I’ve been 95% for about 3 months, and this past week and almost every weekend since I’ve been back at school I have been eating absolute crap. (like not even vegan foods!) I feel awful, and I feel guilty eating it everytime, but I have these cravings for salty foods, whole wheat pasta, chocolate..and I just go crazy until I eat what I’m craving. If it makes me feel so awful, I shouldn’t be going back to it again and again but I can’t seem to find a way to get motivated to feel good again and eat how I really want to. Maybe it would be best to plan on eating some more cooked foods for winter like soups and quinoa and steamed veggies…if I plan on it then I wont snack on my roommates pizza, right?! Do a lot of you people who aren’t 100% include more cooked foods in the winter? I’m not sure what to do but I know I don’t want to feel like this anymore!
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Do what I do eat more hot peppers and spicy raw foods! I am dehydrating some Habeneros now in my Good4U Dehydrator. I will eat them like chips, when you dehydrate them they are still hot but not as freaky hot, also when they are finally done dehydrating I will make them into a powder and sprinkle on foods I love the flavor and spice. Eating spicy foods is VERY healthy if you can handle it, it improves circulation, increases digestion I have a friend that eats Habeneros everyday whole and fresh! He is 100% Raw literally never eats ANYTHING cooked, he is trying to prove a point and he healed himself of many diseases RAW saved his life he is like 59 now I think and looks like 29 seriously! Who is he? Lou Corona, he is RAWMAZING he taught me a lot about raw, eating spicy = healthy. Also if you eat some cooked foods every now and then it is not the end of the world! I will eat more hot soups if it is cold out it is ok really….!
Rawsaysrita – I think you should do what feels right for you. There are so many conflicting opinions within the raw community, but the one constant seems to be to listen to your body. I was craving the processed crap recently too. Since eating some cooked soups, etc., I’m not craving the processed stuff (at least not yet). :)
I have recently stopped eating 95$% raw, and I’m happy with my decision. Now it is more like 75% raw. Basically, I’m eating a raw breakfast, raw snacks, and raw lunch, but for dinner I had a cooked veggie soup, and tonight I had some baked winter squash. It felt perfect. I was having trouble digesting anything cooked when I was so high raw, and it made it difficult to share a meal with my friends and family.
I am a single parent, and my daughter loves cooked beans, veggie soups, etc. I found that while I was eating 95% raw, I was not cooking her the wholesome cooked foods we used to enjoy together, and she was eating more canned, processed, and frozen foods. It doesn’t make sense for me to make a pot of home-made soup for just her to eat… so I’m happy with my decision to eat this way. We enjoyed a yummy home-made minestrone soup, and the winter squash I ate was so much tastier and easier to digest for me than when I shred it and eat it raw. Next we’re going for a pea soup. :)
For Fall/Winter, at least for now, this is how I plan to eat. Instead of worrying about eating something because it is cooked, I’m going to make sure I don’t eat the processed crap, and enjoy the earth’s bounty in a way that makes sense for my family.
Why don’t you try to eat lots of broths and soups? They are cooked but more or less benign. Even a chicken broth with carrots and good salt will soothe your cravings. Remember also lots of juices, like orange-mango!
You can make yourself a nice vegetable broth, then add the vegetables that need to cook a longer time. Once it is ready, toss in some leafy greens that don’t need to be cooked. That way, you’ll be able to eat them in a hot meal, but not necessarily cooked, since they’ll only be in the soup for a few minutes and only after it is off the heat source. If your daughter prefers hers cooked, you can cook hers but add yours to your own bowl separately. Each ingredient might be less nutritious due to the cooking, but it will still be one of the healthiest ways to cook food.
When I was in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, huge pots of aromatic stocks were made ahead of time. The rice noodles would be cooked, then put in the bowl, with the stock poured over. The veggies were all added afterward, completely raw. They really did not cook in the soup. Often, we were given a plate with raw cabbage, beans, sprouts, tomatoes, herbs and lemons or limes. We’d just tear the big items up, toss everything in our bowls and enjoy a hot noodle soup, but with raw, crunchy vegetables … delish!!! Who knows what the stocks were made from, but it didn’t matter to us. We weren’t into eating tough, stringy water buffalo meat or whatever mystery meat was going into the meat versions of those soups. The vendors happily gave us meat-free versions (with no discount on the price) and thought they were making out like bandits.
1sweetpea- great idea, thanks for the suggestion about adding the raw veggies to my cooked soups! :)
rawbrian—thanks for reminding me about peppers. i just added 1/2 of one to the last part of my green smoothie. yippee. =)
rawsaysrita—i do similar to littlegems in the winter. it just doesn’t feel right to me to eat salads and bananas when it’s snowing. and i can’t do all the fats. i eat steamed veggies, soups, i would even eat the occasional cooked vegan meal at a restaurant (but only for dinner). it makes socializing SO much easier to be a little more flexible and not quite so attached to the mecca of “RAW.”
all these suggestions are great. remember that not all cooked food is created equally. putting a mars bar and a plate of steamed veggies in the same category can be a little misleading. =) i sometimes get whole wheat pizzas (ask for it without the cheese and top it with some olive oil and chili, or avocado. SO good!). if you want chocolate, raw chocolate desserts are SO much better anyway…
raw chocolate sauce: -2 TB ground cacao nibs (use a coffee mill) -1/2 TB coconut oil -2-3 TB date paste -a little water
(blend in magic bullet type small blender)
make more as you see fit.
=)
I think if you prepared some tasty spicy food in advance it would help you keep off the junk. Try some of the pizza and wrap recipes on site and take a flask of warmed raw soup with you to school. Snack on spicy pumpkin seeds with gojis, cacao and raisins.
maybe try the curry recipe on my profile, it got me through last winter, I think I ate it every day pretty much. So far this winter I am ok, all I have noticed so far is that I am into eating more fat than normal and pigging out on raw ‘not’ potato salad to ring in the change of seasons, which is no problemo for me ;)
Thanks for all your suggestions. At home (not here at school) I have a dehydrator which would make life so much better for warming foods, making crackers, I do eat a lot of spicy foods. I put cayanne or siracha (the asian hot sauce) on just about everything : ) I will try some hot peppers though. I will probably work with soups and such for the winter, and I had been using a broth then adding my veggies last minute so they were still almost raw. I find that anytime I eat cooked foods I feel really heavy and bloated and it is hard for me to digest, so I guess I will just phase in soups and such and just listen to my body for what I need.
Thanks again for your avdice!