WHy I follow a low fat raw vegan diet

Primeval_Princess

Ok, I need to get ready for bed. BUT I will leave you with this -- google jim morris vegan body builder.
You HAVE to check out this man's body.

I am very familiar with the vegan bbing community, so a few things:
He was not vegan until he was 65.
Banana Girl (Freelee) is recovering from an ED as is a lot of her followers
They aren't respected in the majority of the vegan fitness communities and made huge negative waves in the raw food community.
There is a website out there that has many unhappy old followers who suffered health issues.

I'm happy for you that you lost weight. Please be careful.

geebusuk

You mention doing your research, yet I've yet to find any GOOD resources that suggest processed food is toxic, or various other things you mention. Infact, I'd suggest blanket statements like that show a considerable lack of decent research/understanding of the subject, to my mind.

Obviously there was SOMETHING in there causing you problems if you did have migraines and they went.
I know I'm intolerant to caesin in decent amounts, so avoid it, for instance.

On what others have mentioned - to hate yourself because you ate some food when you're otherwise keeping your calories down and so on is a characteristic of various eating disorders.

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!

I do kinda agree with a good bit of what you say.
For instance I had a whole tub of cheap Chocolate Truffle icecream the other day. This was ideal nourishment to compliment the heavy weights I had done. Eating a whole tub of chocolate truffle ice cream while meeting nutrient targets for the day certainly is something beautiful (I've had high hopes for the frozen banana fake icecream, unfortunately found it incredibly foul.)
Why, however, do you have to limit the suggestion purely to the food YOU like?

SunofaBeach14

I'm sorry that veganism is a threat to anyone's self-esteem. Live and let live, as they say.

Not really a threat to anything but a sense of humor.

hilts1969

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!

Sorry but got bored reading that quite quickly, which ironically must be what being a raw vegan must be like, not many on their death beds wished they ate more raw carrots, i wish you a long but very very dull life

Sunka1

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!

Sorry but got bored reading that quite quickly, which ironically must be what being a raw vegan must be like, not many on their death beds wished they ate more raw carrots, i wish you a long but very very dull life

.
What a coincidence. I just read a post about "meanies".

dietstokes

bump to read later

hilts1969

bump to read later

lazy

jenilla1

This.

Dnarules

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!

Sorry but got bored reading that quite quickly, which ironically must be what being a raw vegan must be like, not many on their death beds wished they ate more raw carrots, i wish you a long but very very dull life

I am not vegan. But did you look at the images of her food. Doesn't look dull to me.

SunofaBeach14

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!

Sorry but got bored reading that quite quickly, which ironically must be what being a raw vegan must be like, not many on their death beds wished they ate more raw carrots, i wish you a long but very very dull life

.
What a coincidence. I just read a post about "meanies".

You might want to post a thread about that. It's a little dull in here today . . .

geebusuk

I am not vegan. But did you look at the images of her food. Doesn't look dull to me.

Look pretty 'orrible to me.
No meat or dairy.
Too much trying to pretend it'd grown like it was presented out of the ground or something.

My food is nice enough that I can just plonk it on a plate and it's still appetising .

Dnarules

I am not vegan. But did you look at the images of her food. Doesn't look dull to me.

Look pretty 'orrible to me.
No meat or dairy.
Too much trying to pretend it'd grown like it was presented out of the ground or something.

My food is nice enough that I can just plonk it on a plate and it's still appetising .

Again, I am not vegan. And I do not want to give up dairy or meat. But the food looks good, and there was a lot of variety. This is all relative anyway. I am just saying it doesn't have to be dull. Vegan doesn't mean just carrots. That was what I was responding to.

Mr_Bad_Example

I'm sorry that veganism is a threat to anyone's self-esteem. Live and let live, as they say.

Actually, veganism is a threat to vegetables. Won't anyone care about the poor carrots, or potatoes, or broccoli florets being killed and eaten so mercilessly?

LC458

I really enjoyed your post and I too have taken extreme measures to be what I consider healthy for ME (may not for others, I understand this!) I think what you're doing is great and it isnt for everyone. I began a similar lifestyle change and I feel the glow and energy. Good luck to you and I hope you continue with being happy

Duck_Puddle

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

JackiePenner

Nicely put.Thank you for sharing.

geebusuk

I was looking back at the pictures and found this...

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.

Actually, I wouldn't put them too far apart, personally.

Needlessly restricting a big load of food.

The difference of course, is that the McDonalds one was done as a bit of a joke to prove that you CAN lose weight and become more healthy by just eating less even if others consider it 'junk'.

This post also proves the same - I'm sure plenty of people have similar opinions about the food she's choosing and how much of it they'd want in their diet.

The difference, of course, is that the people doing the McDonalds ones and such like actually advise AGAINST restricting your food choices like that .

jonnythan

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

I believe that poster thinks we'd get enough B12 if we didn't wash the dirt off our veggies, or something.

