How to Start on a Raw Food Diet
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Long time RFRN reader and fabulous designer Marta Spendowska recently posted one of the best summaries we’ve seen on how to start (and stick) with a raw food diet. Marta has been around the raw food scene at least as long as we have and has a lot of insightful wisdom to share.
Even though we no longer follow a strict ‘raw vegan’ diet these days, we encourage many of those starting their health journeys to follow such a regimen for a while to cleanse their bodies before they start adding other things back in. The raw vegan diet is excellent at completely stripping and cleansing a toxic body when done properly.
How to Start Eating Raw
So how does one start this path? We’re going to summarize Marta’s 10 steps here and you can go to her full article to get the overview of her steps. We’re going to list each step below and give a little commentary from our own perspective:
- Educate yourself. This is extremely important. Without at least some prior knowledge about what you’re doing, you are doomed to fail. This means reading raw food blogs (like this one!), websites, and books.
- Decide about so-called ‘ percentage ‘ of how much raw food you’re going to start eating. To someone first starting out, they may not realize that not every raw fooders eats “100% raw”. Many quickly abandon the diet when they can’t do what they think is the only way to do it. A good rule of thumb is to start “50% raw”, then as you adjust to the diet, increase more raw food until you get to the magical “100% raw”.
- Decide about the time frame of raw diet. This is very important. Give it a 2 week trial to see how it feels for you. Or, if you are really passionate, make a commitment to stick with it long enough until you’ve cleansed your body.
- Buy nice, inspiring notebook and set an intention. It’s critical to keep yourself motivated and inspired. The best question you can ask yourself is, “Why am I doing this”? Do you want to lose weight, clear your skin, etc.?
- Decide if you can get rid of everything that contradicts with raw food diet. If you’re not going 100% raw, what do you want to keep around? See if you can get rid of any item in your kitchen that doesn’t match what you intend to eat. We know some people are 100% raw except for steamed veggies. Other people like to eat sprouted grain bread, or perhaps some cheese.
- Decide if you should talk about your raw trip with others. Often it’s best and easiest to tell as few people as possible about what you’re doing. Unless you are 100% confident in what you are doing and armed with lots of knowledge, you may get easily swayed away from what you’re doing from well-meaning friends and family. Keep it to yourself if you can.
- Decide how to act in public places. How are you going to eat out? It’s going to happen, so you may as well plan for it. If you aren’t going 100%, we recommend just eating the best you can and not making it a big deal when you’re out. Just wing it, but try to avoid going out as much as you can while you are doing this.
- Search for local food. This is ideal, but not always feasible on a raw diet. Do the best you can. Farmers Markets are excellent sources of local raw food!
- Always, always, always have something prepared in your fridge. This is the most important step and key in this list in how to stay raw. Make sure you always have something available to eat that is on your plan.
- Food is not everything. Find other healthy obsessions! Yes! Chill out. It’s just food. Don’t make it a raw-ligion. Obsessions are never healthy.
Making a big dietary shift doesn’t have to be difficult if you plan and intend what you are actually doing properly. Give yourself a little prep time, a goal, a time line, and stick to it. You can always re-evaluate after your trail or cleanse ends.
~ Raw Food, Right Now
http://www.RawFoodRightNow.com
