This web site is home for the ebook 100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats, which was written by me, Carolyn Hansen.

I have added this page for those of you who would like to know a little more about me, and the reason why I took the trouble to put together a book on healthy raw sanacks.

But first, if you really want to understand my motivation for spending time writing about issues related to health and fitness, when instead I could be hitting the gym a lot more frequently, then you need to know a little about my background, and my earlier life.

I was born in New Zealand (which, by the way is a beautiful country that you should take the opportunity to visit if you ever get the chance) and I still live there today, in Whangarei, the northern-most city in the country. Don't worry if you have never heard of it - so many people have no idea even where to look for New Zealand when they pick up a world map. Hint: it lies about a thousand miles to the south east of Australia.

See that little red dot on the map above? - that is me waving to you!

Basically Whangarei is a little green paradise surrounded by the most gorgeous coastal scenery you can imagine, and so much in the way of ocean that it is almost like living on an island. Whangarei is also famous for the fantastic diving opportunities out at the nearby Poor Knights Islands.

Currently I operate a pair of fitness centers located in the heart of Whangarei city, and I spend a great deal of my time consulting with people in my gyms, and learning about the problems they face trying to stay in shape and maintain the right kind of diet - which, I will admit, always takes a certain element of willpower. Over the years I have learned that the best way to control your calorie intake, and ensure that you are not ruining your health because of poor nutrition is to pay close attention to the kinds of things you tempt yourself with. Why use unhealthy butter, sugar, and processed flour to prepare the foods you eat when you can use equally delicious substitutes that confer none of the ills that the refined foods do?

When I was training for bodybuilding competitions I knew that the available foods that were being offered to me were not all that healthy. So when it came time to prepare for a competition I would end up starving myself so that I did not gain any unwanted ounces of fat. Back then I had no idea that there was a way to eat right and avoid the extra calories.

But I learned, eventually. A great deal of trial and error was involved, but over the years I came up with recipes for snacks and treats that allowed me to go on eating during my training periods without having to starve myself, and without having to forgo the enjoyment of food, which is a key reason that so many diets actually fail. Well, not possibility of that here because I no longer have to put myself on diets!

Honestly, it was not until I sorted out my nutritional problems, that I started seeing the successes on stage that I had dreamed about years earlier. All the wasted time and effort of those frustrating earlier years! I can barely stand to think about it.

But it is because of those head-shaking memories, and a sense that I need to turn all my previous losses into pluses as I advance into the next stage of my life, that I am so determined others should not repeat the kinds of soul-destroying mistakes that I was prone to making (always unnecessarily). This is really what provides the motivation needed these days to commit myself to spending a good part of my day at my desk, writing about all of those things I learned the hard way that you need not.

100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats is not the only product into which I have invested a good deal of my time and energy, and I am sure that there will be more down the road. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a certain degree of satisfaction I get just from knowing that others can grab one of my books and benefit immediately from the hard won successes I experienced only after years of hard work and countless days of writing off techniques and recipes that sounded promising, but which bore no fruit. It is the kind of feeling that I used to get simply by stepping onto the stage.

It also doesn't hurt my customers that I am a firm believer that if someone has tread the difficult path before others, that they should do their best to leave foot steps, and sign posts, so that others can better navigate the journey ahead.

So that is basically what I am about. I try to pass on the information that came to me not over a period of weeks, months, or even years, but over decades. I try to crystallize this knowledge and set it into my books so that others can take up where I left off - which is the place that, had I started out there, at the beginning of my own journey, I would surely have reaped benefits and successes in both health and well-being that go far beyond those I was able to achieve simply by never giving up, no matter how hard the journey seemed at times.

To your sustained quest for Health and Fitness,

Author of 100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats,