Vegetarian Elite
 
Detoxing with Food Pioneer Karyn Calabrese: "Welcome to My Raw and Vegan World!"      
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Just do it – that’s the real secret to life, that’s the holy grail. Detoxing and cleansing the body a minimum of four times a year. That’s it.

Welcome, beautiful viewers, to Vegetarian Elite. Today, we’ll visit the exciting city of Chicago, Illinois, USA to meet vegan raw food pioneer and the forever young Karyn Calabrese.

Ms. Calabrese has been featured on many national popular television programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Sunday Morning News and NBC’s The Today Show, plus featured in Chicago’s two largest newspapers the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. She has also been honored with the First Annual Raw and Living Foods Golden Branch Award in 2002 for introducing the idea of raw and living foods to the greatest number of people in mainstream society.

Her positive attitude and boundless energy have helped her maintain the longest operating raw food restaurant in the United States. Karyn’s passion for clean living and her love of life are her greatest motivations. Thirty years ago, she used raw foods and detoxification to heal herself of allergies, skin problems, fatigue, and many other physical ailments and has since been a radiant example of the incredible benefits of plant-based living.

Let’s head now to Karyn’s Inner Beauty Center in Chicago, Illinois to meet the vibrant and inspirational Ms. Karen Calabrese. She begins our conversation by talking about her motto: “If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?”

People have so many excuses why they can’t be healthy: “It costs too much,” “It’s too far away,” “It’s too difficult,” “It’s too hard,” “I don’t have the time.” You have a myriad of excuses why you can’t take care of the most magnificent and the best thing you’ll ever be given in your life, right? So, my statement is helping people to remember that if you don’t take care of the most magnificent thing you’ll ever be given, you’ll have no place to live.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how great your job, your children, your home, your spouse. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t have your health – you have nothing. So, why not make that the number one focus in your life, and then it’s like a domino effect. Everything else falls into place.

I haven’t always had this lifestyle. I mean, I’ve had a very difficult childhood. But because I saved my money, worked three jobs, and bought a wheatgrass machine and started growing it hydroponically, I believe that’s why I am where I am today. I put my money into me. The best thing that I could invest in and I’ve got everything I want now.

With the unfortunate passing of her mother at age 48, grandmother at 50, and great-grandmother at 60 due to health problems, Ms. Calabrese became determined not to repeat this sad family history, but to create a healthful future for herself.

All the women in my family died overweight, and very young. I was just 64, two days ago, and I don’t know what illness is; I don’t know of being tired, it just isn’t a part of my world or my vocabulary. And I directly relate that to the lifestyle that I have evolved into. So because I was a very sickly child and a sick young adult – I had every allergy known to man, I had terrible skin, I had PMS, I was constipated all the time – my mother had introduced to me to vegetable juicing.

So I kind of started the vegetable juicing. And the more I did, the more I wanted to learn, because I believe that we intuitively know what’s right for ourselves; we’re born knowing from God telling us how to take care of our bodies. We’ve just forgotten because the world is so bizarre, and there’re so many bizarre things out there to attract your attention. So, as I started cleansing my body with the vegetable juices, I developed a natural repulsion to red meat.

And once again, I don’t believe it’s a natural human instinct to eat dead flesh. I think it’s a learned experience, and I think everybody does it so it feels comfortable. But I don’t think it’s natural to human beings. And so, my body evolved into being a vegan. I haven’t had meat, fish, chicken or dairy 42 years now, and it has served me very well. I don’t get sick, I don’t get tired, I went through menopause with no symptoms, I’ve got the same body I had at 16, and I work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week at 64.

What secrets has Karyn Calabrese discovered along her incredible path of self-healing? Let’s hear her thoughts on the body’s amazing ability to regenerate itself to make new cells and new tissues.

You know the beauty of it is, the way we were created, we are self-regenerating organism. We get new cells every 7 years, we get new tissue every 3 months – so the body is in an ongoing process of regenerating itself. The reason that it doesn’t, is it gets too much of the wrong stuff.

I mean even if you’re eating perfectly, we are living in a world where the oxygen levels are in the teens. When God created us, the oxygen levels were at 38%. After the industrial revolution, they were down to 22%. We are living in the teens in the oxygen levels in our atmosphere. All cancer cells, all viruses are anaerobic; they can’t live in an oxygenated environment.

