hi! my name'a trish and i wen't from vegan to raw vegan about a week or two ago. it's going really well and i have no desire to go back, i have more energy and my favorite is how it is sooo much easier to get up in the morning! especially when i'm looking forward to a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. but i have a lot of question about cleansing and detox! i think this is something i should really do but i don't really know how, or when, or what it is like? what is the benefits of it, what is the master cleanse? when is detox and cleansing typically done when someone starts out raw?

i've tried to find information about this or people's personal stories but i couldn't lol. anyways. yeah i don't really know a whole lot about it !

Welcome. The folks here are very helpful and will answer most questions you have. I am new myself...only raw for about 2 months now. However, I started with the Master Cleanse, before I knew anything about raw. It was through researching the MC that I found out about the raw food lifestyle and even the differences between vegetarian and vegan. I've learned a lot in 2 months.

There is a lot of info on the internet about the Master Cleanse, just google it. When you start eating whole foods, detox is something that will occur naturally within your body as it begins to deal with toxins. My detox was bad for 2 weeks, then 1 week, medium and then probably another 2 weeks light. The hard weeks I felt like I had the flu...depressed, aches, pains, and no energy. The 3rd week More energy, but still feeling a little drained with mild aches and pains. The 4th & 5th weeks, a little aches and pains. BUT...everyone is different and it largely depends on what you are eating. Even with whole foods, too much fat in the diet can affect the rate of detox...or if your transitioning versus going 100% cold turkey, your detox rate and symptoms will be different. You'll just have to take it one day at a time and monitor what you eat in correspondence to how you feel.

Again, there is a lot of info out there for you to read and a number of different schools of thought. There seem to be commercial products that you can take for cleansing, but I prefer to do this naturally by just eating good, whole foods.

hi applebaby

congradulations for going raw!

If you have truly eliminated all non raw foods, without even the smallest amount and are not overdoing the fats, you body should detox itself quite rapidly on its own! Some people even start detox at 80 or %90 raw and then increase the raw amount as they can handle the sypmtoms of clean out.....sounds like that's not an issue for you though.
Personally, after going raw I did not want all the maple syrup involved in the master cleanse, though some people really enjoy it.....I would think that a simple raw diet would achieve the same if not better results,
peace
venusian

wow ok thanks for the info guys !! i think maybe why i'm not having as hard of a time right now is because i had previously tried to go raw a month or two ago and that time i reaaally felt the symptoms of detox hard. i felt hungry so often and very light headed and almost like i was dying lol. so while i kept eating many raw things i transitioned back to my old vegan cooked diet. but this time is very different, although a few days ago i was feeling really really depressed for no real reason and i wondered if it was connected with detox. but yeah! my body is getting used to it still. but i guess everything else will come with time.

so ... should i avoid eating a lot of fat at first ? or like, as much fat as i can ? or does it matter. because i love avacados and nuts cure my hunger cravings sometimes !

the more fats you eat, the slower the detox....it's up to you, really....if you mix in days of juicing, you'll speed up the process even more.

hi applebaby...congrats on your transition.

As already pointed out, a diet of predominately raw plant foods is already cleansing/detoxifying in and of itself, and unless you are ill or having some major health problems, there is no good reason to rush detox. Your body is constantly cleansing itself...its a self-cleaning system. Raw foods help in this process so that it (the body) can do what its designed to do, and already does as best it can given the conditions it has to work with.

In my opinion and in my experience, it would be a mistake to drastically lower your fat intake this early in your raw transition. Raw fats are good for you, are satisfying, and enable a great deal of variety in the diet, which is needed by most people when just starting out. Most people gradually reduce the amount of fats they eat as they continue raw over time anyway as the body has its own way of telling you when enough is enough.

I think that most people here would tell you that the most important thing right now is just staying as raw as you comfortably can. Everything else will follow that...


khale

I started this diet 9 days ago and up until yesterday I thought I was doing great.
I was eating Green smoothies 1st thing in the morning and then later fruit and salads . Yesterday for dinner I made a Portabella Mushroom stuffed with Avocado/tomato and onion and a salad. About two hours later I started to feel very sick and spent a good portion of the night in the bathroom getting cleaned out. I thought I was going to die. Today, I am much better but am very weak and am not interested in eating although I have tried to get a little fruit in my stomach. Is this normal? Is this what detox is? I can't seem to find any posts like this one on detox. Appreciated any answers you could send my way.

For nannie11, I got food poisoning from the e-coli tainted spinach that was in stores this year. It was 3 days of misery, thought I (would have like to)was going to die. I should probably have gone to the hospital, but I made it thru.

Love,
Prism

Hi Prism:

I am beginning to think that I did get some sort of poisoning and I hope I don't have to go through that again. I am really going to be careful about what I buy and make sure I wash it really really well before I eat it.