Raw Food Diet - Day 2 (Blog)

[Amit]

I can see where you're coming from, like you said only time will tell, best wishes for the experiment, I'll be following your logs!

[Gforce2008]

Steve - bless you 10 fold for conducting this experiment and blogging it. I am VERY curious as you are following the diet I aspire to, but am not yet "living" it. I think the low-fat raw food diet you are following (eating natural, unprocessed foods mainly with mostly fruits and greens being the focus) is the best and more natural way to eat. The evidence sure seems to show this is the healthiest way to eat for humans. (See Dr. Graham's 80/10/10 book if folks want more detailed info.)

I've been completely a raw eater 3 times (with 17 days being the longest) and I really want to do it for longer this time -- at least 30 days, ideally 60. I am on Day 3 (started Jan 1 also) and I have a slight headache tonight - it never occurred to me that it could be mild detox.

This forum is very helpful for reminding me we are sharing great information and are a great help to each other in this community. Thank you so much for sharing - I will follow your story daily!

I am having a hard time keeping the fats down (so many recipes have lots of nuts and seeds in them, but I hope to gradually eat less of those as I get more confident with my raw foods so I can experience optimal health).

P.S. I know this is TMI for many folks, but true experimenters may laugh at this -- I am having my first green poos in my life and am pretty excited to see that I am finally eating enough greens! Will be interesting to see if they return to other colors if my pH levels right themselves (per Victoria Boutenko's theory) or if it's strictly the "whatever color food you eat, that's the color of your stools" - such as with beets.

Anyway - on with the optimal health journey!

All the best to you!
G-Force

[bwb]

Originally Posted by WillPowers

Steve, thanks for the answers. Bananas make me gag (it is an involuntary reflex, eggs do this to me also, I am much more sensitive to texture than to taste), so after reading your post I went to the store and bought 10 bananas. I might as well figure out how to get over the gagging now, cause I'm going to be eating a lot of bananas in the near future

Tried them frozen, in smoothie form? You can do this raw or non-raw depending on your tastes and ingredients.

- 1 banana, split into pieces and frozen
- 1 cup soymilk/rice milk/nut milk
- 1 tsp unsweetened chocolate powder
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- dash of sea salt
- (optional) sweetner, like a packet of stevia or a squirt of agave nectar
- (optional) 2 or 3 tbsp nut butter

With the nut butter this is like a meal in a glass. Either way it's creamy and delicious.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@Bruce: The "mixed greens" is the Organic Spring Mix from Earthbound Farms. It's sold at Costco and Whole Foods. The ingredients listed are: organic baby lettuces (red & green romaine, red & green oak leaf, red leaf, lollo rosa, tango), organic red & green chard, organic mizuna, organic arugula, organic mache, organic frisee, organic radicchio.

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply, Steve! Quite the interesting selection there.

Having an ingredients list like that really helps since it gives me an idea of what I (and I imagine, other people) need to do in terms of availability and nutrition when it comes to a raw food diet.

So far your experiment has inspired me to eat a lot more fruit, as well as try to get better deals on fruit instead of getting scammed at Coles (a supermarket you've probably never heard of, hehe).

I can't say I'm quite ready to go raw foodist yet (it's always been something I've wanted to try after hearing about it on your blog, even before I went vegan), but after having a few fruit-only meals, I can see my body really agrees with this diet. Cooked food is still tasty, but it leaves you feeling all bloated and full in comparison to fruit.

But anyway, enough rambling. Thanks again.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by WillPowers

Steve, thanks for the answers. Bananas make me gag (it is an involuntary reflex, eggs do this to me also, I am much more sensitive to texture than to taste), so after reading your post I went to the store and bought 10 bananas. I might as well figure out how to get over the gagging now, cause I'm going to be eating a lot of bananas in the near future

I used to get that when I was younger. In fact, I used to get it with a lot of fruit/vegetables -- and I'm vegan now. Ha!


