I am a newbie here, but can sure relate to eating disorders. I have struggled with either one or the other for many years and have been through various in and out patient therapy programmes. I have many health related problems due to my years of struggle with it, but as I now want to nurture my physical body, I find the thoughts of torturing myself with the eating disorder habits are dwindling. However, I don't think they can disappear 100%. As for following a raw food diet, is everyone here 100%? I know alot of people with eating disorder issues are also perfectionists, so does anybody find themselves berating themself when they are not 100% raw? I know I am now trying to let go of some of my perfectionism and learn more self-acceptance.

That's a really good question. I kind of think it's Ok to strive to do your best, and yet not blame yourself or berate yourself whenever your best isn't quite good enough.

Also, I think there's a difference between taking responsibility for your actions and taking the blame for your actions. Responsibility implies moving forward, sometimes with a new plan. Blame implies shutting down and giving up.

I had to think about this question some more. It's such a good question.

I think striving for perfection can have good or bad consequences, depending on what our goal is and what our attitude is about achieving our goal. For example, is our goal healthy and realistic? Do we have reasonable expectations about the benefits of achieving our goal? Will we pursue our goal in a healthy manner, or will we focus so much on achieving perfection, that we don't care how we get there, even to the point of seriously hurting ourselves?

There are a lot of things we can strive to do perfectly without harming ourselves. A crossword puzzle for instance.

Achieving perfection can obviously be good for us. Like getting 100% on a spelling test. Or writing a poem. Or writing a constitution.

I think being a 100% raw food vegan is, in itself, a very healthy goal to pursue. But a person can be a 100% raw vegan and still not perceive that they are following the PERFECT 100% raw food vegan diet. THAT'S OK if it leads to fine-tuning our 100% raw food vegan diet to enhance our LONG-TERM health, but if we have expectations that our diet should make us into PERFECT HUMAN BEINGS, cure every disease, remove every wrinkle, grow back all our hair, give us the perfect figure or physique, bring us happiness and love, make us rich, and/or allow us to live forever, well, we might get into a little trouble. Especially if we adjust our diet to be ever more restrictive to the point where we're actually hurting ourselves.

A temporarily restrictive raw food vegan diet, and even an occasional water fast can improve our health, our looks, and our sense of well-being. But a consistent overly restrictive diet will have the opposite effect. Expecting that any diet (or lack of) will transform us into perfect human beings is not healthy, either physically or emotionally. It will side-track us from reaching our true potential, because it leaves us obsessed with food, while neglecting all other avenues of self improvement. And it causes us to dwell on our perceived failure, rather than allowing us to reach in new directions for enhancing our health and our personal growth.

Am I getting carried away here? Yes.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2007 07:28AM by suncloud.

I have nothing really special to say except: get your minerals. Minerals help you get what you need. Without them any normal person can binge.

Agree 100% treflur. That's been my experience too.

I always thoroughly enjoy it when you get "carried away" suncloud.

Just so I understand what you guys mean by "get your minerals"...can you expound on how exactly to go about that?

khale

Khale, thanks for saying that. Sometimes I can get a bit preachy. I'll feel like I just have to say something! And then when I do, it bothers me later. So thanks again.

The reason I agree so strongly with treflur's post is that I started eating sunflower seeds to correct an iron deficiency; and, amazingly, I was able to cut way down on my cooked food binges. It really made a huge difference. Before then, I just blamed my lack of willpower.

I guess for me, the minerals I've had to pay most attention to are iron and calcium. Several years ago, I visited a vegan nutritionist for advice on how to be raw vegan. She said calcium is one mineral that's harder for vegans to get. She told me to make sure I ate plenty of oranges and cruciferous veggies. She told me that if I ever get leg or toe cramps at night, that's a pretty sure sign of calcium deficiency.

She was also the one who told me about raw wheat germ. I tried it for awhile and really liked it, but then I kind of just forgot about it for many years. I don't really know why.

Later, I read that unhulled (brown) sesame seeds have lots of calcium. I think I read it in John Robbins' book, "Diet for a New America". That's a great book.

According to nutritiondata.com, unhulled sesame seeds are high in both calcium and iron. You can enter your foods for the day at nutritiondata.com in their "pantry", and see how much iron you get. I personally like it better than fitday. It's more comprehensive, I think. But it can be a little tricky to use at first.

I've been eating both sesame seeds and sunflower seeds as a staple now for many years, but just maybe in the last few months or so, they became more difficult to digest. I started eating them sprouted, and that problem disappeared. I notice too, that I only need to eat about half the seeds that I'd often eat before, when they were unsprouted.

Well, that's about all I know about minerals. I hope treflur answers your question too.