Transition to All Raw Food Part One

Transition to All Raw food
And why it isn’t an easy ride  .  Part One

Transition, in Raw Food circles, is a very over worked word. It can be used to describe almost any degree of eating raw from an occasional really good salad when there’s time to shop and prepare at the weekend, and other days a commercial smoothie, and a tired juice bar version of bitter tasting wheatgrass followed by the ever popular carrot apple and ginger juice, which leaves you with sugar swings and cravings and may not even be organic.  It is also used to describe enthusiasts who embark on 100% raw for a while, not always at a good time of year to make a sudden change, and then come up against renewed cravings and mood swings to match. This is usually because the actual daily/weekly raw food isn’t balanced, or chosen according to what you need to nourish and satisfy you, while you adjust, and detox from your previous eating habits.     

There are other versions, which you will recognise, and the sad thing is that you feel under pressure to “make it raw” and the whole thing becomes a worry instead of the joyful, clear thinking energetic transformation you set your sights on.   

This month I’d like to help with some discussion on what to avoid, so that you don’t set yourself up to fall at the first craving. In part two there will be some tips on the basics of a good transition plan.

First what a good raw diet, and even more, a balanced Live Foods diet, is not!  It is not about juicing anything you fancy, and loads of fresh fruit snacks and fruit based smoothies.
It’s not about buying tubs of ready made “superfoods”, though some of these are very good, and certainly have a place in boosting nutrition.  It’s not about adding a daily wheatgrass shot to an otherwise largely cooked menu, nor buying the dried version  of the latest discovery in antioxidant berries,  or chocolate substitutes!  You can think of a few more for yourself, but at this point, let’s lighten up a little. Yes it’s a serious subject and we all need and deserve to get it right for long term good health, but stop and have a chuckle at yourself now and then instead of getting anxious, and definitely stop comparing yourself to other people.  

Why do you want to eat high raw/live foods?

Everyone has a different history, different age group, different metabolism, different starting points, and different motivation.  To take motivation first.  Is it enough just to want excellent health? It’s a great starting point, but what else is in there? Maybe a feeling of needing to succeed at something new? To compensate for something else?  A bit of competitive spirit, or a need to show someone in your life (maybe yourself?) that you can start again, succeed?  Not to be too solemn about it, a good first step is to sit down with yourself, and work out how things have gone in the past with new ventures. Forewarned is forearmed, and a bit of personal insight is a great tool. 

How efficient is your digestive system?

It’s interesting that usually, younger people do fine for several years, even on a rather unbalanced raw diet, by which I mean too much fruit and not enough green things.  However older people need to be realistic about declining levels of absorption; the small intestine just isn’t as efficient at getting the minerals into the bloodstream, and that may be compounded by a build up of coverage of the villi in the first part of the small intestine, whose job this is.  This unwelcome build up comes from habits of eating complex meals, badly combined and not thoroughly chewed.

 So successful transition comes from not just what you eat but what you choose, how you put it together, and your digestive efficiency.  If you are a middle aged starter, you’ll need to take account of this, and get your digestive and detoxing organs unclogged and working as well as possible. Even so, hormonal changes for women can alter things.

 It’s important to know how your own body is working, and look after it.  Doggedly sticking to the raw meals you’ve eaten for years, in spite of symptoms, for example bloating, which you never used to experience, isn’t the best plan for looking after yourself, and you may have to adapt.  You may need a few good  supplements for a while,  especially B. Vitamins  and perhaps a daily dose of flax oil. After all your goal is to maximise your own personal health and energy, not to achieve some text book standard.    In fact that applies to all age groups, as changes in digestion can and do happen for comparatively young people.   

What have you been eating for the past few years?

Looking at young and older raw foodies from another  perspective for a moment, there has been a step change in the kinds of food the different generations of vegetarians and vegans eat.  On the whole older people who have been vegetarian for decades, have eaten a better, fresher, more balanced diet. More home cooking, time to prepare, a lot of fresh and often home grown produce.  By contrast in the last 10 or 15 years young vegetarians and vegans eat more prepared food such as tofu and soy, they snack and graze more, neither of which helps digestive efficiency, and grab a handful of raw nuts instead of making bean and root veggie casseroles etc. 

