A little bit about me

Hello, everyone! Lovely to meet you. I’m Sydney, daughter of the founder of the only 80-10-10 community on the planet. I’m a fifteen-year-old low-fat raw vegan with a passion for healthy living.

If you’re new to all this hippie, new-agey “raw food” stuff, let me give you a quick summary: most raw foodists are into dehydrating and sprouting and trying to remake popular non-raw dishes with complex recipes and a whole lot of nuts. Not me. I consist almost entirely off fruits and vegetables - with a few occasional overt fats thrown in - as they appear in their natural state.

Like this.

“What? You can’t be serious! You must be starving yourself!” Rest assured, standard dieters, that I am not starving myself. I typically get anywhere from 2500-3000 calories per day and well more than my RDA for vitamins and minerals. I’ve been at this for almost a year now, and am not quite dead yet.

“You mentioned something about a community…” My father founded the first and only 80-10-10 community anywhere. We’re located in the jungles of the Big Island of Hawaii on a fruit farm, sustaining ourselves with the exotic fruits we grow, like rollinia (my personal favorite), jackfruit, jaboticaba, ackee, rambutan, durian, and many more. I spend half my time there. The other half is spent in Pittsburgh, PA, which is as drastic a difference as one could imagine.

Scrumdiddlyumptious! Rollinia is the best.

“How’d you get into all this?” My father’s been a low-fat raw vegan for almost five years now, about the same time I’ve been a vegetarian. Up until about two years ago, when we moved from a small town in Pennsylvania to Hawaii, I hadn’t even given raw foods a glance. I had a smoothie for breakfast every day at my dad’s, but other than that, I was a generally unhealthy vegetarian. When my dad said we were moving, I figured I’d give it a try, since I was going to be living with a bunch of other people who were doing it and didn’t want to be the oddball out. Turns out, I liked it. I vacillated for another year, doing raw when I was with my dad, and vegetarianism when I was with my mom, the other half of the time. Finally, I worked up the courage to go raw at my mom’s, and have been happily drinking banana smoothies since.

My life now.

So now you know a bit more about me. I’d like to know more about you guys! Ask me questions, message me on Twitter, or reply to this post telling me your story and what kinds of things you’d like to hear about. My goal for this blog is for it to be a support system for teens (or adults) who are struggling with making healthy life choices, or simply a chance for them to feel normal. Let’s make it happen, people!