I've been raw for a month and a half now. I love this diet because I feel great and after years of trying everything, it's the only approach that has apparently taken care of ten years of chronic stomach problems. However, in the last two days a couple of issues have come up and I'm looking for advice.

I started off my raw adventure with low body fat and avoided the scale until a few days ago, when it was clear that I had lost weight. In a month and a half I had gone from 6 ft.3 190 lbs. to 178 lbs. I've lost a lot of muscle yet I've continued with my usual routine of running, yoga, and weightlifting through the raw transition. I'm not really into this weight loss and I'm concerned that it's going to continue. I do realize that my current dimensions are normal and healthy to most, but to make a long story short, I'm a studious, quiet, peace loving nerd who lives and works in a rough situation where being at 190 lbs. means that I'm as small as I want to be with out getting run over by all the macho idiots I have to deal with (haha). Obviously, when I compare my current diet (daily summary below) to my old diet, my calories are way down. But how do I get my muscle back? Please help before I get beat up!

My next problem involves cravings. A couple days ago I started dying for things, off and on, that I haven't ingested for years and which until a couple days ago I didn't even think about anymore. I didn't even like them back when I was eating them, but instead just did it because it was available and customary or part of some addiction. But now, I'm literally fantasizing about cheeseburgers, cigarettes, cheesecake, brownies, chicken wings, etc. What's up with that? That stuff practically killed me, and now that I'm raw a part of me wants it again? How do I get this to subside? Is it just a phase I have to work through? Any commentary will be helpful, especially if you can tell me that it will go away soon.

Approximate Daily Diet

--20-25 pieces of fruit including a lot of bananas
--1 large green salad
--1 quart of green smoothie
--handful of nuts and seeds
--I eat an avocado about every other day
--1 bowl of cooked vegan veggie soup (hey, it's cold as hell here!)
--not much water because I always feel hydrated and I pee A LOT.

Thanks for your help. Peace to all.

I had the same problems with cravings. It gets way better. They are emotional and what I call memory cravings. Storm and Jinjee have a book on gaining weight on raw and their books help teach you to deal with cravings. You can find them at www.thegardendiet.com. When I get a bad craving I try to think about something else and I say to myself "I choose to put only healthy food in my body."

Here's an article written by Dr Graham. Perhaps this will explain what is happening to your weight.

----------------------
Now that I've gone raw, I'm so skinny
by Dr. Douglas N. Graham

Is raw really that different?

Americans generally have two features in common: they are overfat and undermuscled. There are good reasons for both of these unhealthy conditions. Going raw can help with both, but in both cases, going raw is simply a start.

People are overfat because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple, almost. They are also overweight because they hold on to excess water. In the body, the solution to pollution is dilution. One method of coping with those toxins that are more than the body can eliminate is to dilute them in water and store them. This excess water weight is easily lost, and is not the issue of this article.

Overfat people usually tell me that they "don't eat that much, really." They are probably telling the truth, when it comes to the actual volume of food they consume. The SAD has three main features that make it easily recognizable: low water, low fiber, and high fat. Each of these three features reduce the total volume of food while increasing the number of calories per bite. It therefore takes very little food volume to provide more than enough calories for the day, hence people gain, on average, a few pounds every year.

The SAD, vegetarian, vegan and most raw diets tend to have these same three features in common: low water, low fiber and high fat. As raw fooders we find a meal of fruit unsatisfactory because we are hungry soon after consuming it. This is no fault of the fruit. Any meal where insufficient calories are consumed will leave the eater hungry soon thereafter. We have shrunk our stomachs to the point of deformity through the continual consumption of concentrated foodstuffs. By removing the fiber (juicing), by removing the water (cooking or dehydrating), and by increasing the fat levels above 10% of total calories consumed (cooked or raw, plant or animal, fat is fat), we mimic the SAD with many of our raw food dishes. This is surely an unhealthy practice. Both water and fiber are essential nutrients. Therefore removing them from our food must be to our detriment. All health experts worldwide agree that we must make dramatic decreases in our fat consumption if we ever hope to achieve health.

The solution to the shrunken stomach problem is to eat more volume of fruit, but this takes practice and determination. It requires, essentially, that you go on a flexibility training program for your stomach, allowing it to enlarge to the point of being able to comfortably accommodate the food volume required for a proper meal of fruit. Most folks find that within a few months they can easily double and often triple the total amount of fruit they can consume at a meal, without consuming anywhere near as many calories as they used to consume from more calorically concentrated sources.

