WHy I follow a low fat raw vegan diet

Rays_Wife

No offense lady, but that would be my definition of living in hell.

Congrats on the loss, though.

bribrijean234

OP - thank you for your post. Everyone finds different diet lifestyles that work for them, and clearly this has worked for you. It is a shame that so many that commented were so negative and critical. This is a place to discuss, find support and offer advice. I tried Raw Vegan for 3 months last year, and felt the best I ever have. Unfortunately, my will power was a little on the weak side when it came to being around others that were eating lots of junk and delicious smelling cooked pasta etc, so eventually I fell back into eating whatever. Slowly but surely, i want to get back to eating mostly vegan again.

In any case, i am glad that you have found something that works so well for you and makes you feel happy and healthy! That is what is important!

PRMinx

Haha great point - I was just kidding around :flowerforyou:

...altho 5 martinis is pregame :laugh:

LOL. :drinker: :drinker: :drinker:

elfo

Thank you for all your comments. I want to just clarify somethings.
1) I did not give up my friends- I still will go out with them, but I don't go out and get trashed. My point was that I introduced more friends that are into the same lifestyle and are also more into doing things like sports that I wanted to get into/

2) I am NOT advocating this lifestyle for everyone. It is a very hard lifestyle to follow, BUT this is my story and I have never felt better in my whole life.

3) I eat what I "WANT" I listen to my body and have what I feel I need. I don't ever restrict calories, and I make sure that I am getting enough calories in. I eat this way because it's what makes me feel AMAZING!

4) When I talk about "bad" foods- I'm not talking about the foods being "bad" - I'm talking about the perspective that of what "bad" might be for me is sooo much healthier than what it used to be. That's why I say bad in quotes. I mean merely to say that it's just bad in the sense that it doesn't follow the what I normally eat. And if I have it it's a conscious decision to do so, so I do NOT feel bad about it.

Anyway. Like I said- I'm not preaching and my intention wasn't to change anyone else's lifestyle- it was simply to share my story. I have had soooo many benefits from this lifestyle, I feel great, and I've never had so much energy in my life. I don't get caught up on all the labels and just try to eat what responds well for my body.

There are many power athletes that follow this lifestyle, and just to give you an idea of the amount of energy this lifestyle gives you a couple in their 60s from australia on this same lifestyle ran a marathon EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year just eating raw fruits and vegetables and limited nuts and seeds. Check it out...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/older-marathon-runners_n_4530775.html

SCV34

It is great indeed that you have found what has worked for you. Is this something you are doing for the long haul or is it just temporary? Sorry if you already mentioned that in your original post. I was just curious.

vjohn04

what are visual migraine auras?

I get these. They kinda look like this:



I get blind spots and am very disoriented. If I am driving I have to pull over as it's not safe.

bcattoes

I read most of the OP, although I admit to skimming ahead a little at times.

I will not disparage anyone that has found a diet that makes them fell better and they can stick to. And I certainly don't think there is any harm in giving up partying every night.

Raw vegan is not a diet that would try because I know I would not stick to it. I do label foods as good and bad. That part I totally get. And I agree that most people could benefit from more vegetables. But I love fat and generally prefer my vegetables cooked. But that's just me.

OP if this is working for you, then I think it's great. Even if it doesn't work forever and you tweak your diet in the future, I think think it's great because you will likely have learned a lot during this time and you can use that knowledge in the future, whatever it may bring.

elfo

Thanks for the synopsis-- just some minor edits...

cliffs for anyone interested:

OP did dukan diet, lost some weight, decided high protein [eating that high amounts of animal products on a daily baisi] was bad for her [after watching the documentary forks over knives that provides data linking high amounts of animal products with heart disease and cancer]
started vegan diet, regularly went drinking with friends and ate french fries, nachos, and all things delicious [that screwed up her weightloss progress] (except meat and cheese)
met the banana girl at some festival and decided to dump all her friends and stop drinking [amd decided that she wanted to do things with her friends other than go out and get trashed. Also that she wanted to meet more people that were into healthy eating and more athletic]
now eats high carb, low fat,{she has never felt better in her whole life} and freaks out when she goes to Chipotle [and she still has things like chipotle, but her perspective on what "bad" food has changed so much that even having a meal that doesn't completely follow LFRV is still a hell of a lot healthier than what she was eating before.
{She's not only lost 55.5lns and counting and feels the best she ever has but she's sooo happy and wanted to share her story}

pretty sure that covers it

elfo

Reply to SCV34-- I am planing to do this for the long haul- I am more athletic than I have ever been, happier, healthier and I have met so many wonderful people on the same lifestyle and my old friends are actually making some of the same changes in their diets because they've seen the benefits that I've had.

babynew

I wanted to share with you all a little bit about my dietary lifestyle. While I don’t let a label define who I am, my food choices fall into the high raw low fat vegan category. After almost two years of research on nutrition, I find this to be the ideal lifestyle for not only a healthy lifestyle, but also for fueling the body with optimal energy so that you can take on all that you desire in all areas of your life.

