30 Days Raw (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

30 Days Raw

[Berix]

I am very interested to read about your experience with raw diet - so much that I finally decided to signup to this forum and leave this message.
For me, this is more interesting topic than for example - quitting my job.

[tekomino]

Talk about extreme and middle path

[Nico Kempe]

12 clementines?!
Good heavens, and I thought 4 pieces of fruit was much..

Anyway, I'm also interested in your progress, especially since to me this looks like a pretty tough diet.

I'll do a veggie diet trial next year, which is a whole change for me already..)

[urlwolf]

I've tried a raw food diet for about 6 month before.
It was very different, including raw fish/ fresh cheese.

I'm very interested in a raw diet daily log/recipes, and honest evaluation.

Thanks

[Klamachpin]

I too am interested in a daily food log / recipes, but I would rather it not hijack the blog. I can certainly see a mid-term (2 weeks) and summary (4 weeks) update on the blog, but anything more than that may seem a bit much. Perhaps a specific thread for the food log / recipes here on the forums?

[klokkasju]

I am very eager to read about your experiences during your 30 days trial.

One particular point i'm interested in, is the amount of time (for buying all the food) and money you'll have to afford. And if it is manageable to eat without salt for 30 days. I thought the body needs some salt. I'm not talking about the oversalted supermarked stuff, but without any salt?!? .. I'm curious.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by tekomino

Talk about extreme and middle path

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

[tekomino]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thats the good one.

But, it is extremes that defines us. Nobody would care if Steve said he is going to try French cooking for 30 days to see how it goes. People are just not interested in that. But if you take it to the extreme like eating raw meat or raw fruit people start to pay attention. Steve is shrewd businessman so he takes advantage of that... Law of attraction, no need to have job, beg instead of work and all that...

Nothing wrong with that, we naturally flock to extremes.

Extremes define us.

Ron Paul understands that as well

[MrsCogan]

We can't compare ourselves to modern apes when it comes to diet. Modern apes are as highly evolved as we are and are on a completely different branch of the family tree. To see what's natural for our species you have to look at our immediate ancestors. Homo erectus was using fire from 500,000 years ago to 1.8 million years ago depending on how strong you want your evidence.

Evolution is a messy, gradual process so it's tough to say exactly when our own species evolved, but it was about 100,000 to 150,000 years ago. Our ancestors had been cooking their food for at least 350,000 years before the first modern human saw the light of day and possibly a million and a half years before we turned up. That's a lot of evolution.

We evolved with fire and therefore cooking. Eating cooked food has several obvious evolutionary advantages. Fire kills pathogens. It makes some foods easier to digest and other foods cannot be eaten at all without breaking them down with heat. It widens food choices which is vital for health and well-being. Many seeds--dried beans, wheat, barley, etc.--are inedible raw but become available as food if you can boil them in water. Steve mentioned potatoes. Not only are they mildly poisonous raw, but they are nasty tasting. There are a lot of very healthy nutritious foods that are nasty raw but wonderful cooked.

We do have remote ancestors who were entirely vegan and ate only raw food, but they had enormous teeth and powerful jaws to deal with the tough stuff. Their gut was almost certainly a lot different from ours. Our teeth are a lot smaller and unspecialized which means they are meant for an omnivore.

I think that avoiding refined sugar and processed food is vital to our health. I think vegetarianism is fine--I was a vegetarian for about 15 years. I don't see the point of veganism, but it can be equally healthy with a little thought and care. I think an exclusively raw food diet is going too far. The potential risks far outweigh potential benefits. And, again, I don't see the point.

[MasterD]

Jo Steve,
Certainly interested in how the diet will work for you!
One of the beliefs I have at this moment is that too much fruit is not good for you because of the acidifying effect the sugar in the fruit may have on the body (pH miracle Robert Young / Tony Robbins Living Health).
I used to eat a LOT of fruit and cutting it out actually made me feel better, but that may have something to do with other changes I made too.
Keep us posted; looking forward to reading about the results you will get with it!
Dirk

[Savage]

Originally Posted by MasterD

Jo Steve,
Certainly interested in how the diet will work for you!
One of the beliefs I have at this moment is that too much fruit is not good for you because of the acidifying effect the sugar in the fruit may have on the body (pH miracle Robert Young / Tony Robbins Living Health).
I used to eat a LOT of fruit and cutting it out actually made me feel better, but that may have something to do with other changes I made too.
Keep us posted; looking forward to reading about the results you will get with it!
Dirk

I used to be a big Dr. Young fan myself, and I attended a lecture of his a few years ago, but in reading some other reports, I have more doubts about his theories now. I think a lot of what he writes is true, but there are some problems with his recommended solution that I feel others like Dr. Graham do a better job of resolving.

