I was interested in finding out more about the raw food diet, and as I began scouring the internet for information, I found myself slowly but surely buying into the idea. Eating whole-fresh, live foods - how could that not be good for you? It just made total sense to me. I had come across some cases of people who had problems with the raw food diet, but surely that wouldn't happen to me.
Well, after a few of months of gradually adding more raw foods into my diet, I finally decided to go 100% raw. To make a long story short, I experienced a few problems. First and foremost, I lost too much weight and too quickly. I also had low energy - feeling lethargic a lot of the time. Without going into a long explanation, here are a few of the mistakes I made that, hopefully, you won't.
#1) Calories - calories - calories. In general, raw foods are not very calorie-dense, meaning you have to eat much more of them to achieve a normal intake of say, 2000 calories a day. If you're used to eating a standard diet, and then switch to raw, you have to increase the volume of raw foods you take in, just to maintain anything like a normal body weight. For example, eating a banana as a snack is about 100 calories. That's a long way from 2,000 calories. See what I mean?
#2) Too much fat!! Raw fooders typically eat way too much fat in their diet (and most of them don't even know it). They think that because they're consuming the "good" kind of (unsaturated) fat, no problem. Sorry - problem. You just can't gorge on avocados and nuts, etc. Too much fat in the diet, even if it's the good kind of fat, can cause a whole host of major problems.
#3) Now that I'm eating better, my health will improve automatically! Eating more nutritionally is only one aspect of achieving and maintaining good overall health. You just can't ignore the other things that are associated with good health - like physical activity-exercise, proper rest, stress reduction. Don't obsess on just the food - good nutrition is just one of the pillars of good health.
During my search for information on raw foods, I came across one particular author who sounded a little different from the others. In fact, he expressed some opinions that were clearly at odds with conventional "raw" wisdom. I began reading more of his information, and it made a lot of sense to me. I liked his independent thinking, approach and integrity.
[Gary_C.]
1 comments:
Going too fast into raw foods can also lead to system wide feelings of illness due to detoxing.
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