While it’s taken me about a year of trial and error and finally the last 5 months of finally getting control over this lifestyle (and getting to now 55.5lbs lost), I feel that everyone must find their own path to of what “comfortable” means for them. Before, food was a vehicle to some underlining issue I was trying to numb out. After years of numbing out, I lost all perspective of what real food really was. Ridding my diet of all the highly processed and highly addictive food, allowed me to gain back the sensitivity to know what it was my body was asking for.

After making many choices in the right direction, there was one last choice that I needed to make that kept pulling me back to old habits. I started out by cutting out gluten, processed foods and refined sugars. This seemed to work well for me, and I was able to loose about 35 lbs on this lifestyle. However, the more I researched nutrition, and more importantly, the more I cut the “junk” out of my diet, meaning all that highly addictive chemical processed food, the more I started to listen to my own body. Having substituted the gluten with large amounts of produce, I realized that my body was really craving this new source of nourishment more and more.

When emotional ties associated to my food choices were removed, what my body really craved was fresh raw fruits and vegetables. I then came across the raw food lifestyle, and I made the great big leap in one go. After about a month I started to feel incredible changes. I gave up coffee, yet I had more energy than ever before. My acid-reflux had disappeared instantly. I used to have visual migraine auras at least once per month and sometimes up to once per week, which seemed to also fade away. My skin started to glow, and I started to feel an inner sense of joy and peace that I had never really experienced before, and little by little, I started noticing myself smile more and just be happy for no apparent reason.

The one thing that always pulled me back, was the social drinking with my friends. I would eat healthy all day, and then I would go out and have some crazy night out, and my frontal lobe would just go on binge feasts that would make my progress seem futile. I didn’t want to do harm to my body by getting super clean with my diet and then getting super toxic by going out drinking. So I decided that maybe going vegan rather than raw would be better for me.

Somehow, the food on the plate had changed, but my habits were still pretty much the same. Eating really healthy vegan meals (still high raw) and then going out 3-5x per week and having a few drinks and my diet became vegan à la bar menu, which could consist of about 5 martinis and a large plate of french fries or some vegan nachos. I hated myself the next day, and I could hear this inner voice pleading me to stop. Problem was I never wanted the party to end.

Going out, socializing and drinking was my way to relax and let go of all the stress I had going on. I was so concerned all the time with all the things I “had to do” or the person that I “had to be” that when I went out, all that went away as well. It wasn’t as though I needed to drink, I had gone months before without drinking just to see, but it was more like that’s when I felt like I was really “living it up”!

I realized that in order to change my lifestyle, I needed to change my social group, and so I set out to meet more people that were into the raw food lifestyle. One way that I did this was by attending the Woodstock Fruit Festival. While at the festival, I was having a conversation with one of the pioneers, Freelee (The banana Girl), and I asked her how I could still have a social life and have this new lifestyle. I candidly told her about my issues going out with my friends and trying to maintain this lifestyle, eager to hear the answer as to how I was going to be able to merge my two lifestyles, I was shocked when she just came back to me with a question.

She asked me how old I was. Something I was completely NOT expecting! Maybe because deep down I knew that while this may have been ok to do in my early 20s, it was not ok to do in my 30s. What would my life be like in my 40s? If I didn’t change my path would I still be out at bars at the age of 50? This realization really scared the crap out of me. I realized there, in that moment, that life was about soooooo much more than the “never ending party” LIFE was the party, and I was missing it!

From that day on (August 2013), the lifestyle became intuitive for me. I continued to set out to find the real me that I had buried deep down below so long ago. I thought about the person I wanted to be… that day… ten years from then…20 years from then. I knew that my weight wasn’t just about physical appearances, it was something that was holding me back from doing all the things in life I wanted to achieve. I wanted to be athletic, and to surround myself with people who were thriving, and I wanted to become the best version of myself that I could become in ALL areas of my life, and I knew that I needed health and vitality to do that.

August 17, 2013 was the last time I had a drink with my friends (or at all for that matter) and to tell you the very truth, I haven’t missed it one bit. What I’ve gained is immeasurable! The day I made that decision, was the day that my dietary lifestyle finally started to “click”. It was no longer a conscious thing of having to eat a certain way, or not eat “this”, or only eat “that”. I gained the control I had struggled to find before. I was eating the food that my body was asking for, and for the first time in my life, I could hear what my body was calling for loud and clear.

