Hello Everybody.

I have been raw for about 2 months. Since that time I have actually gained 4 pounds. I am a woman who has always had issues with her weight. I am small (5'3 123 pounds) so for me to gain 4 pounds was devastating for me.

I believe the problem I gained the weight was for one I gave up cigarettes and coffee which caused a drop in my metabolism. Secondly, I am en emotional eater!! I constantly eat when I am not hungry and sometimes at night I binge out on cooked granola!

I need help because I am loosing faith. I love raw food and the feeling I get from it but I do want to loose ten pounds which I have gained in a year.

Does anyone have any tips on loosing the late night binges or learning the practice of eating ONLY when hungry?

Thank you for your help fellow raw foodists!

Peace, Light, Bless
Jamie

Hi Jamie!

I SOOO relate to you!

I've been in "trasition" for almost 3 years!!

I think I finally did it though!!

I'd eat fruti all day then go home to binge on WHOLE loafs of bread with PB&J!!
Cookies
crackers...

Anything with wheat

Then I read a book about wheat/grain addiction. YES we are addicted!
I keep remembering the line...

"one slice is too much, the whole loaf is not enough"

I have removed all grains from my diet.

BUT I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted as long as it was raw

WRONG!!

I replaced grains with dates and almonds!!

I GAINED 12 POUNDS in 2 months!!

Emotional bingeing on NUTS AND SEEDS and DATES!!

it was out of control!

So, I went back to green smoothies and keep myself out of the house during BINGE time...

I've joind hot yoga and do 3-4 classes a week - instead of going home and eating I go right there.

I am a PE teacher and also teach aerobics at goodlife gym
I am also training for a marathon

and I GAINED weight!!!

I've been at this for a week now and I've lost 5 pounds!!!
YAY

I do work out every day with weights and running, sometimes 2 times a day - you gotta want it sister!

As soon as I get home I have about 2 LITRES of green smoothies

60% fruit and 40% greens - blend it up and YUM!!

I actually crave these now!

YOu gotta keep yourself busy and OPUT of the house during BINGE time.

Others may say don't have it in your house but I have a vegan cooked daughter and husband so THAT is not an option.

I am also not neurotic aobut it. I am currently looking forward to going to the MANDARINE - an award winning chinese buffet here in canada.

I will eat cooked veggies - LOTS of fruit and sushi! yes with white rice!

I will do this aobut 2 times a month!

Learn to love yourself, accepted and be kind to your body - YOGA will help with this...

ALl the best T

Hi, it's Brand new heart again. I still can't post in my name. Have I been banned? If so, I appriciate if someone tells me why so that I can learn how to not do that thing again. Would you like to let me know so that I can change?

However, here's my answer to the topic:

One of the commonest mistakes and a reason many quits raw foods is that their diet contains too much fat. Gabriel Cousens recommends that 15% of the total daily calories intake should come from fat. Dr. Douglas Graham reccomends 10%. On a 2000 calories diet that is exactly 25 grams of fat or the amount of almonds you can grab in a small hand. The rest should be vegetables and fruits.

If you can't afford to eat 15-20 fruits per day (which keeps me at 200 grams carbs so I add some grains) you can add sundried raisins or sprouted grains. Remember, you might think you're not "eating that much fat really" but 1 g fat contains 9 calories (I've heard 8 too) compared to 4 for carbs and protein so it adds a lot more calories then you think.

Also, high blood sugar caused by high glycemic index foods such as unripe bananas, raisins (cause higher blood sugar than white sugar), carrot juice, watermelon (especially commercial I've heard) and beet roots, the body lays on fat (It has something to do with lots of insulin being released). The more toxicity you have in you, the more fat cells you need to store it in - where it causes the least harm.

If you havent cleasend internally what goes in never come out. Weight gain is the result

elnatural

i am a granola junkie too
love the sweet crunch

been granola free for over 6 months...what a miracle...
first thing i did was upgraded to highest quality granola,
then instead of 10 -12 oz binges, i shifted down to
6 - 10 oz "servings" eventually i was able to replace
the granola with apples, other crunchy fruit and greens.

where the real magic resides for me of course, is being willing to
hold the emotion that is wanting me to "drug out"
when i see that I AM capable of doing that, it usually
passes in mere minutes...still a challenge for me

best of luck

My plight very much -- hard to lose weight! If I live on almost nothing but green smoothies (a la Victoria Boutenko) I can lose weight though! I think it is because the green drinks cleanse me while nourishing me without ever getting stuck inside. For me, everything wants to take up permanent resident in my bod!

