Day 44 The Two Types of Raw Food People

photo credit Libraryman@flickr

There are basically two types of raw foodists:
Raw Gourmet and Raw Low Fat.

1. Raw Gourmet. Many people initially embarking on raw food start here. They recreate as many SAD (standard American) diet recipes with raw food as they can. There are websites and glossy magazines devoted to fancy, beautiful raw food. So you have people making fancy stuff as well as pizza and White Castle sliders and crackers, etc., from raw food and you end up with a diet that can be as high as 80% fat and with as many health problems as they had before. Salt also runs a bit rampant in this mix which holds its own health problems.

Besides this flying in the face of proper food combining (a whole 'nother topic) they don't eat a high ratio of fruit and this is the downfall of the gourmet raw foodist - you have to consume enough fruit everyday to make it work. You simply cannot get enough calories from greens, zucchini and tomatoes - you would eat endlessly all day and never make it up. Furthermore, you don't just need 'calories'. You need specific things from those calories. If that were not true, we could all just blissfully chow down on Ho Ho's for the rest of our days and be thin, beautiful and healthy. Right.

1 cup of spinach leaves is only 7 calories. I eat 6 cups a day, sometimes more, but 6 cups are just 42 calories. Wow. Why bother? Well because of the minerals - that's why you'd want to eat those lousy 42 calories. You need that, particularly if you're in your first year. Calorie-wise, you need much more than that, obviously. On good days I eat around 2500 calories so what else am I gonna eat to make that up?! You have to eat high calorie fruit. In fact, this has to be the mainstay of your diet so you replace your glycogen stores. This is why we crave sugar in the first place: To replenish our glycogen stores - the fuel we run on all day.

Granulated sugar will never serve your glycogen stores properly. You'll just need tons and tons of it over and over and it's not the right stuff, so you'll just feel and look like crap. No one ever got thin and healthy eating large amounts of refined sugar and that's a fact. Only whole food (fruit) will meet your bodies requirements - and probably for the first time in your entire life. Wow.

If you eat enough fruit you will never crave sugar again. I have cravings sometimes if I've not eaten enough calories in a day but to my surprise they are never for sugary things because my glycogen needs are finally being met. I admit it's a relief to no longer crave sweets. So what do I crave? Stupid crap like McDonalds cheeseburgers. When I crave that, I know I just need a couple hundred more calories for the day. I finally learned how many calories a day make me tick. It's around 2500.

It's different for everyone but everyone who is a low fat raw foodist or low fat raw vegan needs a lot more calories than you're probably eating now. I've never eaten that much a day on a regular basis in my life. I had to work up to it but it feels good now :)

Those who don't make their calories up in fruit make it up by default in FAT instead. Lots and lots of nuts, tahini, possibly oils and the sad thing is, nuts in America are DEAD. Unless you get them from small independent farms, thanks to the USDA, any nuts you buy in the stores have all been heated - cooked - no longer raw. If you claim to be a raw foodist and you are eating heat treated nuts - you're no longer a raw foodist. You can't even buy them at Whole Foods. An independent store might have them. The way you can tell they are dead is they will not sprout. You're basically eating fat gravel You'd be better off fat-wise on a SAD diet where the fat is around 35-45% than do that to yourself. If you buy nuts locally you need to ask if they've been heat treated. Ask if they're sprout-able. If the person doesn't answer you with conviction either way, yes they're certified raw, they will sprout or no, they've been heat treated and they will not sprout - don't buy them.

Besides the fact they're not raw, even if you buy raw nuts you need to understand that fat will never fill your glycogen stores and you'll be forever craving everything you were trying to get away from in the first place, including your health issues. You cannot make up your other 2458 calories of the day with nuts - aka FAT. You need fruit.

You also need to know that too many nuts will start to affect your teeth. People think it's the sugar in the fruit when they start to have dental problems from a raw food diet, but fruit is not the culprit. It's the nuts. They stick to the teeth and embed in between far more than the fruit ever does. You can rinse the fruit down with water but the nuts stay adhered. Trust me on this one - cut the fat - forget the nuts! I eat some pumpkin seeds once in a while but I'm pretty much even over that. Bottom line - you don't need nuts at all.

Which is not to say you don't need some fat. I track my food everyday and if I need fat, I eat a half an avocado last thing of the day, all by itself. That's it. My body has all night to process the fat, I get to 'sleep on it' and I have no active fruit in my system to get bogged down in the fat - causing blood sugar issues. AH! There is much to learn.

2. Raw Low Fat. Those who eat simply fruits (80%) and vegetables (10%) and fats (10%) and those really into it take the time to learn about food combining (which is not recipes...) and they are adamant about exercise daily. They never try to recreate any of the former SAD foods they ate.

I'm of the 2nd group if you couldn't tell by now, but I'm considered 'transitioning' since it can take a year to fully adopt a raw low fat diet. Wow - just my luck I've set aside a year to do just that. HA! Those who are 100% low fat raw vegan absolutely never, ever eat anything they're not supposed to - not ever. That's why they're considered 100%.

I'm doing better than most people I'm told with my transitioning - mostly because I'm doing it in the public eye so I don't want to cheat or fall back or transition slowly. It's a little tough but I get there nearly all the time. I'd say once every two weeks something stupid happens and we're talking one item - not a Thanksgiving dinner or binging for days on end. It's one item - like some popcorn or a few bites of my daughter's pasta. It's OK. I pay the price which is huge (very painful) and learn once again why I don't want to do that.

The great part is I always get back on the horse, unlike other 'diets', and that's because this isn't just a diet. It's a lifestyle and once you embark on it, it's pretty compelling. Just one example, often gourmet raw foodists are still over weight even a year down the line, they have bloating and digestion and other chronic health issues that they really should be able to get relief from. All dedicated low fat raw foodists are very trim and cut, their faces and bodies have redesigned themselves in the most fantastic ways and they've eliminated their bloating and digestion issues as well as a myriad of health issues. Cut the fat. Up your fruit. Change your life!

As far as all the raw food info out there, a good rule of thumb is if the person is selling you supplements and hawking 'super foods' you might want to take their raw food info with a grain of salt. If you're 100% low fat raw vegan - you won't even have any salt! If you're really doing raw food you wouldn't need processed 'super foods' or any other strange processed preparation. Just RAW FRUITS & VEGETABLES.

Low fat raw vegans/foodists take little if any supplements. I thought I needed calcium recently but upon tracking saw I was actually above the RDA. I supplement Vit D in the winter and I'll supplement B12 as this is a concern for ALL vegetarian type people, but let me tell you - I needed B12 even when I ate meat and many other meat eaters do as well. So there will be no more blaming the veggies ;)