All about a girl named Beatrice
Well, aren't you making my day clicking on my about me page! My name is Beatrice Johnston and I started Raw Pathways in an effort to fuel my drive for helping people build their momentum on their path to better, healthier eating choices, raw or not. The most important things in my life are my relationships with God, family and friends. Because of that, I am on a crusade to help people empower themselves to live the most abundant, exciting and quality life imaginable. I’m 39 years old (as of May 2009) and feel fit, fabulous and fortunate. There is so much to my story, so many blessings, so many discoveries and so many still left to encounter. I am glad that you have come to visit my site and share your time with me, I am grateful because, as we know, you will not get back the minutes that you spend here. So Thank you!
I will treat your time as I treat my own, with value and respect. There’s so much that I can tell you about who I am, where I’m from and what I’ve lived through. The quick story is that I became a vegetarian at 16 years old and have been on a continual path for better health, eventually settling into a high raw diet. I have helped many people to develop their own menu plans and food systems in order to meet their goals, which vary from losing weight to saving money to having more energy. I am not a nutritionist, and I believe that it is our own responsibility to take charge of our health and that without knowledge, we are powerless. If you’d like the full run down of my life, beginning with my crawling years full of drama and hardship to my present life of blessings and joy, read on.
Well, thanks for inviting me in.
I was born in Chicago, a city that really lives up to its name: The Windy City. I have a sister one year older than me. When I was just 11 months old my mother died. She was only 19 years old. I think of it sometimes and I think, Gee whiz, it seems that life had barely begun at that age and her life ended then. It is the reason I do not lie about my age and why I appreciate every day that is given to me. It is a gift. Her situation was unfortunate, she broke a bone, was taken to the hospital to control the bleeding and was allergic to the anesthesia that was administered to her. It was a fatal mistake. My sister and I were then taken in and raised by my mother’s Mother, and she raised us as her own with my 2 aunts and 3 uncles (though she was a single mom).
My grandmother was from Louisiana, so that meant that we ate lots of chicken, ham hocks, pork chops and hamburgers. I have always intuitively thought about nutrition and at the age of 16 decided to do some research into factory farms. My research motivated me to become a vegetarian (that, and my job at McDonalds at the time, which might have sealed the deal). At that time, remember this is 1986, there was no one in my community that knew what a vegetarian was, let alone supported it. It was crazy and pitiful to deny yourself meat, as it was considered a luxury for many, especially when you had as many mouths to feed as my grandmother did, but she is AWESOME and though she had no clue what that meant, she supported it. “I have no idea what you are going to eat” is what she told me. I told her not to worry about it and that I would figure it out somehow.
You see, since my birth mother Deborah had died so young and because she was the oldest of my grandmother’s children, she was often told “You have to set the example for your siblings, “Deborah, you can do ( enter any fun teenage activity here ) later.” Because she died so young my grandmother encouraged me to pursue all my dreams, responsibly. “Tomorrow is not promised to you, so do it now while you can” is what she’d say, and she still says it today, and I am so grateful for that. She did a good job!
My first few years of being a vegetarian were quite boring. I was mostly a pasta, potato, corn and broccoli vegetarian because that is what the stores in my neighborhood had available. I would go to the library to do research to make sure I was getting enough nutrition because everyone was concerned about my protein intake, and I was also a dancer. Since I’d work out for hours at a time, I didn’t want to pass out from lack of nourishment. One of the best things about me becoming a vegetarian at that time was the affect it had on my skinny little body. Here’s the thing, I was rail thin when I ate meat, and the moment I gave it up I finally grew some curves! It was awesome (I use that word a lot, awesome, you should know that about me). The thing about the human body is that if you provide it with the proper nourishment, it will do what it is supposed to do. For some people, it means they’ll lose weight, and for others, it means they’ll fill out.
In the early years I survived as best I could, eating beans and rice, bread, grits, cereal and the like. There was not an abundance of mock products like there are now, no fake ground beef, fake hot dogs or fake chicken nuggets. I ate real food or nothing at all. I kept it simple. I went to college and studied Urban Planning at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and took my first nutrition class. It was fascinating and it was the foundation for which all of my self-education is built. While in school I was working at the department store for Sears as a cashier and then started doing a bit of modeling for them. When I graduated, I moved back to Chicago and thought I’d leave the modeling behind but ironically was approached by the creative director for a major magazine about a cosmetics line they were in the process of creating. Well, to my surprise, they sent me to a photographer, he shot some photos and then a few weeks later my face was in magazines and on cosmetics ads across the country.
My first ad - 1993
I was able to travel, get paid to do it, and live the life of a semi-jet setter (if I were a full jet-setter I’d be rich right?). After a few years I moved to New York to further pursue my career and as my modeling career took off, my personal life fell apart. New York is a big, big city, and it’s very, very hard to make friends. Even now, I speak to strangers and strike up conversations and people are taken aback by it. Well, things fell apart because I had no idea how to adjust or who to trust. I was over worked, because I was modeling and working as a word processor in between jobs, and I was eating out all of the time because I was never at home. I had a friend to ask me how much I spend in a typical day on food, and it was about $40, and when she said “you’re insane” I thought she was just jealous. I know now that I was just insane. This was in about 1997. Yeah, kinda crazy.
I thought I was in good health because I’d escaped asthma, a condition which plagued my whole family, and then one winter it hit me like a Mack truck. I went to the doctor because I couldn’t imagine why I was having breathing problems, and I was diagnosed with asthma, given an inhaler and a prescription for Advair, a steroid. Well, as you know, I research practically everything so the moment I found out I would need to rely on a steroid FOR MY NEXT BREATH I decided I’d had enough. I started looking into the triggers of asthma and allergies and I cut out all that bleached stuff: white flour, sugar, rice, bread. It had the most amazing effect, I could breathe again and did not need to refill my prescription for Advair. That means in one month it changed my life. It was winter, so I thought to play it safe I’d also give up dairy, and after a few months I could do cardiovascular activities without getting winded. This is how I was supposed to feel, and hadn’t felt in a long time.
I went to my first raw food restaurant not long after that, around 1998, and was so surprised to discover that raw nuts, seeds, and vegetables could turn into such wonderful cuisine. I bought a juicer and food processor and started using them to prepare more foods at home. I also started setting goals for myself each day, such as “eat only fruit for breakfast, and get at least 3 green vegetable servings by the end of the day”. I had no one to help me, because I didn’t know anyone like me (ie, not a doctor or health practitioner) I was really busy and the internet was not the robust technology that exists today. I read books, sought a quality doctor (it is soooo hard to find a good doctor, it took me years!) and followed my intuition and prayer. Slowly and steadily I moved toward a diet fuller in fresh fruits vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds.
Since that time I’ve moved steady along the raw path, eventually also giving up sugar, and am now full of the confidence, energy and glow that a high raw diet provides (not to mention, it no longer takes $40 per day to feed myself). My mission with Raw Pathways is to help others to walk down the same trail that I did, with less roadblocks, so that they too can achieve their goals, whatever they may be. For some, it means they want to eat less meat and eat more fresh foods, for others, it means eating the right variety of foods, and for some, I’ve even gone grocery shopping with them because they simply don’t know what a zucchini looks like. I’ve been there!
If you have any questions about me or my journey, or if anything resonates deeply with you that you’d like to speak to me more about, or get more insight into dealing with, schedule a call with me (for free, of course) or write to me at mail [at] rawpathways [dot] com.
