Hey Raw foodists,
I’ve been doing at least 80% raw for just over 2 weeks and I really really really love the idea of raw foods however I’m getting bored with it…I love cr4eating amazing cooked dishes and my raw food dishes just don’t wow me like the stuff I used to cook does. And everything ends up tasting the same. Don’t get em wrong, I’ve made up some very wonderful dressings to change flavors around. But I’m a little discouraged right now and on top of that last two weekends I’ve probably only have done about 50% raw and ate some icky stuff cause of my discouragement. I need to lose around 50 pounds and I know raw foods are right for me. Has anyone else had this problem?
Comments
I have not made quite as many recipes as you but I too am getting bored because no matter how you make it, veggies are veggies, nuts are nuts, etc..so if someone can shed light on it, I too am interested in knowing :)
BTW…don’t get down on yourself about not eating more raw…just get back up and keep doing it. Also…I personally had to start slower because i was detoxing so fast and my detox pathways are not working,,,not to say the case for you, but I also know that going raw really fast CAN result in fast weight loss for those overweight, however you do NOT want to lose too much weight too quickly as it can put enormous stress on your liver and gallbladder (speaking from someone with personal experience ;(
Good luck! Btw..can you post some of your dressings??
What do you miss? Temperature? Texture? What are you missing? I don’t eat 100% raw; I had two bowls of minestrone for dinner tonight. High winds in IA and some flurries. Colorful picture, blanket from Pier One?
i miss meat and crave protein all day long, that’s just me and i have to go easy on the nuts…though they say there is a ton of protein in greens, i still crave it
Dude, your already board with it? Are you eating more than just salads? Brows through the recipes on this site, buy a Raw uncook book. I recommend RawVolution to start out with. There are other great ones out there too. Eating raw can be more than just fruit, smoothies and salad. That is the simplest way to eat raw, but there is so much more you can experiment with. If you really think you want to go raw I would recommend a food dehydrator, it will allow you to do so much more.
Can you tell us more about what you have been eating? Maybe that will help explain the boardem a little more. Also, try more than just dressings on your salads. I LOVE putting guacamole on mine and I never grow tired of that. Sprouted seeds, olives and onions are other wonderful toppings for your salad.
I make a bunch of salads and dips throughout the week and offer a few at a meal with lettuce for making wraps. Each bite will taste different, depending on what you put in each leaf. I also make a lot of blender soups. They’re easy and each one tastes different. If you’re bored with basic fruit and vegetable flavours, I offer two suggestions: 1) expand your variety and what you do with them. I’d blow my head off if all I could eat was salad and whole fruit. I love both and enjoy both regularly, but along with some more involved meals with different textures and flavours. 2) Don’t abandon your spice rack. In fact, expand it. Many raw fooders will tell you that as time goes by, your preferences change and you begin to relish the purest flavours of the fruit and vegetables on their own. I too, am a fan of plain fruits and some veggies on their own, but a pinch of this or that goes a long way to make dishes more savoury. I can make a basic blender soup with tomatoes, a red pepper, plus a little onion and garlic, but change it up in a dozen different ways: use ras el hanout (a Moroccan spice blend of up to 25 different spices), basil, parsley, ginger and cumin, cumin and coriander or cilantro, dill, orange zest and juice, a touch of Jamaican jerk seasoning, or hot Madras curry powder, or garam masala or Southeast Asian flavours like galangal, lemongrass, star anise, cloves, chiles. The choices are endless. Yes, you could argue that many spices are not dried in optimal conditions. But, the trade-off is well worth it if you’re able to keep to a mostly raw diet with the addition of a minute amount of fresh and dried herbs and spices. Look for salt-free blends and try to buy from a place with high turnover, so your spices don’t just taste like pencil shavings. I try to buy cumin, coriander, fennel, cloves, star anise, cardamom, allspice, black pepper and nutmeg whole and grind only as I need them, to presever freshness. If it weren’t for variety of spicing, I’m sure my boyfriend would have totally rejected the raw meals I make pretty early on. He likes healthy stuff, but I’ve spoiled him with my “out there” international cooking odysseys. He needs big flavour and frankly, sometimes I do too.
