Raw Food Diet - Day 20 (Blog)

[Steve Pavlina]

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

Raw Food Diet - Day 20

[Michelle]

So, either the Universe wants to warn you that your batteries are low or wanted you to shop somewhere else because the produce you bought is somehow dead inside.

Hope you feel better today.

[cnwoods]

I wonder if your ponderings of yesterday have shifted your awareness into mind and away from the body consciousness you were blogging before?

...or maybe it's just overwhelm.

I guess, since this is observational, it's all good, right?
It's been fascinating so far, so thanks for sharing...

Crystal

[impaul99]

LOL.

Now you've got to discern whether it is your true self sending a message or your Ego trying to sabatage your success. One of the two is creating this stuff in your life.

Been there. That's why I don't believe in 30 day trials anymore.

I ran into the exact same problem you describe and blogged about it here:

How My Beliefs Broke My Diet | Self Help Wisdom . com

It took more than 3 months to get past this issue for me.

[munish]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Whatever energy I was putting into this way of eating seems to have gone somewhere else.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Good grief! This experiment took a weird turn in the past 24 hours.

Now this experiment is getting even more interesting ,atleast for the next 10 days .

I have found the both , positives and negatives of Raw food diet. But now at this stage going back to cooked food looks like a mistake.

[RedFoxBot]

Perhaps you need to revisit why you started the 30day challenge?

I'm probably stating the profoundly obvious here but I'll say it none the less....if the universe puts hurdles in my way I usually find that its trying to get me to learn something about myself.

weather you attracted it or not...perhaps that's a symptom of something else?

Go find some other retailers (with more value?)....in fact...go pick your own food! That's assuming there's some fruit trees somewhere in Vegas.

[MasterD]

Whether you go back or not; it's probably been a great detox period. I would however be very curious what the health benefits are when you do it for 4 months. Many natural doctors advice to this for at least 4-6 months to have diseases cured. However, when you were already in a healthy state you probably do not need that long.

[seeker5]

Alternatively, perhaps the bad battery had nothing related to the diet, and it started a lot of questioning in Steve's mind that led to the rest of the day being that way?

[nownow]

I noticed that Steve decided to eat walnuts. I think this is pure instinct. Many of the essential aminos and fatty acids which have been lacking in this diet are in the walnuts.

[Roger Haeske]

Great posts Steve. It's great to see your day to day feelings. This is certainly what happened to me in many of my Raw Food Diet trials. It's one of those obstacles.

And this is precisely why a 30 day trial is good. Because you commit yourself to 30 days and after that point you can reevaluate whether or not you want to continue.

The positive point being that usually after 30 days of being raw and doing it properly, your body will resist eating cooked food. So then you have your body helping you to stay raw.

As for missing amino acids and essential fatty acids from nownow's post. That's simply not true. Eating a low fat raw food diet with lots of fruits and vegetables provides an abundance of all of the essential amino acids and it provides enough omega 6 and 3 oils and in close to a 1 to 1 ratio.

Compare that with the dangerous 20 or 30 to 1 ratio most people on the Standard American Diet get. A 1 to 1 ratio is considered ideal and the low fat raw food diet provides that and enough of those amino acids as well.

So you actually get your needs met better than on any other diet. Not the other way around.

But you'd have to have studied quite a bit on nutrition to know this. You'd have to have broken down the nutrients in a full day of raw foods to realize that this is actually the case.

Also most people don't realize that most fruits contain all of the essential amino acids. And the big advantage in a Raw Food Diet is that these amino acids have not been denatured and damaged by the cooking process.

It's quite possible that a low fat and vegan raw foodist might be getting more usable protein than people on the Atkins diet.

Cheers, Roger

[Raymond Fernando]

Originally Posted by RedFoxBot

Perhaps you need to revisit why you started the 30day challenge?

I was thinking the same and saw why Steve began this blog in the first place.

As Taken from The Meaning of Life: Conscious Evolution

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I figure that over the course of my lifetime, the absolute best thing I can do is to implant and strengthen the seed of conscious personal growth into the noosphere, in cooperation with other people who have similar missions.

Thank you Steve for your contributions on helping spread personal growth!

Steve is human and has emotions. The way I think and feel about food is more emotional than anything. When I feel happy about something going on in my life I go eat a luxurious meal. If I am feeling down I tend to eat something sweet to pick me up. As I have been becoming aware of my thoughts, I have noticed a lot of the foods I don't like tend to come from when I was a child and attached a negative emotion to the food I tried. As soon as I started to change the way I felt about the food, it tasted different.

Since I don't live in Steve's body, if I was doing a similar trial or wanted to make a major lifestyle change in my eating habits, I would start attaching positive emotions to the food I ate. I would probably sit down at night and figure out why I attached negative emotions to the food I disliked. After I overcome the emotion, I would attach something positive and re-try the foods again. Doing this will probably take a month or two (maybe more) for my brian to re-wire my emotions from all of the 22 years of conditioning from eating food. That is just my body

How do you think of the food you eat?

