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How did I finally decide to go raw?

I actually finally realised that my diet and lifestyle were what was making me ill after a few months of praying most days about my health. One day, I was tired out and laying face down on the floor I prayed, “Lord why do I keep getting this fatigue?”. Instantly there was an answer in my head. “It’s because you’ve been eating food made by man, not food made by me”.!!!

From then on, from hardly ever reading anything I became an avid reader. I kept stumbling across the most amazing health & lifestyle books. Then one day I was wondering why we cook food, so I typed “raw food” into google and youtube. I was amazed to see loads of people recover from ill health by cutting out cooked food. I went raw from then on, or so I thought, as many things I was having weren’t totally raw. My health got a lot better but I kept having massive swings back into fatigue, depression and IBS. Cutting out fat and simplifying things totally changed all that. I feel massively better now.

In summary, the more man has to do with our food, the worse it is for us. We need to eat food as near as possible to the form found in nature, ie God made food. A high fat spiced up diet is a man made thing, it doesn’t occur in nature.

Things became much easier once I ditched the fat. Now the only difficult thing is buying massive amounts of fruit and veg. I don’t do much food preparation now, I eat most things in their whole form.
To get will power, you need to want health more than taste and comfort food. You could do want I did and do lots of praying, I often gain strength and guidence this way. If you fancy exploring this more then all over the country there are fantastic Alpha courses http://uk.alpha.org. I don’t normally mention the spiritual side of things in my blog, but being a Christian, being ill, and the resulting guidance gained from praying is what led me into raw foods.

If you are wanting to go raw, my tip to you would be to gradually reduce the grip of addictive foods, like tea and coffee, or dairy, wheat etc. See my blog post. http://eatmoreraw.net/blog/?p=329 . You can really help yourself on the way by still eating cooked food, and then ease yourself into eating more raw food from a healthier cooked diet as a starting point.

Stuart

Encouraging others to eat raw food

One of my pet hates is putting people in boxes, that’s one of the reasons that I don’t like to call myself a raw vegan. I do happen to eat almost exclusively low fat raw vegan food, but I feel calling myself a raw vegan puts pressure on me and others. It is with that pressure that some people may feel guilty for deviating slightly from their intended diet and the subsequent feeling of failure. A feeling of failure often stops people getting on and moving forward.

I do get a little annoyed as well by the doomsayers who may criticise others for following a slightly different path than something that they pronounce as ‘the way’.

Many say that garlic is not optimal food (including myself), yet I recently did a blog post with it in a recipe. So what! I probably had it then for the first time in couple of months. There are actually some health benefits from eating it, and if it helps you stay on the raw food then go for it. The same goes for fat, or even an odd bit of non-raw food. The important thing to remember is to learn how your body responds to all these various foods and do whatever is necessary to optimise your health and move forward.

I couldn’t do much exercise during the 2nd half of last year due to my hernia operation. As far as I was aware I went 6 months only on raw food. I feel better now though. I’ve backed off slightly to 95% low fat raw, mainly for social reasons. I’m doing exercising and getting other areas of my life in balance. I’m enjoying things more than I did then. I actually feel healthier now (probably due to exercise), and I seem to be able to comunicate this message to more people. My objective is not to impress those few who have ‘made it’, but to somehow encourage the masses to begin moving forward in the right direction to help their own health.

I’ve helped out in some schools recently, the primary objective is to get kids to eat fruit and salads, preferably raw. During one activity I had arranged egg mayonaise, on another honey. These are both often frowned upon in ‘health’ circles. However, 95% of the ingrediants in the activities are based on raw fruit and vegetables. We had kids who have NEVER eaten fruit before actually eating fruit and kids trying out their first salads. I was blessed so much during one activity when a child looked directly at me and said, “can I do what you do when I’m older?”!!!

Delicious raw tomatoe and pepper soup

This is something that I put together to use up some ingredients. I made it first as a dressing, it was so nice that a made another whole bowl full and added a few hemp seeds to make a lovely colourful raw soup.

Blend up the following for just a few seconds:

• 1 very large red bell pepper (or 2 medium ones).
• 2 ripe tomatoes.
• 1 TBSP of pumpkin seeds.
• 1/4 of a red onion.
• 1 or 2 garlic cloves crushed.
• 1 TBSP of dried goji berries.

Blend up the above, then add 1 TBSP of shelled hemp seeds.

Wow – it is a VERY TASTY savoury dish!

Improve your teeth health and stop nose bleeds!

I’ve had teeth issues a couple of times over the past year. The first was about a year ago when I used to eat late and snack on dates, I had visible signs of enamel erosion and my teeth became very sensitive. Another time was when I wasn’t getting enough greens. I couldn’t get my usual quota of fruit and greens, so I had loads of dates and some honey to get me by. Again I had more signs of enamel erosion. I think I’m learning by my mistakes now!

I put in quite a bit of time reading up on teeth and bone health. For healthy teeth and bones, we need in particular:

Vitamin D. best obtained from sunshine, otherwise take vitamin D3 supplements, 2000+ iu per day.
Vitamin K2. from leafy greens and also from the flora in a healthy gut. I took a supplement for a few weeks to boost mine, as well as greatly increasing greens intake.
Magnesium. Best from leafy greens.
B vitamins help too.

