Hi,

Here I am, at three months and a half 100% raw and still confused as hell. In the beginning, I took the advice to go low fat seriously and ate large amounts of fruits and some vegies and nuts for the first two months. Maybe 80% fruits, 15% vegies and 5% nuts and seeds (by volume). At first all seemed well and I felt what is usually known as detox. I actually loved eating those savory fruits all the time. However, this detox seemed to never give me a break and other bad things started to show up.

I noticed sensitivity in my gums and teeth and plaque forming pretty easily and what looks like the beginning of a cavity (I never had any). I also started to realize that the lightheartedness that I sometimes experienced wasn't necessarily due to detox but in fact dehydration. I found it annoying to go to the bathroom sometimes 3 or 4 times per hour but figured that my body was just eliminating the excess amount of water. Well it wasn't all the time because when my body eliminated such amount of water my mouth was dry as hell and I had lightheartedness.

I read great posts from Arky that opened my mind on dogmatism in the raw food world and decided to act and change things. Since now about two weeks, I've lowered my fruit intake greatly and added a lot more greens and vegies. I also added more fat sources. Now it's more like 25% fruits 65% vegies and 10% nuts, avos and seeds by volume.

I've seen some progress in my teeth. Plaque isn't forming so easily. However, the dehydration and frequent urination that I had when eating huge amounts of fruits now happens with small amounts. While sometimes I was fine with 15 bananas in one setting seem, 2 bananas seem to provoke a crisis now. Like if my body tells me it doesn't want fruit anymore.

I'm writing this in the middle of a urination crisis with a dry mouth and even a mild stomach ache that seem to come from the fact that I ate a banana and an orange. It prevented me to sleep.

Even eating things like peppers, cucumbers and celery seem to make me go to the bathroom often. I get those crisis when I go very often for a while then it stops.

I'm worried because I never had problems like that eating SAD and also because I don't know what I should eat anymore. Restricting the delicious fruits is just one problem, but getting enough calories with greens and minimal fat is the real problem. I heard so much bad things about high fat that I'm scared of that also right now. I also know I would have to eat greens non-stop all day long to merely satisfy my hunger if I just ate that.

As anyone had a problem like that who could help?
Thanks a lot

I'm experimenting with an All-Green Diet, and giving up Fruit altogether. I believe you can build a stronger Body with Greens rather than Fruit. I seem to have a better 'tone'.
Anyway, my advice to you, and all others, would be to just keep Stumbling in the Right Direction. That way you can't get too far off track......WY

I agree with WY...just keep following your instinct until you find that you are living the way that feels right and healthy for your body. Personally, I wanted scientific proof that I was doing well for my body, so I have been getting bloodwork done every so often.

I'm currently experimenting with less fat and more fruit. I was very high fat for my entire transitioning into raw and more than one full year of 100%. I have gained increased health and reduced weight to a healthy range, even with all of that fat. It felt great in the beginning, but now I don't feel as well with the fats and I want to see how it is if I try less fat and more fruit.

Sure, it's not the healthiest thing to be consuming a lot of fats (even if they are raw), but for me it was the easy way to get on the raw path.

I hope you'll find something that works for you very soon, so that you don't worry.

Lots of love to you,

Wendi
XOXOXO

Maybe try no fruit for a week and then gradually increase or add them in and see how you feel?

Don't stress about it!! But do try to keep track of your nutrition.

[utopiankitchen.wordpress.com]

Right. Of course YOU need to do the leg-work....and DECIDE what foods are best for you....and eat them....and accept the consequences/responsibility. In the beginning....I tend to recommdend (just my opinion) a wide variety of fresh, raw unprocessed plant foods that focus on greens on sprouts. Only later, a higher percentage of fruit may help a person in their detox. But in the beginning, this might not be as helpful. There is no ONE standard. Often, what a person needs when they START on the path to health....is not what their final habits evolve into. And when some one finds what finally is right and works for them....it certainly MIGHT deviate from the much larger majority of folks that are just starting on the path - you know?

-In any event, if you are ever in a crisis....then bite the bullet...and move to a way of eating that is 100% comfortable for YOU.....and stretch from THERE. Acute crisis (mental or physical) or extreme thinking/obsession (for those that have it) is NOT helpful!

