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Welcome to the site! I used to worry about my coconut oil consumption when trying to lose weight, but I found out that weight loss really is about calories in versus calories out, so it's not what you eat, but how many overall calories you are eating and burning, and if there is a deficit between the two.
Thanks ClaireT. Do you, or does anyone, have suggested limits for raw food intake? Perhaps there is a weekly menu somewhere that gives ideas about food intake with minimal use of nuts and nut butters (my addiction, I must admit).
I probably ate mostly fruit, veggies and almond butter. I cannot imagine that almond butter (1tbls per day) really made me gain weight, but while eating raw for that 18 months, I felt wonderful but did not lose one single pound. Oh... I did have 1/4 cup of nuts per day. I am 55 years old and weigh 169 pounds. At the tme, I was training for a marathon so I was getting a lot of exercise (cardio) in. . . I'm stumped. I will be eating mostly raw (about 80%), but want to figure out how to lost weight too.
Hm. My weight loss secret was to find the most flavorful and filling foods with the least amount of calories (I ended up eating a lot of olives). Hopefully someone will come along that can offer a more complete meal plan. lol
I've been looking for the same thing, but all I keep running across are exercise tips. Diet is important too IMHO!
There are around 15 calories in a teaspoon of sunflower seeds. I don't think something small like that would cause too much harm to a weight loss diet. Micronutients and variety are important. Maybe halving the usual raw vegan recipes would be enough?
So it looks like we need to create our own raw meal plan. Erinc, I recently read an article about Sarno (one of the top raw food gurus, as I understand it). He recently received reports about his blood work being high in cholesterol (I believe this was it) after eating a 100% raw diet. My interpretation of the article is that eating 100% raw is not so good anymore but eating 75% to 80% raw still gives us benefits. The article mentioned the heavy reliance on nuts in the raw diet as being a factor. I read this article either in the AARP magazine or Vegan but here is a link to an internet blog that interviews three top raw chefs (http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=4102&catId=7). Here is a quote from that article attributed to Boutenko.
"We understand now that regular consumption of large quantities of nuts, seeds, and oils is not healthy due to their high levels of omega 6s— which can contribute to negative health conditions including slowed metabolism, inflammation, and obesity."
Erinc, this time around, I am just trying to each whole healthy food and am not trying to make the raw food into something (pie crust, rice, etc.). Let's share some of our nut free meals.