Raw Food Diet Plan

Using a raw food diet plan is the best way to transition into starting a raw food diet in order to experience all the benefits of raw food. A list of raw foods and ideas for raw food meals will make your new diet easy and effortless.

There are ten steps in the diet plan I suggest, and while you can take on as many of them as you feel comfortable with, I recommend you carry out two a time. The steps are listed from those of greatest importance to the least, so it is good to follow them in the order they are listed.

Going from eating fast and processed foods to eating all raw food is too shocking for both the mind and body. You will likely suffer severe detox symptoms and binge on the bad foods you have been addicted to if you take on more than you are ready for. It is much healthier and more practical to ease into a new way of eating by making small changes that are applicable to the stage you know you are at so you can experience all the benefits of raw food.

Guidelines For the Raw Food Diet Plan

Stay at two steps for 30 days

It takes a month to develop a practice into a habit, this is why most trials of any self development experiment are set at 30 days. It takes at least this long to see if something works for you as well as whether it is something you can do long term.

So, give every two steps 30 days before you decide upon moving to the next stage of the raw food diet plan or staying where you are at. Feel free to stay at a stage for longer than 30 days if it feels right for you to do so.

Also, if you find a particular step just really does not suit you, do not feel disheartened to jump back a stage. You should always do what feels right for YOU, especially when just starting a raw food diet.

Banish Guilt

Do not feel bad if you slip up once in a while. Stress and negative emotions cause acidity in the body and are just as detrimental as eating a poor diet.

Live in the present and learn from your weaknesses. If you binge at night make an effort to not eat past a certain time or just have fresh juices after dinner. If you get hungry at work and raid the vending machine, make sure you bring sufficient healthy snacks with you the next day.

Just have a plan for next time and realize that it is what we eat on a DAILY basis that determines our weight, health, etc.

Getting Started: The Raw Food Diet Plan

1. Eat whole, organic foods

In order to stop eating fast and processed foods you will have to do more than quit going through the McDonalds drive through.

Most pre-made foods are filled with additives that allow food to be inexpensive for a company to make while still mimicking the taste of food. While an apple goes bad in a few weeks some packaged foods can last years because of preservatives. What do you think "foods" like these do to your body?

Processed food is lurking in many places so your goal is to start preparing your own meals so that you know where every ingredient comes from. Almost anything that has been boxed, canned or packaged has been through some kind of processing. You should begin to only dine out on occasion and choose wisely where you do. An added perk is that you will save a lot of money doing this!

You should concentrate on eating organic whole foods. It is easy and risk free to shop for items such as vegetables, fruit and organic eggs and meat. If you feel you cannot afford to buy organic vegetables and fruit, then only buy the most heavily sprayed foods organic, such as bananas and greens, or whatever you eat most often.

However, it is especially important to only eat organic meat and eggs or, in my opinion, these foods should not be eaten at all. Optimally, meat should be from a grass-fed animal that were allowed to graze. You eat what the animal ate and you do not want that to be corn, soy or other sickly ground up animals.

Most people believe tofu is a health food but all the hype it has received is unwarranted. Soy is a combination of protein and starch which does not digest well in our bodies (the same goes for legumes/beans). As a result, soy moves slowly through the digestive tract and is very mucus forming. Additionally, most tofu is processed heavily in products such as tofu burgers and other imitation foods. If you insist upon having tofu the best kind to eat is tempeh, which is made from fermented soybeans.

You will need to shop wisely when buying packaged food, such as snacks, but you can refer to my list of recommended products to make life easier. Salt free tortilla chips and organic dark chocolate that is at least 70% dark chocolate are two good options that are easy to find.

2. Eat your greens

Your goal is to build up an alkaline reserve so that even when you eat something acidic your body can deal with the damage. Thus, if you eat sufficient alkaline foods you can still enjoy your favorite foods that are in the not-so-healthy category.

Leafy greens are extremely alkaline and they are going to be the number one thing in your diet that will make all the difference, so you want to get in as much of these as you can, but the way you do it is up to you.

Personally, I love eating a big salad everyday for dinner, but if you are just starting out on your raw food diet plan you may want to do a salad for lunch and eat a cooked meal at night. A salad is a nice light option for lunch on a raw food diet plan and when you are starting a raw food diet it is best to stick to simple raw food recipes.

An added perk is you will be able to think clearer throughout the rest of the day and feel more energetic because digestion will be easy. Plus, it is the perfect chance to alkanalize the body with some greens.

