Hello all. I've been mostly raw for over a year now, moving towards mostly fruit. anyway, i haven't tried mono eating yet but want to. i feel like i could eat only watermelon for days straight, i love it so much.

I was just wondering, for those that have done this or do it on a regular basis: what fruits do you tend to mono eat and for what duration? For those that have done it with apples, do you stick to one kind?

Thanks :-)

Hi Birdie,

There's no set form for mono eating, it can be for one meal, one day or however long you want to experience this way of eating.

One of the pitfalls of this (or anything else with raw lifestyle) is that you can approach it from the mind or from a feeling place. My experience is that our modern society has conditioned us to over-exercise our minds at the expense of staying in touch with our senses or feelings. So mono eating is a great place to practice your feeling skills and get in touch with your body. After all, the mind is only a small part of the whole being.

Since you expressed that you're moving towards mostly fruit in your diet you are already in an excellent position to play with mono eating. It's a great way to take advantage of fruit that is in peak season, abundant and at it's lowest price in the stores. Start with one meal a day and work your way up from there. A friend of mine mono ate bananas for 10 days last winter and shared her experience in these posts.

My favorite fruits to mono eat are melons of all varieties, bananas, mangoes, papaya, peaches, persimmons, very fresh sweet corn (preferably just picked at peak sweetness) and the king of fruits, durian. Some things just naturally lend themselves to mono meals like my favorite, watermelon and durian.

I find apples a little harder to digest if eaten in large quantities, but if they work for you go for it. As for your question about mixing varieties, why not trust your own experience, try it both ways and come back and share your experience.

Some things I don't mono eat. Fresh dates for example, they just feel too heavy if I eat a lot of them alone so I usually eat them with romaine lettuce or cucumber slices. I don't recommend large mono meals of overt fats like avocados or nuts (durian is an exception). I'm still playing with nuts in my raw diet and lately have been moving towards eating them by themselves and not eating anything else afterwards except for some citrus if I don't feel satiated.

Whatever you do have fun!

I agree with Uti. I have been eating this way for many years....and enjoy eating one thing at a sitting....and waiting a few hours...or whatever....and then eating again. Very simple...and gives rise to more complete digestion. Favorite items include: Melons, avocadoes, pineapple, asian pears.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I have done mono eating on apples for a few days to a week. The first time, I mixed varieties, and asked about it here. Some advice I got was to keep it to one variety. By the end of the week, my digestion was very quick from swallowing to -you know- and very clean on the other end (yikes! sorry!).

I found that apples were wonderful for me, I felt the fiber was the right amount for me--and the crunching kept me satisfied. Once I switched to one variety (mac), I could eat many more with no discomfort. Then the second time I did it, I used only sweet apples (no granny smiths or pippin etc...though these are my favorite). again, success. The most recent time, I would get a few of one kind per meal. Then the next meal I chose whatever made my mouth water first, and got a few of that variety.

Apples may not work for you at all. I have tried grapes and couldn't focus in the way apples helped me. Sometimes I think to try melon, but when the day comes that I decide to begin, I keep choosing apples--and I don't fight it.

my reason for monoing comes from a mental clarity need--when my emotions turn sour, I look at my diet and realize that I've begun to get a little harried and haphazard (even still raw)--like mixing dried fruits and avo and tomatoes at one sitting...bleh. It comes to pass that I have mono-ed once a month the last three months. I wonder if this is occurring in connection to my menstrual cycle...I suppose it's pretty likely based on the phase.

so fascinating to watch this body fulfilling itself.

measure twice, cut once.

"In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." ~r.brautigan

I make paintings

My fave mono-fruit meals tend to be an abundance of apples blended into a puree. - The same with melons.
I tend to enjoy mono-diet fruit meals as the first meal around midday.
However at the moment I enjoy my green-leaf burritos too much to be mono-fruit in every meal.