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Have you looked into cleansing consistantly while detoxing/transitioning?

I don't believe that it's the fruits that's causing the "problems" but what's coming out of you because of what your longer eating, don't forget that now your raw your body has opened up the flood gates to your emotional and physical detox/purging!

Problem is that a lot of us cannot get rid of the toxins/debris fast enough and that's where the problem starts because you end up with all this crap racing around in your blood stream and everywhere else.

Just ma two cents

Richard

Those 3 months you took seemed to follow Dr. Grahams approach. Maybe set up an e-mail consult with him?? Just e-mail him and ask, it's not bad price wise and may help guide you to at least starting off with guidance. Afterwards, with a better foundation and awareness you can adapt to what works for you over time or continue on as with his guidelines. Sometimes a little professional reassurance can help. In the end we all become our own guru's anyhow if we do this long term.

I agree with F-1 detox can take a long time depending on how long you ate poorly.
Im coming out of it finally and i must say Im a spastic freak! Like I felt when I was a kid and drove my mamma crazy! But before this I had a constant runny nose,and was tired as hell all the time and just felt like sleeping and I hated the runny nose it seemed it would never stop! now the runny nose is all gone!I sleep less,wake up before my alarm and cant get enough of working out! I ride my bike to work and back 6 miles round trip,run 2.5 miles 4 times a week and I go PLAY at the playground doing pullups.leg extentions,pushups,russian twists etc and I feel great! Matter fact my muscles are getting bigger and toning up nicely!
But when you are 100% fruit I think its a good idea to be avtive, because its a high energy lifestyle! As far a greens? I get mine from cucumbers,avocado,zuchinni.
And I eat everything mono form. Alos the other thing is FOOD IS ENERGY or FUEL for our daily activity, not a passtime or social event. We only need to eat when we are hungry, not for something to do and overeating isnt good eathier, just eat till full and move on! I find myself now eating less and less because I have more important things to do besides eat. But everyone is different I guess. For me fruit is all I need and Im not pushing it on anyone, it is great for me.It has all the nutrients we need check out nutritiondata and plug it in youll see!
Rob

don't worry and eat whatever you want as much as you want. 3 months is a very short time anyway. you will survive! lol!

I had a time when i couldn't eat oranges and now I can eat them for weeks and feel great. Your body transforms/rebuilds itself everyday so what doesn't work now may work later.

And I wouldn't worry about calories too, nobody has really figured it out anyway. I can easily live off pumpkin for days, which is what I actually do so far btw. I wouldn't consult Dr. Grahams too. All answers are inside your body even though you have to learn to listen to it.

Oh and I wouldn't combine banana with orange, maybe try to combine foods properly or eat mono meals.

Walkern Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>I wouldn't consult Dr.
> Grahams too. All answers are inside your body even
> though you have to learn to listen to it.

Hmmm, I think you are missing the fact that sometimes beginners need that mental reassurance from a professional. Not everyone, but this is a suggestion only since the 3 months mentioned were following Dr. Grahams guidelines to begin with.

In addition, true, the answers are within us, but most people at square one do not have the ability to see those answers yet. It can take literally years to become aware of some things. Consider all options and choose to what draws you not what someone else does.

sebzzz,

A couple of things.

When I started the low fat thing, it took me a period of 2 years to get from my high fat of over 60% fat (by calories) to under 10% fat. So it takes time for the body to adapt to a new way of eating. When I was first raw and high fat, my weight became very low for me (130 pounds), I always had dark circles under my eyes, and to other people I appeared unhealthy. And I was eating in excess of 60% fat.

When I first heard Graham speak, I decided to try 80/10/10, and lowered my fat immediately to 10% fat. My body went through a huge detox, where my skin turned grey, and there were times where my skin got very dry and I was flaking dry skin, and I became very chronically fatigued and was unable to work, so I ended up taking a 4 month leave of absence from my work. After that healing period I felt great, and gained 10 pounds, and people no longer viewed me as being sickly. However, I felt I was controlling my fat intake too much, and I was desiring more fat, so I raised my fat intake to 20%, which felt very comfortable for me, and over the next 2 years my fat intake gradually fell to under 10%.