Eat more raw pie! :) Okay, I’m only partly kidding. But seriously, I like lots of flavor, and a variety of textures. I find a great amount of variety of flavor & texture & ingredients in what I make:
seed cheese/dip (Check out Zoe’s “Cheese With Spring Onions” for a great one)
salad dressings
pies (fruit &/or creamy)
crackers/bread
shakes
smoothies
other drinks (like raw warm cocoa or a raw version of orange julius)
pudding
alfredo sauce (with zucchini or kelp noodles)
marinara sauce
lettuce wraps (taco-flavor filling is my favorite)
nori wraps
marinated veggies
Carol Alt recommends deciding what cooked foods you feel you absolutely can’t live without, and deciding how often you need to eat them. Her opinion is that if you know you can still have certain things that you would really miss if you ate 100% raw, you won’t feel deprived.
My new 5 Star Raw Spa Book will totally SOLVE your problem! Not trying to “sell” but just recommending my new no nut recipes, and no dehydrating, so it makes raw fun, easy, exciting again! No nuts is important if you are trying to lose weight…check it out and see what you think click on the new cover: http://www.RawInTen.com hope that helps! Stay away from the nut and avocado or olive recipes if you want to lose weight.
We have a great library system where I live. You can make a list of books you want to borrow online and they email you when they arrive. When i went raw I made a huge list of raw recipe books, so now every couple weeks I get a new un-cook book. When you look at the fancy pictures, you want to try new recipes – which is exciting. Then you can tweak them and make them better! (not boring at all). I got the book Caleb mentioned and there are some rad things in there (try the stuffing recipe!). That totally won’t make you think “a nut is a nut” I recently got “Raw food Real World” – fancy, fancy stuff! You can make your food way more interesting, you just have to take the time and be into it. What’s cool about cookbooks too is that they always have a little section about why they are raw in the start of the book – it’s like an affirmation as to why you are raw.
I stay excited about raw by coming to this site, too! I actually don’t go to other sites anymore because this one is way cool. It’s like a cookbook itself with the recipe section. Everyday people are coming up with awesome new recipes (little surprises when you come to the site), followed by comments of other people getting excited or making suggestions. I ramble….anyhow – there are tons of ways to get excited on raw so stick at it!
Don’t be discouraged, you’re doing well, making the effort to eat raw. Just keep trying new recipes to keep it interesting. Make something special now and again that takes a bit longer to make, raw cakes are great for sustaining one through the day.
Hi smiller – sorry to read that you are bored with raw food.
Can you share what you used to eat and what you are now eating/creating that is getting so boring?
On the SAD diet there is usually only a handful of foods that people eat, only mixed up and prepared in different ways – meat, bread, potatoes, dairy, fat, sugar, rice, corn and maybe a few others.
On raw you have a pretty unlimited amount of choices from the fruit and vegetable family alone. We are talking hundreds of varieties here. Then if you go into the nut and seed families there are so many more choices.
So, if you eat very basically, you’ll get a ton of variety – for instance, a meal of pineapples and grapes, then a banana smoothie or ice cream. For salads use one type of green each time (romaine or baby greens, butter lettuce, green or red leaf, even iceberg) and only add 2-3 extras in (peppers & mushrooms, tomatoes & onions & hemp seeds; avocado & cucumber – get the idea?) so each time you get a completely different salad.
I don’t know what you are making right now, but if you mix up too many raw foods you might be getting a similar flavor and not enough of a taste of variety. Recipes are great but if that is all you eat I can see how it can get boring and tiresome after a while. Making a recipe once in a while and keeping the main diet simple may help.
it took me and the hubby months to get our un cooking to a palatable stage. It is just like learning how to cook all over again from scratch.
It just takes time and experimentation. Can you get to a raw restaurant, or buy premade raw food online, just so you can see that it can be delicious and amazing.
Also make sure you add enough salt to your food, can make a heck of a difference. Also if in doubt, lemon juice usually sorts it out ;) add a drop or two to dodgy concotions before you chuck them just to see if they can be salvaged…
The recipes on my profile are pretty fool proof and tasty, if you make them and they taste awful please email me and we can sort out what went wrong !
Hi smiller450 – I recommend investing in a couple of my fave books – Ani Phyo’s book, and Cafe Gratitude. Note that not all recipes you see online will come out tasty, as they haven’t been published by actual raw chefs. Also, what zoe said is SO TRUE!! My raw recipes came out awful at first… i kept trying, and stuck to really simple (5 ingredients or less) and before i knew it, i’m making raw recipes that will astound any raw vegan! I even surprise myself.