Try increasing fiber, 50-100 g per day, usually this means more veggies but if you are eating a great deal of fruit you can achieve it on fruit alone. You will eliminate 2-3 times per day, whether you want to or not.

I too can relate to your problem, i am fine in the day but then when i get home on a night i binge and then feel ill and fat and vow to be good from now on....and then the cycle starts all over again the next day, i have put on sooo much weight and feel disgusting, i am so desperate to lose weight but cant

One thing you might want to check is the PH level of your body. Our blood MUST maintain a ph reading very near to 7.365 or we can get sick or even die if it is too far off. Our bodies have several ways to maintain that level. I'll explain one of these mechanisms below.

Our bodies neutralize excess acids with buffering minerals such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and maybe some others. When those supplies are sufficiently depleted, other means must be tried. Sometimes our cholesterol goes way up. Sometimes our weight goes way up. Other processes are also involved.

Let's talk about the fat part. A little known fact about our bodies is that fat can initially save our lives (but overweight is bad in the long run of course). When our bodies become too acidic (a reading below a neutral 7.0) our bodies must capture the acids in our fat tissues. Otherwise, our blood would become so acidic we would die. All of that is an effort to save our lives.

It is essential to raise your ph level to the optimum in order to lose weight. When you do, you can drop as much as a pound a day - safely - for a long period of time. Why? Your body doesn't need to store the acids any more.

For more info, read The PH Miracle for Weight Loss by Dr. Robert Young. It changed my life. I lost nearly a pound a day for a month!! I felt terriffic after a week or so and still do.

Most of what I eat is raw except that I can't eat too much sweet fruit. My body reacts negatively because it still can't handle all the acid ash formed in the digestion of the sweet fruits. Others here do fine as they still have sufficient minerals and such to buffer the ingestion of foods that produce the acid ash.

I do not believe you will have success any other way. Of course, please consult a medical professional to eliminate any possible immediate health threats they may find. Otherwise, go forth, educate yourself and let us know how it goes.

Jamie,

What does your typical daily menu look like? Can you tell us the time of the day you eat, and what quantities of food. It may be simply that you are eating too many calories.

If you could put your daily menu into a nutritional calculator like fitday or nutridiary and tell us how many calories you ate, and the mix of carb/protein/fat percentages of that menu.

Jamie, I am sorry to hear about your weight gain - how awful for you! Difficult to just binge in frustration. However, I have two solutions for you, both guaranteed to work! That is, two solutions that do not involve fasting or limiting how much you eat - because bingers will sometimes binge, so you have to realize that and make it part of your dietary, not part of "falling off the wagon". Of the two options, figure out which one you can do psychologically, so you can stay raw vegan even during big binges. Option one is the "ph balance" one - read ninjagreens.com and follow a raw vegan alkalizing dietary - you can have greens, vegetable fruits, avocadoes, almond butter and almonds, nori, salads with lemon juice, non-starchy vegetables, and green drinks - it's an enjoyable, peaceful way of eating.and you can rapidly lose weight on it. The other eat-all-you-want way is to do the opposite - eat as much as you want of fresh, raw, organic, high-water-content fruit - or, if you prefer, fruit and greens or green juice or green smoothies - just make sure it's juicy fruit, not bananas, dates, etc. This will cause dramatic weight-loss as well over time and your day-to-day effort - you will be amazed and love your new you. Choose the option you can stick to without cooked bingeing, and do it for a month at least - then if not satisfied with the quickness of the weight loss, you could switch to the other if you think you can do so without cooked bingeing in between. Keep up posted - I am sure you will be delighted and it is more than worth the psychological effort and work, what you get as reward.

Low fat is working. High fat doesn't. I eat no more than the equivalent of 120 calories of fat per day and often only every three days or four days. I eat lots of green smoothies, fruits, veggies. I just steer clear of fat. I also cut out salt. That seems to help as well. It is working. Finally.