So not only people, they’re not getting it from their air and the life force that we were meant to be in the breath work. They’re not getting it from their foods. So what I’ve learned, and what I teach is that you can help the body to regenerate itself, and get over anything. People come to my classes with all types of challenges. So for me, the main tenant that I follow, yes, I’m a vegan, yes, I’m a raw foodist, but I cleanse and detoxify my body a minimum of 4 times a year.

Ms. Calabrese has constructed a powerful 4-week detox program called “Nature’s Healing System” that highlights life-changing information such as proper nutrition and holistic therapies. Let’s listen to a few testimonials from her program.

Sometimes during the fast, you get that glimpse of you’re like in a totally different dimension, you feel that you are more than your body, you feel that you are a spiritual being.

The first day of my fast, when everything just kind of came all of a sudden. I got the energy, the skin just really started glowing.

On my fourth day of fasting, I was very intuitive and very peaceful.

Now I haven’t eaten meat in 42 years, I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, I pray and meditate every day of my life, and I detox 4 times a year. And people say, “Well, you live that lifestyle, Karyn, why would you detox?”

I drive behind buses, I’m taking in chemicals. I get my clothes dry-cleaned; I’m taking in chemicals through my skin. The skin is the largest eliminative organ on the body, and absorption, so you taking in chemicals. So for me, taking the time to break down those layers of toxicity, taking the time to clean out my body times a year, to help my body regenerate itself, to me, is the answer.

And if you check my website, you’ll see women and men and children. We’ve had people with type II diabetes reverse. We’ve had people with fibromyalgia, with fibroids, with tumors, with cancer, endometriosis; it doesn’t matter the name. Because any challenge you receive, your body is just trying to shake you awake and say, “Excuse me, I’ve got too much of the wrong thing and not enough of the right thing.”

We are created in Divine perfection, but we get these little challenges so that we learn to keep learning and keep moving forward. Because even if you became a vegan today, you’re still a product of all the years that you weren’t You can hold medications and even animal products in your body for years and years and years. So cleaning the body out, taking the time to do that, is to me the most important thing.

Last year PETA’s Sexist Vegetarian over 50 was Mimi Kirk who won at age 71, as a raw vegan. And recently Sunny, the supermodel, shared that what kept her healthy and beautiful at 70 is a raw vegan diet. You are over 60, and look like a supermodel yourself. Why is being a vegan so effective at keeping one young and vivacious? Is this the fountain of youth everyone has been searching for?

Well, you see those cells that I talked about regenerating themselves, if they got too much of the wrong materials – and that’s your animal products and your dairy products, I call them cow secretions and dead flesh – if you’re taking that in, the body has to work so hard to break them down because we weren’t designed to take these things in.

I mean the cow secretions was created for one thing, a baby calf, right, an animal that’s meant to grow a 1,000 pounds the first year of its life, and everybody wonders why they’re getting larger and larger. So being a vegan is definitely, exceptionally, helpful in keeping the clock going back, because the human body’s meant to last several hundred years. This dying off at 50, 60, 70, and 80 is a travesty because our bodies are meant to last almost indefinitely if you’re getting new cells regularly and tissue.

So the vegan diet does support that because your body isn’t breaking down all of that toxicity. So instead of spending all this time to regenerate, it’s spending its time breaking down the toxicity. When you don’t have so much toxicity, it can spend more time regenerating.

I always say I’m not teaching anything special, and I got the best business partner on the planet – God. Because I’m just helping you to step back into His plan and there’s no way it can’t work. Cause and effect, that’s what rules the universe, cause and effect.

And so, if you start feeding your body the way it was meant to, the raw living foods, the vegan foods that was intended to take in, it changes your attitude. It changes everything. It changes your connection, not only with the planet and the universe, but the people around you. I like to make the little joke, that button that says “no war,” if you put it on and stand in the mirror and put it on, it says “on raw.”

Our warmest appreciation, Ms. Karen Calabrese, for your charming presence and valuable information.

For more information on Karen Calabrese and staying healthy and forever young through veganism and detoxing, please visit: www.KarynRaw.com

Enlightened viewers, thank you for spending time with us on this week’s energizing edition of Vegetarian Elite. Please join us next week for part 2 of our fascinating interview with vegan, raw food pioneer Karen Calabrese. Coming up next is Between Master and Disciples. May universal love fill your mind, body, and soul.
I tried raw for a week; it just drove me crazy,

Because you can’t just eat raw. That’s a misconception; you can’t go from A to Z overnight.

Thank you for saying that. Because I felt like such a failure.

No, no, no, and that’s the problem with all diets, people expect to go from A to Z. It’s a process.