We go on the raw food diet and lose weight like champions. This is a mixed blessing. Most of us have weight to lose and are pleased at the initial weight loss. However, if we are losing weight consistently and dramatically we must be drastically under consuming calories. At some point we must learn to eat enough volume of raw foods to satisfy our caloric demands, else we fail as raw fooders. Unfortunately, this form of failure on raw foods happens all too frequently. Usually, we blame the addictiveness of cooked food or our own weaknesses rather than acknowledging that we were eating a nutritionally unbalanced and unsustainable raw food diet. Along the way, various unhealthy habits can develop such as overeating of fatty foods, occasional bingeing on cooked foods, relying on refined and concentrated food sources, and the sedentary lifestyle that often accompanies the malnourished state.

We are crippling ourselves

Labor saving devices have become the standard in America. Shopping carts, rolling luggage, moving stairways, vacuum cleaners, automatic doors, household conveniences such as automatic hot water; we use these things without giving them a second thought. Even our labor saving devices often have labor saving devices. (Ex. - Power windows, steering and brakes for our cars, remote controls for television, sit down lawn mowers, battery powered toothbrushes and screwdrivers). Using them has had disastrous effects upon our fitness. Never before in history have we, as a people, been so unfit, overfat, or unhealthy. In both test case and real life scenarios we have found that a significant percentage of our population is too unfit to make it down a few dozen flights of stairs, even if it means saving their own life.

The inertia of the sedentary lifestyle must be overcome if we hope to achieve better health through raw living than that which we brought to it. Losing excess fat certainly is a step in the right direction. Eating foods that require less fuel for the digestive process frees up more fuel to use for activity. Still, I am asked all the time, "what do I eat to gain weight?"

After discerning that the requested weight gain is not to be in the form of fat or water, the question is refined to, "what do I eat to gain muscle?" The answer is, "There is no food that will cause one to gain muscle. This can only be achieved by performing the appropriate strength demanding activities". Unless demands are placed upon the muscles, the brain will perceive no reason to direct growth of the muscles and the muscles will likewise acquire no reason to hypertrophy.

"I went raw but I got so skinny that I went back to eating cooked", I hear again and again. I can only reply that most people are skinny, they just hide that fact under a substantial layer of fat. We have become used to seeing fat people, they are the norm. So used to it, in fact, that people who are not fat look abnormal to us. They look too skinny. Though for my height I am absolutely a normal weight (5'10", 150 pounds) I have been told that I am "thin, skinny, too trim" and once even, "emaciated". (This last by a man 5'10", 300 pounds).

We know the shape that we think humans should be, what appears to us as "normal". The undiscerning eye usually does not differentiate between a person with a low degree of musculature whose body fat levels are double or triple normal from one with adequate muscular development whose body fat level is healthy. They look basically similar, especially when they are inactive and even more so in street clothing. The telltale indicators of low fat with muscular development; well defined vascularity and the shredded or ripped look to the musculature, are simply not noticed or even visible until bodies go into action.

Muscular development takes time. It is rare for a body builder to gain more than one pound of muscle in a month. By the same token, barring a total cessation of physical activity, muscular loss of size also is a slow process. Of the three caloronutrients: carbohydrate, fat and protein, the body will always use carbohydrate and fat before consuming protein for fuel. Hence, when we switch our diet to raw, the likelihood that the body will consume its own muscle tissue for fuel is practically zero. At least, that is, until starvation is initiated, which is not until all available carbohydrate and fat sources have been utilized. When people say to me that they got so skinny on the raw food diet, I can only smile and say, "You have probably always been skinny, you just couldn't tell because you were fat, too. Congratulations on losing the fat, for it was only then that you noticed how undermuscled you are."

If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets. For uncommonly healthy results, one must be willing to live an uncommonly healthy life. Anyone who puts in the effort involved in building muscle will see the muscular development and will reap the concomitant rewards. This can be done in various ways and will be a focus of a future article: Four methods of increasing strength related performance.

In health abundance naturally,

Dr. Douglas N. "Mono-Man" Graham
www.doctorgraham.cc
All raw, all the time, count on it

Here is an article on how to gain weight called "How To Gain All the Healthy Weight You Want".

Devric,

Congratulations on your clarity and the improved diet!

I agree with pakd4fun about the 'memory' cravings that will subside with time but I think there is another piece to it too. When I was still severely restricting my calories (in the long slow anorexia recovery) I went through a six month - or so - period where my hunger had come back but I was still fixed on the idea that I couldn't eat more than 1200 calories per day. For those six months I was _constantly_ hungry and also had all kinds of weird cravings, for things that never even tasted good to me when I ate them, just as you described.