I knew that I felt my absolute best when I was eating a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables, and because I was getting a large amount of my calories from fruits (sugars), I knew I had to keep my fat intake low (~10%). I won’t lie, there are still times when my body wants to just eat something outside of the LFRV (80/10/10) plan, and when that happens, the first thing I do is to try and understand what it is that my body really needs. If I can get it from my LFRV food then I do- If I crave something savory – I’ll make a HUGE bowl of salad, If I want some fat- I’ll have some guacamole, If I need something sweet- I’ll munch on some dates, but there are just those times when it’s our subconscious mind that wants something “bad”. So when this happens, you know what I do??? I have something “bad”, but not without first understanding WHY it is I want it. I take the time to explore my subconscious. There is usually some emotional reason that has NOTHING to do with the food AT ALL! So after I’ve identified what this is, acknowledged it, and make the CONSCIOUS decision that I still want to “be bad”, I allow myself to do that. The thing is that NOW my definition of “bad” is A LOT healthier than anything I would have eaten before.

Bad for me now might mean a bowl of quinoa or wild rice made into a vegan vegetable paella. Maybe a hot homemade lentil soup, or some hummus made from real garbanzo beans (not from a can and no oil). Or if I really want to veg-out (irony I know) I will make a plain bowl of popcorn on the stove. AND if I’m REALLY REALLY REALLY needing something super bad – I will go to Chipotle and have a vegan bowl with black beans, brown rice, veggies, pico de gallo, corn, lettuce and guacamole which is 555 calories, and me at my VERY worst. I want to stress that I don’t eat like this often. On a day-to-day basis I am pretty much eating VERY high if not ALL raw, but once in a blue moon, I will say F@^% the label and give my body what I think it needs, and I find by the next meal my body is lusting after a green juice.

Again, the important thing is to LISTEN to your body. Don’t just go numb it out by going into some food coma. Learn to have a good relationship with your mind and to identify what are the non-food habits that cause you to eat out of your healthy conscious food choices? When you start to identify these- two things will happen- first, you will have less and less cravings as time goes on because as you identify and deal with your emotions, you won’t need to numb out with the food, AND more importantly, you will find that your “diet” will be the best therapy for all other areas of your life because by eating clean you will be able to better identify the triggers that make you reach for the bad food that keep you at your best. You will find that your mind and your body will start working together rather than against each other. You will find that other areas of your life begin to change as well, and as long as you keep being honest and true to yourself and cut out the processed foods and toxins that dilute the real message that your body tries to give you, that inner bliss within you will start to grow.

You will come to realize that food is nourishment for your body, just as love, and sleep, and peace of mind. You will want to nourish your body more and more everyday, and with each day, you will see it blossom into something beautiful. This is what comes from eating clean living food, and this is why I strive to stay crude!

BRAVO !!!!

bribrijean234

ELFO - also wanted to say congrats on the weight loss, you look amazing! And kudos for really sticking with your diet for the long haul and changing your lifestyle. I am sure it was not the easiest journey, but well worth every bit of effort.

fortally

Bad for me now might mean a bowl of quinoa or wild rice made into a vegan vegetable paella. Maybe a hot homemade lentil soup, or some hummus made from real garbanzo beans (not from a can and no oil).

Maybe I'm just confused by the 80/10/10 thing. I was a vegetarian for years and then went vegan for a short while, so I'm familiar with healthy versions of those diets. But even eating healthy vegan I was never as low as 10% protein. The bowl of lentils I had for lunch the other day had 14 g of protein in it. That alone was 20% of my daily protein. Even though I eat some meat now, there are lots of days I end up with a vegetarian diet (not for a 'reason' - just worked out that that's what I wanted to eat that day). Even on vegetarian days I still max out my protein!

Personally, I pat myself on the back when I eat quinoa. Can't really stand the stuff, so when I choke down something that healthy I feel quite proud. Why does she see quinoa as a bad thing?

I guess I'm just not getting what the OP eats every day? Just curious of the opinions, but is this a healthy way to eat? I guess if it works for her, though, it's a good thing. Glad she is happy, I just don't get how it is healthy?

RonnieLodge

TL DR

Whatever works for you.

haha, ^This^.

This thread also reminds me of a (vegetarian, considering going raw vegan, lives in NYC) friend who recently said "NYC is the best place on earth for catering to finicky eaters".

