Wanting to Raw - Question

[Naossoan]

Hi all,

I'm just wondering if there is a benefit to eating food raw compared to just making smoothies all the time?

I'm going to start eating 100% raw soon as currently I have a terrible diet of a lot of fast food, eating out, processed foods, etc and I want to be healthy.

I'm not exactly unhealthy, I'm not sick or overweight or anything if anything I'm under weight but I still just want to eat healthy and raw seems like a really good way to go.

I've eaten a lot more fruit this week than normal, which was pretty much 0 other than a Banana now and then. and I've been a lot gassier than normal, is that common?

I was just thinking that it would be a heck of a lot easier to just make smoothies all the time and throw in all the stuff you need.

Have a fruitier one in the morning, more veggies in the afternoon, fattier in the evening to get your fat intake.

any thoughts?

[jroo]

Originally Posted by Naossoan

I've eaten a lot more fruit this week than normal, which was pretty much 0 other than a Banana now and then. and I've been a lot gassier than normal, is that common

A high fiber diet can be quite a bit gassier at first. Your body needs time to adjust to better foods. Plus, it's also starting to clean you out.

According to David Wolfe, when fruit reaches undigested food matter in the digestive tract, the fruit will stop digesting and ferment, causing gas. The longer you go high raw, the more your body should start removing the undigested waste.

Also, some people are very sensitive to food combining (myself not so much, at least I haven't noticed it, yet). So, if you are eating fruit with, or too soon after, certain denser foods, you may be having issues.

[jroo]

Since you brought up a few different points, I thought it would be easier to break up my responses into three parts. Here's the second.

Originally Posted by Naossoan

Have a fruitier one in the morning, more veggies in the afternoon, fattier in the evening to get your fat intake.

any thoughts?

This reminds me of the Dr. Douglas Graham 80/10/10 diet, which is mostly fruit during the day with veggies and a small amount of fat at night. In contrast, Dr. Gabriel Cousens recommends keeping the same ratio of fats/carbs/protein for each meal and choosing that ratio based on your Ayurveda body type and your metabolism.

I think both approaches are valid, or even something in between, depending on your body, activity, and what you used to eat. Go with your intuition and pay attention to how you feel. Then adjust from time to time, as needed. Dr. Cousens says that when you make a dietary change that feels great at first, you should give it about three months and re-evaluate. Your body terrain will change over those three months. Also, sometimes things that give quick results aren't necessarily the best choices long term.

[jroo]

Part three.

Originally Posted by Naossoan

I was just thinking that it would be a heck of a lot easier to just make smoothies all the time and throw in all the stuff you need.

Blended foods are great. They certainly are quick and easy. David Wolfe mentions in the updated "Sunfood Diet Success System" that he hopes someday to be 100% 'liquidarian'. Montel Williams (not a raw foodist) consumes quite a bit of juice and smoothies in the diet he uses to control the affects of Multiple Sclerosis.

One of the latest trends I've seen is a 'juice feast' or 'smoothie feast' (a play on the word 'fast'), where people go long periods only consuming blended and juiced foods. Often, this is for weight loss, but I believe a healthy and detoxified person can maintain or even gain weight on a high liquid diet.

Make sure to consume them slowly, especially high carb smoothies. I've read that 70% of carbohydrate digestion (especially fruit) is done in the mouth, or is due to saliva. Tim VanOrden (raw athlete) recommends chewing each swallow of your fruit based smoothies (to stimulate saliva production) until it gets sweeter. I'm not that patient, but I do try to chew each mouthful at least 8 times.

[Naossoan]

Ok thanks for the help all.

It's funny that you mention to drink them slowly as I've pretty much been downing a glass (maybe 1.75 cups) of smoothie in seconds. Each smoothie I make is roughly 2.5 glasses and I feel quite full afterwards, though I only feel that way for a few hours.

The smoothies I've been making lately havent involved any fatty raw foods as I'm still eating some unraw food such as bagels and cereal in the morning, which has quite a bit of PB&J on it

The smmothies I've been making over the past few days have bee 3 organic bananas, 1 gala apple, and 8-12 mid-sized strawberries. Depending on how I want the smoothie to taste I may or may not add green, but I usually have at least 1 that I make with green.