Dr. Young and Tony Robbins push a lot of very expensive supplements with a ridiculous mark-up. These are manufactured products you wouldn't find in those same forms in nature. To me that's a big red flag, since they're claiming that we need to buy their engineered "nutrition in a bottle" to achieve optimal health. My intuition flashes a big danger sign at that. The message just isn't congruent.

Fruit is extremely alkalizing. However, the main issue is to eliminate the acid-forming foods. That's one of the reasons I want to do this test. I have pH strips that I can use to test my own pH levels to see what changes, although the results won't be very precise.

Eating a lot of fruit on a diet filled with acid-forming foods won't produce optimal results. If you add fruit to a bad mix, you may have an even worse mix. Many people who've had problems with fruit report feeling great when they eat virtually nothing but fruit. I've also noticed that the more fruit I eat, the better I feel. But if I eat a bunch of watermelon for dessert on top of a high-fat meal, I won't feel good at all.

[tstesen]

I'm very interested in hearing about your experience with going raw throughout January.

Tanya

[Stormhierta]

Hiya!

Interested enough in more information about the RAW diet to sign up on the forums (like some before me).

My suggested "spread" would be 3 updates the first week, covering the first 7 days, 2 updates on the second week and then one weekly with a final summation. I think this would cover the biggest "changes" and the most intense emotional period for such a dietary change - the things which would interest me (and alot of others I think), the most.

[bart]

I deleted my first reply to this post, since I do not think it was appropriate.

I am very interested too on how you proceed. I am still on a non vegetarian diet due to medical factors (and the difficulty to sort out a right vegetarian diet within the limits of what I can eat). Still I plan to make a few more gradual changes and see how it goes, probably slowly moving to vegetarian first in a cautious way, possibly move on to the next stage.

The raw diet you describe would be lethal to me, I would not survive it without extra medication, but it does sound very interesting ! Keep us posted !

[Savage]

Originally Posted by bart

The raw diet you describe would be lethal to me, I would not survive it without extra medication, but it does sound very interesting ! Keep us posted !

That's an assumption you have to be careful with. If your physiology is already messed up, then adding healthier foods to your diet can create adverse effects because the body will either not be in a condition to assimilate it properly, or the body will try to begin returning to a more proper physiology which can produce short-term negative symptoms.

So even if fruit is very, very healthy, you have this problem to contend with:

Unhealthy diet + healthy fruit = Unhealthy diet = Unhealthy physiology

Adding fruit to an unhealthy diet is like taking medicine while still consuming poison. You may continue to get worse. The solution isn't really to take more medicine. It's to stop taking poison.

So while you may in fact have a serious problem adding fruit to your current diet, remain open to the possibility that if you ate almost nothing but fruit, your physiology may correct itself to the point where you'll be able to thrive on such a diet. This is not an uncommon experience from what I've read.

For example, if you currently consume a high-fat diet, that will certainly interfere with the digestion and assimilation of fruit sugar. So a good first step would be to progress to a low-fat diet first, which will create better conditions for eating fruit. If you're diabetic, for instance, you don't need to avoid sugar. Sugar is what fuels all the cells of your body. You will, however, benefit greatly by dropping your fat intake, which will improve your body's ability to metabolize sugar. People have cured diabetes by eating the kind of diet I'm about to test. Instead of avoiding fruit, they correct the underlying problem that prevents them from metabolizing fruit in the first place.

[Cat Dancer]

Ooh this is exciting! I think I'll try this diet too.

Steve, where do you buy your food?

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by bart

As I stated, making the change to so much fruit now might not be a good idea yet, it could actually kill me.

