Experimenting with Raw Food Veganism
Wow - this Nablopomo thing is more difficult than I thought it would be. But here I am, continuing to post every day… Tonight was cold and dark. I made a grand effort to attend my yoga class but there was an unusual amount of traffic, so even though I was supposed to be fifteen minutes early according to the buses I ended up being a few minutes late and couldn’t attend my class. I can’t stand that feeling, where you’ve only just missed out on something, when it wasn’t really your fault. I know for next time to go much earlier for the class to make sure I make it.
Anyway, it’s been a long time coming but I thought I would finally tell the story of my experience with raw food. It has to begin with my lifelong struggle to maintain a healthy weight. I had done so, through hard work and developing athletic habits, but even with veganism I found that I had a difficult relationship with food. A tendency to overeat unnecessarily, plenty of cravings and too much of a focus on eating. I wanted to eat to live, not live to eat. I began researching raw foodism, something I did for months, not quite ready to go completely raw.
The research was confusing, to say the least. Since it’s a new phenomenon, I found it hard to sift through a lot of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo to find out practical ways of getting all of the benefits I’d heard of:
- Needing less sleep
- Having more energy
- Living longer
- Preventing cancer
- Not having to worry about my weight
- Moods balancing out, feeling happier
- Better brain functioning (memory, clarity, etc)
And much more, but these were the top things that inspired me to keep learning about raw foods. Because of its relatively new status and seeing extremity, it was difficult to figure out what the right information was. Debates about people on raw food eating too much fat (even if it was healthy), versus those that said you could never eat too much healthy fat. I knew there were plenty of people who expressed “spiritual” connections with phrases like “bliss” and “harmony,” etc, but I was motivated by practical reasons. If I am going to graduate school, it would be great if I could have the energy and brain functioning it requires to be at the top of my game. But of course for all areas of my life it seemed like I would have a lot less stress.
To figure out if the supposed raw food benefits were actually true, I knew I would have to test it out for myself, experiment by going raw. I tried several times to eat raw, but it never seemed to work out. I read Victoria Boutenko’s book Greens for Life which I really liked - Boutenko seems like a relatively sensible raw food advocate and explains her beliefs through her own experience of her family going 100% raw and healing their various illnesses. I started to incorporate green smoothies, experimenting with different combinations and gradually getting to the point where I was happy to add in plenty of greens. In my research I stumbled across stories of people overcoming even stage four cancer by eating raw, curing their eye sight, and having grey hair go back to brown/black again! In the face of all of these seemingly ridiculous allegations, I had to remain as critical as possible. Behind all of it, I reasoned, there must be some reason it is catching on so much. I’m not sure what I believe until I try it myself and see what effects it has on my body.
I consider myself an open-minded person, but I find raw foodists a little too over the top sometimes. Raw food veganism as a result is taken as something of a fad diet - something trendy that celebrities sometimes experiment with, something light-hearted, extreme and thus exciting for those reasons. The more I got engulfed in my raw research, the further I felt from the core ideas of veganism and my strong political stance in refusing to eat meat. Despite the fact that raw food veganism is a lifestyle that makes a big difference for the environment and for animals, there is hardly any discussion about this in the movement. The rhetoric surrounds ideas of ‘feeling good,’ experiencing extreme joy and bliss from eating really healthy. This bothers me, but I can understand the benefits of a lifestyle that is separate from heavy ideas of morality - it makes it much more enticing to the general public and as a result raw food veganism does draw in many SAD (Standard American Diet) eaters than the vegan movement. But when raw food vegans cheat, they sometimes eat meat - which must be extremely hard on their system. There are also some raw foodists who eat raw dairy and raw meat - in my opinion they are misguided. Do an ounce of research and you will see the negative health impacts from eating meat and dairy - to eat these raw in an otherwise wholesome idea of natural fruits and vegetables seems very counter-productive to me.
So what does the raw food diet entail? Essentially, no food should be cooked past the point of 115 degrees fahrenheit, or else raw foodists believe that plant foods lose their natural enzymes and a good deal of nutrients. You are eating your food in its most whole form - uncooked and usually organic. The diet consists of eating vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains and legumes… you subsequently are cutting out all soy, wheat and problematic additives. It is a diet that returns completely to whole, unprocessed foods. They believe that since raw food contains the intended enzymes to help digest it, the body has to do much less work - not having to produce the necessary enzymes and being able to break down the food in its most whole form. As many vegans know there is no problem getting enough protein as long as you are consuming enough calories - on this diet you get high levels of protein from the usual sources: greens (spinach has lots of protein), nuts, seeds, legumes, sprouted grains, etc.
So I had come to the conclusion that I could not try it on my own. Despite the fact that I was managing to get in lots more raw foods, I was going to need a big push to go all the way. A friend of mine had signed up for a local raw food detox. For 30 whole days, it consisted of a support group, comprehensive binder of information, and permission to participate in a detoxifying and life-changing raw experience. Well, I decided, as I try to, to take the leap. I paid the large financial investment it entailed (ouch!) hoping it would be worth it.
In the beginning, it was easier than I expected. I felt I intuitively knew what to eat, and when. I started to experience the benefits of my decision. First I noticed that I was much happier, and had lots more energy. I felt so different - as if I was buzzing all day at work, always awake and seemingly thrilling with this alertness. As a consequence of this high energy I found that I was much more exhausted when it came time for bed - I felt like my body would push me into bed - I couldn’t stay up late like I normally did, but felt compelled to go to sleep.
