Hi good people.Here’s my issue;I typically eat more or less 95% green smoothies each day(kale/spinach,cucumber/tomatoes/red peppers/avocados etc).The other 5% is fruit.My wife thinks this is the reason why I’m losing weight; she says that I need to eat full meals(salads, dehydrated, prepared stuff for example), and that I’m just drinking pre-chewed”juice”. But I tell her that this is the ideal state for the food to be in once we’ve chewed it, and that it saves energy during the digestion stage.Is she right, and I should eat more full, solid meals?My weight has gone down considerably and I’m trying to counteract this by lifting weights.
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dehydrated foods are definitely not essential, but it does look like you are missing a KEY component in a balanced diet: fat. you do have avos in your green smoothie, but if you find you are hungry, or losing too much weight, you probably need more of it…especially if you exercise. regardless of all the anti-fat propaganda out there, you need limited amounts of naturally sourced, raw vegan fat each day. even a course in introductory biology will tell you a multitude of reasons you need fat. a good way to incorporate this into your diet would be to have a BIG salad, with sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. and AVOCADO!
good luck=(
also, i don’t think just smoothies is good for a long period of time. its EXCELLENT for cleansing, but in the long run it makes sense to me to use the teeth that we have and chew quite a portion of our food. try snacking on raw veggies and some kind of seed based dip maybe? there are plenty of ideas on this site
Hey Chella, I’m more or less on a similar path, sans a beautiful wife. For the past two months I’ve eaten mostly green smoothies with a similar emphasis on dark greens, and a wide variety of raw, organic vegetables. I eat a lot of young coconuts, many avocados, and I’m getting sufficient amounts of daily fat. Like you, I’ve cut back on sugary fruit intake. And also like you, I’ve also lost a lot of weight. I was skinny to begin with, now I’m skinnier. I’m very skinny. My BMI is 18. I’m 6’2” and I weigh between 140 and 145. And I’m also a very active and athletic person. I’m a professional cameraman, I’m constantly moving, running, lifting in my working life, and I’m also an avid bicyclist.
For me, I’m wondering what’s so wrong with being skinny? We live in a time of wide-spread obesity. Much of the science I’ve read about longevity, healthy life extentsion, staving off diseases and the uncomfortable aspects of aging seems to indicate that calorie reduction is one of the healthiest ways to live. The line goes that if you limit your calories to foods that are nutrient dense (like what you’re eating) you’ll live longer and healthier. It’s a simple, elegant claim. It has intuitive appeal. It seems to hold true for many different animal species, from worms to mice to monkeys. From what I’ve read, there is more science backing calorie restriction as a method for enhancing the quality of life than any other method of living I’ve seen. The resveratrol claim seems interesting, too, but resveratrol may just be the most marketable nutrient…
If you’re getting your daily nutrients consistently day in and day out, I would try to relax a little about losing weight. For me, some of it is vanity: do I “look” too skinny? One thing that’s helped me has been the act of entering my daily diet into a database that adds up all my vitamins and minerals according to some RDA guide. Of course I know this ain’t perfect. But it gives me some peace of mind that I’m getting enough, say, copper in my diet every day, so I can relax a little and not worry so much that my hair or teeth are going to suddenly start falling out. It gives me some numerical “proof” that I’m getting my daily needs.
You might tell your wife that if you’re drinking green smoothies (ie, grinding up complete greens and veggies), then you’re indeed consuming more than simply “pre-chewed juice.” You’re getting a lot of fiber, and research indicates that insoluable fiber is excellent for animal bodies.
I just had one thing to say about calorie restriction and being “too thin”... These aren’t my words, but something I heard (sorry I can’t remember the speaker…. but I THINK Dr. Andrew Weil).
He said that Calorie restriction diets work for longevity, but then he said that these studies don’t look at quality of mental functioning in later life. He went on to say that if you don’t have much body fat (which will store toxins that you have), then those toxins will instead go to the fat in your brain and can then lead to stuff like alzheimers. Now I don’t know how true this is. He didn’t mention any studies (although I’m not sure I even trust ‘studies’ anymore), and he only briefly went over it. But I thought it was a good point. We all come across toxins now-a-days thanks to our polluting population.
But as far as being “too skinny”.... Are you comfortable? Do you feel good? I think these are far better indicators than a number (BMI or weight, etc.) or people telling you that you are too thin. If you feel wonderful then you’re probably just fine.
Why are you just drinking green drinks rather that incorporating other raw foods into your diet? I know you mentioned that juicing was doing the work saving the stomach energy, however I wondered if there were any other reasons.
In terms of being skinny, are you in a normal weight range for your height and bone structure? While 60% of Americans may be overweight, I would think that being underweight may not be healthy either. Life seems to be all about finding balance.
