Raw Vegetable Diet

A raw vegetable diet is the diet humans were designed to eat. Although starting a raw food diet can be confusing, if you use these tips you will be able to effortlessly stick to eating a raw vegetable diet.

What do you eat on a raw food diet?

A raw foods diet is a diet where the bulk of ones calories come from raw vegetables and fruit with the addition of raw foods such as raw nuts, seeds, and sprouts. Use this list of raw foods as a reference for a list of vegetables and other raw foods.

A raw vegan diet does not include any dairy or meat, but some people who eat a raw food diet do consume raw dairy products and meat such as sushi.

1. Raw food contains live enzymes

Our bodies need enzymes to digest food and utilize nutrients. These delicate proteins are destroyed by cooking, forcing the body to use its energy to produce its own enzymes, which contributes to weight gain and disease.

2. Raw foods are mostly all alkaline

Research has found that acidic foods, such as meat and grains, contribute to disease and poor health. If the PH of the body is alkaline, disease cannot exist.

3. Raw foods are easily digested

This important quality allows waste to leave the body and prevents future toxins from accumulating. A common side effect is weight loss and the return of pristine health.

How to do a raw vegetable diet the right way

Many people begin a raw vegetable diet with good intentions but find they cannot stick with it for the long haul. During the course of my transition to eating raw foods, I have tried many variations of raw food diets. All are better than the Standard American Diet, but some will make you feel better and then there are some that will make you feel GREAT.

After all the books I have read, and all the different approaches to this diet that I have tried, I have found there are three simple tricks to successfully eating a raw vegetable diet so that you can stay with it long term and enjoy perfect health as well as the perfect body.

I never had a problem with this, but I find many people do not realize just how much fruit one has to eat on this diet. As a culture, we are just not used to consuming very much fruit. At best, most people only have a few pieces a day.

However, assuming you are striving to eat a low fat diet (no more than 10-15% from fat), you will need to eat a lot of fruit to meet your caloric needs. If you fail to do this, you will have cravings because your body is still in need of more calories.

I am 5'7 and weigh 120 lbs. A typical days worth of fruit for me is 32 oz fresh orange juice, 1/2 a large watermelon, 2 pounds of grapes or 6 or 7 bananas, (all this so far is about 1600 calories) and a large vegetable salad at the end of the day will give me another 400 or 500 calories.

This will give me about 2000 calories. Sometimes I will have more depending on my physical activity, but rarely will I have less or I run into trouble. Some people who are very active even consume up to 6,000 calories.

BUT, keep in mind that when first starting a raw food diet I needed to almost eat almost double this amount because my body was getting rid of old waste and rebuilding itself almost faster than I could supply the new building material (raw food).

Back then I would typically eat a whole watermelon in one sitting, 1-2 pounds of grapes or 6-7 bananas, and a really big fruit salad with my vegetable salad at dinner consisting of around 5 bananas, 2 grapefruit, 2 apples, 3 kiwi, and some more grapes. This is roughly 3,000 calories or more and I was still losing weight. If you grow tired of chomping on food, a good tip is to juice or blend some oranges and enjoy some fresh OJ. There is about 450 calories in 32 oz of orange juice.

To gauge your own needs based on desired weight and height, refer to Dr. Graham's method layed out in this article.

In my opinion, the best fruits to really fill you up are:

1. Bananas because they are a. cheap and b. dense in calories at about 100 calories for one.

2. Watermelon because you can consume a lot of it without physically filling up the stomach since it is mostly water. A 15" long melon is 1,355 calories! I basically lived on just these guys for a while.

3. Smoothies or fresh orange juice because these are easy on digestion and high in calories since it is condensed by being all blended up.

2. You have to eat A LOT of greens

It was not until I read a book called Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko that I realized how important greens are and how much we really need.

Victoria also had trouble staying on a raw vegetable diet and said "After several years of being raw foodists, however, each one of us began to feel like we had reached a plateau where our healing process stopped and even somewhat began to go backwards." It wasn't until she started eating more greens by making green smoothies that her health began to soar.

Fruits are dominant in vitamins and greens are dominant in minerals. While we can obtain minerals from fruit, it is not in the quantity we need. Greens are also the most alkaline food on the planet and abundant in proteins.

How much greens do we need? A minimum of 1 pound a day and even up to two or three pounds depending on how active you are and how much you weigh. I eat a pound a day and make sure I weigh and measure to ensure I am meeting my daily quota.

For anyone with cravings, I feel eating more greens is the solution, of course in addition to making sure you are eating enough calories by consuming sweet fruits. As soon as I began eating more greens my cravings virtually disappeared and my energy improved dramatically. I have to say, it was the single most important adjustment I made to my diet.

3. Eat a no-salt-low-fat raw vegan diet

The raw food world seems to be split into two parties: the vegans and the non vegans. Either way you go is probably better than the diet you used to eat, but in my experience eating vegan gave me many more benefits for a number of important reasons.

Firstly, animal products like raw cheese (which almost always contains salt) and eggs are high in fat, and a high fat diet creates blood sugar problems unless you are eating very little fruit. So, essentially you must pick whether to eat a high fat diet or a high fruit diet, unless you are eating very little of these non-vegan foods.

I have also found that eating things like raw cheese and salt has caused me to gain weight, even if I eat very small portions. I believe this is due to both the acidity of dairy products as well as the fat content, although some people do seem to be able to thrive on such foods, if they are free range or grass-fed. You can read more HERE about why salt causes weight gain.

However, under no circumstance is salt healthy is any form. Many people in the raw food movement are very fond of using sea salt and other "healthy" salts, but all forms are toxic and cause water retention in the body. Although I loved it, eliminating salt, for me, was an extremely essential step in regaining my health.

Aside from high fat non-vegan raw foods, nuts and seeds are very popular in the raw food movement. You should be very careful to eat only small amounts from this food group for the following reasons:

1. Nuts and seeds are very high in fat and difficult for the body to digest. In nature it would take you a long time to extract a nut from its shell in addition to the fact that you would only find them in the fall when the squirrels would take most of them.

2. Nuts and seeds are almost always pasteurized to some degree to prevent mold even though they are labeled "raw".

3. Nuts and seeds have a lot of copper which can cause emotional problems and are also more acidic than fruits and vegetables.

Instead of eating nuts, seeds, and animal products, I have found it best to enjoy fatty fruits such as avocados, coconuts, and olives instead. These digest much better, are more alkaline, and are more natural foods for humans.

The Importance of Eating Raw Food

Raw Food Diet Plan

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