A salad does not have to be boring if you include all your favorite foods. The list of raw foods to choose from to make up a salad is endless: spinach, arugula, avocado, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, peppers, cheese, strawberries, sun dried raisins, olives, and so much more. Find a really good raw dressing you like and you will never feel deprived.

Be sure to bring some dried and/or fresh fruit and raw nuts to snack on in case hunger strikes but if this still leaves you hungry bring along a baked sweet potato or other cooked starch as well. If you are father along on your raw food diet plan you may feel comfortable having a lighter salad for lunch or even just fruit or juice.

For some people, salads are just not all that appealing, so in this case you can make green smoothies. It does not sound very appetizing but the point is not to appease the palate, it is to get your greens in.

You do not need a fancy blender, the one you have or buying an inexpensive one will do the job. Simply cut up any greens of your choice, such as kale, collard greens, romaine lettuce, dandelions, spinach, etc and blend them up with some fruit such as an orange or banana and a little water. If it tastes good to you then great, savor it and enjoy it, but if you abhor the taste then hold your nose, chug it down and congratulate yourself.

If you have a juice bar near you or choose to invest in a juicer you can make green juice. This eliminates the fiber and make it easier to drink for some people. Of course fiber is healthy, but you can get fiber from your meals. The purpose of green juice is to get all those enzymes and vitamins and build up an alkaline reserve.

3. Stay raw till dinner

Now that you are hopefully eating healthier foods your next task is to eat them in the state nature intended, which is uncooked. Most foods (but not all) are far more nutritious when consumed raw. The benefits of raw food are that you have access to all the enzymes, vitamins and minerals the food has to offer, but when you cook the same food these precious nutrients are damaged.

Although raw foods are healthier than those that are cooked, a good raw food diet plan does not recommend you eat 100% raw when just starting a raw food diet. Changing to a raw food diet is challenging emotionally because of our addiction to cooked food and physically because you will experience detoxification symptoms. You will want to ease into this new way of eating and the best way to do it is to eat raw food until dinner.

This has several advantages, one being that it is always better to save the heaviest foods for the last meal of the day so that your body has the rest of the night and into the morning to deal with the consequences of it. This way, these foods have time to make their way through the body during the night and you are not piling up foods in the stomach and impeding digestion.

Also, your body will be able to rid itself of old waste during this big slot of alloted time of rest from heavy digestion and the bombardment of new waste.

So what will you eat? Fruit or just fresh juice should be your breakfast. If you feel comfortable, you could fast until the afternoon. When you are first starting the raw food diet plan, however, you may not tolerate fruit very well until your body is cleaner.

If even fruits with lower sugar content seem to make you dizzy or disagree with you, you may want to pick up a good raw protein powder such as Raw Power or Amazing Meal. I personally use Amazing Meal because it is very low in fat and sugar and has 10 grams of protein per serving.

For lunch you can have more fruit or a raw protein drink with a big salad filled with plenty of your favorite foods to help you feel satisfied. A list of raw foods is handy for ideas to choose from but all vegetables are fair game and to make it satisfying you can add raw cheese, nuts and avocado. Use a tasty raw dressing but stay away from vinegar and salt.

For dinner you should enjoy your favorite foods, as long as they are a part of your previous step in the raw food diet plan to eat organic, whole foods. So, for instance, have some baked or stir fried organic free range chicken with a steamed vegetable such as broccoli with a little salt free butter and a backed sweet potato. It is good to have a little side salad with a cooked meal so that you have some available enzymes to help digest your food, but if the thought of another salad turns your stomach, take some enzymes in the supplement form.

4. Eat easily digested grains

Grains are to blame for a lot of the health problems people suffer. Sprouted grains made into bread using a dehydrator consumed in moderation is a healthy addition to ones diet, but the processed, enriched bread products found in the grocery store that have been heated to 400 degrees are far from healthful.

In general, grains are sticky in the body and hard to digest. Wheat gluten is in a large number of products and causes many people health problems, such as Coeliac Disease that is becoming more and more common. Grains contribute to weight gain, fatigue, depression, joint aches, bloating, cancer, etc.

If you merely read the ingredients on a package of bread you find on a supermarket shelf you will find a long list of words that do not even sound like food. On the other hand, the low sodium Ezekiel Bread is a great alternative if you cannot make your own sprouted bread. Remember, this bread is not raw but it is easily digested and you can continue to use it in moderation throughout the raw food diet plan.

