In this article I would like to talk about an approach to health that I have picked up over the years and it has really served me well. It is something that not many people know about and if they do, it is not discussed very much. As we know, the raw food path is a journey.
It's a journey because not only does it take time (for me it took about 5 years) to beat down your insatiable cravings for cooked and processed foods, but it's a journey that you take on intellectually as well. So in the journey of eating a raw food diet, we read all the books we can, we read all the websites, blogs we can. Basically we soak up as much information as we can.
As time goes on the transformation is immense. Our transformation is like waves crashing against a cliff. If you see the side of the cliff dropping into the ocean one day and come back the next day, the cliff looks no different. But if you come back in 5 years, the cliff is completely different. It is the same with us, the more information we take in each day and end up applying, over time we change immensely. We become somebody totally and radically different. The process is natural and it takes time. Not only all of that but it's fun too.
The information, ideas and practices that we end up learning and applying become like stepping stones stacked one on top of the other. I've heard it said that the best ideas are always up high.
You need to read the books to be able to stand on top of them to get at the best ideas. So as we apply these practices and lifestyle choices, what we are really doing is stacking the odds in our favor.
I've heard people say over the years that "oh this can of coke won't kill me" or "it's not a big deal it's just a slice of pizza." Notice the focus of words and intention here. It's "won't kill me" or "just a slice" it's never focused on the positive. For example, they are not saying "this can of coke is going to help you be the person you want to be" or "this slice of pizza is not going to help me reach my goals." I digress. Usually the focus is on the negative of the little amount of harm that cooked food will do to a person instead of asking how this food is going to benefit me to become the person I want to become.
What I'm talking about is small choices, and as they stack up, they become who we are. Stacking the odds in your favor is getting yourself and your health to a place where you can overcome any disease. Personally I like to focus more on where we're going verses what disease we need to overcome but if there is a disease that needs to be overcome, stacking the odds in your favor is critical.
Now what does stacking the odds in your favor mean and what does it not mean? It does not mean that any "one" thing will heal you of a disease. Let's say for example you have cancer. If you're interested in alternative cancer treatments you can checkout that post. I look at stacking the odds in your favor a bit like play the game tug-o-war. Imagine you're playing the game and each side has 10 people and there is a pool of water in the middle. Let's have this pool of water represent cancer. The one side is your health and immune system, the other side is toxicity, sugars and all the imbalances that play a role in cancer. So by changing your lifestyle, habits, your thinking, your diet, your exercise routines, your stress levels, your friends, your influences (what you allow in), your cravings and all the rest of it, you all of a sudden have added about 10 more players to your team. And not only that, but the push pull components of this game of tug-o-war is finite. So what you have added to the "health" side of your team has now been subtracted from the "toxicity" team.
If you make all of these changes and "add 10 more players to your team" then it gets really difficult to say one way or the other than any "one thing" caused you to overcome cancer. But more accurately, it allowed you to take a more holistic lifestyle approach and stacked all the odds in your favor.
Now what are some of the practices you can take to stack the odds in your favor on a daily basis? Perhaps you have cancer or perhaps some other disease or maybe you just don't want to end up with these diseases. What are some things you can do to stack the odds in your favor? I'll list a few of them below and then I'll ask you to share some things you have come up with that have helped in your journey.
Juicing
Making smoothies
Wearing a zapper
Adding lemon, sea salt, msm, sea minerals to a morning water
Getting lots of sleep
Doing yoga
Walking, running, biking, swimming or some form of cardio
Going to the gym
Eating more raw foods
Eating super foods
Meditating and praying
Taking 30 slow deep breaths per day
Drinking more water each day
That is just a list that I came up with that is in no way a complete list but these changes have sure worked in my life. How about you? What are some ways you have stacked the odds in your favor?
Stacking The Odds In Your Favor
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I'll have a Burger, Fries & Coke please
"Can I take your order sir?"...."Sure I'd like a burger, fries and a coke please." Does this sound familiar to you? because it does to me. I can't tell you how many times I've rolled thru a drive thru at my local fast food restaurant and ordered this food, if you want to call it food. But it's really amazing to me how resilient the human body is to be honest. We can really wreck havoc on our entire internal organs for 50, 60 sometimes even 70 years before it starts breaking down. God really is amazing and our bodies truly are like machines. When you take good care of your body (temple) it makes perfect sense that it will serve you for much longer than the normal 60 to 70 years. But when you eat conventional denatured, cooked, chemicalized foods, diseases like cancer, and heart disease become normal. Thank God we are on an entirely different path.
There really is no way to 100% completely eliminate toxins from our entering our bodies. It's in the air, the plastics, mold in our houses the food etc. But what we're trying to do with raw foods is to lessen the toxic load to a more manageable burden.
The link to the study can be found here:
US Food and Drug Administration -
Total Diet StudyMarket Baskets 1991-3 through 2003-4
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~acrobat/TDS1byps.pdf
Here is what I've found in a conventional hamburger, fries and coke.