*continues to drink wine and eat roast pork with crackling* :drinker:

elfo

I don't think Quinoa is bad- it's actually really high in protein. What I meant to say-- which I'm glad you all pointed out to me that I didn't express well-- is that it's "bad" (in quotes b/c I didn't mean it was REALLY bad) in RELATION to what I eat on a day to day basis. I made a youtube video about what I eat in a day, but it was deleted from my post- I guess MFP thought I was trying to promote something.
This is what a typical day looks like for me. I might change it up at dinner, but this is a usual day for me:

Breakfast: HUGE Green smoothie
3-4 bananas
~4-6 cups of organic baby spinach
2 cups of freshly squeezed OJ
and either pineapple, mangoes or berries

Snack:
Fruit: maybe a handful of dates

Lunch: A HUGE HUGE HUGE salad
you know those wooden bowls you use to serve salad for company- that's my individual salad bowl
- 6-8 oz of Organic arugula (or kale, baby spinach or romaine)
- 1 red pepper
- 1 yellow pepper
- 1 orange pepper
- 1 cup celery
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- 1/2 cup mushrooms (or 1 portabello cap)
- 1/4 cup of fennel
Dressing: 1 beefsteak tomato, basil, 1 red bell pepper, 1 mango blended and poured over my salad

Snack: fruit: 4 apples cubed with cinnamon

Dinner:
Raw zucchini pasta (using a spiralizer)
Raw "Pasta"
- 4 zucchini
Raw Marinara Sauce
- 3 large tomatoes
- 1 cup of sun dried tomatoes (soaked)
- 1 red bell pepper
` 1/2 green pepper
- 1/2 cup carrots
- fresh oregano
- fresh basil

Maybe I'll have dessert
- 3-4 frozen bananas blended to soft sere consistency
- vanilla bean or carob powder

Bad for me now might mean a bowl of quinoa or wild rice made into a vegan vegetable paella. Maybe a hot homemade lentil soup, or some hummus made from real garbanzo beans (not from a can and no oil).

Maybe I'm just confused by the 80/10/10 thing. I was a vegetarian for years and then went vegan for a short while, so I'm familiar with healthy versions of those diets. But even eating healthy vegan I was never as low as 10% protein. The bowl of lentils I had for lunch the other day had 14 g of protein in it. That alone was 20% of my daily protein. Even though I eat some meat now, there are lots of days I end up with a vegetarian diet (not for a 'reason' - just worked out that that's what I wanted to eat that day). Even on vegetarian days I still max out my protein!

Personally, I pat myself on the back when I eat quinoa. Can't really stand the stuff, so when I choke down something that healthy I feel quite proud. Why does she see quinoa as a bad thing?

I guess I'm just not getting what the OP eats every day? Just curious of the opinions, but is this a healthy way to eat? I guess if it works for her, though, it's a good thing. Glad she is happy, I just don't get how it is healthy?

elfo

What my meals look like (yes these are portions for ME) For the smoothie it's usually 2-3 of those in the AM

fortally

@ Elfo -

Okay, now I understand better. When I was vegetarian/vegan I ate a ton of lentils, beans & rice, & soy-based things (like tofu & tempeh). My protein levels were always pretty balanced with my carbs, and my fat intake was probably much higher because I ate a lot of olive oil, seeds, & nuts. But based on what you described I can see why your protein % is so much lower. I think the "raw" part didn't click in my head

Hope I didn't come off as snarky - I was genuinely confused. I gave up vegan because I never got over the things I missed (like cheddar) and felt so deprived. Then I found myself trying to replace things and ended up with a lot of processed vegan junk - unhealthy "fake" foods that defeated the whole point of going vegan to begin with!

Anyway - congrats on the weight loss. You look fabulous. I guess if the diet works for you then kudos to you! I can't say that what you are doing would be healthy for me personally, but if YOU feel good then who cares, right?

seamonster1203

LOL bad place to talk about your vegan diet....lol you'd have much better luck telling these folks how you lost weight on a mcdonald only diet.

My_Own_Worst_Enemy

Holy Sheet with all the TL DR nowhitespace posts!!!!


Where were all you people when I was writing my Thesis!!! *shakes fist & kicks rocks*

Phaedra2014

You did an excellent job of explaining your thought processes and why you feel this was the right decision for you. I also like that you didn't spend a lot of time trying to tell everyone else that you believed it was the right decision for everyone.

To draw a comparison, an alcoholic has a serious drinking problem, but many people *can* drink like gentlemen and ladies. Similarly, it sounds like you had a food problem, and it sounds like you've done a marvelous job of fixing it for yourself. You sound happy, and that is good.

What a relief to find a polite, accepting and respectful reply!

OP, good on you for finding what helped you. There was nothing in your post that said we should all do as you do. You simply shared what you found to be the best way for you to eat. Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

Muddy_Yogi

cliffs for anyone interested:

OP did dukan diet, lost some weight, decided high protein was bad for her
started vegan diet, regularly went drinking with friends and ate french fries, nachos, and all things delicious (except meat and cheese)
met the banana girl at some festival and decided to dump all her friends and stop drinking
now eats high carb, low fat, and freaks out when she goes to Chipotle

pretty sure that covers it

Thank you...that was a lot of words up there....:::continues to eat huge steak::::