So I think that when you're calorie-deficient, your brain starts getting pictures of dense, heavy, evocative stuff, if that makes sense.

Hope this is some help.
love
Ela



seeing is freeing
hearing is clearing
feeling is healing

Bryan Wrote:
> Now that I've gone raw, I'm so skinny
> by Dr. Douglas N. Graham
>
> This excess water weight is easily
> lost, and is not the issue of this article.

I wish Graham elaborated on this point!

Brian, thank you so must for posting Graham's article - it is just what I needed !! ''

'' Three weeks all raw '' was the longest stretch of time I was able to do because I became so emaciated (being already thin) that I got REALLY scared. Looking unhealthy too ,although working a lot outside and gardening in my spare tine. I was feeling great though...

Since that time, more than a year ago, I kept more raw things on the daily menu but never went back to 100%.

Not loosing weight is the only concern for me right now as I'd like to give the 100% raw life style another chance...
I must say I was thinking that walking was enough to get fit, exercise and put on healthy weight while being raw. From Bernarr's site, I learned that it is not so...

I guess I have to figure out now what kind of exercices I can easily do at home since I'm not much into gym work out.
All comments are welcome.

Blessings and love to all of you
Cynthia

SiennaInLondon,

One way to eliminate excess water weight is to quit eat salt, celtic sea salt, himalayan salt, braggs, nama shoyu, miso, dulse, sea vegetables, or any other products that have sea salt or salt in them (fermented foods will often use salt to slow down fermentation). We all need sodium (but not sodium chloride, a different beast), but really not that much as our body is so efficient at saving sodium. Eating celery and tomatoes will give you all the sodium you need.

Having salt (sodium chloride, or NaCl) in the body causes the body to retain water to help dilute the salt, because it is toxic to human cells. Diluting the salt makes it easier for the body to eliminate it and reduces the damage it does to our cells. This is why eating salt makes us so thirsty.

So quit eating any salt or products that contain salt, and you will see yourself shedding water weight and water bloating.

Thanks Bryan as usual! I hate salt anyway but you have pointed out a few products that I didn't know were problematic. When I was SUKD, I didn't understand why they would put salt in sweet things like cakes and biscuits. I could taste the sourness and couldn't believe nobody else could. Apparently there is quite a capitalistic reason behind it. For example McVities cookies have the same salt to sugar ratio as in your blood so the biscuits are incredibly moreish. How unbelievably EVIL is that?

>the biscuits are incredibly moreish.

I hadn't seen this word before. I figured it out from the context, it is a very cute word! And very apt!

"But now, I'm literally fantasizing about cheeseburgers, cigarettes, cheesecake, brownies, chicken wings, etc. What's up with that? That stuff practically killed me, and now that I'm raw a part of me wants it again?"

This puzzling experience of craving foods that kill us is a standard transition experience associated with detox. I went through this too and at that time I was puzzled why would I want to eat such foods. I was asking exactly same questions that you are asking. I allowed myself to test myself and see how I feel if I have what I crave. I learned that no type of cooked food that I ever tried left me with without adverse effects. There was always a price to pay. I also learned that it takes me about two weeks to clear the physical effects of having eaten something cooked, such as breakouts, feeling lethargic, cravings etc. I no longer find cooked food tempting. If someone kept offering me the finest chocolate, and then kick my head each time, surely I would learn at some point not to be tempted by the chocolate. In a similar way, I learn not to be tempted by foods that I might have enjoyed in the past.


Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

gosia, must be really wonderful not being tempted anymore...

cynthia, temptation by association with the past is something that I still experience and I think it will take long time of getting used to new patterns, before the old patterns will go away completely, and there is no guarantee that they ever will. For example, when I participate in some social situations, I need to think and plan so as not to repeat the past patterns. But the physical temptation is something that fortunately goes away. Things do get easier as one progresses on raw. Cooked food desires get replaced by raw food desires. For example, when hungry, I want fruit, or greens. So it is different from the past, when I had to struggle not to give in. I think that eating a simple diet, with lots of fruit and greens, and no stimulants (salt etc), keeps me hydrated, satisfied, and keeps the cravings away.