Bart, I don't quite understand. I thought fructose gets proceeded independently from insuline? And it has a GI of 22, which is very low. So where's the problem? Fruit normally shouldn't affect your insuline level too much, especially if you also eat veggies and nuts.

I don't have diabetes, but I have glucose intolerance and insuline resistance, and I've never felt better than with a fruit+veggie+nuts diet.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by bart

Your statement however suggests that you have read information from diabetes patients that have done similar. Could you please tell me where you found that information?

Yes, I've seen many testimonials. They can be found on the web sites of the raw foodists linked in the original post and in their books.

I've never had diabetes (at least not that I know of), so I can't provide any insight from personal experience. But the theory behind it and the results others have reported makes a lot of sense to me.

Erin and I actually have a blood sugar testing device, like what diabetics use. I've tested my blood sugar a few times in the past several days out of curiosity and have never had a reading above 87 (I think the ideal range is supposed to be 80 to 120 or so), even though I'm eating tons of fruit sugar. So apparently my body is doing an OK job of regulating my blood sugar. I may keep testing after I convert to all raw just to see what happens, since then I'll be eating even more fruit. I just find it interesting that no matter how much fruit I eat, it doesn't seem to spike my blood sugar.

[Michelle]

I would definitely enjoy frequent updates!

[Tobias Zimpel]

Originally Posted by bart

As you may have seen in my previous post my condition is quite different from what you describe about your girlfriend.
...
I am really sorry I do not have more information.

Bart, thanks for your answer. However, I were not asking you in particular, or even Steve, because I already thought that you might not be of much help here.

If anyone else feels they could help us, however, I'd really appreciate if you contact me here in the forum or via PM.

However, I am perhaps better off starting a new thread in the proper forum.

[Andath]

Hi, I'd greatly like to hear your results and food logs, ect. What I'd be more interested in then that are grocery lists and costs. I've tried upping the fruit in my diet and always felt alot better afterwards but it seems like everytime I try to my grocery bill skyrockets. Now this is partially 'cause I'm still getting everything else as well (my other half would never be willing to try this, but I suspect I could trick him into it by eating the fruit in front of him lol, he always wants some) but being a college student I'm especially aware of the effect my diet has on my pocketbook.

[Jake Birkett]

Yeah please blog about, I'm very interested in it. A friend of mine is an experienced raw fooder and loves it. Also a friend of his recently beat the world "staying awake" record on a raw food only diet, something like 11 days...Tony Wright (sleep deprivation) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Rosie]

I'd definitely love to hear more about your 30 day trial!!

[Andrew Michaels]

I'm only eat raw fruits, vegetables, and a few nuts and seeds. I follow the 80/10/10 diet.

When I first made the switch I wrote about my first 64 days or so. You can see my periodic updates by looking in the archive section of my site and looking under raw diet. There is a big summation at the end.

Best of luck going raw Steve. It made a huge difference in my life, even if it took a few missteps and a lot of will power to get there.

[Paul C]

This has gained my attention for sure.

I wouldn't mind at all if you made daily updates on your progress, this is all very interesting to me. There's something appealing about making fruit a foundation for healthy eating (yet I was aware of this to a certain point already).

I look forward to reading what you experience.

[Roger Haeske]

Hi Steve and all of you other great folks.

I just started reading Steve's blog and this forum today as he linked to my site from the post about his 30 Day Raw Food Diet Trial.

I'm glad to see there's so much interest on your forum about eating raw. This is one field where there is a lot of misinformation.

But I can tell by your writing and your forum posts that you now have a very good handle on the main issues. I think you're going to do just great in this 30 day trial and you'll see it won't be nearly as time consuming as in the past.

For me the only time consuming thing is that I tend to go shopping for food every other day. But eating and making my breakfast for instance doesn't take me more than 15 minutes.

Dinner which is usually two or three large blended salads, doesn't take very long to prepare or eat either. I can make a blended salad in 5 to 7 minutes.

And it could take even less time if I didn't do any food preparation and just ate the foods as mono meals.

One person mentioned being hungry all of the time when eating a high fruit diet. I used to have the same problem but no more. It's likely you still weren't consuming enough calories. Bananas really helps in that regard. I usually eat around 20 a day.