If your wife is concerned then perhaps you might consider making some kind of compromise with her. I sometimes think it’s hard for us to truly see what we look like. For example, after I had my daughter I lost a large amount of weight. I am almost 5’9” and was under 119 pounds. I ate all the time, but because I was nursing I just could not get enough calories. For me, I really did not feel like I was that skinny, but when I saw pictures of myself at that weight, after gaining a few more pounds, I didn’t like what I saw and not from a vanity standpoint. I looked sick and like I was starving; I looked unhealthy. No wonder people were asking me if I was okay constantly. My body is much happier with more weight and I am still very skinny.
Maybe try incorporating some fats into your diet, as suggested above, and see if that makes any difference in how you feel and/or your weight loss.
I agree with Katie 100%. People should not base how healthy they are on primarily weight and BMI. If you are functioning normally and are very thin then there is nothing wrong with that at all. My nutritionist has always told me not to focus on the weight that the scale gives me. I am 5’8” at 125 lbs and I feel great.
The human requirements for fat are much lower than you might have thought. If you read Doug Graham’s 80/10/10 Diet, you will see the proof that we need less than 10% of calories from fat. You will get at least that from the green smoothies. That is not your problem. You do need to use your teeth as the old saying goes, if you don’t use ‘em you will lose ‘em. I suggest you do eat a few meals a week in it’s whole form to get some teeth exercise. Otherwise you’re on a great path to health, keep it up.
I’ve also heard that because veggies and greens are lower in calories than fruit that we need to eat sufficent fruit. Fruit provides the necessary calories to maintain a healty body weight and function as well as the other vitamins, minerals, organic water, etc. it provides. Balance is key!
We write: “Life is all about balance” and “Balance is key!” I’m not being flip when I ask—what in the world is “balance” when it comes to eating?
SocaL: how do you suppose Graham would answer Katie’s (Weil’s?) interesting claim about environmental toxins stored in brain fat? This argument seems to make some sense. If we have no body fat, or very little, and most of our body fat is the brain, then toxins could build up in the brain and then produce later life mental troubles…
Someone today told me I look “gaunt.” And this was hurtful, and I’m wondering what, if anything, I should do about it. Eat more fat? Give up raw and go back to eating meat and dairy? If it’s all about how I feel, well, I feel pretty good eating all raw food. It seems to be a healthy longterm way to eat. But I don’t feel good all the time. Who does feel good all the time? Life is full of ups and downs, rising and falling feelings. The trouble for me is that it’s not good enough to just feel good. I want to look good, too. I mean, who wants to feel great but look bad? Self image is important, and it’s part of what it means to be healthy.
Balance in eating, to me, means eating a diet that provides enough of everything your body needs to keep you healthy and in harmony. An imbalanced diet (too much or too little of anything) can cause problems.
Shane—6’2” and 140 seems very thin. I’m 6’4”, and my weight over the years ranged from 168 to 192 (midpoint 180). I increase nuts and other fatty foods when I get below 175.
If you’re losing weight, you need to increase your intake of calories.
According to Victoria Boutenko we need to chew our food to a creamy consistency before swallowing to make the nutrients available to the body. Thus your nutrients are more ready available to you in smoothies than in for example a salad, if you’re anything like me – I cannot chew kale, grapes or even tomatoes to that consistency. I remember reading Shazzie’s (shazzie.com) blog years ago where she wrote after having a colonic: “There was tomato peels to be seen, and I chew so well!”
So I’d say you should increase your food intake, and if you cannot do that, perhaps add more calories to the smoothies you drink. Avocado, oils or the like. Nut or nut milks, if you like.
On another note, you might check your level of stomach acid. Read “Green for life” by Boutenko for more on this. Regular consumption (I think at least 1 or 2 months) of greens like in green smoothies will raise the level of stomach acid so you’ll actually absorb the nutrients in your food. If you haven’t been doing green smoothies for that long, you might just ask your wife to have patience for a month more and then you’ll revise your diet?
If your stool is green when doing green smoothies, red when doing beets, orange when chewing carrots, then your level of stomach acid is not yet high enough for you to get all of the nutrients out of the food.
Oh also, I remember someone at a whole foods telling me about a weight lifting vegan (don’t know if he was raw) who ate a lot of hemp seeds. You could try those if you’d like to gain some mass.
shane, here is Doug Graham’s rebuttal of some of the things that Dr. Weil (who is definitely not the picture of health himself) says about raw food.
www.foodnsport.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_…
For some reason the link is not working. Instead just go to http://www.foodnsport.com
and then search for Weil in the search bar on the left and select the second article.
BTW I think the stuff about toxins going to the brain is complete bogus. People who eat food with little or no toxins will have much less toxins in their body and the body stores fat in proportion to the amount of fat we have, which means if we have less fat then there is less fat in our brain and our body. People always want to ‘prove’ that their (often bad or wrong) diet is best so they put down others that are obviously better.
I just read that article and it seemed that all of Dr. Weil’s concerns about a Raw Food dietstyle are based on one very small study. Even the data from that study seemed to be analyzed in an illogical way.
The other national talk show doctor, Dr. Oz, seems much more open to Raw Food. I’ve only heard him say good things about it.