Karyn Calabrese, 65-years-young, believes in raw foods as the key to wellness.
The stunning wellness advocate addressed attendees at the 21st Century Sistahs speakers event in a segment hosted by publisher Hermene Hartman and presented by WVON AM 1690 radio. WVON’s Melody Spann Cooper served as the emcee.
Calabrese said that she doesn’t consume “dead meat,” or dairy (“cow secretions”) and has built a vegan/raw food empire on Chicago’s north side to inspire others to do the same. Calabrese owns two restaurants, teaches detoxification and runs a holistic therapy center, Karyn’s Inner Beauty Center.
Calabrese’s wellness philosophy is quite simple: “I feel we’re born with a gut feeling , an intuition of how to take care of ourselves and we’ve just forgotten,” she told the audience.
“The world is set up in a different way. This is a very bizarre world and you accept the things that are happening to you. You assume that you’re supposed to have headaches, that you’re supposed to be tired, and that when you reach a certain age you’re not going to have the same energy that you had in your 20s and 30s and that’s just not a reality.”
Here are a few highlights from Calabrese’s conversation.
How did you get introduced to the vegan lifestyle?
All the women in my family died at an early age. My mom died at 48, my grandmother died at 50 and my great-grandmother died at 60. I knew something was up. I was sick and had illnesses and problems, and it was very unique; my mother inadvertently introduced me to juicing. She introduced me to vegetable juice and I started to drink it here and there, started going to the bathroom, and things started to change for me.
How do you convince family members to make the transition to raw foods? You don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all day.
First thing, you don’t cook with raw [foods]. Secondly, take care of you first. As you take care of yourself and start to heal, people will want to know what you’re doing.
That’s how I’ve built such a large following. I’m not an expert in anything, I’m not a registered dietitian, I’m not a real chef, and I can’t chop fast or anything. But because I take good care of me, people are drawn to me [because they want to] know what I do.
Most of you have made changes. But you have that tapes that have been replayed for a lifetime. It’s all that stuff in you that calls for the negative stuff; that is why you can’t change your habits so regularly. Most people are walking around with 6-to-30 pounds of crap in them literally. … They did an autopsy on John Wayne and found 75 pounds of crap in him.
A huge component of my detox program is colon therapy for those who are ready and want to. Everybody doesn’t have to, but we’ve been doing colon therapy since the Egyptian times 4,000 years ago.
Does your husband follow your diet?
Yes, I can’t have sex with a meat eater. [Laughs].
For more info on Karyn Calabrese’s wellness tips, visit www.karyns.com
