Is anyone on the raw food diet?
 

If so, what are the pros and cons?

No, I can't imagine. I've read about it though, but I'm not sure if there is a group here at 3FC.

Alright. Thanks anyway.

I am not 100% raw, but I'd say about 80% and trying to do more raw.

My husband and I were considering it. I definitely want to start drinking the green smoothies.

I did it for a week, it was hard because I had to plan ahead. What I did was I drank watermelon rind juice and I ate raw nuts, usually sunflower seeds and lately peanuts.

I was all over the place geographically, and I did not stick with it. But juicing made me feel better anyways.

My downfall is cheese and pizza! I know one can buy a dehydrator, just not there yet!

I did buy a used Champion juicer, but to be honest, I still have to strain pulp after juicing, so my blender or magic bullet suffice.

Dr. Weil has a good article on the pros and cons of a raw food diet. I had considered raw food until I read his article. I trust him, he's very much an authority on natural health care so if he doesn't recommend it then I'd personally rather not try it.

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA357082

That's very confusing, because all the other articles and book excerpts I've read say the exact opposite. :( Now I'm confused.

I've tried doing very high raw (90-100%) raw food diets on and off in the past year but I've never been able to stick with it for more than a week. It's tough to do, at least for me (but I have a lot of food obsessions and issues - I think that people who come to raw food without food issues do much better). There are a lot of "gurus" out there in the raw food world which makes me a bit leery of going all raw as well.

Right now I'm actually trying to just add more raw food to my diet. I actually read Natalia Rose's book and she, unlike a lot of raw food gurus, advocates eating as much raw as is right for you rather than assuming that high raw is right for everyone. In fact, she recommends that if you're new to raw you should start out with no more than 60% of your diet raw food. So far I feel very good so we'll see what happens.

Tam

Thanks, tammay.

A very dear friend of mine, Eric, is a raw vegan. He lost almost 200 pounds doing it, and is just an amazingly vivacious person all around. Here's his blog... he needs to update more, but you can read his story so far.

http://ericjohnraw.blogspot.com/

I've tried it... for about a week. Not my thing, but I can appreciate the creativity that goes into it. And there are some amazing things I still eat, like chocolate avocado pudding. Oh yum.

Thanks! I love reading blogs. It looks very interesting.

Hmmm... I've never heard of chocolate avocado pudding.

I agree with what you said, and want to try it still. I feel like my body wants me to too, because here lately I have lost a lot of my usual cravings in anticipation, and when I was a child I could be found "grazing" outside. lol. I would eat almost any plant I could find (wild fruit, flowers, honeysuckle, grass, clovers ect), and am surprised I never got sick. Thinking back on it, my diet has never been all that healthy, so maybe I was craving nutrients?

Well, I went grocery shopping. I couldn't buy all organic, because the grocery stores carry only a limited supply and they're insanely priced (one onion for 4 dollars!!!)

Here's a few things I got if anyone cares to know:

Organic bananas
Nonorganic bananas (They were really cheap at another store)
nonorganic oranges
nonorganic apples
nonorganic pineapple
nonorganic nectarines
nonorganic avocados
nonorganic spinach
spinach in a bag that says it's 'all nature'
nonorganic collard greens
nonorganic broccoli
nonorganic cilantro
nonorganic bell peppers
nonorganic kale
nonorganic roma tomatoes
organic carrots with the greens
nonorganic carrots
nonorganic cucumber
nonorganic mustard greens

I think that's it. I still bought other things too, and spent all in all about 120 dollars (counting the 'normal' nonvegetable stuff).

So, what should I eat on first? I'm bad about letting stuff go bad. I just plan to have lots of salad, and am going to eat on the 'raw' food during the day and have a 'regular' dinner for a little while and see how I like it.

I used my salad spinner for the first time. It's a Sunbeam salad spinner, and it was a LOT of work for all the leafy veggies that I had. It did get them dryer than they would have been had I not used them, but sadly they aren't completely dry. That's okay. We'll eat them fast in salads.

I'm going to wash the fruit and other veggies as we eat them, because some are wrapped in plastic.

For once my fridge is full of nice colorful healthy food. lol.