I swear I cant get past about 90% raw.
I just absolutely crave a hot meal now and then.
Fall is coming up with wonderful memories of beef stew,hot soup...etc
Even hot VEGGIE soup!!!!!!!!!!!

Brian



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2008 12:18AM by Raw1228.

i'm sooo new to this. but isnt that okay as you adjust? i'm 75% now and am thinking that one fine day my body wont have a tolerence for the cooked anymore. what do you think? Just dont want you to punish yourself. 90% is so fab!

Brian,

When you hit your edge at 90% raw, what is it that you are feeling that is preventing you from going further? What ever that is, needs to be dealt with for you, otherwise you'll not go any further.

i'm fine with 90%, 100% isn't neccessary for me. i find it very impractical to be honest. no biggy, some do very well on high raw, some are great at 50%, while others can't have anything cooked at all or it is all cooked, kwim?
ask yourself what your goal is, is it to reach optimum health or just very good health? for me it's not important to be "perfect", tremendously healthy will do.

If you want something warm, get a Vita-Mix and make soup warm and warm drinks.

I know you're not eating a plant-based diet/raw (or partially so on each) for ethical reasons, but when I went vegan, it probably helped in that I didn't consider animal-based items sold at the store as food anymore. There was no way that product was for my consumption, surely wasn't for nutrition, and involved so much pain and environmental waste that to call it "food" would be an insult to my core values.

Just some of my experiences:

The way I do it is that I am 100% in touch with what my healthy goals / lifetime goals really are. If I am HONEST about that....and I decide for myself (after doing research) what is ABSOLUTELY necessary to achieve my health goals. So: I don't do it by DISCIPLINE.....I do it by identifying what my REAL motivation is.....what I'm ACTUALLY motivated to do. If the answer is nothing.....then I'm OK with that....and I accept the consequences. If the answer is SOMETHING.....then I make a plan and DO something (usually very small). Often, what I am VERY MOTIVATED to do......(or not to do)....flies in difference to what others are doing.....or is at a level that is much smaller.....or over a longer time frame. I don't let others or some mental image 'bully' me into a schedule or time frame.....or level of accomplishment....that I am not actually motivated to do.

-This is the hard part: learning to accept and act on the TRUE level of motivation that you feel and take responsibility for it. For those that are depressed, that level might be VERY SMALL. They are thus tortured mentally by the idea that they must do VERY SMALL things....when they would rather be doing something large (which they don't.....or fail at....and then feel even worse).

-In reality, while transitioning, I was at about 75% (eating a cooked dinner) for about 6-12 months. Plateaus are certainly normal when keeping your final destination in mind.

-Power & Success to you!

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Brian:

Please be kinder to yourself - 90% raw is a phenomenal achievement! I was 50 - 90% raw for over two years before I finally took the plunge to 100%.

Maybe your body isn't ready yet, wouldn't it feel better to listen to that and allow yourself to go at the pace that works best for you? When you are ready, you won't feel deprived of anything.

In the meantime, if you really want something warm, and I know this isn't really raw, I might try a cup of warm tea before your raw meal to give you that. (or after) Eventually you will find you don't need it.

But if you decided to spend this winter enjoying a warm meal from time to time, and try to increase your raw percentage in the spring, would that be so bad?

Sapphire

I am a 100% all fresh raw vegan since August 1, 07. I have "slipped" a few times ;-( but I have been consistent in my perseverance because I don't want to go back to my SAD condition before becoming a raw food eater. When I have "slipped" I have taken a few minutes to quietly review the situation in terms of:
1) my goals
2) what can I learn from the "slip"
3) being kind to myself and giving myself a pat on the back for having the fortitude to get back on my path to a successful raw food lifestyle journey.

Thanks for all the input, and sharing things folks.
I will try to not beat up on myself too hard,but the main issue with still wanting a hot meal is that it leads to wanting many many hot meals,and then the pizza and all that stuff.
Maybe I will make all hot meals a good home made veggie soup or something.

Brian

Quote

Posted by: Raw1228 , Date: August 30, 2008


the main issue with still wanting a hot meal is that it leads to wanting many many hot meals,and then the pizza and all that stuff.

