Newman - Going Vegan

I had the good fortune of growing up in a traditional middle class family with a breadwinning father and a very dutiful and dedicated stay-at-home mom. We were a typical American family with a very typical American diet. My mother thought she was being a good mother by serving us what she had been taught was a well-balanced diet. In fact, I distinctly remember not being allowed to leave the table until I had tried a little of everything and I had eaten all of my vegetables. However, if I had known then what I know now, the food on my plate would have been a lot different. I would probably still have all of my organs. I would have been able to have children. And I would not have lost my mother to cancer at the early age of forty-five.

Even though I was fed what was thought of as a healthy diet, I grew up not being a very healthy person. As a child, I could count on having tonsillitis or strep throat at least once a year, plus numerous colds. I was always told that my illnesses were due to the bad sinuses that ran in our family. All through my teenage years, I struggled with my weight, and I suffered tremendous cramps, water weight gain, and mood swings with my monthly visitor. In my junior year of high school, my appendix became severely infected and ruptured before the doctors detected the problem. I came closer to dying than I would have liked.

When I was twenty-five years old, my gallbladder had to be removed due to gallstones too numerous to count. In fact, it took the doctors three months to diagnose my condition because gallstones were unheard of in a twenty-five-year-old in great physical shape. As if all of these health problems were not enough, I developed endometriosis in my early thirties, and by age thirty-five, I had my right ovary and fallopian tube removed. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful fertility doctor who was able to save my left ovary and fallopian tube so that I could continue to try to become pregnant. However, after many years of trying, I was still never able to have children. Exhaustive testing never uncovered the reason why.

At the age of forty, I decided that I didnt want to undergo any more major surgeries. I was running out of organs to have removed and still have my body function normally! At this point in my life, I decided to start researching on how I could make positive changes to my physical health.

I became a voracious reader, combing through every book on nutrition and diet I could find. Then one day on TV, I heard actress Marilu Henner being interviewed and talking about her new book, The Total Health Makeover. After ten years of studying anatomy, physiology, Eastern and Western medicine, macrobiotics, vegetarianism, acupuncture, and chiropractics, and experimenting with different eating behaviors, Marilu had come up with a lifestyle that afforded her optimum health and vitality. In fact, she looked so good and had so much energy that her friends, family, and fellow actors all wanted to know what she was doing. After much encouragement, she decided to share her program in a book. I was intrigued by the information she gave in her TV interview, and I went right out and purchased the book.