I learned that it is not worth giving in social situations, because after having eaten some cooked food stuff, I do have to go through detox, cravings, bad skin period, constipation. Once, we had a friend staying at our place. She was not coping very well with our diet. One day I felt sorry for her and ordered a pizza, which cheered her up. My whole family participated. I thought it would be just one off. The following day she decided to give us a treat in turn and ordered a pizza again. On the third day, she ordered another one. By then, my body was completely refusing. I could not stand another insult and did not participate. It took me more than two weeks to get back to my former self. Nevertheless, I do not regret that experience at all. It was a valuable lesson. And note that it was not the case of me being tempted by the third pizza and deciding not to give in. Rather, I could not physically stand having another one, and had a strong physical rejection reaction. So yes, I could say, that staying raw has become an effortless desire. I am in my fourth year of raw. Some people learn faster than me, some slower. I was cooked for 40 years before going raw, and some say that for every 10 years of cooked one needs 1 year of raw to make it up. So, I've got six months to catch up yet! I think that I've got quite a bit to learn yet. No idea where I will be in a couple of years, or even if I will be a raw foodist still. I like my freedom. I let the future unfold spontaneously. I do not follow any regime, but observe the patterns that manifest spontaneously.


Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

Gosia, you're an inspiration for me... Thank you to be on this planet.

Cynthia

Good article. It has made me remember a program I once saw on PBS called Frontier House. It was about some modern day people living like pioneers did in Montanta in the 1800's. One of the participants, I think his name was Gordon, was concerned enough about his weight loss to have a Doctor come and check him. The Doctor checked and finally concluded something to the effect of 'You are at your normal weight now.' Apparently under the conditions of eating less and more physical labor than he was used to, he was now at an appropriate weight. He wasn't accustomed to this 'appropriate' weight.

Kit

Interesting thread, thanks Bryan for the article. I was curious if you'd list a typical day of eating. As I read posts of what people eat the amount seems huge. But now it does make sense why this is the case after reading Dr. Graham's article. I certainly am not there yet. Having only been at this for about 6 weeks and still struggling with social pressures in and around me to deviate from my plan.

Or as happened yesterday. I didn't eat enough fruit or veggies during the day. I consumed a huge slice of watermelon in the earlier morning and it took me several hours to eat it. From then on I was not hungry, until I got home and then I consumed way too much of the bad things. Such as English muffins and some spaghetti, of which after and even today I am suffering for my poor choices.

I will be moving the end of October to an area where there will be greater choices of fruits and veggies and also moving away from the person in my life who is a major SAD eater and would never consider changing for better health.

One more question, what is ED? and what is SUKD or was it SKUD? Sorry new to all this and sometimes i am lost with people use acronyms

Custom

Devric..

also thank you for sharing about craving cigarettes. I've not smoked in over 10 year. It was a nasty habit I hated even when I did partake.. Over the last several weeks I've been craving a cigarette and also alcohol and couldn't figure it out. Perhaps, my body is finally letting go of the stored nicotine. I don't know.

Custom

Custom,

Yestday, my first meal was at 2pm, and I had 5 pounds of watermelon, 1 pint of black mission figs. For dinner at 7pm, I had 1 pound of grapes, 4 large nectarines, 1 pint of dates, 4 cucumbers.

ED is eating disorders. SUKD is the UK equivalent of SAD - Standard UK Diet, Standard American Diet.

Byran.. Thank you.... So another question for you... how many years raw? how many years 100% raw and how long did it take you to work up to eating that much food? And lastly, I know many have given suggestion on here on how to start out.. but could you please, once again, outline some suggestion on how to start out. Right now I am eating just one slice of watermelon in the morning. Then eating a cucumber and tomato salad, but still using traditional salad dressing. At night I am having maybe a fruit smoothie or a green salad. Green salad consists of some type of lettuce, kalamata olives, tomatoes, and any other greens I might have in the fridge and sometimes sundried tomatoes used as salad dressing. In comparison to your day I am consuming way too little food. But perhaps about the same calories, but highly concentrated and not as rich in water and higher in fat.

Sorry for the seemingly dumb questions. But just trying to figure this all out.. I know people say just keep it simple and eat what sounds good, as long as it is raw. Guess I prefer a bit more of road map

Thanks,

Custom

Great article from Dr. Graham, Bryan. Thanks very much for sharing.

David

I think colonics (or enemas) help tremendously with cravings. Yuk, I know, but it is worth it. The raw food diet helps us to detox faster than we can eliminate and our colon gets backed up (even if we are eliminating well) and then the toxins start recirculating in our blood and set off the cravings. That hamburger you ate ten years ago ends up back in your blood and then you crave it!

This is my 5th attempt at the raw vegan diet and as long as I get regular colonics (I use a colema board at home mostly), I feel like I can go forever. Despite picking up Taco Bell once a week for the kids, cooking for them, and watching everyone in the house eat junk. If I wait too long, like 2 or 3 weeks, the cravings get intense. I have made it 2 1/2 months so far. But, I know, I really can prove this to be true until I have made it for a few years - which I plan to.

