How To Eat More Raw Food

So you're looking to eat more raw food I take it. As you all know by now, I'm a big advocate of that. I think that it's not only healthy but also leaves less of a carbon footprint on our environment. But the question many of you are probably asking yourselves is how do I eat more raw food? You might be dealing with sugar cravings and you might also be targeting that ever so elusive 100% raw goal. As I've been learning more and more about eating a living foods diet, I've read tons of books and have listened to hundreds if not thousands of hours of lectures and attended lectures as well. You can checkout some of the people I've learned from here.

By getting a wide variety of viewpoints from many different angles you're able to pickup health tips from all over the board. One of the things I like to do when trying to incorporate more raw food into my diet is first to tackle one meal at a time. When I first started out, naturally I thought breakfast would be the first place to start. I read Fit for Life (that book is what started it all for me) and they talked about food combining and eating fruit only for breakfast up until noon each day. So I decided to do that. But how could I give up two big bowls of frosted mini wheat’s, two pieces of toast with peanut butter each morning? I mean c'mon I'm not Phillip at lovingraw.com, I can't just do this overnight. So I did it in stages, I did one piece of toast with one bowl of cereal for a few days. Then I did cereal only for another few days. Then I'd eat so much fruit until noon, it was crazy. But that's what I had to do. Goal number one, bam done. Now onto bigger and better things, like lunch. Wash, rinse and repeat. I did the same thing with lunch over the course of probably a year. At one point I was eating five to ten chocolate chip cookies and or a double chocolate chip muffin with my turkey sandwiches every day. The point is to realize that it took you years and years, decades really of eating one way and I don't think you should try to change that overnight. Why not, you say, other people have done it. First off, never compare yourself to other people, only compare yourself to yourself. Secondly there is a mineral trade out that happens when you start making drastic and sudden changes to your diet program. The point? do it slow, take your time and eat your greens as you transition.

Now moving on to that last dreaded meal of the day, dinner. Before getting to that, many people are happy just doing the first two meals of the day raw and that's awesome. If you want to go all the way, which may or may not be a part of your goals, then this is going to be one of the hardest meals to tackle. This happens to be the case for a few reasons. The first reason is that this is the meal that is easiest to cheat on because it's the most social meal. When we go out with friends or family it's always for dinner and we tend to give into peer pressures or cravings that have not gone away. As you get more mineralized and cleaned out, the cravings tend to dissipate.

If I want a pizza or a cookie I'm going to eat it!
I know that that doesn't sound that great coming from a raw foodist. But we have to ask ourselves what the desired change is in our lives. Do we just want to eat more raw food? Or do we want to eat more raw food because we want to eat more raw foods? You see are we trying to change our desires here or our cravings? The master switches of our motivation. I'm reminded of Vince Vaughn's line in The Break-Up
when Jennifer Aniston's character gets mad at him for not doing the dishes. He says to her, "Why would I want to do the dishes?" to which she replies "I want you, to want to do the dishes!" Classic guy, girl scenario but it's true. We want to not crave bad foods anymore. We want to crave good healthy foods. That is the goal. We are trying to change our cravings first then our actions second. It took you years and years of eating whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted to create those cravings. We all gave our cravings a lot of power. Don't think you can change them overnight. Be kind and gentle, soft and allowing.

Raw Food Health Tip:If you're still transitioning, and you're craving a pizza for example. Tell yourself you can have that pizza if you first have some type of healthy raw food like a smoothie or salad. That's what I do. This little tip has spared me from eating the junk food. You can fill up on the good mineralized food first then you can eat the bad stuff. Focus on adding foods in, not taking foods away! Pretty soon and before you know it, you'll have so many choices of good stuff there will be no time or room in your stomach for the bad stuff.

It's simple, subtraction by addition.