Welcome back, lively viewers, to part 2 of our interview with the beautiful and extraordinary Ms. Karyn Calabrese. As we found out in part 1, Ms. Calabrese has been nationally recognized for her innovative work in the current raw and vegan food evolution, helping thousands of individuals create healthier, happier lives for themselves. On today’s show, we’ll learn of Ms. Calabrese’s own A-Z journey which started about 30 years ago when her mother bought her a juice maker.

This intuitively sparked her search for self-healing, which led her to discover the works of famous nutritionist Dr. Ann Wigmore. Later on in 1985, she established her own greenhouse called “Karyn’s Fresh Corner,” where she grew her own wheatgrass and sprouts. Seven years after, she opened one of the United States’ first raw foods eateries, which is still thriving today as an incredible raw, vegan gourmet restaurant plus café.

For those who preferred to keep cooked food in their diet, Ms. Calabrese considerately opened an amazing vegan restaurant, aptly named, “Karyn’s Cooked.” Then due to its popularity, she opened her third restaurant in early 2010, named “Karyn’s on Greens” described as a “contemporary American vegan restaurant free of meat, seafood, poultry and dairy – a gateway to veganism.”

Truly, Karyn’s vegan entrepreneurial ship knows no bounds! Another way Karyn has decided to help people achieve their dietary goals is with “Karyn’s at Home,” where customers can pre-order a week’s worth of raw or cooked vegan cuisine and have it delivered right to their doorstep! Scrumptious meatless meals include stuffed mushrooms, roasted veggie sandwich, mashed sweet potatoes, chocolate mousse and blueberry cheesecake. WOW – sign me up!

Every month Karyn’s Inner Beauty Center offers classes and events to help individuals along their path towards wellness. Movie nights include important documentaries such as “Food, Inc.” or “Meet Your Meat;” yoga and meditation classes, raw food preparation classes plus seminars by well-known experts in the health and wellness industry.

So let’s return now to our in-depth interview with Ms. Karyn Calabrese at her holistic healing center, “Karyn’s Inner Beauty Center,” located in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

I really started all this for me, and the beauty of it is, I’m able to share it with other people. I do free information seminars twice a month. I hold them here in my Wellness Center. I speak for 2 or 3 hours; people can come and ask me all the questions they want. I have a lot of this on YouTube. I answer the calling – any time somebody asked me to come and speak and talk, you’ll see that I’m right there because I believe that I’ve been given a mission to do.

And so I think it’s educating the public, because once again, we all know what’s right, we’ve just forgotten. So when you help people uncover those layers, you don’t have to talk anybody into anything, you don’t have to convince anybody of anything, you just have to wake them up a little bit, and they jump on themselves.

Karyn has said the reason traditional diets don’t work is because people expect instant results, whereas her philosophy is to take the transition step by step, according to your body’s needs.

I think the best recommendation that I could make is you don’t go from A-Z overnight. It’s a process. People tend to think, or they’ll hear me speak today, “Oh I need to do that.” And then they may try it for a day or two and they can’t succeed, “Oh, I can’t do it.” And so to find comfortable baby steps for yourself so that you can reward yourself along the way. Make comfortable goals, don’t try to go from A-Z overnight, and be kind to yourself. Don’t judge yourself, don’t put yourself down.

Find a comfortable journey for yourself, and find a comfortable group that believes in and feels the way that you do that you’re comfortable with. And take baby steps. Find steps that work for you. Find something that works for you, and then after that’s worked for a week or two, say, “Okay, now I’m going to try something else.”

And you build on it, because no other endeavor in our lives do we hear at once and expect to get it. You don’t hear one lecture on law and you’re a lawyer, you don’t want to hear one lecture on math and you’re a mathematician. It is a process. And it’s the same thing with lifestyle. You have to allow yourself the process.

Ms. Calabrese shared with us of some of the success stories she has met with in her work.

In the 1800’s, the only people that died from heart disease were the rich people, because they were the only ones that could afford to eat meat all the time. The older guy who was 87 I spoke of. They were ready to amputate his toe from diabetes and he took my detox class and it healed.

I had a woman with fibromyalgia. She could barely walk. She can run up the steps and went back and got her master’s degree. I’m working with a young man right now with tumors, given six months to live. Eight years later, he’s still doing fine. And I believe once again, that’s the detox classes that I teach.

If you aren’t able to take one of Ms. Calabrese’s effective detox courses, then you may want to read her newly published book called “Soak Your Nuts,” which details her cleansing program and provides much more fascinating information on healthy living.