[Andrew Brunelle]

It could just be a rough patch in the trial. I know when I tried to go raw and lasted about a week, I could not eat a couple of days because I knew the food would be cold and I was experiencing cold sensitivity. All I could think of was a nice warm soup or a cup of tea. Maybe you need to increase your variety and go towards new fruits and vegetables. There are thousands of each, so it should not be too complicated.

Better luck on Day 21.

[IamBren]

Steve - you seem to be hitting some realizations I've had while experimenting (30+ day trials) with strict vegetarianism. I went "vegan" for about two months not too long ago. I adopted the "meat is murder" mindset in a way, just to see what it was like. At first, I really felt a boost - I was apart of something. I was better than those dirty meat eaters. People really resisted my change and I became quite isolated. If I went to a favorite restaurant with friends, I was usually reduced to eating some poorly done vegetable dish that tasted like crap. Social aspects are apart of my - I think - more holistic eating plan now. And I've dropped the belief that "meat is murder" and related beliefs such as that. They just didn't turn out to be that effective for me. I felt really unhappy much of the time focusing on that sort of thing. I still don't eat a lot of meat, but I'm just not that harsh about it.

I've done more health minded changes like adopting an "Eat to Live" diet as well (out of the book of that title by Dr. Joel Fuhrman). He calls the diet "the best diet on the planet" or something like that. I agree that nutritionally, it's probably very sound. I agree with the science. But, he has a very traditional doctor's view of health it would seem, and doesn't really seem to take into account the other aspects of health other than food. It reminds me of the scene in the Matrix where they're eating that goop, one guy complains about it, and the other says that it's the best mix of amino acids etc. So it's like yes, but... I'm sure people who've seen the movie will know what I mean!

Another thing that I've experienced myself from your day 20 post:

"Could I have been the one who was putting the energy there in the first place? Was I assigning some quality to that produce as a result of my assumptions and expectations?"

I've gotten to these "dry spots" myself many times. I know exactly how you feel, but I tend to end the experiment right there! There just seem to be too many clues out there that, to me, point to the idea that mindset, attention, focus and intention seem to be more important than food and other behaviors. Look at all the yogis who smoked like chimneys and lived to be nearly 100 years old. I know an American kung fu instructor that smokes and does a lot of Qigong! Diet just seems much less important to me now than it did. I just feel like investing that energy and attention elsewhere.

Brendon

[gettingskinny]

Wow, that sounds like a blah day. I'm sure you have had insight since you wrote this post and I can't wait to read about it tomorrow!

[Jaben]

Maybe the feeling was to help you diversify your intake of a larger variety of fruits and vegetables as they all offer different nutrients and medicinal properties. Ask your body what sounds the best.

It is important to increase your variety of greens as well. Try dinosaur kale, collard greens, dandelion, lambs quarters, carrot greens, parsley, beet greens, swiss chard, cilantro, mint, basil, dill.

Think of chlorophyll as liquid light energy.

[GrannyGamer]

I think that, even with our 30-day challenges, we need to be careful not to adopt a "do or die" attitude. If at any point in the month we realize we made the wrong decision, it's not a failure to stop, re-evaluate, terminate the experiment early, and try something else.

You've been on this path long enough to get a "taste" of raw foods (if you'll excuse the deliberate pun!) and if you already know that it's not for you, why waste time and energy finishing the month?

Is it that you think you'll look like a failure or a quitter to those of us reading your blog? I don't believe you need to worry about that. We've enjoyed letting you be the guinea pig and most of us would have probably come to the same conclusion (even Helen Nearing, who saw the benefits of raw foods, said her love of soups made it impossible for her to be a real raw foodie.)

By the way, if you DO continue, take particular care of you teeth during this month. I can't remember where I read it (and it could have been in error) but there was something about the excess of fruit sugar causing dental problems.

Finally, for purely selfish reasons, I DO hope you stop early! I love your blog but since I'm not at all interested in a raw food diet, I've had to resort to reading your archives<G> for the past 20 days. I'll be real happy when you get back to discussing a variety of topics.

[Roger Haeske]

It's interesting all the variety of posts. Everyone has their own agenda. Some want to see you succeed and some would prefer you fail to even make it to your 30 day goal.

Steve even has these forces within himself. Each one of us has many conflicting desires inside of ourselves and you can't stay raw until you have mastered those conflicting desires and your desire for health and happiness wins out over the desires for the momentary pleasures of cooked food.

The 30 Day Trial helps with getting a handle on these conflicting desires. It's a wonderful psychological tool.

On the one hand, blogging about your trial can actually make it easier for you to succeed with going raw. But with so many people posting and commenting it can throw you off as well.

But so far as I can tell, what Steve is going through is natural for any new raw foodist. And more so for Steve because he's trying a very strict raw food diet.

I might not have been able to stay raw at first by eating as simply as he's doing now. Although these days it's easy for me to eat that way. I had to first progress to a 100% raw food diet. Then later I improved how I did the raw food diet many times. I've made numerous improvements and refinements over the years.

It takes a while to break a lifetime of addiction to cooked foods. These back and forth processes happen to most people going raw and especially in the first month. It happened to me quite a bit.

Then less so over the coming months. If you've been happily raw for a year or so, then it starts getting much easier.

