my choice of teaching people how to have the energy and radiance that I have.
How I transitioned over the 5 years (since 2006):
When I first stumbled onto Raw Foods on the internet in 2006, it seemed like an impossible idea. Being curious by nature, I probed and researched before deciding to experiment on myself. Even only for a few days, I could feel that something was changing inside my body, and the experience was phenomenal.
Living purely on fruits and raw vegetables, i started needing lesser sleep and getting a lot more energy. My mind became sharp and focused like never before, and the world seemed different. Day after day I woke up on lesser sleep and higher energy!
But everybody thought I’d gone insane when I told friends about it! I stood out like a sore thumb, social situations turned out extremely bad and people frowned upon my diet disapprovingly. People viewed me as a weirdo at best, and a lunatic at worst!
Raw food just started nibbling at the Western countries then, and Singapore was definitely not a great place to introduce new ideas yet! With so much new found energy, nobody could match my pace and I grew bored, lonely, even scared, and eventually gave up.
Turning raw was not an easy change. I scrambled feebly onto raw after every backslide, only to find myself back in the comfort of cooked foods too soon. Somehow, thank God, I made enough progress through months of research, perseverance, trials and errors, that I slowly found my path back to raw again. It was really difficult because I was all alone here and my nearest “raw buddy” was an Australian living in Canada! There wasn’t even a shadow of any raw foodist in Asia then.
But still, it wasn’t complete until I finally took a month off and flew to Boston. After 3 flights, 2 days of being in the air, 1 shuttle bus, and a 2 hour car ride, I reached Kittery, Maine – the place where I received training. There, I experienced the biggest transformation of my lifetime.
I had access to gourmet raw food everyday, world-class trainers on both raw food preparation AND personal development. Everyday was packed with training on raw food preparation, terminology and character development to qualify as a living foods teacher.
I also met many people from Europe, America, Germany, Australia – most of them had healed themselves of ‘incurable diseases’ with living foods and Yoga; and they all look amazing!
Honestly, having been in banking for the whole of my working career, being a teacher was the last thing on my mind then! I only wanted to satisfy my curiosity and learn to prepare raw gourmet for myself. But then remembering how tough it was to stick to raw in Singapore, I thought it would be cool if I could be a teacher and coach myself.
That was, I classify as, the best decision ever made for my life. My learning curve was exponential, coupled with the fabulous raw gourmet food which was available all day long, made that period the most unbelievable time of my life. That was one of the first major turning points on my journey of healing.