Hello everyone, I am new to this site; however, I was following an 80% raw diet a few years ago. I felt the best I ever had. I followed this diet for 18 months and it was the best I felt ever in my life. I stopped eating raw because with my job it just seemed like too much prep to keep up. Also, I never lost any weight on raw - probably because I had 1 TBLS of almond butter each day! I am returning to raw now, and must drop some weight. I know to eat almond butter sparingly (perhaps 1 to 2 times per week), but what other ways can I drop weight while eating raw?
Answers
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.
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.