Help from experienced raw foodists please

[Mati Manik]

Hi!! i'm Mati. I'm a 26 year old male argnetinean. I've been a vegetarian for the last 2 years, vegan for the last year and been eating raw for the last 2 months.
My problem is that i feel weak. My energy levels are not how they should be and don;t know what else to do to feel vibrant.
I've been doing meditation for the last 6 years and thats the only thing that makes me feel energized again, but whenever i;m not meditating i just start feeling exhausted.
A friend (20 years raw foodist) told me it was a matter of adding a lot of green leafy veggies cos i had mineral defficiency but for the last 2 months i've had spirulina, wheat grass, green smothies, vitamins and i got a job in a fruit and veggies store, so i can eat spinach all day and all the greens i can...but still i feel weak. i need to eat all the time and that doesn;t feel good.
I feel that my eyes lack energy and drained.
this is waht i eat every day:
Soaked maccadamia nut, almonds, cashews, pumkin and sunflower seeds, daily/
All types of salads, sprouts, 2 or 3 avocadoes daily.
Lots of fruits but not that many, cos i don't feel right if i have too much sugar.
Another friend reccommended trying fish once every 2 weeks, i had it today (cooked) but still felt my eyes drained after 30 minutes of eating.
What can it be???
When i eat green veggies, it feels better but just temporarily.
then i have to eat something else...and i never know intuitively ewaht to eat. I just have to pick up some food, and start seeing hjow i feel after it...
But i feel that after 2 months, i should feel a change...some more energy...
Any help please??!!
thanks
with love
Mati

[RawFoodGrl]

You might not be getting enough food/calories, or enough of the right kinds of foods.

I would suggest finding one of those free internet sites that lets you enter your food and will help you figure out what your targets are for your age, height and weight. Or simply start eating a lot more.

I feel really tired if I don't eat enough, and also if I don't keep up my blood sugar by eating enough foods that have carbs in them, like tomatoes, broccoli, bell pepper, onion, and also things like beans, rice, and grains. I also feel tired if I don't get enough protien.

If you are nutrient deficient, adding a green superfood can help. There are a lot of options, my personal choice is Pure Synergy.

Also, I need to eat every 2-4 hours or I feel tired too. So I eat 3 meals and 2-3 snacks at least, every day. I usually have salads/veggies for meals, and fruit or nuts for snacks.

Also, for what it's worth, if I eat a lot of nuts and seeds (nuts particularly), I feel more tired and sluggish, I feel heavier, more weighted down.

Are you getting enough water (at least 8 cups, 64 oz, 2 liters per day)?

[Mati Manik]

Hey RawFoodGrl, thanks so much for answering me!
Actually, what you are saying is what i've been trying for the last days. Adding some more carbs that make me feel stronger, though they are not RAW. Specially rice makes my energy levels go higher, i have started to have plain rice for breakfast, and some sushi veggie rolls after work and that seems to work pretty good.
I still don't feel vibrant all the time.
I guess i tryed to go 100% raw too fast, and my body is not ready yet. I'll keep combining raw and cooked food to see how it goes.
The interesting point is that, my body got used to the raw food and the wayci feel after eating, so each time i eat some cooked food, i might feel that it gives me mor energy in a way but also makes me feel a bit lazy while the diggestion happens.
I'll pay more attention to the water.
Does this happen to you?? whenever i eat cooked food, i feel that i need a lot more of water afterwords. My mouths feels dry, that doesn;t happen if i eat raw.
Anyway, thanks for your dedication!
Love, light and peace to you!
Mati

[RawFoodGrl]

I always get tired if I eat cooked foods, even cooked vegan foods. So when I do eat a cooked meal, I try to make it my dinner meal.

I couldn't go raw food right away. I had to do a lot of superfoods (Pure Synergy, maca, goji berries, cacao) daily in addition to increasing my protien (several tablespoons of hemp powder) daily to get my nutrients up to a good level so that I can be raw.

I still do this, but generally just once a week now. I was really struggling with low blood sugar and fatigue and I could NOT go even 60% raw or have an entirely raw meal without being effective. I met David Wolfe and he explained that what I described is what I should do - and it sure did make a difference!!!

I'd been wanting and trying to go raw for YEARS, and doing just a few weeks of the superfoods and I could do 85%+ raw no problem!!!

Lots of people aren't 100% raw, so don't feel you have to do that if it doesn't work for you. But you can eat sprouted rice, beans, and grains, which will help increase your protien and give you some of that long-fueling carbs in a raw form.

You may also still be detoxing - going raw (even if you've been vegan) involves a detox which can take weeks or months. It can be physical as well as emotional. Lots of people get depressed, have headaches, get pimples, have bad breath or body odor, have emotions that are all over the place, some people feel like they've got the flu, just to name a few things. Each person is different.