Other grains that are easier to digest are quinoa, kamut and millet. You can cook these and add a little organic grass-fed butter. Brown rice is okay but I would stick with the latter.

As you dive deeper in the raw food diet plan you could opt to purchase these grains raw in addition to raw buckwheat groats and oats. You simply need to soak them and then you can eat them in their natural state as a part of your raw food meals.

5. Banish salt

Salt is vile and toxic to the body; you should get your sodium from whole foods such as celery, tomatoes, mangoes and strawberries. Salt intake is directly linked to weight gain, gout, migraines/headaches, high blood pressure and other health problems.

Avoiding salt is easier said than done, but in my opinion, you cannot experience the full spectrum of the benefits of raw food until salt is eliminated from your diet. Doing so, however, will become easier as a larger percentage of your diet comes from raw food, because as you might be able to tell from the list of raw foods, most of them are naturally salt free.

Salt is in sauces, dressings, dairy, chips, cookies, bread, lunch meat, canned goods, soups and the list goes on. It is admittedly hard to avoid, and will prove to be one of the hardest steps in this raw food diet plan. This is why preparing your own food will come in handy. As far as shopping goes you will have to obsessively read labels but it is well worth your aggravation.

For sauces and dressings you will fair better if you opt to make your own. It is hard to find a pasta sauce, ketchup, mustard, etc without salt and these condiments are fairly easy to make, especially if you make them in big batches. For a salad dressing you can use olive oil and lemon or make your own concocction from a sweet fruit such as an orange with avocado or your choice of a nut.

The best bread I have found is a brand called Ezekiel but you must look for the one that is low sodium because the rest have salt. This is not a raw bread but it is nonetheless a very healthy alternative to other bread when starting a raw food diet. It is made from sprouted organic grains and has no additives or mysterious ingredients. They also have corn tortillas that only have 5 mg of salt for one tortilla.

If you have been eating a raw food diet for a while already you might opt to invest in a dehydrator so that you can make your own bread from sprouted grains. However, if you are just starting a raw food diet, the Ezekiel bread will be easy to digest and you need not worry about getting overly strict yet.

Dairy is tricky because it is hard to find cheese without salt. If you are in the New York or North Jersey area you can join a co-op through www.uddermilk.com and they will deliver to your door. They have a great selection of raw dairy and salt free cheese. If you cannot find salt free cheese and you simply can't live without it I would suggest finding the lowest salt raw cheese you can find and to use it sparingly.

For snacks, opt for salt free tortilla chips or other kinds with some homemade salsa or guacamole, salt free spelt pretzels, snack bars (raw revolution is my favorite), organic ice cream or organic 75% or > dark chocolate. Remember to always check the ingredients for salt, even ice cream sometimes has salt added to it. These snacks are good for a raw food beginner, but later down the road you may want to omit some of them.

When you go out to eat remember to stick to the raw food diet plan and always ask the waiter to ask the cook not to add any salt to your meal and to bring sauces on the side. This is usually not a problem and you will not wake up with a puffy face and a migraine wondering why.

6. Cut back on meat

If you typically eat meat at every meal your goal is to now have it once a day at the most, but preferably once a week. If you rarely eat meat then that is great; the less the better because flesh constipates the body and is very acidic. The meat you do eat should be organic, and if it is beef you should try to buy grass fed if you can.

The healthiest choices for a flesh based meal are organic free-range eggs, wildcaught seafood and organic free-range poultry; try your best to make beef and pork a rare treat and do not cook anything well done so that the bioavailability of the protein remains somewhat intact. Sushi is a great option because this is one example of the raw food meals you can still enjoy at a restaurant when starting a raw food diet (but beware of sushi rolls, which have a lot of salt).

Why organic and grass-fed? Remember that when you eat an animal you are eating what they ate, so if it was given soy, corn, antibiotics and hormones instead of a field of fresh grass as nature intended, then you will be just as fat and unhealthy as that animal.

The Whole Foods Market near me has organic chicken, turkey and eggs. They even have grass fed beef, but don't assume their meat is organic unless it says it. All their meat is hormone free but not necessarily organic.

If you do not have a Whole Foods near you go to http://www.eatwild.com/index.html and you may be able to find a farm near you that you can order from. Otherwise, you can also go to http://www.grasslandbeef.com/StoreFront.bok and place an order (they also have really great raw snacks).

7. Practice proper food combining

The philosophy behind proper food combining is that different foods digest at different rates, so if you eat a food that digests fast with one that digests slow you can pretty much count on it that the fast digesting food is rotting or fermenting in your stomach as it waits for the slower food to finish its business.