I also have found that to be the case. When I have been all raw for a long time the cravings are very weak and easy to get past but they still come at me occasionally and I get over confident and I forget about how hard it is to close that door once it has been opened to cooked food and how once the cooked food foot is in the door it just wants to open the door wider and wider. When the door is open it is hard to close again, in fact, the last time I let my guard down I was concerned that I might not get it closed again as it was a struggle. I did get back to all fresh raw again and I feel so much better both physically and mentally because there is nothing to compare with how good I feel when I am on course in my raw food journey. I now know not to open that door even a bite and that the cooked food addiction craving diminishes steadily in terms of frequency and intensity as time distances me from my last SAD encounter.

i've been 80 to 95% raw for well over a year without knowing it...the last few months, i've been 95% more often than not, and some days...all raw. Though for me...i like a good 90% balance...and sure, i go all raw when i can. i love that, yet i do not beat myself up over what i can do....

enjoy and be proud of how far you have come! most people still don't know what a "raw vegetable" is...

c

Here are things that make me want to have a cooked meal:

-convenience.
-nostalgia.
-feeling controlled by my diet.
-cravings for wheat/wheat addiction.
-wanting to feel grounded/numb.
-longing for complex food tastes.

With the exception of the maybe last one, where I then try to make raw food dish that has a variety of flavors, none of these reasons are nutritionally-based. When I realized that, it was a lot easier to stay raw, even though those things still exist.

Brian,

If its a hot meal you want, just make some steamed veggies or a simple vegetable broth. But if its a pizza or pasta or a hamburger you want, then probably you are experiencing either emotional eating, that is, eating to not feel what is going on in the inside, or you are trying to ground your energy, which results in the same kind of eating as emotional eating.

If you are doing emotional eating, it would be worthwhile to observe and feel your emotions and perhaps you can even release them.

Great job!
How about an accountabilty partner to stay on course after your 1 or 2 cooked meals.

Claire you are so right on! HA! Yeah, most people think I live on twigs and leaves. LOL.

I figure... raw junk is better than SAD junk. Occasionally splurging on something raw/vegan that I don't usually eat is a good thing. Get out of your raw/vegan comfort zone and try something new or travel to a raw restaurant if you can. And, if none of that works, what Bryan is saying above makes a lot of sense.

I never eat raw junk though. I think it's Doug Graham, but it may be David Klein, who says that if it looks like pizza, smells like pizza, and tastes like pizza, it digests like pizza. And Lara Bars make me want to barf. Seriously disgusting. They are the raw/vegan equivalent of sausage. I mean... does anyone know what is REALLY in those things? Make your own if you must! Or buy some supposedly raw dried fruit.

Lately, I've been seriously into organic green grapes. It's killing my bank account but they are so good. Those and organic figs and watermelon, and my usual standby, papaya.

What I sometimes crave in cooked foods is the flavors, the spices. So sometimes I will eat something with a lot of stimulants like raw salsa. Sometimes I need some raw garlic and chilis. That's ok. Most people stimulate themselves with Diet Coke or those cans of toxic chemical-filled "energy" (HA!) drinks. If you need a little spice, go for it.

I love this food!


Lee

[www.dhamma.org]

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

Bryan,
Good point.
And the broth idea is one I have done.It works.

As I mentioned in the opener to this thread,certain hot foods bring back a memory,or a feeling of comfort.

All emotional eating for sure.

I live alone,and sometimes its just me and the fridge.(or stove for that matter)
I was thinking of making a nice huge cutting board to cover the whole top of my stove.It would give me alot more counter space.

Brian



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2008 02:04PM by Raw1228.

I work from home part of the time and also live alone (but I have a sig other I'm frequently with at night, at his place). I try to make sure I ALWAYS have fruit and greens or a raw concoction available. Eating is emotional, for sure, but you can break away from that and fuel your body with nutrition instead of empty emotions (because they are fleeting when it comes to food - eh).

Put up a menu of activities that you enjoy

also make goals a part of the menu

when u think about going for cooked

take a look at the menu of activities

and grab a few a la carte

get out the door

and go for it

Bryan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
you are trying to ground your
> energy, which results in the same kind of eating
> as emotional eating.
>
WHAT does grounding your energy mean?
patty

i don't know what that means. my mama used to feed us "grounding" foods when we were little kids and had gotten hyper crazy with the spazzies from running around playing and getting too hungry. peanut butter was it for my bro. brought him back down to earth.

