Raw Food Essentials

In this post I want to give some basic information about what things you'll need when starting to incorporate raw foods into your life. These are the things that you'll rely on, on a daily basis. I'm not necessarily talking about physical things like raw food appliances or types of food but more than that.

Intention:
This is how determined you are to do this type of lifestyle. Do you want to be in the best physical shape possible and in the best health ever, or do you only want to overcome a short term physical illness or disease of some sort? Do you want to add a couple of raw foods into your life or do you want to become a raw food chef and go into business for yourself? It's important to figure out what exactly you want by eating more raw foods and to which level you aspire.

Motivation:
Motivation is a little different than intention. Intention runs a little deeper than motivation. Here we are just trying to get at the root of not what you want by doing this but why you're doing it. What's going to motivate you to have a salad when you have really intense cravings for MacDonald’s with your friends? Many times people's motivation is to lose a few pounds or maybe even a lot of weight. When they do so they stop eating this way and go back to their old habits. It's important to understand that there is always a push pull happening to some degree. We are pushing ourselves away from something like obesity, diabetes and bad health, but also pulling ourselves towards something else. For each person that something else is their motivation that gets intertwined with intention runs deeper at the core. What's your motivation? What are you moving towards?

Education:
Now that we have got all of the psychological mumbo jumbo out of the way, it's time to get educated. You will have people challenge you on what you're eating. "Really, You don't eat meat?", "But where do you get your protein?", "There's no proof that not cooking your food makes any difference" etc. You will get this from time to time. Most of the time their reactions to you are a person's inability to deal with their own lack. They don't want to deal with the fact that they would love to make changes but don't have the "discipline" that you have and that makes them feel insecure, so they start questioning you to make themselves feel better. In my opinion you have to want to eat this way because you love it and you love how it makes you feel. If you look at the top of this page you'll see a blue banner for a website where you can learn more than you can imagine. In 6 months you can become an expert in this subject if you want to. If the average book is 300 pages and you read 20 pages per day (for example 10 pages in the morning and evening) for 6 months you could read cover to cover about 12 whole books on the subject of raw and living foods nutrition. If you also factor into that time any lectures, seminars, videos, interviews and audio books or MP3’s you could listen to, you will have taught yourself more than the average person has ever learned about health and nutrition. The key is to figure out what your learning style is. Are you a reader? Do you like to listen to your ipod and lectures while driving or doing laundry? Do you learn best by watching videos or doing things hands on? Figure this out, and you'll be an expert in 6 months.

Raw Food:
Personally I like to have raw nuts of any kind on hand so that I can make nut milks. I love to have bananas to add to my green smoothies and raw chocolate smoothies each day. I like to have salad greens in case I like to make a green juice, a green smoothie or want to add them to a raw sandwich. I also love to have some raw cacao or chocolate around I can eat them as is or as snacks with goji berries or make anything I want with them. I also like to have some lemons to add to water. Having some sweeteners on hand is always helpful like yacon root syrum, xylitol, stevia, honey, dates or agave nectar. This helps tremendously.

Raw Food Appliances:
For the appliances I like to have a high speed blender like a Vita-Mix or any blender will do. I like to have a Breville Juicer around and a Excalibur 5 Tray Dehydrator.Nut milk bags are always good as well as a good mixing bowl. I also like to have a mixer as well. These are not necessary but only things I prefer to have if I can. Obviously if I'm traveling, I just stick to a more mono diet or do more food combining that's talked about in Fit For Life.

Everybody's raw food path is different. You just have to figure out what yours is that's all. It is well worth it because you will never feel better than eating this way. Even if it is only making a few small changes, you will not regret it.