This is an important step in the raw food diet plan because we are trying to get rid of waste and we cannot accomplish that if we let new waste accumulate.

The following are the rules of proper food combining:

1. Always eat fruit alone and wait at least a half hour before eating anything else.

2. Never mix starches with proteins, so that means no meatballs with spaghetti, no peanut butter and jelly, no steak and potatoes, etc. Pick one or the other people!

3. Try not to mix proteins with fats and oils, but in my opinion this does not cause much of a problem for most people.

When first starting a raw food diet you will not be as sensitive to poor food combinations, but as you progress you may also want to properly combine fruit (melons should always be eaten alone, acid fruits go with acid fruits, etc.). A list of raw foods is helpful so you can determine what group each food belongs to.

8. Get up and move!

Exercise will really benefit you as you make these new changes in your diet. Your body will be releasing old waste and exercise will help move this matter along.

The lymphatic system is in charge of a lot of this waste disposal and exercise stimulates this system. This is one reason why people feel better when they exercise.

You do not have to do rigorous exercise to reap the benefits. Simply taking a walk everyday or rebounding are great ways to aid the detoxification of your body. One of the benefits of raw food is that people actually begin to WANT to exercise because they have so much more energy.

9. Minimize alcohol

Alcohol harms the liver, contributes to ulcers, enlarges the heart, kills brain cells and dehydrates the body. If you are having a few drinks every night you will want to try to cut back to a few nights instead or even once a week if you can.

The best kind of alcohol to drink is organic sulfite free wine. Indeed it is raw, but is it healthy? I see nothing wrong with having a glass once in a while, even half a glass every night is okay for most people, but do not abuse it.

If you are out and do not have access to sulfite free wine then you should have a good quality vodka with seltzer water instead. Sulfites are a preservative that many people are sensitive to. I can drink half a bottle of sulfite free wine and not have a single symptom but if i have a few sips of conventional wine at a restaurant I immediately feel funny and dizzy. Expectedly, I feel lousy the next day.

Not all alcohol is created equal. Congeners are toxic substances that are the result of the alcohol fermentation process and play a big part in the cause of a hangover. More expensive alcohols generally have fewer of these substances because a more rigorous distillation process is carried out. As a rule, go for lighter colored drinks such as vodka and gin (when you cannot have organic wine) or for beer have Guinness.

10. Cut back on caffeine

Caffeine is very addictive and taxing to the body. Those of us starting a raw food diet are doing so to gain health and energy so this part of the raw food diet plan should not be ignored. Caffeine can cause blood sugar problems, mood swings, adrenal fatigue and an acidic body where disease thrives. Coffee and tea do not provide real energy, they merely stimulate the fright or flight syndrome. A great, informative book to read is Caffeine Blues by Stephen Cherniske.

A good indicator that you are consuming too much caffeine is if you are completely incoherent and irritable until you have your first cup of coffee in the morning. This was me not so long ago and it took a good year to finally kick the nasty habit. Trust me, you do NOT want to quit cold turkey. The body can become so addicted to caffeine that it is almost impossible to do this.

It is a good idea to wean yourself off coffee, as Cherniske suggests in his book. Buy a caffeine-free alternative to coffee such as Teeccino and start substituting a little at a time in your morning brew. Additionally, limit caffeine to the morning or once a day.

If you do not want to give up coffee altogether you could continue to mix half Teeccino with half coffee or drink decaf, which still has some caffeine. Better yet, drink green tea sweetened with some honey or stevia. Read this article on quitting coffee to learn more reasons to kick the habit.

Life after the raw food diet plan

Continue to experiment with your new diet and refer to the list of raw foods to give you new ideas for raw food meals. What works for one person may not work for another, so tweak the raw food diet plan to your liking. Figure out whether high fat or low fat works for you, if eating frequent small meals makes you feel better, or if one large meal a day suits you better. Some people prefer to eat 100% raw, while others feel best incorporating some cooked veggies into their diet.

Remember, a raw food diet does not mean it has to be a vegan diet. Raw, organic cheese, milk, eggs and even fish can be healthy additions to ones diet and these foods ensure you are getting the proper amounts of B12.

In my opinion, the optimal diet consists of plenty of greens, raw vegetables and fruits with a moderate amount of cooked starches (excluding potatoes), sprouts, raw nuts and raw, organic dairy and eggs.

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