Hamburger: 38 pesticides
Fries: 23 pesticides
Coke: 8 pesticides
Total: 69 pesticides
Quarter-pound hamburger on bun, fast-food
1,1,1-trichloroethane 44
1,2,4-trimethylbenzene 44
benzene* 44
BHC, alpha 44
BHC, beta 44
bromodichloromethane 44
butylbenzene, n44
carbon tetrachloride 44
chlordane, cis44
chlorobenzene 44
chloroform 44
chlorpropham 44
chlorpyrifos 44
chlorpyrifos-methyl 44
cumene (isopropyl benzene) 44
DDE, p,p' 44
DDT, p,p' 44
diazinon 44
dichlorobenzene, p44
dieldrin 44
endosulfan I 44
endosulfan II 44
endosulfan sulfate 44
ethyl benzene 44
heptachlor epoxide 44
hexachlorobenzene 44
lindane 44
malathion 44
nonachlor, trans44
octachlor epoxide 44
pirimiphos-methyl 44
propylbenzene, n44
styrene 44
tetrachloroethylene 44
toluene 44
trichloroethylene 44
xylene, m- and/or p44
xylene, o44
Carbonated beverage, cola, low-calorie
benzene*
bromodichloromethane
chloroform
dichlorobenzene,
omethomyl propylbenzene,
n-styrene
toluene
trichloroethylene
French fries, frozen, commercial, heated
1,2,3,5-tetrachlorobenzene
2,3,5,6-tetrachloroaniline
2-chloroethyl linoleate
2-chloroethyl palmitate
benzene*
chlorpropham
chlorpyrifos-methyl
DDE, p,p'
DDT, p,p'
dicloran
dieldrin
diphenyl 2-ethylhexyl phosphate
endosulfan II
endosulfan sulfate
ethylenethiourea
heptachlor epoxide
iprodione
isopropyl(3-chloro-4-methoxyphenyl)carbamate
malathion
pentachloroaniline
pentachlorobenzene
pentachlorophenyl methyl sulfide
TDE, p,p'
For a great documentary on the production of food checkout The Future of Food.
Remember this is only pesticides it doesn't factor in herbicides, fungicides, and other chemicals. Eating this food is more like eating chemical soup! Thank you very much but I'll make better choices. So hopefully this list can serve as motivation the next time you may get tempted to eat fast food. It's just one more tool to keep in the back of your mind that will allow us to make better food choices. How often do you eat fast food?
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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
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.
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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
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.
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Starting A Raw Food Diet
What are your goals?
So many times I get the question, "so how do I go about doing this sort of thing?" or "how do I start out eating a raw food diet?" Just today I got to talking to somebody in the gym about that. I think the first question to consider are what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to just be more healthy or do you want to live until you're 120? Do you just want to overcome candida or do you want to simply lose a few pounds? For me I'm in it not only to NOT get cancer and heart disease but to radically become something totally and 100% different than what other people are. I want to somehow (by daily disciplines over time) become the best that I can be. Some people call it their archatypical form or in a christian sense an imitation of christ. So first start out by figuring out what your goals are. 
How raw do you want to be, and how fast do you want to get there?
Have you figured out your goals for why you want to eat this way? okay, good. Now that you have that figured out, now you can determine how quickly you want to become, however much raw you want to become. For some people 50, 60 or 80 percent is where they want to be and that's great. For some people it's in their destiny to become 100%. Personally I want and am 100% raw and it took me about 5 years go get there. For some people they do it overnight and that works for them. For me the best thing I ever did was to be gentle on myself and give myself time. Think about it, say you're 30 years old and are just starting out. You're trying to change 30 years of toxins, poisins and bad habits in a matter of days, weeks or months? The faster you make that change the more detox symptoms you will experience but the greater the immediate highs also. So now that you have that determined let's move on...
Strategy
There are 3 very important things to always remember:
- Be kind and gentle, soft and allowing on yourself, ALWAYS!
- Always add foods in, never take away
- Remember you have a lifetime to get better and better at it. This is a lifestyle
So the foods you want more of are obviously fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, seaweeds, superfoods and herbs. Now you have to determine how you're going to incorporate them into your daily routine. Don't worry about the pizza you had for dinner or whatever else. Here are some disciplines you might want to consider:
- Have a salad a day
- Have a smoothie a day
- Have some fruit everyday
- Have a liter of water a day
- Have a green juice a day
- Have an herbal tea a day
- Have a superfood chocolate smoothie a day
- Have some enzyme suppliments with each meal a day
Pick any one of these little things and make it a daily habit and work from there and DO NOT worry or beat yourself up about the other stuff you are eating. So many people think that if they have pizza for dinner it somehow cancels out the salad their having with it. This should be fun not about deprivation. Plus studies have shown that when we eat cooked food we get an immune system reaction from it. But if we have alkaline vegetable salad with the meal then it cancels out the white blood cell immune system response from the cooked food we are eating. So ADD ADD ADD.
How fast did I make the transition to raw foods?
Personally I read Fit for Life
and it rocked my world. Amazing book to start out with. My first discipline was fruit for breakfast. But even that was too much. I used to eat a couple bowls of cereal with two peanut butter pieces of toast. I went down to 1 piece of toast for a while. Then none. Then I switched from milk to rice milk, then stabalized. Then I went down to just one bowl of cereal with rice milk. Then I was able to go to the fruit. That process alone took me a few months. Like I said, going slow was the best way for my body to do it. I'm so glad I transitioned that way. One day you'll start adding in so many good things in your diet that it crowds out the bad. Personally if I want to have pizza one day I will. But as time goes on and on, I don't even crave it any more. The more you put restrictions on yourself the less fun you'll have and the higher the chances are that you will not stick with it.
The technique I uses is, if I want something bad say, a veggie burger or something. What I'll do is before we go to the restaurant I'll make a super filling chocolate smoothie. I'll be sucking down the final gulp as we walk out the door. What happens is, that I'm so full at that point I just end up getting a salad and I'm done.
So there are some tips I've learned and experience about going from SAD to raw. It's a journey and it opens things up inside you you never thought were there and it's so much fun.
If any of these tips helped you out, just let me know!
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