Before and After: My 30-Year Journey

Published: (May, 2025)

My Backstory First

I started giving raw food presentations almost 25 years ago. I just found this picture from 2002—back when I was 44, already believing in and passionately promoting raw foods. ⁠Along the way, I had the pleasure of meeting many of you in person—and some of you might even remember this part of my lecture:

I was born in Moldova. This is a small country in Eastern Europe close to Romania. Back then it was a part of the Soviet Union.

During my birth both hip joints were damaged. Surgeries consumed my childhood. I spent years in casts, but ultimately nothing could be done. My parents were told I would never walk.

In time, I did learn to walk—first with crutches, then with a limp. So many of the things teenagers did, I couldn’t—like wearing short skirts, playing sports, or dancing. Especially dancing. I’d come home from school and pretend I was a ballerina. With painful hip joints and a pronounced limp… that took a lot of pretending.

If you haven’t heard my story, I encourage you to read my books—because true inspiration doesn’t come from how much someone has achieved, but from how much they’ve had to overcome.

Now let’s fast forward to the early 1990s. We're living in America. I was eating the Standard American Diet—because it was inexpensive and incredibly convenient. By 1995, I had gained extra weight, developed a double chin, and felt tired all the time. I began to wonder what was going wrong.

That same year, I discovered raw foods—and just like that, everything changed. Spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, sloppy joes, hot dogs, frozen dinners... even my beloved morning cappuccinos—all disappeared from my diet.

Around that time, I stumbled upon a book by Paul Bragg called The Miracle of Fasting. It really spoke to me. I began fasting every Friday for 24 to 36 hours. And within a few months, I could feel the difference—my health started to improve, and the pounds began to drop. My ebook Your Right to Be Beautiful: The Miracle of Raw Foods describes that period in detail.

2. Before and After: My 30-Year Journey

I knew, early on, what it meant to be severely limited in my body’s abilities. And I deeply wanted to experience what lay on the other side of that—a full range of motion, the freedom of movement... and my heart’s desire: to dance. Yes, many years have passed, but the girl in me still wants to dance.

Over the last twenty years, I’ve put an enormous amount of effort into restoring my hips, which had been cut through and traumatized by multiple surgeries in every imaginable way. The hip joints were replaced and completely reconstructed.

Then came the challenge of regaining full range of motion and reviving muscles that had been atrophied for most of my life. I had to restore alignment and learn how to move my body in a “normal” way.

Injuries and age were not on my side. Nevertheless, I set out to learn to dance for the very first time, well into my mid-sixties. Many of the trainers I encountered were condescending—both because of my age and my physical limitations—to put it mildly.

But always remember you would not have a particular dream, if you had no means to fulfill it, no matter how impossible or improbable it looks to others.

These are my very first results in learning to dance. It's modest, I know. But I am very proud of my progress.

And I’m grateful. Grateful for the struggle. Grateful for the scars that taught me how to heal.

You can see that even a 60-year-old dream can come true. So what’s the secret to making your dream happen? First, don't let age limit you. Seriously, aging doesn't have to mean slowing down. You just need the right, age-defying practices and simple tools. They worked wonders for me—and there’s no reason they won’t work for you too.

One more note: upgrading your diet and creating a beauty routine takes real motivation. Quick videos and clips aren’t enough. You need to read books, absorb the information deeply, and stay connected to an author you trust. That’s how I made it through my own challenging transition. I read—and reread—the books by people I wanted to emulate.