For a couple of weeks, each day I sucked a calcium tablet last thing at night.
I occasionally brush my teeth with baking soda.

My nose bleeds story: We all fall over and cave in to temptation at times. At around the same time as the above, I caved in and I went through 2 or 3 weeks where I just scoffed loads of freshly shelled peanuts. They were so nice and I didn’t get fatigue so I thought I’d be OK. I didn’t know about the effect peanuts can have, until a non raw friend told me about it. Peanuts (and excess fat) can rob the body of vitamin K2. A sign of low vitamin K2 is nose bleeds. Strangely for the first time in my life I had nose bleeds for a couple of weeks! After my friend told me that peanuts can cause nosebleeds, I read up on it found out about the vitamin K2 thing, and I stopped eating them. I also made sure that I consumed my increased quantity of greens and I took my temporary emergency measures as described above. The daily nose bleeds stopped almost overnight, and my teeth felt much better not long after that.

I didn’t take the supplements for long, I used them more as a kick-start for my teeth health. Now I’m making sure that I have plus 2 pounds of greens a day. I usually have a litre of green juice, or about 10 to 12 glasses of green smoothie plus a salad a day! The large volume of greens helps massively with teeth health as does keeping fat levels in the diet really low.

My teeth very quickly settled down, and now they feel like they’d been polished at the dentist, although my enamel damage is still there.

In summary, my problems were self inflicted and caused by poor habits, like snacking and eating between meals and not brushing teeth, especially after dates. They were also possibly caused by low vitamin K2. Dates (and honey) are quite dry and really stick to teeth. I don’t generally have honey and as far as dates goes, I try to have them in smoothies. If I do have dates out of the box, then I have them all in one go and brush my teeth straight away. On 10th March I also made a blog post warning to be careful when eating dates – one of my favourite foods!!!

Banana Date – Ice Cream

I’ve had my juicer for about 2.5 years now and I’ve never made ‘ice-cream’, that was until last night. Wow – I’m amazed at how quick, easy and how nice it was! I just put dates and frozen bananas through my juicer which had a blank crush screen fitted. It really was like ice-cream. It’s really healthy, raw and low fat. It was very tasty.

I’ve since seen other people on Youtube just use blenders or food processors and get a similar result. People just use frozen bananas or combine frozen bananas with other frozen fruit.

Today I made a nice date sauce, but I had no banana ice-cream to put it on

Now I have another excuse to buy even more bananas!!!

Travelling on a low fat raw vegan diet

Here’s my first youtube video!

Do you love dates? I do, but be careful with your teeth!

Dates tend to be dried a little so they will really stick to your tooth enamel. It’s best to soak them first, or have them in smoothies. I do still eat them as they come, but I try to get through them in one go rather than snack on them over an hour or two. Then once I’ve got through them I brush my teeth really well. It’s not good enough just to eat something like a carrot or few pieces of lettuce afterwards. You need to ensure that no bits of dates are sticking to your teeth, especially near the gum line. The reason I say all this is that I did have teeth problems, this was more due to poor habits such as snacking, eating late, and not brushing after eating. I’ve taken measures to address these poor habits and to improve my diet further. Now most of the time my teeth feel like they’ve been polished at the dentist!

Improvements in my skin health

Keeping off fat and eating LOADS of greens has made my skin feel amazing. Dandruff hasn’t bothered me for a long time either. If you want to use a moisturiser cream then ensure that it is edible! Whatever you put on your skin soaks in and becomes part of you. I recommend virgin coconut oil.

I only occasionally use the coconut oil on my hands if they became chapped due to doing DIY type of work. It’s usually my hands coming into contact with some chemicals (eg treated wood, or some form of cleaner) that means I need to take extra care. One of my rain coats is treated with something. If my hands are wet and come into contact with the waterproofing material then my hands get really sore – coconut oil sorts them out though. Pollutants and chemicals can and do dry out your skin, including chorine in tap water.

Soap and the squirty stuff you get for washing hands is a big burden on the skin. I recommend trying not to use soap, bubble bath, washing up liquid, shampoo, or any other chemicals that may come into contact with your skin. Most personal care products do absolutely nothing for your health, in fact the majority are a burden on your health.
 
Drinking enough water is essential. Some people may get away without drinking much, I can as well if I’m eating mainly things like oranges and watermelons. However I need to drink plenty of water most of the time. If I don’t, then mental fog and fatigue can creep back in. If you eat cooked food, fat food (eg seeds/nuts), or dried food then you need to drink more water. I drink 1.5 to 2 litres a day and I have loads of fruit and greens. On the odd occasion when I deviate from my diet, then I make an effort the drink more water.

Some improvements in my skin are as follows:

• I used to be forever washing my face because it used to feel dirty and my skin felt clogged up - Not anymore.
• Acne is gone. It bothered me all my adult life until I made the diet and lifestyle changes.
• I used to get very painful cracked skin on one of my toes - that is gone.
• I also used to really itch in various places and tried several creams and ointments over the years. Itchiness is gone.
• I occasionally used to get skin infections on my face (a bit like a large gooey spot). I don’t get these either.

All these improvements in skin health I put down to:

1. Not exposing myself to the chemicals in personal care products, domestic cleaners, and so on.
2. Eating a mainly low fat raw vegan diet with large amounts of greens in the form of juice, smoothies and salads.