You might also be tired because your body is working hard to heal whatever, let's just call them imperfections, are in your body. Healing is tiring work. Just think about every time you've had a cold or flu and all you want to do is lie down in bed for days.

I'm going through something like that myself - I am doing a lot of internal/physical healing and I'm so tired, so exhausted, it's mind-blowing. I can't hardly function I'm so tired. But that's because my body is at a place to really heal, and besides the high raw diet and superfoods, I'm providing my body with other supplements that facilitate the healing process.

I am reveling in it, honoring it, and just resting. I don't try to do anything other than the bare minimum, and I lie down a lot. It feels good because, well, because I'm so tired!!! LOL!!! But it feels good because I know my body is doing good stuff so I have to just be smart, let it do it's thing, and rest while it's working. (I know the "it" is me, but my body pretty much heals without my conscious involvement - but I could consciously choose to be more active and therefore interfere with, slow down, the healing process!)

[Mati Manik]

Hey! Tks again for your answer!!!!
i want to go as much raw as my body can get without going nutrient defficient...and you might be able to help me.
How could i eat these foods in the raw form?
Rice ( i don't know how to sprout....could you tell me please?)
Oats ( i just soak it for one nigth but still doesn't diggest as a raw veggetable)
Beans and grains...i soaked chick peas for one night but it tstes horrible!
Also, i'm a backpacker, so i can't afford right now to buy all the equipment to dehydrate food.
Still i give food a priority and try to but as much good food as possible, including suoerfoods like spirulina and wjeat grass and supergreens powder.
It's so good what u explain about the body's healing cos im also learning to rest more, trying to slow down and let my body heal.
RawfoodGrl, i wish you the best in this ever healing process and ever deeper bliss journey!!!!!

thanks for sharing!!
with love
Mati

[RawFoodGrl]

Yeah, I hear you on the chick peas. I CANNOT STAND the taste of sprouted beans. That's my biggest reason for eating as much cooked food as I do (little though it may be). I like cooked beans , but don't like them raw. I've been trying different kinds, so maybe I'll find one I like. But for now I'm eating cooked beans, cooked tofu, cooked tempeh, cooked seitan.

With the beans, it might help to not just soak them overnight, but then let them sprout. You do that by leaving them in the jar, then rinsing them a couple times a day, and in a few days they start getting a tail. Same thing with grains.

With the oats, be sure you're getting truly raw oats. Most oats have been processed to the point they will not sprout.

About dehydrating stuff - the original way was to let the sun naturally dry it. So, you could cover some fruit in cheesecloth to keep the insects off, then put it in the sun and let the sun do it's thing. While it might be harder to make something like fruit leather or a granola bar, you could certainly make a trail mix with sprouted and sun-dried grains and fruit. I'm thinking of a cereal I'm eating right now - it's buckwheat, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and qunioa. (It also has cinnamon in it as it's a breakfast cereal, but you could leave that out.) Add some dried fruit and you'll have something handy for hiking.

Another thought I had is that if you can keep the foods reasonably cool, whole foods really do last quite a long time, especially if you wait to cut it until you actually use it. If you get some hard-sided containers (to keep things from getting squashed and goopy), you could bring avocado, lettuce, zucchini, tomatoes - all kinds of things. Sprouts would be fine for the first couple days. Nori or other seaweed can give you some of the salts and minerals you'd need to replentish from all the sweating. Of course your superfoods will handle the trip quite well.

On road trips I always bring my own foods, rarely bring an ice chest or ice, and I'm always pleasantly surprised how well whole foods hold up to the journey.



Here's a sprouting list - conveniently I just put it into a spreadsheet recently, so it's easy to paste it here for you. Looks pretty messy, but hopefully you can figure it out. I'll see if I can do something to make it easier to read.....


If you copy this into Word (or a word processing program) and replace the asterick (*) with a tab, it'll become quite legible.



