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Smith shows the size 54 pants he wore about two years ago before he started the raw foods diet. He now wears a size 34 pants. |
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
By MARLENE WOODS - Bulletin Accent Writer
Two years ago, Lee Smith was the poster child for bad choices, bad health and inevitably bad news.
“At every meal I was digging my grave with a fork,” Lee said.
When Lee Smith left Martinsville for Tennessee in the early 90s, he weighed 190 pounds. Within a few years he was twice that.
Now 180 pounds lighter and with renewed energy and vigor, Smith attributed his weight loss success to determination and discipline, while strictly following the living and raw foods diet. He is neither a vegan (no animal products) nor a vegetarian but he eats mostly fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts and drinks bottled water.
“Now I am looking at the natural side” of foods, he said.
He said that the raw- and living-foods lifestyle is unusual for this area and the family must shop at health food stores in Greensboro, N.C., and Roanoke, “but there is a raw-foods restaurant in Richmond,” he added
Smith estimated that about 80 percent of his regular diet follows the raw-foods approach. “I focus completely on nutrition,” he added, noting that he doesn’t consume sugar, white flour or red meats. He goes through about a bushel of apples a week and eats a salad every day and salmon twice a month. He also drinks freshly squeezed juices.
His wife, Lisa, has adapted their menus to reflect their holistic lifestyle. She does most of the cooking but only about half of her regular diet is raw-food.
Long gone are the days of fastfood dining and sipping through a pitcher of Diet Coke at his neighborhood Tennessee restaurants, where he was a fixture. In 2002 the pest eliminator (he works for Eco Lab) weighed almost 371 pounds. Life on the road and shoveling down fast food and pizza had come back to haunt him with a vengeance.
“The TV message is to eat everything in moderation,” Smith said. “I am not one of those people who can make gradual changes; I needed to make a radical change in every area of my life,” Smith added.
His radical shift began with a life-threatening kidney disease known as membranous glomurulonephritis (MGN). Then his body was shut down with gout. He woke up one day with his knees and legs fully bloated and unable to get up off his living room couch, a condition known as peripheral neuropathy. Walking with crutches became his daily routine. Pain medications were his only relief for sleeping.
After frequent visits with his nephrologist and adhering to five years of conventional medical treatment at a teaching hospital in Vanderbilt, Tenn., Smith still kept gaining weight. He was “at risk for everything,” he said.
The pivotal point came when his doctor finally warned him, “‘There’s nothing we can do; you have to control your weight with your diet.’”
The bad news, not to mention the constant pain he was in, sparked the primary motivation that Smith needed to bring back the old and revived version of himself. Before that he was antagonistic of alternative health diets, he added, having tried them several times to no avail.
So Smith contacted a church friend and elder Dr. Larry Rawdon, at General Assembly and Church of the First Born in Hohenwald, Tenn., where Rawdon is a naturopath. He helped educate Smith on the raw and living foods diet. He also recommended that Lee consume freshly extracted juices for 10 days to jump-start the results.
For 10 days, Lee drank fresh carrot, apple, beet, romaine lettuce and celery juices.
Seven days later, Smith was able to walk without crutches. He also had lost 10 pounds.
With that incentive, Smith undertook a difficult and serious 70-day juice fast. At the end of that fast, he had lost 50 pounds. He was convinced that he should follow the diet and regimen.
“I began my holistic health program on Aug. 12, 2004, during a period of disability,” Smith said. “And by Dec. 1, 2005, I was at an all-time low weight of 191,” Lee said. His blood pressure and cholesterol levels also had stabilized.
Smith, 36, now is studying for an ND, a doctor of naturopathy.
People who see Smith now are amazed at his change and usually think he has had gastric by-pass surgery, he said. He sets the record straight with his skeptics and still doesn’t tire of telling his testimony of how he change his eating habits and lifestyle.
“I am not where I want to be, but I’m not where I used to be,” Smith added. |
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