What do I need to eat? - Page 2 - Raw Food Chat

RawFoodGrl · 10-31-2007

I think if you're hungry for broccoli, that's no different than being hungry for meat. There's something in the broccoli your body needs, just as there's something in the meat your body needs. If you can find it in another source, so you crave that (like me with spinach now), then that works. So, if you're eating nutritionally balanced enough there's never a specific "thing" you ever feel hungry for, that's great.

Yes, that's true, I'm not eating fruit. I'm doing a candida cleanse, which means no fruit. Besides that, fruit hits me like 5 espressos in a child - it makes me spacy, jittery, irritable, hyper, and massively, massively, MASSIVELY hungry. I start off the day with a banana in my smoothie and I eat about 6 times what I normally do all day, and I feel utterly miserable, and put back a lot of the weight I struggled to take off.

I also start craving other sugary foods, things that hit me the same, like bread, crackers, pasta, corn, potatoes, carrots, sodas, chocolates, candies, etc. And believe me, I recognize it as a *craving* not a true biological, physiological, *hunger* or *need*.

I cannot think, focus, or accomplish anything - but instead of from low blood sugar hunger, it's from more sugar than my body can handle.

It takes me about 4 days to recover from 1 banana.

Eliminating fruit and other sugars from my diet has made me much more functional and stable than I'd ever been before. Besides sugars naturally found in vegetables, the only sugars I get is from agave, stevia, and on extremely rare occasion maple syurp or honey - and I try to avoid the last two.

So, again, this leads me to ask what everyone is eating ... because if people are mostly eating fruit, then there's no way I can be raw.

omega pete · 10-31-2007

i don't eat alot of friut.

i eat alot of spinach, as a base for salads and as ingredients in more complicated recipes.

for example my lunch salad today consisted of:

spinach
carrots
celery
raw almonds (i'm amost out of raw almonds and it tough to get them now)
alfalfa sprouts

dressing:

hemp oil
braggs raw apple cider vinegar
and italian types of herbs

it was delicious!

dinner last nite was

olive tapenade (i can't remember the recipe because it was the first time i made it)
but it had both black and green olives, miso, and some other stuff.
i wrap them in rice paper (not raw but i hate nori)

i made a dipping sauce out of soaked cashews, red and white miso and some other stuff (again first time i made it so i can't recall exactly what was in it)

rawhippie made some great spinach and herb crackers the other day as well.

RawFoodGrl · 10-31-2007

That's very helpful, Omega Pete!

How long have you been raw?

What do you have for breakfast? Can you give me more of an idea what you eat every day?

I feel like I ate a lot of food and fats yesterday, but ended up having to eat a LOT of cooked vegan food because I was so hungry and losing my mind. (I ate far more food than I ordinarily do.) It took me about 4 hours to get somewhat stabilized, but I'm, at 10:20 am today, still feeling the effects of it.

omega pete · 10-31-2007

i've been transitioning for about a year, 95-100% raw for 2 weeks.
my fiance (rawhippie) has been raw for 2 years.

i don't eat breakfast, i never have. i'm just not hungry in the morning.

lunch is my most important meal, most of the time i have a spinach salad, loaded with stuff like:

red & green peppers
red onion
walnuts or almonds
black olives
cucumber

and my own dressing like i listed above.

that salad really satifies me.

dinner is usually something special we put together from one of our many raw "cook" books.

one of my faves is from renee undekofflers book, living cuisine.

it's zuchinni "pasta" with "alfredo" sauce.

peel the zuchinni, then use a cheese grater to make "pasta"

the sauce is a base of soaked cashews, pine nuts, lemon juice and some other minor ingredients.

it's yummy!

nothinkingbehind · 11-01-2007

Hi!

I do eat fruit, but I thought I'd jump in here with my experiences. One thing that has been VERY beneficial for me is to use super foods and plenty of hemp. I think I posted somewhere here that I make a drink of coconut water with lots of stuff in it, like spirulina, hemp protien, bee pollen, cacao, almond butter.... oh, and maca and raw power powder. I drink it in the afternoon, and it seems to stabilize me.

