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17Jun/095

Raw Food Experiment- Day 1/90

Today I begin a Raw Food Challenge.  If you aren't familiar with the idea of eating raw of living foods.  There are some good descriptions at: http://www.living-foods.com/faq.html or here.

I've been fascinated by raw and living foods for about 3 and a half years since I saw the exquisite book Raw Food/Real World in a book store.  It totally shifted my view of what food could be.  Raw food is not all about carrots and celery.  There is enormous sophistication and flavor that can be created with purely raw, organic, delicious, healthy ingredients.  One of the most sumptuous meals I've ever eaten was at the raw restaurant Pure Food & Wine in New York City.  I've dabbled with a raw diet now and then and done a few stretches with it, but never stuck to it for more than a few weeks.  I absolutely love how I feel when I eat this way, but have found it to be a real challenge to stick to that when working crazy long hours and eating out for business.  Hopefully I've learned enough from my prior experiences to succeed this time.

Today is my 37th birthday and it's time to get a bit more committed and serious to my health.  I aim to stay at 95-100% for the next 90 days and report my progress.  As of this morning I weighed 210lbs. and 28% body fat.  I know from a few short-term experiments that I may lose weight very fast eating raw, or I might not.  I haven't worked out why it can take so long sometimes and other times the weight just falls off.

The other thing I will be incorporating into my diet over the next 90 days are superfoods.  I recently saw David Wolfe speak and I read his book brand new book Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future .  I guess I remain a bit skeptical about some of that, but like most things it's worth testing for oneself.  I've begun to introduce superfoods into my diet now and will continue for the next 90 days, primarily on a daily basis with goji berries, cacao, maca, raw honey, fresh coconut or coconut butter, spirulina, hempseeds, and occasionally aloe vera.  I also will  also eat kelp and chlorella on a daily basis as they are listed as honorable mention superfoods in David's book.  I will also start out taking MSM, milk thistle, Vitamin D, and alfalfa supplements on a regular basis during the 90 days, but may make adjustments as I see fit.

I'm planning to post fairly frequently on my progress as well as give people an idea of what I have been eating.  I think that the staple of my diet will end up being a large daily green smoothie.  I started today with one that was just a cornucopia of goodness.  Here's what I threw in:

  • 2 bananas
  • 1 orange
  • 1 apple
  • raw honey
  • frozen peaches
  • coconut butter (2 tbsp)  - at this point I blend it and give some to the kids then I take the remaining and the rest
  • cacao (2 tbsp)
  • ginger (very small chunk)
  • maca (2 tbsp)
  • MSM (1 tbsp)
  • hempseeds (3 tbsp)
  • basil leaves (3 today - really adds a nice flavor)
  • aloe vera (1 small leaf fileted)
  • spinach (2 large handfulls)
  • turmeric (1 tsp) - I'd never tried this before, but thought it would be nice

Blend that up and it's 30 oz. of total goodness that I drink over a period of 30-45 minutes.  It keeps me going for a good chunk of the day.

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  • http://www.digiscrap101.com Kayla

    In the same boat – dabbled in raw food and haven’t moved forward much with them. It will be interesting to read your thoughts. One thing I have learned is that for my kids putting washed baby spinach leaves in berry smoothies is a great way to get greens for my kids – they actually CRAVE them! Here is what we put in –

    You need liquid as a base so I either use water or Fresh OJ

    then add –
    1 cup fresh baby spinach
    then we add whatever fruit we have on hand – mixture of fresh and frozen –
    frozen tripleberry mix (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries)
    Frozen mangos
    Banana
    Apple

  • Patrick

    Question: can you name a single tribe or native (aboriginal) ppl who eat only raw…
    I think you will hard pressed as I dont think there are any. Its food for thougth as they say.. some research i heard about suggests that cooking adds calories and that the extra calories allowed humans (once they started cooking) to evolve larger brains…

  • admin

    Excellent point Patrick. I’m not sure about cooking adding calories to the food, but I’d love to see that research.

    After a lot of experimentation with raw food (and I do value experience more than almost anything) and observing many raw food people, I think there is a lot of value in a high-raw diet, especially if you want to have energy and look vibrant and healthy, but having occassional meat/dairy in cooked form is healthy too and probably adds balance that some long-term raw-foodists could use. Some of the best arguments for a high-raw diet today are 1) It’s now possible because of modern transportation to eat high-raw regardless of the climate or season you live in. 2) The sources we have for food we traditionally cook have become so poor due to factory farming, pesticide and herbicide use that leaning more on raw, organic plant food is a better choice comparatively than it would have been 100 or 1000 years ago.

    In terms of my own diet right now, I try to eat about 85% of my meals raw vegan and the rest I eat whatever, although I always try to find the highest quality food sources possible.

  • https://www.chlorella-world.com/ chlorella

    It also has one important
    pigment – chlorophyll, whose concentration is the highest amongst all plants!
    Chlorophyll is not only a coloring pigment in plants but has great
    immunity-boosting properties for humans as well. Overall, this is the best
    natural source of a rich variety of complex natural elements, better than the
    amount of meat we eat to cover our daily protein intake.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QEM3CFXCYFT7Y6CXUSOBC6W5SA Kids Behealthy

    Experimenting recipes that is made up of raw foods is such an exciting experience. Making a good recipes out from those made experiments could really enhance ones cravings, especially if those recipes that are being experimented is those of the kids healthy snack.

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