By green I mean a "mixed greens" container I purchased which has various types of lettuce and some other stuff, I'll have to look at the package, and the same type of just Spinach. All organic. I was pleasently surprised at how inexpensive those were, they were about $4.50 each and its like a freakin huge container, it'l last me forever, it will probably go bad before I consume it all.

I don't have a scale or anything but I'd say I was putting about 2 fist fulls of the greens in the smoothies I made. Not a loose fist but like a slightly clenched fist full of greens, haha. I'd just grab a fist full of each and throw it in the blender.

I find those smoothies don't taste all that geat so I'll have to experiment with different fruits that will overpower the poor taste of the greens. I've never been a fan of spinach or pretty much any kind of vegetable my whole life, so it may just be that I'm more sensitive to their taste than a regular person.

I've gotta say though that I've only been doing this since I made this post, and I haven't been 100% raw...maybe 75-80% and even going that far, every time I see an ad on TV for a Pizza Hut P-Zone I start getting huge cravings for that kind of food. As I think I said in my previous post, I have not been a vegetarian/vegan at all previous to this eating raw. I haven't had any meat for like a week, and I want some greasy pizza real bad lol.

[livinglove]

The above point on food combining especially fruit and starches is one of many important rules of thumb in these transitions towards purer diet and detoxing. Citrus and grain is perhaps the worst of combinings, second only to citrus and milk. When I was a kid. the morning TV commercials would show a combination of cold cereal with milk, OJ, toast and butter. The commercial would say "with milk and juice to make it complete." My researchings have suggested the near deadliness of such common mixtures. Amazingly people do survive the norm for quite awhile.
An oldschool authority towards the beginning of the last century Prof. Arnold Ehret gave a good visualizable and experimentable teaching on food combining. He said to take the food that a person would eat in a day and put into a pot with a lid. (Perhaps cereal, bread, mashed potatoes, butter, milk, meat, dessert, etc) Then heat it to about 100 degrees (mimicking the body's 98.6 degrees). Leave it slow cooking overnight and the next morning examine the contents of the pot. This should reveal much.
He also pointed out such things as how you can have say a banana sitting on the refrigerator for a few days and it just continues ripening but a cooked food you wouldn't dare set out for a few days, because it is, immediately upon being cooked, decomposing.
Not wanting to be longwinded, but my root recommendation is study and research those who lived the lifestyle for a long period of time, starting with some of the oldschool. Terminology is a lot more confusing for most people now and it is harder to arrive at key foundational rules of thumb in a world that codes it's ignorance with vague wordage like vitamin thus and so, and amino acids, and such and such minerals, and blood types, and etc. that one would have to spend years to memorize, only to be in a bigger set of contradicting paradoxes than ever.
Set long range goals/ideals, and short range goals, and make concise steps into the direction you want to go towards. Enjoy the journey as well. "Cold turkey" (obviously not a vegan or raw foodist phrase), or rapid transition, more likely than not gives a bad association with the lifestyle. I would say that most negative reports about raw food comes from poor beginnings and led to false starts and finally regret and resentment. "I did the raw food thing before but it didn't work for me..." Again, study and concise steps is what I would recommend.
Finally, going from one diet and/or lifestyle to another is really going from one intake to another intake. Most people already suffer from excessive intake as it is. When does the "intaking" take a break? The best way to deal/heal the intake of the past is periodic fasting. Breaking the fasts to better intakes then we did previous to our fasts seems to be a practical way to gradually transist from the intake of mostly dead substances into the reality of intake of mostly living substances. People hop diets all the time, but rarely deal with the past intakes. Wise fasting is the surest way to deal with the past stuff as we head towards a saner and healthier future for ourselves. Again, study and guidance is important. So much work and experience has been gone into by others that there is no need for anyone to jump into anything blindly or haphazardly.
Yet one does not need to be a quantum physicist or a biologist to grok that you cannot get life from dead matter. Live food is lifegiving and facilitating. Eventually live/life will overcome the dead...Peace be the journey.

[jroo]

Originally Posted by Naossoan

Each smoothie I make is roughly 2.5 glasses and I feel quite full afterwards, though I only feel that way for a few hours.

