For those of you who have transitioned from high fruit to high greens, what would you say your fruit to green ratio is currently? Also do you practice food combining? How much fat do you eat?
I've been raw (100 percent, except for the days I eat nutritional yeast) for over ten months, and I have been high-fruit the entire time, and have some issues with my health, such as sluggish digestion, bloating, constipation, and I've developed tooth sensitivity. I'm thinking that going higher greens would be beneficial?

I love greens with dressings (e.g. cold-pressed flax oil, an ume plum, garlic cloves, cayenne, lemon juice) but I seem to have weak digestion and I get bloated and "backed-up" when I eat salads. I properly combine my food, (and try to eat my salads on an empty stomach) don't eat after 7:30, and have tried enzymes, blending, and so forth. I still get the same reaction.
Any advice?

Check out Gabriel Cousin's Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine book. It has helped me to transition. It has made an immense difference for me to leave out fruit - for awhile. Let your body lead. You will probably be eating more fat and nuts at the beginning. As you balance out, what you will wish to eat will change. Don't be afraid if it feels off balance in the beginning. Change is always an imbalanced state initially.

Stevia is a good friend. So is flax seed.

A nice smoothie - do your own amounts

1T flax seed
As much raw coconut as you like
vanilla
a pinch of nutmeg
stevia to taste - I use quite q bit - Now company brand, I like - liquid
6 ice cubes
1/3 cup water

blend till creamy

put a handful of spinach a bit of kale in the smoothie. Good meal!

mallow,

If you want to understand why your salads are bloating, first take your daily menu and enter it into a nutritional calculator like fitday or nutridiary and report back to us how many calories you eat each day, and what are the percentages of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in your daily diet. Also provide us with the times you eat these meals, and what a typical day of eating would look like.

My guess is that if you are not eating much fruit, most of your calories come from fat. Until you use a nutritional calculator, you really don't have any idea of the percentage of your diet that is compose of fat. This is because very small volume of oil can have a ton of calories.

here's what I had today:

Calories Eaten Today
grams cals %total
Total: 1156
Fat: 10 91 8%
Sat: 1 7 1%
Poly: 3 31 3%
Mono: 1 10 1%
Carbs: 292 1056 89%
Fiber: 28 0 0%
Protein: 9 37 3%
Alcohol: 0 0 0%

Fat Carbs
Protein Alcohol

hi Mallow
maybe you could increase your green intake without necessarily decreasing your fruit/eating a lot of fats? Green smoothies (fruit and leafy greens blended up with water) are a great way to do this, don't know if you're doing that already. Have you read the Boutenko book on this subject? they're especially brill if you are having trouble digesting 'whole' greens in salads.
many people swear by them - and they taste great.
x

wow, mallow, that seems like an exceedingly low amount of daily protein to me. What did you eat? I'm curious as wholefoods usually have a higher amount than that.

Cheers,
J

Hi mallow,

It looks like you are eat mostly fruit at this point. If so, are you practicing food combining or mono-eating? For eating fruit, this is pretty important.

If you are unfamiliar with food combining, it is a practice of eating similar fruits with one-another. There are sweet fruit like bananas, mangos, figs; acid fruits like citrus, pineapple; subacid fruits like strawberries, apples; and non-sweet fruit. Sweet fruit and acid fruits should not be mixed. Sweet & subacid as well as acid & subacid are less than optimal combinations.

Its okay to mix greens like lettuce and celery with your fruit.

Okay, here's today's menu:
...and to bryan, I do practice food combining, and I mono-eat my fruit.



breakfast: (at 9 AM)
whole small watermelon

dinner: (at 5:30 PM)
large salad consisting of:
6 cups organic baby spinach
2-3 cups organic baby carrots
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 package fresh shitake mushrooms (I think about 1 ½ cups)
1 cup parsley
¼ cup sesame seeds
2 tbs. whole flax seeds
1 brazil nut

with dressing:
1 avocado
juice of 3 lemons
½ cup nutritional yeast
1 tbs. ume plum paste
4 cloves garlic
1 pinch celtic sea salt
1 pinch ginger powder
1 tbs. cayenne
a bunch of fresh ground black pepper

and this is purely intuitive - try leaving out the nutritional yeast and the shitake's....they are highly mycotoxic and many people - self included - react to the yeast. As well, sun dried maters can very well make you gassy. They do me.

Best,

Piano Gal

eating all that will be ALOT of fibre! its very common on high fibre diets to get "backed up". this is called "impaction" and results when not enough water is consumed to soften the fibre-rich stool. fibre pulls water from the body so that it can ease its way through your colon. if you eat lots of fibre, make sure to chew very well, and drink plenty of water throughout the day between meals! and don't overeat.

I noticed you're eating tomatoes with your salads. As tomatoe is a fruit, I personally would be cautious mixing them with my veggies, actually I don't do it at all.

Also, do you soak your seeds/nuts? I find nuts and seeds difficult on the digestive system, somewhat even when soaked, and especially when not soaked. I also would be careful with the mushrooms.

Good luck to you!
-Jayburd

Hi,
Consider the quantity you are eating.
Throughout my time as a raw fooder, I've adhered to the concept that the stomach's normal capacity is about 2 cups and a meal should not exceed this amount. I've expereinced a lot of bloating and gas when I've eaten more than this. The digestive system is overloaded and can't digest completely. I think its much better to eat 4 or 4 smaller meals than big meals. I don't bloat or have gas when I eat smaller, more frequent meals.
Chickory

Hello, Mallow -

Wow...you certainly can eat a lot! If I ate that much I'd feel ill, too. Consider cutting back on everything and see how you feel. I follow the idea that one's stomach cpacity is about the size of about two cups, give or take. You're possilby very stretched out and therefore not very effective at digsting. Give you gut a chance....

Take care!

GeneticPromise

chickory Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi,
> Consider the quantity you are eating.
> Throughout my time as a raw fooder, I've adhered
> to the concept that the stomach's normal capacity
> is about 2 cups and a meal should not exceed this
> amount. I've expereinced a lot of bloating and
> gas when I've eaten more than this. The digestive
> system is overloaded and can't digest completely.
> I think its much better to eat 4 or 4 smaller
> meals than big meals. I don't bloat or have gas
> when I eat smaller, more frequent meals.
> Chickory

If the stomach's capacity is about 2 cups, then no wonder I'm sick. I usually eat about 4 cups (3 meals a day) and I used to eat abot 7 cups at a time (usually only ate 2 meals a day).

I must be overloading my system and no wonder I have severe acid reflux that just doesn't seem to get better.