The point is not that traditional cooking methods are necessarily best, but that there is a whole different way of eating, so when these two age groups then take the step to raw food, they may have different basic levels of nutrition. In fact some of the digestive inefficiencies discussed earlier, are occurring in younger and younger people, not because of age -related slowing down, but because of poor eating habits.

Good health is worth a little planning.

This is a very good reason for stocktaking, and changing some basic things.  Spacing meals, choosing simple meals, sitting down to eat, chewing thoroughly and so on can make a huge difference.

Contrast this rather more balanced and planned way in to raw, with the happy go lucky hit and miss version of raw food, using a lot of fruit; salads and veggies a few days old before you get them home; not enough good quality juice,  It’s just not going to work, and will leave you feeling a failure as well, possibly with an uncomfortable degree of bloating, and tired instead of energetic.

Does any of this ring a bell? Are you chuckling yet or is that just a wry smile?                                              

You need protein in the morning

However well balanced and motivated you are, and some of you are admirable in this respect, your own physiology and personal metabolism need respect as much as your mind and emotions.  An attitude or an idea cannot over ride your stomach’s requirement to eat protein separately from starch, or the fact that your metabolism needs kickstarting with protein in the morning. Easy if you are a vegetarian happy to cook the odd egg, or a near veggie, happy to have a sardine or two.  Not so easy if you are vegan.  You need to be clever with nuts and seeds and to prepare them by soaking at the very least and chewing thoroughly.

As an illustration of mind over body, and a misplaced idea, some years ago there was an American fashion for eating nothing at all before noon, and then only fruit.  This was based on the idea that a few hours extra fasting was beneficial on a daily basis, an idea which might have had a kind of narrow logic, but took no account of the different requirements of anabolic (building) and catabolic (breaking down) metabolism.
Eating like this for years, and losing the natural keen morning appetite, has a detrimental effect eventually on the whole endocrine system. So if you’ve been tempted, because it’s so easy to grab some fruit in the morning, just add some well chewed seeds or nuts.  The same effect lasts until early afternoon, so have protein at lunch as well.

Take your time.

For most people it will take a couple of years of steady progress to achieve a reliable 100 percent raw diet, and there is no golden rule which says that 100 percent is necessary or right for you to be at your best.  There are other things to take into account, such as digestive competence, your general lifestyle, how good or bad you are at stressing yourself, what responsibilities you have, how balanced and available your energy is.

Start in your head, not on your plate!

So for the next few weeks, I suggest you get yourself into mental shape for what you want to achieve.
Why do you want to be high raw? Be honest.  What do you know about yourself which might get in your way?  Is there any ingrained way of thinking, behaving that could be sorted with a little help?  With flower Remedies?  Study the list and choose your own.  With a few sessions of EFT? (Emotional Freedom Technique) ? There’s a long list of good practitioners out there. 

The Good News

The good news is that you can programme yourself to succeed in this, whereas if you just plunge in, without a realistic view of what it might take for you as an individual, special person, with an individual digestive system, individual mind and unique emotional history it could be hard to adapt successfully. 

If you are already well on with a high percentage raw diet, you may be absolutely fine, at peak energy and resilience, sailing through and making a fine example for others.  Congratulations! However if you are puzzled or downcast by developments such as losing energy or positivity, or experiencing some digestive discomfort which never used to bother you, there’s a good reason, which needs tracking down and corrected.

There’s only one rule on this path, which is don’t beat yourself up, find out what needs beating instead.

In the second part I will outline a practical step by step way for you to make a safe and achieveable transition to your chosen level of health through raw living foods.

Meantime, in preparation for the practicalities, get yourself a good juicer which will do green leaves as well as everything else, and if you already have a masticating type, consider a wormscrew type which will do wheat grass as well as green leaves.  You don’t actually need a blender right at the start, but it comes in to the picture pretty quickly.  In the early stages of getting to grips with say 50/60 percent raw, you don’t need a dehydrator. You can spend a lot of time playing with dehydrator goodies before getting a solid raw foundation.

So for the next issue come with your personal assessment, the progress you’ve made with your flower remedies and /or EFT, and a few weeks experience of adding some organic freshly pressed juices to what you normally eat every day, and eat rather less fruit.

For Emotional Freedom Technique Practitioners  www.theamt.com
Flower remedies and a pocket prescriber (free with orders) from www.healingherbs.co.uk  
Free advice on juicers from www.livingfoods.co.uk