There are a few things to remember about the raw food lifestyle:

1. There is more than one type of hunger. Our stomach tells us when it's empty and we feel the need to fill it, because we're used to eating when our stomachs finally empty after sticking a bunch of slowly digesting stuff in them. When your body is resting from digestion, it can heal better, so it's good to wait until you are truly hungry to eat. Depending on your current health, and once you've detoxified somewhat, you may want to try a 24-30 hour water fast. During that time, you will experience different types of hunger and your energy will have highs and lows. You can use that to understand when your body is really asking for food. I find for myself, that it also breaks the need to keep the stomach full. If you aren't ready for a fast, you can also try making sure you fast at least 12 hours per night.

2. This diet is inheritantly low calorie. If you calculated the calories in your smoothie, they might be anywhere from 300-600, and most of that is coming from the fruit, and fat if you added it.

3. That said, you may not need as many calories as you would on cooked food. I believe that the SAD diet relies on 2000-3000 calorie intake not for energy, but to make sure that we get enough nutrition every day. Yes, we need calories, but no, I don't believe they are our only source of energy. Raw food can have 80% more nutrition than cooked, and organic food can have 1-2 times more nutrients than non-organic. Dr. Cousens says that a person on live foods can eat as little as 60% of the calories he/she was eating, and not necessarily feel deprived (because you are filling your stomach just as full, just not with high calorie food.)

Raw requires so much less energy and resources to digest, even if you are poorly combining it. You eventually start digesting so much more of it (instead of packing it in your colon undigested), so you're more efficient. Your body is not continually trying to push out the junk that you are putting in. There are other things that go along with this as well.

By green I mean a "mixed greens" container I purchased which has various types of lettuce and some other stuff, I'll have to look at the package, and the same type of just Spinach... ...I find those smoothies don't taste all that geat so I'll have to experiment with different fruits that will overpower the poor taste of the greens.

Mixed greens have a bitterness to them which is normally balanced and harmonized by the fatty salad dressing. Spinach also has a strong flavor. You might want to try something less strong like kale, collard greens, romaine, or green cabbage. Or try a tablespoon of coconut oil (once again, I don't follow strict food combining).

Greens are life. They are detoxifying, alkalizing, and loaded with minerals. Pound for pound they can equal the protein in meat. Except for strict fruitarianism, all raw food diets stress greens (the only food group that they don't limit). I think it's worth learning to consume them in larger quantities. But you can increase them slowly.

every time I see an ad on TV for a Pizza Hut P-Zone I start getting huge cravings for that kind of food.

It's certainly no problem to eat cooked foods during your transition (or beyond). As long as you have a realistic goal and don't guilt yourself. However, if you want to minimize your cravings, turn off commercial TV for a while. Visit your library and stock up on TV shows from there. You may need to watch them on your computer, it will ignore the scratches more than your DVD player.

[livinglove]

Alot of foods that we can "crave" have similarities to them that is worth noting. There is salts and hydrogenated oil (monounsaturated fats I think is the word) in combination that makes a Western MSG. Sugar added to this increase the addictive components. McDonalds french fries actually adds sugar to the oil, and many fast foods and quick foods (like you'd see on TV) uses similar techniques. Mix these substances with starches and you have made a type of drug. (Think of donuts and pastries) Sometimes subconsciously manufacturers looking for a taste do this stuff, and in some cases it is a conscious practice known to be highly addictive. Addictive because the body can't correctly process it, it is like the chemistry is missing some electrons or ions or something by the cooking process, (think of potato chips for example)so it borrows these ions from your body and bonds with your organs. Anyway, so during cleansing processes as these compounds are about to be eliminated it is as though a part of you is missing. We experience this as a strong craving. It is not, however, that you crave it in truth, it is that it (the compounds) crave you. It is like the concept of an entity that is bonded to you and suddenly the bond is breaking loose. It in you, craves more of the same. It is most experienced in fasts where the old foods that were bonded to the organs, are released and are back in circulation through the bloodstream in process to be eliminated. As the blood passes through the brain particularly one is reminded of the memory of that old food. Sometimes a person will dream about the old food like french fries, potato chips etc.
Point is, this is stuff that is kicking out of us. It is a withdrawal.
One can move through it, knowing it is just toxins leaving us and maybe drink lots of water to aid in elimination. An attitude of mastery over these toxins, instead of struggling with cravings, can help arm a person with the state of mind that will confidently get them through these changes of purification.
Chapters can, and probably have been written on these topics alone. Hopefully, my generic short and skinny will be adequate to give the jist of what I'm intending to convey. (Hopefully you or others will find it helpful)