The Raw Food Lifestyle
7 Tips to Succeed
Living the raw food lifestyle can be a blast. When you eat close to 100% raw fruits and vegetables, your health goes to a new level. Physically, you feel like a million dollars; mentally, you feel like Einstein; emotionally, you feel like a rock. The raw food diet benefits are mind-blowing.
Despite the massive positive benefits, many people have trouble transitioning to a raw food diet. The attraction of cooked food holds strong, especially when raw food doesn’t seem to fill us up. Rather the transition being easy and automatic, it’s often complicated, hard and very “stop-and-start”.
If you’ve begun learning about the raw food lifestyle and want to start making changes, use these seven awesome tips to make it easier. Also check out 21 Must Read Raw Food Facts.
1. Get a juicer.
Ok, so this first tip isn’t very surprising. Since you’re reading this on a juicing site, you may already have a juicer. If not, make sure to invest in one. They are an essential part of the raw kitchen and make eating raw THAT much easier.
2. Make a meal plan.
Jumping straight into it is the fastest way to failure. But hey, failing only provides another lesson, the lesson being that making a meal plan will make everything easier. Figure out ahead of time what you’ll eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Remember that “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
See List of Raw Foods for tips.
3. 100% isn’t necessarily the goal.
While going 100% raw has produced countless benefits for many people, you can still enhance your health by eating a large proportion of your diet raw. The best practice here is personal experimentation. Be your own guru and do your own tests. If 100% raw doesn’t work for you (and it doesn’t for some people), then incorporate some cooked foods.
4. A blender is a great addition to a juicer.
Green smoothies are a staple part of a raw food lifestyle and a great way to consume a bunch of veggies with their fiber. Juicing strips the fiber out while a blender keeps it all combined. For best results, make use of both.
5. Transitioning has its own side-effects.
Whenever you make drastic changes to your diet, you can expect various uncomfortable symptoms. This is no different when transitioning to raw. People often experience nausea, headaches and various other conditions when first beginning a raw food lifestyle. The severity of the symptoms directly relates to how drastic the change in diet.
6. Eat lots of fruit.
While vegetables are high in minerals, they do not contribute many calories. While this is a good thing when it comes to weight loss, it also makes it hard to feel full. To meet your calorie requirement, a large part of living the raw food lifestyle is lots of fruit. Eat a BIG fruit salad for breakfast and snack on fruit during the day.
Eating raw food exclusively is made easier if you consume lots of fruit.
7. Drink lots of water.
When you’re eating mostly raw, you’ll be getting a lot more fiber than your body is used to. Fiber soaks up fluid which means you’ll need to rehydrate more often when living the raw food lifestyle. Fresh fruit and vegetable juice, herbal teas and water are your best tools. An amazing habit I’ve gotten into is drinking a bottle of water as soon as I wake up. This has the effect of waking me up immediately and kicking my digestive system into gear.