I also add a lot of hemp seed to my diet. I put it in all my salads and pretty much add it to anything I can.

I also eat goji berries in my trail mix.

The only other thing I will add is that I have found when I drastically change my diet all at once, it doesn't work well for me. I have been transitioning to vegan raw for a couple of months, and though it may seem slow to others, my body is taking it quite well. I never ingest cooked food without at least 50% of what I am eating as raw. I would say I am about 75% raw right now.

Hope this helps!

Melissa

nothinkingbehind · 11-01-2007

Hi!

I do eat fruit, but I thought I'd jump in here with my experiences. One thing that has been VERY beneficial for me is to use super foods and plenty of hemp. I think I posted somewhere here that I make a drink of coconut water with lots of stuff in it, like spirulina, hemp protien, bee pollen, cacao, almond butter.... oh, and maca and raw power powder. I drink it in the afternoon, and it seems to stabilize me.

I also add a lot of hemp seed to my diet. I put it in all my salads and pretty much add it to anything I can.

I also eat goji berries in my trail mix.

The only other thing I will add is that I have found when I drastically change my diet all at once, it doesn't work well for me. I have been transitioning to vegan raw for a couple of months, and though it may seem slow to others, my body is taking it quite well. I never ingest cooked food without at least 50% of what I am eating as raw. I would say I am about 75% raw right now.

Hope this helps!

Melissa

Double Helix · 11-01-2007

Quote:

Yes, that's true, I'm not eating fruit. I'm doing a candida cleanse, which means no fruit. Besides that, fruit hits me like 5 espressos in a child - it makes me spacy, jittery, irritable, hyper, and massively, massively, MASSIVELY hungry. I start off the day with a banana in my smoothie and I eat about 6 times what I normally do all day, and I feel utterly miserable, and put back a lot of the weight I struggled to take off.

I am like you, I cannot just have 1 banana. I need several bananas or pieces of fruit to satisfy my need for carbohydrates. That is probably why I tend to have cravngs for "cooked" carbs and starches, on those days I don't get enough fruit in my body.

Did the effect you had yesterday seem anything like the effects from eating one banana? Just curious, because it seemed to parallel what you described when you eat 1 banana.

Also curious, if you were to ever eat a meal of fruit (could be a lower sugar fruit, doesn't have to be bananas) until you were satisfied, do you think your body would function better? I wonder this, because on raw food, many people can eat things they never could eat on a cooked food diet. People's allergies and food sensitivities tend to go away after a little while and they can tolerate things that they never could before on a cooked diet.

Hope you all don't run me off for being fruit happy!

RawFoodGrl · 11-01-2007

OmegaPete - that's interesting! That sounds pretty similar to what I eat ... maybe I'm just not eating enough?? What quantities of the foods do you put in your salads?

I absoultely HAVE to have breakfast, though, I have to eat every 2-3 hours or my hypoglycemia gets out of control.

I've tried several recipes, but, frankly I don't like most of them. I am hoping to try to get most of my raw food in the form of smoothies (aka something blended) and salads, while I keep trying new recipes to find things I like.

Nothinkingbehind - That's really interesting about the super foods. I have heard some about that, but don't know much. How much of each do you use? And is there somewhere online where I can find out what all the superfoods are? Or can you tell me, what they are, how much I should have?

At least to start - I know in time I'll get used to this and will then know when I need more or less of this and that. Right now I need hand-holding, so to speak.

DoubleHelix - as I mentioned, sugar jitters are very different than hunger from not eating enough food (aka getting proper nutrition).

The more sugar I eat, the more jittery I get. It creates severe mood swings to the point of requiring precription medications.

That's actually how I got started on this road in the first place, because eating sugars, including fruits, potatoes, most breads, pastas, to name a few things, are extremely detrimental to me. Once I cut them out, I felt a lot better and don't require medication.

I'm glad eating a lot of fruit works for you - but you'd have to pay me upwards in the millions of dollars to make me go down THAT road again.

omega pete · 11-01-2007

i probably don't eat enough right now, but i'm not hungry so i'm not changing anything right now.

my salads are kind of large, but nothing crazy 1.5-2 lbs.

my dinners are small.