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I’ve been on this raw food diet (well… on and off and struggling with this raw food diet) for almost four months now. As a not-so-newbie anymore, I have some advice that is both good and bad for the raw food newbie:
You will reach a Point of No Return.
You see, when we eat crap food all of the time, we feel terrible all of the time, and we don’t even realize that there is another way to feel. We always feel slightly run down and sick, and we assume it’s the pace and difficulty of modern life.
Then you start eating raw vegan food, and you feel… good. You feel awake and your body doesn’t hurt as much as it did before and your brain is a little less fuzzy. And the longer you stay with raw food and the higher percentage of it you eat in a day, the better and better you feel.
And the opposite happens as well: when you eat fast food or processed food or processed sugar, you feel sick. I mean properly sick with stomach cramps and an achey body and brain. You just feel terrible until your body manages to break the food down and cycle it out of your body.
But here’s the problem: you still like the taste of and crave all that junk food. Just because you’re eating raw vegan food doesn’t mean that all of sudden you don’t want that steak and egg bagel from McDonald’s or those Russell Stover chocolates. So you eat them. And you feel really sick. Then you race back to your raw food until you feel better. And then you eat more junk food. And you feel ill again. Then you eat more raw food until you feel better. Then you eat the junk food….
See the pattern? But then, finally, you reach that point where you just don’t want to feel ill anymore, no matter how yummy Popeye’s chicken and red beans and rice are. It’s just not worth the hours of pain in the mind and the body.
But here’s the other problem besides still liking and craving the junk food: Sure, now you’ve decided not to eat the processed food, but you still haven’t quite figured out how to thrive on raw vegan food. Four months in and I’m still basically eating green smoothies and salads. I don’t sprout any seeds or make almond milk for a muesli-like cereal in the morning. I don’t know how to make seaweed-wrapped veggie rolls. I don’t know how to prepare any of this! What I do know how to do is go through the McDonald’s drive thru and order a #2 and a small coke with no ice.
I don’t want to be sick anymore. It really hurts now when I eat junk food. But I’m still at the bottom of the raw food learning curve. *sigh* I guess it’s green smoothies and salads mostly as I slowly learn how to prepare and enjoy more raw food recipes.
Oh, by the way, the up-side of the Raw Food Point of No Return: 1) you feel so much better and happier; and 2) you lose weight and become healthier. And how can that be a bad thing? 😉