This is a big lifestyle change. But a change that is well worth it in my opinion. I just wouldn't want to go back to the limited cooked food diet.

It so limits your ability to have optimal health, to be your happiest and to look young and feel energetic. Once however you get used to eating raw, you open up a whole new life and new world of opportunity for yourself. And you've just gained a higher level of self-mastery.

And later on you find that your social life doesn't have to suffer at all. I can go to any restaurant or party I chose. I can be with any friends and family. I simply eat what I chose to eat but it doesn't hold me back in any way.

Cheers, Roger

[nownow]

Originally Posted by Roger Haeske

Great posts Steve. It's great to see your day to day feelings. This is certainly what happened to me in many of my Raw Food Diet trials. It's one of those obstacles.

And this is precisely why a 30 day trial is good. Because you commit yourself to 30 days and after that point you can reevaluate whether or not you want to continue.

The positive point being that usually after 30 days of being raw and doing it properly, your body will resist eating cooked food. So then you have your body helping you to stay raw.

As for missing amino acids and essential fatty acids from nownow's post. That's simply not true. Eating a low fat raw food diet with lots of fruits and vegetables provides an abundance of all of the essential amino acids and it provides enough omega 6 and 3 oils and in close to a 1 to 1 ratio.

Compare that with the dangerous 20 or 30 to 1 ratio most people on the Standard American Diet get. A 1 to 1 ratio is considered ideal and the low fat raw food diet provides that and enough of those amino acids as well.

So you actually get your needs met better than on any other diet. Not the other way around.

But you'd have to have studied quite a bit on nutrition to know this. You'd have to have broken down the nutrients in a full day of raw foods to realize that this is actually the case.

Also most people don't realize that most fruits contain all of the essential amino acids. And the big advantage in a Raw Food Diet is that these amino acids have not been denatured and damaged by the cooking process.

It's quite possible that a low fat and vegan raw foodist might be getting more usable protein than people on the Atkins diet.

Cheers, Roger

Your very biased towards a raw diet. I never said eating raw or being a vegan was wrong. You can eat raw and still get all you need but Steve's diet, so far, is an example of a horrible diet.
The goal is not to find a perfect diet but to avoid a horrible one. A horrible diet is one that is unbalanced: too much fat, protein, carbs, fruit, water.....anything. Any substance taken in excess automatically creates an imbalanced system or a deficiency in some other substance. A little bit of a bad thing won't kill you but alot of a good thing will.
Steve needs more variety; less fruit, more veggies in quantity and variety, more essential aminos and fatty acids. I base this opinion on personal experience and 25 yrs of being interested in and learning about nutrition. It's just my opinion.
I suspect that Steve started this trial in an attempt to try and recapture a time when he was feeling better, maybe more energetic. I think he was mistaken in focussing on trying to boost energy directly by eating lots of fruit or going raw. I think the answer lies elsewhere.

[Lauxa]

I'm predicting you'll see an uptick today as you add more greens back into your diet. It would have been easy to add some greens to your smoothie, so I am wondering why you decided not to? Maybe you are subconsciously testing the greens/mood connection.

[RedFoxBot]

Must admit I did wonder about essential fatty acids...
On a slightly random note.....it is a full moon...perhaps you've become sensitive to lunar cycles?

[Megan]

Remember Harvey and Marilyn Diamond's Fit For Life book? Nothing but fruit in the morning. I was in love with it and them.

That was a long time ago, and I still don't like fruit very much, though I liked it just fine before I forced myself to chomp it down, with no other food, for so long.

To this day I get a guilty twinge in the mornings, telling myself I should just eat fruit, but I hardly ever do. I could have it with my sprouted Ezekiel toast, which would probably be more pleasant & feel less depriving, but the Diamonds still have me felling guilty about that, so...I don't. What's maddening is that the Diamonds don't even eat that way now (and they're not even married now), but they're still messing with my mind all these years later.

I suppose I could do EFT and get my taste for fruit back--just haven't got around to it. Probably should.

Anyway, my various heroic food efforts of the past have left me with residual stuff of one kind or another to deal with, it seems.

As I said (and someone suggested before me), the Middle Way is probably the way of Wisdom. Usually my heroic stuff is me trying to escape my not-OK self. Being OK with my not-OK self would be a better place to start, it occurs to me. (Keep putting off doing The Presence Process.)

I'm starting to think that just letting my body have what it's attracted to eat is the best way. Currently that's 3 cups of salad (with veggies, olives, legumes & nuts) per night, with no sign of getting tired of it. Any night I don't feel like it, I don't eat it.

If I want to hate salad, I know just what to do: force myself to eat it, like I did fruit.

Scrupulosity is a pain.

[Megan]

One more thing comes to mind--many years ago I read some channelled writing that stuck with me.

It said that our minds always try to run the show, but sometimes our souls intervene and make us 'fail' because what we're doing doesn't serve our soul purpose.

Maybe you've learned everything you needed to learn from this?

Maybe your soul defines 'success' differently than your mind?

Maybe you're body is 'hitting the wall' and trying to tell you?

I trust I've been annoying enough for one evening.