Patty,

Grounding one's energy is what one may do when one is feeling a lot of energy in the body, from being in a great state of health. This energy is used by the body not only to heal itself, but to transform the nervous system of the body to allow the person to acquire greater levels of consciousness. This stuff is well documented in the classic yoga literature.

For people unaccustomed to this level of energy, its sometimes feel nice to make it go away. In some sense this is exactly like emotional eating, where the emotional eater wants their negative emotions to go away by eating heavy foods to stop the negative feelings. But in the grounding energy case, there is not a negative emotional attachment to the energy. Thing is, they are the same energy - one manifested as emotion, the other manifested as pure energy.

There are other ways to deal with the energy. I wrote about them is this post called What will you manifest with your raw energy? .

thanks bryan
patty

I've been scheming a LOT about soup and the winter.

It IS possible to make a WARM raw soup--heat it up in a pan, while you can still touch the bottom of the pan with your fingers (low heat).

I'm approaching 9 months raw, myself, and 90-99% raw is where I have been realistically stuck at, too.

It's very easy to make a broth, cool the broth to finger-friendly temperature, and then add raw veggies. I'm thinking about even marinating the veggies overnight in a cooled broth?

One of my favorite soups is Tom Yum soup--a Thai soup with lemongrass and chilis. All that is required to make the broth is boiling the lemongrass, chili, ginger and some lime leaves, basically--so I could let that cool, then add the veggies. It's basically like making a tea (I'm wondering if I can even brew this broth like a sun tea?).

Finally, if you're worried about crappy additives in vegetable broth stock, you CAN make your own stock, just by boiling veggies/mushrooms/whatever in a pot for a few hours, then really straining the veggies. It would be fresher than powder, and some vitamins would still be in the broth... though perhaps some would be destroyed/denatured. By calories, though, I'm sure this would be less than 1% of your daily intake. It is definitely the healthiest option for traditional soup stock.

^And then, of course, add veggies to WARM (not hot) homemade veggie stock!

I will post the Tom Yum experiment when I try it. If you are interested, I can give you more details on how to make the homemade stock.

Anyway, this has been my recent, "I want to be raw... but I love soup!" dilemma. I am not entirely prepared to part with spices or the occasional warm (CAN STILL BE RAW!) food, yet. It is a process.

If I get an expensive blender, I'll make raw (but WARM!) pumpkin soup in the fall. >8)

Thanks Phantom!!

I love warm raw soups! I use miso; sometimes I steep sun dried tomatoes or other dried veggies or seaweed in bath temp water, just enough to cover them, then add my other veggies and warmish hot water. If I want a creamy soup I'll add avo or almond milk. Pureed mushrooms with veggies, almond cream and spicy pepper blend in January -- yum!! If you can tolerate spices,especially pepper blends, they can be warming in soups as well.

Phantom, I'll bet you can make a tom yum in the sun. Hmmm....Maybe I'll try it too!
Tom Yum
In the Sun!
Tom Yum
In the Sun!

hah!

cool post

hey raw1228

i think you've seriously come a really long way

am proud of you

Thanks la_veronique.

Dave what you wrote sounds like me. It's really hard to get past my current stressors and meditate. I need to get back in touch w/ me. I think that would help a lot.



davidzanemason Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> -This is the hard part: learning to accept and act
> on the TRUE level of motivation that you feel and
> take responsibility for it. For those that are
> depressed, that level might be VERY SMALL. They
> are thus tortured mentally by the idea that they
> must do VERY SMALL things....when they would
> rather be doing something large (which they
> don't.....or fail at....and then feel even worse).
>
>
> -In reality, while transitioning, I was at about
> 75% (eating a cooked dinner) for about 6-12
> months. Plateaus are certainly normal when keeping
> your final destination in mind.
>
> -Power & Success to you!
>
> -David Z. Mason


WendySmiling in Oklahoma
www.16weeks2health.blogspot.com
12/17/10.......240/155/125

i like not being all raw; that's just because i love cooking, and i don't like to commit to something that i'm not sure about(for example; i am sure about being vegan because of the ethical reasons, and so i can commit to that, but there are many interpretations of raw food and what it does but there aren't too many agreements, making everything too confusing). Cooked vegetables do have good properties about them, and getting a balance of raw and cooked is cool for me. But some people have different ideas and don't agree with mine, and that is cool tooo. Hell, it's better then mcdonalds.

Quote

How do youall do it?

I don't. I'm about 50-60% raw (after being 100% for a few years) and much happier with that.