Hi Kevin,
I've been "into" raw foods for over 20 years. I've tried everything to get raw and stay raw. I've been now just tiny small sliver away from 100% raw for a very long time with periods that get up to six months all raw and then something happens that makes me pull back that I wrote about in the thread: "What do I do with this intensity?" So, when I started out I tried fasting for long periods (once for over a month), going away on retreats (hippocrates - which almost got me off raw permanently), all sorts of extremes and powering throughs and "I'm going to do this no matter what"s. It took me probably 15 years of struggling to find out that the only way for me to get steady on raw foods was to do it in a way that became slowly so part of my every day life that I couldn't help it. I had to get my subconscious and body on board. I did this (after 15 years of trying to be all raw) by finally slowing down. I ate whatever I wanted (which I have to admit at this point was pretty clean food by most standards - no coke) and added just one raw food at a time absolutely consistently into my diet until it was a staple of my life that I now crave. I starte with chocolate. My raw "fudge" (medjools mixed with powerdered raw cacao) is a delicacy to me. It's even easier to make than it is yummy! If I go too long without it I start to crave it like most people crave chocolate bars or cake. Then I added smoothies. Not quite as easy - but easy by all standards of cooking. Easier than calling in for Chinese actually. I probably did just these two things for many months before even thinking of adding or subtracting anything else. This was'nt bad really. I had replaced two of my meals. That only left 3 more meals.
OK, so then I needed a snack or two. That was pretty easy because I could make a raw trail mix. Very easy. Then I got raw cheese. That made things very very easy. By the time I was done with all that I only had one meal left. But by the time I got there I felt like that one meal was weighing my spirit down and it wasn't really that hard because to my mind it wasn't really a big deal. Now, I only want raw food because it's a deeply ingrained habit. I actually did the work long before by switching to a healthy vegan diet. I gave up sodas first - gotta be over 25 years ago now. Then I gave up as much of the real nasty things, but I never could get off the cafefeine, sugar, refined foods and fried potatoes until I found substitutes. I found out about celtic sea salt and fine oils that I was able to replace the cravings with. If you do it slowly - the old stuff starts to look kinda disgusting. So by the time I was going raw it was just a question of doing the same kind of replacements. I couldn't believe that I never thought of it earlier! I could have saved myself at least a decade of trials.
I thought I'd just throw in my experience for you to ponder. Most of the people on this site are young and go getting it like I was so you might not get to hear this radical viewpoint from the youngens.
Best of luck to you.
Greenbunny