So going low fat too quickly can results in huge detox. For myself, I welcomed this detox, because there were things inside my body that needed that healing. But going to low fat too quickly felt too controlling for me. I didn't want to control my diet, but allow my body to tell me what it wanted. So I let go of 10% fat, found what felt gentle and not controlling for me, and just let my body dictate what it wanted. And over time, the fat intake fell naturally.

I recommend using a nutritional calculator like fitday, nutritiondata, nutridiary, or Cron-o-Meter to see what your fat intake is. Measuring fat by volume can be very misleading for you in determining your fat intake. A large head of romaine might be 100 calories. The equal volume of bananas might be 400 calories. The equal volume of cashew nuts might be 5000 calories. So measuring by volume and eating these foods, it looked like one was eating 33% vegetables, 33% fruit, and 33% nuts. But as a percentage of calories, it becomes 2% vegetables, 7% fruit, and 91% nuts. And this foods ends up being 11% protein, 22% carbohydrates, and 67% fat.

And after you use a calculator a few times and get a sense of how many calories are in a particular volume of a type of food, you will no longer need the calculator, as you will be able to get a pretty accurate estimate in your head. And then you don't need to bother any more with the calculator.

Thanks for that post, Bryan. It's good to hear your experiences. I know that I have a hard time with 10% cals from fat right now, but who knows what the future holds?! I felt great at 35% c/f but I read what people were writing on here and was nervous about it, so I decided to cut back and found that 20% (or less) was good for me.

I haven't had much of a dramatic detox, yet, don't know if it will come. I exercise VERY regularly and I think this helps. I did have a sore throat in the beginning and some dry skin, one breakout, a few headaches. Now my skin looks great, aside from a pimple here and there, but it gets better every day; I feel like Im glowing on the inside and out and people do notice.

I say if you feel awesome on tons of greens, go for it. Add some lower fat dressing, if you can, to get some calories, maybe with nutritional yeast (not raw) and flax oil.

How do you do with dried fruit? It's not ideal, but at least you'd be getting some of the nutrients from the fruit.

My body doesn't respond well to high fruit or high fat. I do much better on high greens and complex carbs. I'm not sure why some raw foodists focus on fruit versus fat as if they're the only options.

Complex carbs include things like sprouts and tubers. I eat slightly sprouted buckwheat every day. I add agave and cinnamon so it is like crunchy oatmeal. You can sprout grains and beans, dehydrate raw bread, and blend sweet potato soup too.

sounds like detoxing... from everything I have read, this is a common thing that happens. The blood becomes to thin for the body, to fast. So the body needs time to adjust to the thinner blood. I would assume its easier to get nose bleeds during this time aswell.

Hey No5

I also dont get on with high fat and im not getting on to well with high fruit at the moment either - i cant stop eating and im craving cooked foods.

I just wanted to ask how many calories you have each day ?

I know when i have used fitday and not added any sweet fruits or fats just a bunch of veg and sprouts and greens - the calories are always very low.

Paulie

For the mouth... rinse with and drink fresh wheatgrass. It will help so much. I can't say this enough for any mouth discomfort. When I cut out a lot of fats and went high-fruit, I had some very bad mouth reactions which this cured.

I feel awesome on high fruit/all fruit most days, but there are other days where I just NEED something else (I'm 4.5 months raw now). Understand that the body is constantly changing and evolving, ESPECIALLY in the beginning--so certain days you might need numbers other than 8/1/1!

One interesting thing I did notice was that as I ate less fats, I craved less fats. Eating more fats also made me want to eat more fats the next day. Also, mixing sources of fats will almost always make me want to binge the day of and the next.

But high fruit, a shot of wheatgrass, maybe a small salad, and one source of fat in reasonable amount keeps me feeling good. =)

Something else I wanted to mention concerns the type of fruit you are eating. I have personally found that my body handles low-sucrose fruit better than high-sucrose fruit. That means no melons or citrus for me. I do okay with berries though and the occasional banana isn't too bad if I blend it with alot of greens.

