Transitioning to raw foods can be a fast or slow process. For most of us, it is a slow gradual process. I say for most of us because it took me about 9 months to get to eating 100% raw 99% of the time. And actually, the time it took me was really a year and a half. I started one year and gave up only having to start again.
My first attempt started after hearing one speaker and reading one book.
I didn’t have enough information to make it work but I tried anyway because it made so much sense to me. When I first started the raw diet, it went like this; I had a fruit smoothie for breakfast, then a large salad for lunch, one or two pieces of fruit for snacks and another large salad for dinner. I still ate cooked food, which was mostly on Friday, and Saturday night when my husband and I went out for dinner. Eventually (after about six months) we stopped eating out and if we did go out, we ordered the salad.
Let me tell you about the salads I had for dinner (the one I had for lunch was similar but smaller)…
I put them in a 12-cup Tupperware bowl. The bowl was filled with lettuce, romaine or spring mix usually. Then I added about twelve different things, green peppers, red peppers, cucumbers, celery, green beans, carrots, Brussels sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, sunflower seeds, zucchini, avocado, pine nuts, almonds, etc. The salad dressing I made was called garlic basil dressing and I loved it! The dressing was made with ½ cup of olive oil and I probably used half of the recipe for one salad. What I didn’t know at that time was that ¼ cup of olive oil was 477 calories and 54 grams of fat. Let’s say the other ingredients calorie count was 200 calories. If I added the 200 to the 477, my total calorie count for the salad was 677. The percent of fat for the entire meal was close to 72% of calories from fat. I didn’t learn all of this until years later though. By the way, the World Health Organization recommends a diet of 20 to 35% fat for the day, way below what I was having for one meal!
I went on this way for some time, although I felt hungry most of the time and lost 22 pounds. I eventually found some raw food recipe books and started to make recipes in addition to the salads. I still had my fruit smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, fruit for snacks and a raw food recipe for dinner.
Looking back, I can see that one of my mistakes included eating too many salads with too much high fat salad dressing, but I didn’t know any better. Everything I read and heard kept giving me the same message, “You have to eat your greens!” So I started to put green powders in my smoothies in addition to the salads I was eating. Also the recipes I that I was making were mainly veggies, nuts, seeds and olive oil. I was eating a high fat diet and didn’t know it.
I started to use a lot of products, green powders and MSM in my smoothies, hemp seeds, hemp oil for protein and omega 3′s and 6′s, Goji berries, special olives, agave nectar, Nama Shoyu, and flax oil. It seemed that every time I turned around there was something new I had to buy to be healthy.
No one was telling me to eat fruit.
I tried sometimes to just eat fruit because I like fruit and it was the main reason I decided to try a raw food diet. I liked eating fruit but I had the same problem I had with the veggies…I was hungry. To compensate, I made dehydrated crackers and dip made with pine nuts, and guacamole to eat with veggies. When I look back, I can’t believe that some nights I probably ate two or three avocadoes in the form of guacamole with some veggies for dinner. WOW!
This leads me to my next mistake, which was not keeping track of my calories.
If someone had told me to track my calories, I would have seen how few calories I was eating and probably how much fat I was eating. So I am telling you now – track your calories. Use a free online calorie counter at www.fitday.com, www.nutridiary.com or www.chronometer.com. Pick one anyone and use it. I know that it sounds like a lot of work but you don’t have to do it forever. It will help you to learn how much to eat and once you have that figured out you can stop using it.
Through the years, I kept questioning my raw food diet because shortly after hearing about the raw food diet I heard about Natural Hygiene (the science of health). Natural Hygiene always talked about just eating food as it is. It was about eating more simply. I liked that approach but couldn’t find much information about how to make it work but it always stayed with me. This was the reason that eating green powders, hemp, and MSM didn’t make sense to me. I kept asking myself “Why can’t I just eat the food? Isn’t that what mankind did hundreds of thousands of years ago?”
Around 2006 I started to hear about a low fat raw vegan diet and something called 80/10/10. I was hopeful that this was the answer I was looking for. I eventually heard about Dr. Doug Graham’s book The 80/10/10 Diet and got myself a copy (now I actually own three copies). After I read the book I was convinced that this was the right way to go but it didn’t take too much convincing because I had been doubting my current path for some time.
Not because I wasn’t feeling better, my health had improved dramatically after switching to a raw diet but because it seemed to me, there had to be an easier and better way.
I liked my raw diet but the recipes and the dehydrating were a lot of work. Making those big salads with all those ingredients was a lot of chopping. Then there was making the high fat salad dressings that always had at least six ingredients. The nuts and seeds always seemed so expensive to me, not to mention how much olives, hemp and Goji berries cost.
When I found the 80/10/10 diet plan, I was excited because it was so simple and the recipes were easy.
But best of all I could eat fruit, which my reason for changing my diet in the first place. I have always loved to eat fruit and the low fat raw vegan (LFRV) diet gives me plenty of opportunities to eat fruit. I still have to eat my greens but I now know that they need to make up 2 to 6% of my calories.
In 2007, I decided to implement the 80/10/10 diet.
Again, it was not an overtime change for me. It was a gradual process, some days I mastered the diet and some days I blew it.
I liked some of my high fat food and it was hard to stop eating it. Eventually, I had more 80/10/10 days that not and I experienced another leap in my health. Mostly I felt as though I had a lot more energy. About 3 months after maintain a mostly 80/10/10 diet my personal trainer said to me, “Sue, I can’t believe the strength you have gained these past three months.” My trainer was reviewing my progress with me. I had been working with this trainer for about three years at this time and decided it was time to tell him about my diet. (I had never said anything previous to this about my diet because I didn’t want to get into the protein argument.) I told him about my diet and the recent changes. He didn’t want to believe that my diet was responsible for the changes. He even called Dr. Graham and talked to him. I can’t say for sure it was my diet but it was the only thing that I could think of that I had changed in my life.
The 80/10/10 diet showed me how to eat more fruit so I would get enough calories so I wasn’t hungry all the time. I didn’t have to eat high fat foods to make up for my missing calories anymore.
I wish that I would have had the opportunity to go straight to a LFRV diet but as with anything, if we got to where we wanted to go the first time we tried we wouldn’t make any mistakes and would miss many opportunities for learning. So I am grateful for having had the opportunities to learn about my diet and myself. I am grateful that I continued to question my diet and continued to seek for information about raw foods.
I just wish someone had said to me, “You have to eat your fruit!” instead of “You have to eat your greens!” And maybe I would have gotten to where I am today a lot faster.
Summary of my mistakes:
• Too many salads and veggies.
• Too many nuts, seeds, avocadoes, coconuts, and oils.
• Eating too many condiments, sea salt, Celtic sea salt, agave nectar, stevia powder, Nama shoyu, etc.
• Not tracking my calories and fat intake.
• Not eating enough fruit.
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