My two favourite benefits though, make raw foodism extremely appealing to me:
- I began to notice my mind improving. First I noticed I had a much better short term memory, remembering things effortlessly I had experienced that day or the day before that I hadn’t even tried to remember. Even things as detailed as phone numbers, would just come to the surface of my mind, unbidden. At work, I could always perform under pressure extremely well - I was able to come up with creative solutions to problems and manage my stress much better.
- I found also that I was being very satisfied and nourished by my food. I stopped thinking constantly about food or craving it, but in fact it felt easy to control what I ate. I would think consciously: I should probably eat some more veggies now, and the balance between fruits, vegetables, and fats felt effortless to me. If I was eating something very fatty, like raw pesto with spiralized angel hair zucchini pasta, I felt like my body told me when it was too much - almost like an audible: stop! and I didn’t feel comfortable eating more. I also felt like I could easily go without a meal without having hunger drive me crazy, and when things got really busy at work I could easily go through meetings or workshops without worrying about food. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t hungry, I just felt…nourished. I didn’t have to eat constantly. For someone who has experienced a lifelong struggle with food, this is extremely liberating! I never had to worry about my weight, and I felt as if I was free from an intense addiction to foods that had never let me live my life to its fullest.
The only detox symptom I had was during the 30 days was cold sores in my mouth, a common symptom as the body tries to expel toxins and the bacteria in the mouth gets a little out of whack.
So that is the good side of the detox. But here’s where we get into the confusion. As the 30 days drew to an end, I noticed I started to have extreme cravings for cooked food. When I researched this, some people said that this can be caused by eating too little calories - your body is actually craving calories. My birthday came after the detox and I went back to eating cooked vegan food, noticing that it was very hard to eat a high percentage of raw foods while still eating cooked - it so easily went out of balance. Sadly, I think I’m the kind of person who needs to be nearly 100% - someone who needs extreme boundaries. Anyway, I was off track going back on cooked and could really feel the difference as my body tried to deal with the toxins it had been cleansing from - wheat, sugar, cooked fats, fried foods, etc.
I went back on raw for a while, and this time tried to track my calories using My Daily Plate. Here’s where I realized why I had been craving so much near the end of my detox. I definitely wasn’t eating nearly enough calories. When I looked back at my journal I noticed that on the days where I ate way too few calories I wrote about experiencing strong cooked food cravings. This confusion was in part because I didn’t get enough detailed support from my 30 day detox and the research was so difficult to muddle through. When I tried to eat the proper calories I was concerned about doing it right - not eating too much fat, and so I experimented with eating more calories by trying to eat more fruit rather than indulging in too many nuts, seeds and avocadoes.
But right now I am torn between eating close to 100% raw or keeping cooked foods in my diet, for several reasons:
- I find it difficult with my busy lifestyle to incorporate sprouting, which I feel would make raw so much better (I love sunflower sprouts!)
- I tend to gravitate towards the simplest recipes … which can make me kind of boring when I try to describe how I eat to family and friends who think I’m a little nuts. The more raw I eat, the more and more I appreciate tastes no one else feels the same about in the way they eat. I get into strange food obsessions, right now it’s apples. I can’t get enough of them!
- Every Sunday night I have a family dinner with J’s family. His mother is so amazing that she always makes great vegan recipes, but I would never expect her to make raw recipes - and with all of the conflict my veganism has caused I’d rather not make myself stand out even more by eating all raw at these events.
- Likewise with my family who still are struggling with my choices to be vegan, they may not be able to accept my choice to be raw.
- My work will often order pizza (I get a vegan version) or go to restaurants as a social event.
I’ve always had the problem where I care way too much what people think about me, how I come across, etc. I should be able to eat the way that I feel is healthy, and not be trapped by worrying about how others will perceive my lifestyle. I know that it’s healthy for me, and that should be all that matters. But, then again, I do want to be able to harmoniously socialize with family and friends. I would never go back to being a meat eater and stand by my veganism, but I’m not sure how willing I am to stand up for raw foods especially since it seems so divorced from advocating for animals in a more concrete way.
Right now I’m eating mostly raw until dinner, but I have been gradually slipping more and more. I’m having this strange sensation where my body is pulling me in two directions. I can physically feel the difficulty I’m putting myself through by eating unhealthy cooked food, and I find that my mind craves breads and junk food, while I find myself intuitively drawn to high water fruits such as apples … wanting that hydrating feeling. Sometimes I look at cooked foods and they seem so dry!
So you can see how this is complicated. Really, the best option would be to stay about 80-90% raw, eating raw all the time I can control it and eating healthy cooked food at social events. I am just not good at that kind of balance, so I will have to find a rhythm to get into somehow. This whole issue is troubling me as I struggle to do what is best for my body and my life. I want to get that amazing feeling back, that alertness and energy, the feeling of happiness that infused my life. Right now I can’t even believe that I did it for 30 days, but I know I can certainly do it again. Maybe these issues are all in my head; I realize that this level of attention to health is above and beyond what most people consider normal! But I guess I now know what it feels like to be really healthy, to feel it in your mind and your body completely. And now that I know, it’s hard to understand how to reconcile this with a normal life.
Thanks for the feedback.
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