I'm testing different types of fat as well. I'm experimenting with small amounts of long-chain omega-3 fat instead of the large amounts of short-chain omega-3 fat that are necessary to provide the same benefits due to conversion ratios. I eat a vegan diet right now so that means algae-derived supplements. I don't have any conclusions about this yet though.

Hope that helps!

Hey Paulie,

I try to get at least 1800 calories a day. I eat 2 cups of buckwheat and 2 heads of romaine lettuce every day. That alone adds up to 1400 calories and the remaining 400 calories is pretty easy to get with small amounts of fruit that my body can handle (e.g., kiwi right now), small amounts of fat, non-sweet fruit, and veggies.

In fairness though, I should point out that I haven't been following a high complex carb raw diet for as long as I tried the high fat and high fruit versions of the raw diet. So I don't know how well this will work in the long term. One criticism I already have is the digestibility of raw complex carbs. They are more difficult to digest than watery or mushy fruit. So I make sure to soak, sprout, chew thoroughly, and do whatever else helps in that regard.

It sure would be easier if there was an obvious choice that had all benefits and no problems and that everyone agreed on. But then again that would be pretty boring too...

Be sure your getting enough greens to help keep the sodium/potassium balance from getting unbalanced due to all the potassium in the fruit. If you don't get natural sodium in your diet you can become dehydrated even though you are eating plenty of high water content foods and drinking plenty of water.

Hi No5

Do you sprout your buckwheat ?

I wouldnt be eating that much buckwheat

"Due to the growing popularity of sprouts in general, and a widespread ignorance as to the toxic dangers posed by buckwheat greens specifically, many people are today suffering unnecessarily.

The basic problem with buckwheat greens is that they contain fagopyrin, a naturally occurring substance in the buckwheat plant. When ingested in sufficient quantity, fagopyrin is known to cause the skin of animals and people to become phototoxic, which is to say hypersensitive to sunlight. This condition, specifically known as fagopyrism, occurs when the ingested fagopyrin accumulates under the skin and is subsequently activated by sunlight, resulting in a toxic reaction within the skin. Typically, exposed areas of skin turn pink or red within minutes, and a strong burning sensation accompanies the reaction. Within a few hours the exposed areas usually appear to return to normal, however continue to remain ultra-sensitive to cold water, hot water and to friction. This sensitivity can last for days."

[www.gillesarbour.com]

Anything that can make a person sick from getting sunlight scares me somewhat, so tread with caution. But I could be misinformed, so please enlighten me if this information is incorrect... or a result of something else. I know the sprouted buckwheat smells really good.

Perhaps its a detox? Perhpahs an indication of those with an acidic body eating to much grains at once?

isn't buckwheat a fruit?

I do sprout buckwheat but only to the point where there are little tails which are shorter than the length of the seed itself. I never sprout to the point that they begin to green. I am aware of the risk of sunlight sensitivity but was under the impression that this can only occur when you eat buckwheat greens (i.e., similar to how green spots on potatoes can be toxic).

I have been eating 2 cups of buckwheat per day for a couple weeks now and I live in Florida so I suspect that I would have noticed something by now. If I do start to notice anything I'll be sure to let everyone know so they don't make the same mistake. On the positive side, buckwheat is one of the few natural sources of D-chiro-inositol which is being used to treat diabetics.

thats good to know... keep us updated, because I am definitly interested. BTW how is eating and digesting the buckwheat sprouts? You say have done it for two weeks now... I have sprouted grains before, and found they were way to hard to chew, and not easily digested.

No5, how do you eat your buckwheat? do you blend it into mush or just eat them whole?

Context, I find buckwheat sprouts to be the easiest to digest out of the starchy sprouts. My experience matches yours concerning most grain sprouts. I find them to be hard to chew and difficult to digest in large quantities. Small amounts are okay but when I base my diet on unblended grain or bean sprouts my digestion gets overwhelmed. But then again, I've always had weak digestion (i.e., vata in ayurveda).

Uma, I just eat the sprouts whole. I make sure to chew them thoroughly but I think that's a good practice for any food.

Let me know if either of you try them out. I'd be interested to hear your experiences too!

I might try them out... see what happens.