The wrath of picky-ness
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Suffice to say that I was pretty picky when I was younger, and while I didn't really eat much of what I'd call "garbage" (highly processed foods, sweets, ice cream, and other stuff that is just not good for your body and akin to filling it with rubbish, hence the term "garbage"), I didn't eat many (or at least, a wide variety) of vegetables.

Once I started cooking for myself, I found the reason I didn't eat many types of food was because I didn't like the way they were prepared. I had very specific preferences, and if I didn't get them met, I just didn't eat the food.

I've since become less picky (simply because it's intelligent to eat the foods I wouldn't normally eat, but last year was the first year I started eating bananas regularly.


Make eating bananas easier by using them in shakes
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Anyway, I found it really easy to eat bananas using Steve's banana shake recipe. It's pretty tasty, and while it can be a bit difficult to get down sometimes if you aren't used to eating bananas and you don't make quite right (ie. maybe you have the wrong consistency, maybe you use not-so-tasty under- or over-ripe bananas), but generally the tastiness overshadows the "yuck, I'm eating bananas".

After having banana shakes for a period of months, I gradually got interested in eating bananas, simply because they are very convenient. Since then they've become my favorite fruit (probably my favorite food, to be honest... they're just so damn efficient to eat!). Initially I still had a bit of resistance to eating them, but I find it's more of a thing of the mind then of the body. It's your thinking that causes your body to react the way it does. Now I can wolf down bananas no problem, although I still refuse to eat over-ripe, mushy bananas. Ewww!

So my advice would be to just start yourself off gradually, venturing out of your comfort zone a bit but not enough to make yourself feel sick. Your reaction to the bananas is very real, so don't just ignore it, but don't let it stop you from the efficiency benefits that come from eating bananas!

If you'd like a good banana shake recipe, check out this post I made (scroll down to the second quote in the post). The post lists the recipe Steve uses, and it also gives some variations I've concocted that make the base recipe a bit more interesting. Adds a bit of variety, if anything.


Fruit smoothies are tasty too
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Oh, you also may want to check out Erin's cookbook, Vegan Family Favorites. The smoothie recipies in there are really tasty and completely vegan (there are 11 fruit smoothie recipes in total). I honestly don't care much for recipes and I usually just get a whole lot of fruit and throw it in a blender, but if you're looking for some specific recipes, Erin's book has some pretty decent ones in general. At first I thought, "uh, I already know how to make most of this stuff", but when I actually tried some recipes, to my surprise, most of them were delicious (and I'm not easy to please!).

Here's my favorite smoothie recipe from Vegan Family Favorites:

Eclectic Smoothie:

2 bananas
1 apple
1 orange
1 cup fresh pineapple chunks
1 to 2 cups apple juice

[I usually throw in some ice cubes instead of or as well as water, and if I have one available, a mango as well. This recipe is open to a lot of experimentation and personal preference, so go nuts!]

"Tropical" sums it up pretty well. Enjoy!

[munish]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@Bruce: The "mixed greens" is the Organic Spring Mix from Earthbound Farms. It's sold at Costco and Whole Foods. The ingredients listed are: organic baby lettuces (red & green romaine, red & green oak leaf, red leaf, lollo rosa, tango), organic red & green chard, organic mizuna, organic arugula, organic mache, organic frisee, organic radicchio.

I can't say I know what all of those things are, but it's tasty.

Thanks for the details.

[wulph]

A similar product available here (central Pennsylvania) is
Olivia's Organics Spring Mix (Olivia's Organics)

Organic Ingredients: Tango, Lolla Rosa, Red and Green Romaine, Red and Green Oak, Red and Green Chard, Spinach, Mizuna, Radicchio, Frisse, Beet Greens, Arugula, Tat Soi, Red Mustard ("The ingredients in each package vary").

$4.99/lb at Giant. A pound is a lot of greens; I'm very pleased with this product.