During

[Note: If you haven't yet read "My Story: How Raw Foods and Live Green Smoothies Changed My Life", I invite you to do so before checking these pictures out, to put everything in context. Also, see "Photos: Before Going Raw" to see my delightful starting point!]

So, having started on my raw journey in April of 2005, within 5 weeks I’d lost 15 pounds without moving a finger to exercise and without restricting my diet or appetite in any way, other than to just eat as much raw & living food as possible!

By late June, I’d gone from an 18/20 to a size 14. Here are a couple shots around that time. I think the increased vitality and “glow” is apparent in these photos. The 2nd photo isn’t a close-up, but you can see that the weight-loss is well in-hand from my overall figure.

Here’s a shot from late-August, while vising family in Greece. I’m still a size 14 here… but things are beginning to hit critical mass for me, and I can feel it, even though it’s not quite apparent in my appearance.While in Greece, I swam a couple times every day and absolutely reveled in soaking up the vitality of the sun and the salty Aegean. I felt like a human voltaic cell “charming its battery”.

Incidentally, on the island where my family is from (Samos), they commonly share with each other “how many swims they had so far this summer”. Their view is, the higher the number of “swims”, the better a winter it’s going to be for the person. As my number of “swims” was utterly off-the-charts from my six-weeks’ stay, I was assured by my family there that I was going to have an awesome winter. Turns out… that entire next year from that point forward was one of the most life-changing ever!

When I returned home from Greece at the beginning of September, I was suddenly a 12, then two weeks later a 10, then two weeks later an 8. I was buying clothes that rapidly, because they started to just fall off m frame.

It was within a couple of weeks of my return home that I took my first dance lesson, so the addition of some regular exercise is in my opinion what accelerated the weight loss at that point.

Continue on to “Photos: After Going Raw: The Transformation” to see what happened!