The title “Soak Your Nuts” refers to the best way to eat nuts and most nuts are wonderful source of calcium and protein. Everybody worries about their calcium and protein when they give up the animals. I always joke and say, nobody worries about it when they’re eating garbage, but when they come into the healthy world, “Where am I getting my protein?” “Where am I getting my calcium?” So, nuts are a wonderful source of protein and calcium.

And if you soak them before you eat them, you break down the enzyme inhibitors, you break down the fats and they’re easier to digest. We have seven doctors that have given me a testimonial for the process that I teach. I love my process of detoxification, but I don’t believe mine is the only way. I believe there are many roads to the top of the mountain. So if your viewers find somebody that resonates with them, a book, a person, a class, whatever, as long as you take the time to clean the body out four times a year, you’re going to get results beyond your wildest dreams.

Ms. Calabrese’ reminds people to follow their intuition.

Well, I think that leading by example is the best way to get people into your camp. And being a gentle proponent of what you believe in. I don’t believe in judgment of anybody’s choices. In fact I just opened a cooked vegan restaurant downtown. It says: “There is no judgment here, no right or wrong, or good or bad, or yes or no, just a chance for an Earth-friendly experience.”

Would I love everybody to be a vegan? Absolutely! By being a loving proponent of what you believe in, by living by example, I think is the best way to become what people look to as a leader. But I’m certainly not a leader. I like to tell people that we all intuitively know what’s right. We’ve just forgotten.

Karyn’s loving and compassionate heart naturally extends to our animal co-inhabitants. She has a deep sensitivity to the plight of any animal who is being abused and mistreated and willingly contributes her time and finances in order to do what she can to help alleviate their suffering.

Yes, I definitely have a strong love of animals. When the trucks go by with the pigs and cows in them, I say a prayer and my heart cries, because I feel so sad for them. I don’t even like watching the horses with the carts go by, drawing the people around. I don’t like going to the zoo. I do belong to PAWS. I do a lot of fundraising with them. But there is also a small group here in Chicago called Chicagoland Rescue for Dogs. And my son who passed away three years ago was an animal lover, too. So I do fundraising for them. Like my birthday this year, rather than give me gifts, I asked people to make donations to them.

A very selfless request indeed! Since leading a vegan lifestyle is the best way to save animals lives, let’s find out about Ms. Calabrese’s latest vegan ventures and how she plans to make her raw and vegan foods even more accessible throughout the world.

I want to start streaming my classes all over the world. And we’re building a professional kitchen in there, so I’m going to start teaching food, cooked vegan and raw vegan, where people will be able to type me up on their computers and pull me up and make food in their kitchen with me.

So yes, we’ll want people to come to the class. We are going to do a cooking certification classes for people who want to do something with it, with their livelihoods. But I want the person at home to be able to dial me up on the computer and do classes with me also. So that’s a huge project.

We have started a meals-at-home program, where people can order a week’s worth of food from the cooked vegan or the raw vegan, and we actually ship it around the country. So we’re doing that; it’s in its infancy stages, and I am working with some manufacturers about getting some of my food out in more in the mainstream supermarkets and things. Because the more mainstream you make it, the more people you’re going to attract. So, it’s about finding bridges and transitions for people, that’s what I’m all about. I’m not about absolutes and perfection, it’s about bridges.

The beauty of the way my life lives is, as soon as things start to get completed, more visions come to me. So I don’t think I’m ever going to retire; I don’t think I’m ever going to stop; I just see myself growing with the needs that are needed for the planet.

Our sincere gratitude, Ms. Karyn Calabrese, for sharing your precious time with us, and for your incredible work in helping individuals smoothly transition into the Earth-, health-, and animal-saving plant-based lifestyle. Your many ventures, including Karyn’s Raw Café, Karyn’s Vegan Cooked Gourmet Vegan Restaurant, Karyn’s at Home, Karyn’s Detox Program, and the upcoming Karyn online cooking classes are an amazing array of loving offerings! We wish you all the best luck to continue expanding your raw and vegan world, with Heaven’s abundant blessings.

Fabulous viewers, thanks for being with us today for our conclusion of our informative program featuring raw, vegan food pioneer Karyn Calabrese. Coming up next is Between Master and Disciples. May Divine grace lead you on the path of peace and brotherly love.

For more information on Karyn Calabrese and staying healthy and forever young through veganism and detoxing, please visit: www.KarynRaw.com



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