Duck_Puddle

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

I believe that poster thinks we'd get enough B12 if we didn't wash the dirt off our veggies, or something.

Well that's just silly. We have to wash them. How else would we be eating 'clean'?

vanguardfitness

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

haaah. Good summary

elfo

Ok, I need to get ready for bed. BUT I will leave you with this -- google jim morris vegan body builder.
You HAVE to check out this man's body.

I am very familiar with the vegan bbing community, so a few things:
He was not vegan until he was 65.
Banana Girl (Freelee) is recovering from an ED as is a lot of her followers
They aren't respected in the majority of the vegan fitness communities and made huge negative waves in the raw food community.
There is a website out there that has many unhappy old followers who suffered health issues.

I'm happy for you that you lost weight. Please be careful.

I agree with you- disagree with a lot that Harley and freelee have to say. However, they were extremely supportive at the festival I attended and Harley even helped me to start running and keep decreasing my mile time. I've told them I don't agree with a lot that they advocate, but I can disagree with someone and still respect them. The reason that I mentioned Freelee is because her question to me (could have been anyone really) really shocked me and made me realize that I didn't want to keep going the way I was going.

I have had a lot of benefits from eating this way. AND I feel the best I ever had. I know it's not for everyone, but I eat this way because of the way it makes me feel above all else. I get a WIDE variety of fruits and veggies. I am not your typical 30 bananas a day type person. I actually don't believe that;s a healthy diet.

My usual caloric intake is usually about 2000 calories per day, and I get a wide variety of fruits, & veggies, with limited amounts of nuts, seeds, quinoa, brown rice, lentils, chick peas etc. I don't obsess about what I eat, contrary to what's been commented. I eat what I want and as much as I want because my body loves it not because I have to. I can eat anything really- this is what I choose to eat because it's worked wonders for me.

_Terrapin_

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

paraphrasing...thank you, the Great Slorax makes it easy.

smc864

That banana girl that you met is a total whack job. No thank you.

Sunka1

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

I thought a few plants contained B12. Alfalfa, seaweeds and a few others?

dayone987

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

I thought a few plants contained B12. Alfalfa, seaweeds and a few others?

I don't think that it's been shown definitively that that form of Vitamin B12 from these sources is effective. Also, the B12 found on seaweed thought to be actually from tiny crustacean creatures and therefore not technically vegan.

Sunka1

OP;are you supplementing with Vitamin B12? It's very difficult to get enough on a vegan diet. I think that your body will use reserves for a few years, but if you continue a vegan diet without B12 supplements you can develop pernicious anemia.

I believe it's actually impossible to get enough B12 from a vegan diet. I think it's interesting that veganism is literally impossible without the modern chemical engineering required to manufacture B12 supplements.

You keep writing this and it's just not true. Or at least I am as sure that I am correct as you are.

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

I thought a few plants contained B12. Alfalfa, seaweeds and a few others?

I don't think that it's been shown definitively that that form of Vitamin B12 from these sources is effective. Also, the B12 found on seaweed thought to be actually from tiny crustacean creatures and therefore not technically vegan.

Thanks for the crustacean creature alert. But overall we need to have more trust in our plant friends.

debrag12

I stopped reading what I saw the words banana girl

ishkur

OK I actually went and read the whole thing. Just sounds like the OP reacted to an inability to control herself by instituting an essentially arbitrary set of extremely strict rules. This is pretty common. I guess some people need an extremely rigid structure to enforce compliance. Sounds like she went first to one rigid diet, which she raved about while she was on, to another rigid diet, which she is now raving about.

OP, there's nothing magic about your diet (and a lot that is not good about your diet). The only magic you discovered is compliance.

^^^^This. All "diets" for losing weight no matter what you start doing come down to being in a caloric deficit.

I'm not sure that's true. I myself have struggled with my weight for quite a long time, I could never drop below 130lbs no matter how hard I tried, and the fat just stayed no matter how lean I ate, or how much exercise for 5ish years. Now I've been vegan for 6 months (not exactly RAW vegan, as my dinners usually tend to be sort of a greasy mess but the rest of my day is healthy grains and fruits (in my opinion)) and since then I've finally dropped passed from 150lbs, to 130lbs, and NOW I'm actually 113lbs now! My body fat dropped from 33% to 22%! With just 30 minutes of cardio 6 days a week and a little bit of weight lifting thrown in. My deficit has pretty much stayed the same, cycling between 1200-1300. So I do believe veganism/raw-vegan has greater benefits, at least for me.

yogicarl

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

Um - no. B12 is found in soil which animals injest when they graze, which is then passed on to meat eaters.

jonnythan

Um. B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Perhaps your definition of vegan is different than the one I'm used to?

Um - no. B12 is found in soil which animals injest when they graze, which is then passed on to meat eaters.

People want this to be true, but it's not. The B12 in animal products comes from bacteria that live in the animals which manufacture it. Or it comes from other animals that animal eats.