Hi Wehey,
Yes, yes, and yes! You can easily fuel your body for your active lifestyle with the raw food diet. The problem you are having now, and why you need all those unneccessary calories is that your diet of processed/cooked food is so deficient in nutrients that your body is constantly craving nutrition. Your body can't absorb the nutrients that have been altered by heat, and most of the enzymes and nutrients have been destroyed anyway during the cooking and processing. Calories are not the issue--
your goal is to get as much nutrition per calorie as possible! We have been brainwashed to worry about calories, and that is not the answer. You don't need a ton of calories! That is detrimental to your health and longevity.
Since going raw from an Atkins diet about a year ago, I eat MUCH less than I did before, but have much more energy, feel better, am never sick, and I am working on gaining more muscle for my upcoming fitness competitions. I do take in quite a few superfoods, because I have a very active lifestyle to support as well. It may be hard to believe now, but a tiny amount of superfoods and good whole foods will give you so much more available nutrition that you will have far more energy on almost no calories!
As far as what to eat, please check out my blog at
Defiant Health!. I am posting recipes for free and also recording my progress toward my next competitions. Check out the page about protein--there are a lot of answers on there. Also an excellent website for tons of free raw recipes is
Gone Raw | sharing raw, vegan recipes and advice. Some of my recipes are on there, under the name Jukebox.
Good luck, and contact me if you need any help or advice!
Christy
Be Defiant!