Plant Variety*Soaking Hours*Daily Rinses*Approx Sprouting Length in inches*Growing time in Days
Alfalfa*4-6*4*1-2*3-5
Amaranth*4-6*3*0-1/4*2-3
Anise*4-6*5*1*2
Beans, Most*8-10*3*1*3-5
Barley*8-10*3*0*3
Buckwheat*4-6*2*1/2*3
Cabbage*4-6*2*1-2*3-5
Chickpeas*10-12*3*1/2*3
Chia*4-6*5*1/4*2-3
Clover*4-6*5*1-1/2*4-5
Corn*8-10*2*1/2*3
Flax*5-7*3*1-2*4
Fenugreek*4-6*5*2-3*3-5
Green Peas*10-12*4*1/2*2-3
Lentils*6-8*3*1/4-1/2*3-4
Millet*6-8*3*0-1/8*2
Mung Beans*8-10*2*1-2*3-5
Mustard*4-6*2*1-1/2*4
Nuts, Most*8-12*2*0*1
Onion*4-6*3*1-2*3-5
Oats*8-10*2*0-1/4*3
Radish*4-6*2*1*3-5
Rye*8-10*4*0-1/4*3-4
Rice*8-10*3*0*3
Pumpkin Seeds*6-8*3*0-1/8*1-2
Sesame Seeds*4-6*4*0*1
Sunflower Seeds*6-8*2*0-1/8*1-2
Soybeans*10-12*5*1/2-1*3-4
Watercress*4-6*4*1*3-5
Wheat*10-12*4*0-1/8*2-3
Quinoa*4-6*4*0-1/16*2-3


Just another quick note - chia and flax get goopy when you soak/sprout them, so they cannot be sprouted the same way you'd sprout other nuts, seeds, and grains. I soak them in a bowl with a bit of water if I need something soaked, and if I am sprouting for sprouts (like alfalfa sprouts, but with chia), I actually have one of those Chia Pets (mine is a tree) which works great.

Alternately, you can get a new, clean terra cotta saucer for potted plants, and then put that in a larger container - we use a glass pie pan - and keep that filled with water, then mist the sprouts from time to time.

[Mati Manik]

Hi again!!!
thanks for everything!!!
i've been 100% raw for the last week, really motivated and not finding it hard.
I'm learning everyday from my body, what it needs, sometimes i'm tired and i need certain foods, and sometimes it just needs rest.
What i have noticed for the last days is that going raw maked my meditation a bit easier, i feel so much connected to nature that is pretty easy to find joy just watching the sky, the clouds, the SUN and pretty much anything that is not man-made hahaha.
I'm still dealing with the issues of tiredness but each time is an opportunity to know more about my body.
This time i wanted to ak you different questions.
How did you start your raw lifetyle. Waht type of life do you have? Do you work a lot? it seems u enjoy exercising also. Do you like being in nature? Yoga, meditation? healing?
What do you think is the reason why you became a raw foodist?
I'm just trying to go deeper into waht is behind the RAW stuff.
It's not only about food isn't it? and it's not even only about health....i believe it's about conscioussness. It's quite a big work to talk about but for some reason, these last days, i has been on my mind a lot.
I think there is a huge shift of conscioussness at the moment, and going raw is a process that triggers every cell of ourselves, connecting as back to our nature, to our real purpose...
Maybe i'm a bit out of subjetc, but i think everything is connected and i want to know who else thinks this way.
Who has started to experience other things rather than health.
Have a great day!!!!!
With love
Mati

[RawFoodGrl]

Hi Mati!

Lots of great questions!

Let's see ....

I think for me it really started before birth - my parents were of hippie age, and the consciousness of the late 60s and early 70s between the "flower power", the focus on nature, energy conversation, and the gas rationing had a large part of it. Also, we were fairly broke when I was little, so our "entertainment" was often museums, picnics in the park, hiking, camping - things that were inexpensive or free, and we had pets.

So today I carry all of that with me - the love of nature, the environment, the desire to preserve as much natural earth as we can, the fact that in a sense, a cow or a chicken is no different than a dog or a cat, they all have their own personalities (as I learned from my dad and visiting my grandfather's farm for the cows, and from the chickens we had in the backyard). I mean, they have PERSONALITIES. I had tarantuals a while, and they have personalities too!! Different interests, different tastes, different ways of approaching the world.

That made them no longer a "thing", but a true living being with it's own consciousness.

Once I got to that realization, how could I eat my pet chicken? How could I eat any other chicken or other animal, for that matter?

From that point it became about figuring out HOW to be vegan, in a way that works for my body and tastes. My vegetarian friends ate a lot of bread, pasta and cheese, and since I'm lactose intolerant and too sugar sensitive for bread or pasta, they couldn't help me figure out what to eat. (There's better whole grain breads now, but 15+ years ago, there were fewer options.)

I'm still figuring out how to get enough protien and iron for me - I still have times, between my own unique body chemistry and recovering from this injury, that I really crave meat. But my approach is always to try to find a vegan way, if that doesn't work, try a vegetarian way, then go up the animal food chain starting with eggs, to line caught fish, etc. getting things that are as free range and organic as I can.

But I'm learning, and I'm eating less now this year than last year, and that's the important part. I know some people get on me for that, but I'm in a learning curve, and better I figure it out now and not eat meat again then to give up trying to be raw vegan altogether and eat meat for the rest of my life.

I think you're right about the consciousness - what we do has an impact on the world around us, and the more we learn, the more we grow our own, the more connect