Try this journey in smaller steps.
You can try to focus on High Raw but try to stay all vegan (HRAV – High Raw, All Vegan). There are plenty of options with this lifestyle because you’re still having some cooked vegan food (keeping it low fat will help you lose weight faster). Try to get in lots of Green Juices (I call it PLANT BLOOD – haha) and Green Smoothies (hopefully on a daily basis) to help fight cravings.
Over time, you can decide if you’d like to change it to all raw :)
Of course, exercise is a key to losing weight AND staying motivated on your diet.
Cheers to your journey! Kristen Suzanne
I have found when I fast for a period of time on juice or water it puts me back on track to focus and desire raw…. if I am raw a while and starting to want cooked I will fast 3-7 days reorient and get back into the RAW…
wow!! I’m so sorry I dint make it back here to check this post!! I was sick for 3 days which is annoying cause I never get sick…I had a cold. Anyways, I’m going to read all these encouraging posts. Marionvaleeygirl: the blanket is a scarf from Israel. Caleb: I consider a guac a dressing :) I’ve done all sorts of things, I made a yummy curry korma sauce of tahini, coconut butter and a nice red curry spice…it was yummy…I put it on broccoli and carrots and tried to convince myself that it was a curry but deep down..it really is just salad! Rawcurls: I used to cook eat a lot of great Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian, Ethiopian and Thai food and I’m trying to transpose those into the raw world. I look at all the recipes online and try things out. My main problem is I’m a natural cook and never need recipes but with raw it’s not like that for me…I can’t just make thnigs up like I did when I cooked. rawreformama: I did a 10 day master cleanse right before I began my transition and that was really helpful then. I was thinking of doing a 3 day juice fast tomorow. Thank you all sooo much, sorry I was not by my computer this week. I will say I was feeling pretty down when I wrote that post and waited for like 15 minutes for someone to reply and just felt all “pity party” mode but the last few days I’ve been doing pretty good and am feeling that little raw food excitement bubble popping up again.
rawcurls: I jsut read your post again and your last paragraph is EXACTLY what my problem is, you wrote: but if you mix up too many raw foods you might be getting a similar flavor and not enough of a taste of variety. Now, I’ve known for over a week that this is my problem but somehow I can’t avoid having everything taste very nearly the same!
smiller450, you can’t expect to be an expert chef in just 2 weeks. You’ve likely been cooking and learning how to cook along the way for many years. Cooking raw is going to require a learning curve. When you use heat to cook food, you will change the texture and taste with each different method of cooking. There are lots of texture options with raw, but really only one or two taste options. If you’re not yet ready for the simple, pure taste of each fruit and vegetable, you’ll want to do more elaborate recipes which will involve a lot of auxiliary flavouring. I think that’s great, but I don’t think it’s realistic to think that you’ll be a pro at it immediately and be able to wing it based on your taste buds. That kind of confidence comes from practice. Give yourself time with books and online recipes. Look through many and try lots of different ones. If you’re like me, you’ll instinctively tweak other peoples’ recipes to be more in line with your tastes. But, be careful not to tweak in such a way that everything winds up with similar spice combos, sweetness levels, pungencies, etc. Just as Ethiopian spicing is vastly different from Thai and Mexican, your dishes should be as varied, in order to taste different and be reminiscent of your cooked dishes from these cuisines. My Spanish gazapacho and Moroccan tomato soups have very similar ingredients, but it’s the herbs and spices that make them radically different in flavour, as well as the texture. I completely puree the Morrocan soup and use Ras el Hanout (a mix of up to 25 different spices). The gazpacho is more roughly pureed, with a few finely diced veggies stirred in afterward for texture. With flavours so different, no one seems to mind eating a tomato-based soup 2 or 3 dinners a week during tomato season, whereas they would if the soup were simply a puree of tomato and a few other veggies/fruits. The other day, I took my basic gazpacho recipe and added a bunch of baby spinach that was a little limp and a half container of broccoli sprouts that had been in my fridge a while. For some kick, I threw in a thai bird chile (super spicy), seeds removed. What came out was a little murky in colour, but seriously tasty. I ate it all myself, with a decadent drizzle of truffle oil on top, because I was alone, but I could have served that to company and they would have loved it. Only I’d know it was a convenient refrigerator cleanout attempt and just a variation on a soup I make all the time.