During the winter it is cold here. I am adding plain steamed veggies - as much as I wish - if I need to warm up or feel fuller in the evening, which I often do. No salt, no fat. Just plain steamed veggies. This is helping me stay low fat during the cold when we all get hungrier.

I feel better low-fat too. More steady energy. Lighter.

I would add, I was completely raw for most of the eight years. The steamed veggies are the first non-raw I've eaten. They aren't making me feel bad at all. I don't think I'll need them when the weather warms. For now, they are helping. I have lost 10 pounds in the last little while this way.

The nut/grain addiction someone mentioned previously also applies to fruits, which are high in sugar. If you're going to eat fruit, make sure it's organic(red delicious apples have 50 times more sugar than organic).

The sugar/carb rich foods you eat cause increased insulin production, which promotes fat storage. You'd be better off cutting out sugary foods from your diet, training your body to burn fat as its primary energy source. The average body can only store 2,500 calories of sugar energy, and about 150,000 calories of fat energy.

Eating sugar/carbs causes you to crave sugar/carbs. It's a downward spiral.

It can be hard. Alot of nuts and seeds are fatty. Too much is high in cals. Opt for fresh fruits. They say on raw you can eat whatever and as much as you want but you have to be realistic. You shouldnt eat more than 1,200 cals per day of anything if you are looking to loose weight.

You are getting a lot of really conflicting information, I'm afraid, and some people are not only saying what has worked for them (which may or may not work for you) but laying down laws without even empirical experience (or reading comprehension skills) to back up the laws. It's the same old thing - fruit or fat? The idea is we don't want you to go on a "diet" per se - that interferes with, as you know, the goal of staying raw. In any event, people who eat alkaline do experience weight-loss due to over-acidification, but there is still some discipline involved - as Piano Gal says, if you "let yourself go" on too much fat - several avocadoes per diem, say, I doubt you could lose much weight. However, it is not true that if you were on a solely high-water-content organic fruit dietary, you would crave the sugar or even cooked carbohydrates - over time, it does "naturalize" your overeating instincts and "self-regulate" them so that your ability to overeat fruit changes all by itself - I don't know whether the stomach shrinks or whether one just becomes more in tune with the actual body, but it is the contrary to a downward spiral of needing/eating more and more. That said, I am not necessarily of the fruit camp. It really is true - you will have to try for yourself, as you indeed tried (plunged into) going raw, and see for yourself, but you will not hang on to weight on any dietary (whether it includes lots of fruit or none) that is solely high-water-content. Give it a go.

My experience, after ten years of being between 50-80% raw, is that one loses only the weight one should - meaning water weight, toxins and old fats that the liver can wasily process for fuel. Perhaps you've never done the HHI or OHI program, which is very specific in terms of detoxification, and thus, weight loss. Inevitably, if you are following a specific detox program, you will lose weight. But this requires a specific regimen, which you should investigate, before you continue eating raw. Additionally, there may be foods you're eating that should be eliminated from your diet, regardless of the fact that they are raw. Many questions to consider. But you should work with someone who knows what they are doing....whoever.

Best to you,

Anne Kaspar
BodyByBliss.com
bodybybliss@gmail.com
505.690.0169

Thank you guys for your care and support!!

Johnson I looked at the ninja website and I am going to give it ago!! I was very acidic before so maybe this is the new regime I need. I will keep you guys posted!!

I’m back...and three pounds lighter! YEA!

So I gave up eating one big meal...now i just eat through out the day, I don't binge.

Also, almonds are my new best friend. I still have an oral fixation (from giving up cigarettes) so I need to constantly snack on something. Almonds are something that I can snack on that is like bread and doesn’t make me gain weight!

I am also alkilizing...try to avoid the acid stuff. I am also staying away from really sweet fruit.

Thank you guys for your support! I would love more suggestions as you have helped me so much.

7 more pounds to go!

Happy Holidays

Love you,
Jamie

You will not be able to lose weight with unrestricted binges of calorie-dense foods. Almonds are also calorie-dense foods. They are mostly fat.

If you want something to snack on that will be very unlikely to promote weight gain, think of vegetables like carrots, celery, lettuces, etc. you can usually eat these as they are (not juiced, of course, which will greatly increase the calorie densitiy) without restriction or as much as your stomach can handle. Usually the stomach gets full before too much calorie "damage" takes place.