Matt Monarch is a proponent of regular colonics. He said there is a vegan2rawvegan DVD available (I haven't bought it yet) where the guy is trying to change to a raw vegan diet and he is talking about how bad he is feeling. Then he goes and gets a colonic and he is feeling great!

The guy who taught me about naturopathy, Dr. Joel Robbins, was a proponent of colonics. Dr. Norman Walker, a famous raw foodist who lived into a healthy old age, also believed in regular colonics.

Here is an excerpt about him I found on the web:

"Norman Walker, D.Sc. (an advanced science degree like Ph.D.) was the man who invented the therapeutic juicer to achieve his results and was internationally famous for using nutrition and cleanses. (He required colonics for his patients.) He wrote several books, including Become Younger, Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices: What's Missing in Your Body?, The Vegetarian Guide to Diet and Salad. His juicer, by the way, is one of only two that were approved by Max Gerson, MD, who treated cancer, tuberculosis, and other degenerative diseases by including juicing in his regimen as early as 1948!"

If you still crave after a colonic and it is emotional (but the recirculating toxins can set off an emotional response also), then I like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). It is a tapping technique and they have a free manual at www.emofree.com.

That is my 2 cents worth and just mho (my humble opinion). :-)

This (from Graham's article) is so true!!!


"I went raw but I got so skinny that I went back to eating cooked", I hear again and again. I can only reply that most people are skinny, they just hide that fact under a substantial layer of fat. We have become used to seeing fat people, they are the norm. So used to it, in fact, that people who are not fat look abnormal to us. They look too skinny. Though for my height I am absolutely a normal weight (5'10", 150 pounds) I have been told that I am "thin, skinny, too trim" and once even, "emaciated". (This last by a man 5'10", 300 pounds).

I am waaaay overweight now and on my way to better health through raw vegan eating, yoga, and eliminating abusive/negative people from my life. When I was what was ideal weight, people who were overweight (that is MOST people) would tell me I was so skinny. Now that I'm just plain fat, people think I am normal weight.

I had a three year brain fart and ate a lot of cooked, SAD food. I'm getting back on the straight and narrow, eating right, and have lost 20 of the 50 freakin' pounds of FAT I gained.

I had a lot of cravings at first -- some cravings for stuff I haven't liked for twenty years but I just keep trying and trying without beating up on myself and it does really get easier.

Hang in there. It gets easier as you go along and your body cleans up.

Lee

I've been going through various threads for the last couple of weeks and thought this might be a good place to ask my question..

Brief intro: I've been a closet vegan for most of my life. I hate dairy products and I've never got into meat/chicken (unless it was junk when I was stressed at work or had no other choice - I'm a journalist). I've been looking into raw foods for over a year (I've always eaten lots of fruit and veggies, just not raw, and I've been health conscious since childhood, thanks mom!) but there are no books available in the country I live in, and no one at either of the 2 health food stores here has heard of raw food as a way of life (I use the term health food store loosly, one is a macrobiotic store and another sells organic veg and nothing else).

So I decided to go ahead with the info I have from the net and newsletters I subscribe to.

It's been hard, but I am kind of managing. Things I don't understand..

1. I get the weirdest 'shakes' and 'nervous' feeling after I eat/drink the fruit/veggie blends. I get really excitable and jumpy (verging on anxiety).

2. Sometimes I really space out and find it hard to think/process information.

I usually have a veggie juice (some blended and some juiced) mixed with fruit for breakfast, and as much of a veggie smothie as I can for lunch (I sometimes get queasy when I chew large mouthfuls), and then a large salad (olives, sundried tomato, sunflower seeds, olive oil) and some veggies. Sometimes I have pasta/couscous (I don't think going 100% raw at once is a good idea) for dinner. (I plan to diversify my eating as soon as time allows, I have a 16 hour work day at the moment so the blends/smoothies are easiest to carry).

I'm allergic to nuts (even with the hydrogen peroxide) so I have to get protein elsewhere, but the weird thing is that it's eating complex carbs like pasta/couscous that make me feel better, not necessarily protein.

I have a friend coming from london in a couple of months, she's bringing gabriel c's book and victoria butenko's with her, till then, I'm wondering if anyone had any thoughts as to why the shakes/hyperactivity/nervousness?

Thank you very much to anyone who has the time to tackle even a small part of what I posted about!

Sorry! I found a thread more suited to my question..am going to re post in "new to this"

Sorry!