If any of you are interested I've made a quick survey of people who are interested in the raw food diet. If you fill it out I'll give you access to a free teleseminar I'm doing about your biggest raw food diet problems. It's this Thursday evening.

Please visit this blog post if you want to learn more. I'm really curious to see the opinions of people who may not be as familiar with the raw food diet as my regular readers are.

Can You Help Me With This? | Raw Food Diet, Bodyweight Fitness & Self-Help

I'm going to keep an eye on Steve's progress. Ideally you'd have a place to post every single day as it will help you to stay raw. Maybe you can just add to one post each day and anyone interested can come back and read your updates for the day.

Cheers, Roger

[GODISHERE4YOU]

That is a lot of fruit! How much sugar do you think one body can take each day (I do understand that the fiber offsets the sugar some)? Also, why are you excluding grains and garlic and onions? I understand eating minimal beans, but why are you completely cutting out beans?

I tried a vegan raw foods diet a number of months ago (I was and am already a vegan) but I attend a boarding school, so it's hard to find a afford food that is not already given to you (processed and cooked) from the cafeteria. I have also been recently diagnosed with celiacs disease, which limits how much grain I can eat (which I believe is a great source of calories and protein, being told that a lot of protein is important until now).

[Bruce Achterberg]

I'd be really interested in your experiences with this 30 day challenge, and I'd be more then happy to read about it on your blog.

I'd absolutely love to see some daily food logs, and I wouldn't mind daily updates/posts/logs at all. That said, I can understand some other people may not like that format, so perhaps weekly updates will suffice. Either way, whatever format you go with, I'd really like to see some food logs (daily would be great, but I'd take "some" over "none"). Super simple ones like what you covered in your 30 Days Raw post would be fine, but free to go into excessive amounts of detail.

PS. This is just a short post I typed up to express my interest. I have a few notes taken down with more details/specifics (aka "a Bruce post" ) -- I'll try post them if I get a chance (if I post them, I'll make sure I post it before new years so the feedback is still relevant). Watch this space! (As in, this thread.)

[The Adventurer]

Thank you for the post Steve. It is very helpful that you describe all your experiences and research in as much depth as a blog post allows. It will be good to hear some details about how the trial progresses over the next month and its good, bad and ugly parts - perhaps in short regular logs on the food eaten and the experience, followed by one or more proper blog entries evaluating the experiment.


I have done some raw and non-raw food tests, and a low fat raw diet did feel amazing for a short time. It was very difficult to get calories on it and I had to fall back on boiled potatoes, bread, legumes, etc.

The experience from my tests indicate that my personal optimum is somewhere along the lines of the 80/10/10 diet - so I would gladly join the experiment of figuring a raw diet that can work in the long term.

One thing I found missing in the post was what the plan for things to eat is - the rules were mostly about what what was not to be eaten. However calories, fats, proteins (even if much less than most believe) and micronutrients have to come from somewhere. My first step into starting the diet would be to make a good plan about what is to be eaten and where all the essential nutrients will come from - a rich non-exclusive list of what the diet will consist of. It is good to have ready variety of answers when hunger strikes and another kilo of bananas feels like just too much. Also we are trying to switch to eating the best possible food, rather than limit ourselves from the poorer food we are currently eating (see ps)

I will take a bit of time to make the list of foods and decide on the approaches and will post them then.

Cheers


PS. On a side note - When doing a change in habits I have found that it is much more effective to thinking in terms of what you begin to do and its good effects rather than you are quitting or limiting yourself from. An example for smoking would be that you begin non-smoking instead of quitting smoking. I think that your mind in this approach is focused on the new experience and its benefits and is working on making them a habit. In the other scenario, when you focus on the old habit and trying to force-quit it, the very focusing on it is counterproductive as it activates the mental schemes related to the habit (doing it and getting something from it) which is the opposite of the final effect that you are pursuing - deactivating them.
Any habit - even the obviously self-destructive ones have benefits, otherwise they wouldn't be attractive at all. As one wouldn't give up something that has benefits, the best way I have found for dealing with this is to become aware on a deep level of the greater benefits that the habit gets in the way of. There must of course be such greater benefits, or one wouldn't feel a need to discontinue the habit in the first place.
... a ps that became longer than the rest...