Raw Food Diet

The cornerstone of my healthy lifestyle is a healthy diet. It gives me energy, so I can exercise and feel great all day long. It helps reduce my congestion so I can breathe better, which helps me sleep better at night and helps increase my energy even more.

In my last post, I mentioned that I tried out a vegan diet in 2008. I stuck with that very strictly for about 30 days (just to try it out) and then off and on the rest of the year. One thing I didn't like about the vegan diet is the way a lot of the recipes were an attempt to imitate non-vegan foods: imitation burgers, bacon, eggs, etc., etc., etc. ... all made from tofu, and as you know, I don't do tofu.

So, in 2009 I decided to try out the raw food diet. No tofu. All real food.

On a raw food diet, you don't eat any food that's been heated above about 105°F, which would leave you with vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. There's also unprocessed honey, unpasteurized dairy products (milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt), raw eggs, and some people even eat raw meat and seafood (but not me ... eck!).

When I first started learning about the raw food diet, it sounded really complicated to get started. But one day, it hit me: salad is raw. An apple. Home made smoothie. And I started thinking about all the raw foods I already ate and just started increasing those things while I learned more about more complicated things like raw apple pie (yum!). People always seem to want to complicate things. At first it seems like you need all this special equipment (like a dehydrator and juicer) to get started, but you really don't. If you have a blender, that's good. A food processor is good, too.

Some people go all raw all at once. I didn't. I took baby steps. Baby steps are my friend. I started just by eating a salad with my dinner every night. Then, I started having a homemade smoothie after my workout. The smoothies are so energizing that I decided I wanted to have one for breakfast, too. I learned how to make homemade raw nut butters and nut pate. Bit by bit, I replaced all my cooked meals and snacks with raw foods.

These days, I usually eat all raw food except maybe dinner. Sometimes, I eat what the rest of my family is eating for dinner and sometimes I don't.

This diet has done wonders for me over the last year and a half!

I have so much more energy now than I used to have. I recently taught my son Michael how to ride his bike. I was remembering back to when we taught Ali how to ride her bike. My husband really did all the work. I pretty much just sat on the curb and watched. I didn't have the energy to run alongside of her bike or to even stand up and watch. Had to sit.

(I'm starting to think that the "had to sit" feeling really had more to do with my muscles being flabby than just not having the energy to stand up for extended periods of time because I really wasn't lethargic or anything, but my muscles were flabby because I didn't have the energy to exercise and make my muscles not flabby.)

Teaching Michael to ride his bike was so much different. I ran with him on his bike and even enjoyed it. It seems like such a little thing, but it is so wonderful to be able to play with my kids and not feel like I'm dragging myself around all the time or, worse, having to always tell them that I'm too tired to play with them.

And now that I have so much more energy, I am able to exercise on a regular basis and have been able to bring my weight down.

I have so much less congestion now, too. I keep hearing that this is one of the worst allergy seasons in recent history around here, but I wouldn't know it if I hadn't heard it on the news because I've had so little trouble with my allergies this spring! Dairy and gluten don't even bother me much anymore!

Sometimes I get lazy and fall back into old eating habits. After a couple days I can really tell a difference in my energy level. I'll be sleepy all the time. Crabby, too. I'll have a really hard time getting through a workout (if I can even muster up the motivation to exercise), which after about a week leads to my sciatica giving me problems. It doesn't take long for me to remember why I love eating a raw food diet and why I stay away from all (OK, most) of the junk I used to eat!