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Login Here Signup Here Signup using Facebookhey everyone…I haven’t posted in a while but I am really in a dilemma here. I started raw to try to feel better (I have HORRIBLE digestive issues). And I did feel good, plus I started losing the weight I had gained in the past year. But now I have realized I’ve completely backslid into old habits. Four years ago I went through a 6-month period of severely undereating, though I never reached a technically unhealthy weight I did lose a lot. I managed to pull myself out of it, slowly. Recently, I’ve definitely been going back to these habits! I noticed I was less hungry on raw, and started eating less and less. The past few weeks I’ve been eating probably 500-800 calories a day (four years ago it was 400-700 so this is pretty much the same). I am FREAKED OUT! I thought raw was supposed to help you make a good relationship with food!
So now, before it gets really bad, I have a decision to make. Should I stop eating 100% raw for a while? It would be easier to get more calories in if I eat things like rice and beans (I don’t eat nuts/nut butters really). HOWEVER, knowing how bad my stomach is I am really afraid to go back to feeling crappy all the time. I don’t even know if it was raw now that helped my stomach or just eating less in general (when I eat too much, my body doesn’t digest it at ALL and it literally sits in my stomach and rots…ew sorry tmi). I really want to avoid causing irreparable damage to my heart and body in general by chronically starving myself (even though I’m not ALWAYS hungry now). I have already tried increasing my calories on raw…I wrote out a whole plan to increase by 100 a week till I get to 1400, but I didn’t follow it for a day, I had no desire to eat that much. oh man I don’t know what to do!
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maybe add an avocado and a banana daily if you don’t like nuts, that will increase caloric intake by like 400-ish kcal right there. dried fruit, too, is also higher in calories.
hi liz…be calm :) ok, this is only my experience if your body (they are wiser than our minds..know…and its a good idea to feel as if your body is your best friend ever!!!) isn’t giving you the hunger signals then it’s pretty safe to say that for that moment it is either satisfied with the nutrients you have given it or is doing some major internal cleaning or rearranging and doesn’t want to be having to digest food. it probably depends alot on what kind of lifestyle you had before raw and how much of a change you are coping with now…and we are always changing so what you do today or this week, isn’t going to be forever, maybe not even for that long. especially with living foods…in my experience even when you think you are stuck and stationary your life is always moving you along…breathe :) if you feel good eating this way for now, then feel good…try not to let your head get down on your good feelings…and calories could just be the biggest mythical creature created for people to worry about!!!
i had a history of overeating and living (!) on the most junky foods…etc, etc, but this realisation didnt come up until i’d eaten raw for maybe 5 months. i started what i thought was a backslide into eating rubbish again…but now i see it only came up so that i could consciously see the patterns and move on, releasing them, or at least knowing what was happening when the cravings came up and being able to make conscious choices
i thought raw was ’’the answer’’ to everything…and although its definitely an answer, i can see that my life was made up of lots of questions made up of unconscious patterns i inherited or made for myself as a young ‘un. raw is an excellent first step to healing, there might just be more to heal than you originally thought “to live would be an awfully big adventure” exciting! i hope this helps you love jenny
Maybe instead of having the traditional 3 meals a day you could have small meals and noshes throughout the day. I’ve also read about using coconut (oil, butter, meat) to add calories. Olive oils and avocados as KellyS mentioned got those healthy fats. You could even throw in some healthy fats to smoothies perhaps.
I’m thin myself and underweight based on guidelines. I just try to add healthy fats in my diet and not try to fret over being thin. As long as I feel good and healthy being thin ain’t so bad. I just try to listen to my body and eat when I’m hungry.
You may try those good fats that Satchy and KellyS have suggested. You can try to think NOT in food to eat, but in what food you really fancy. Sometimes to think on food can make food undesirable (in my experience) but thinking on what do you want or what your body askd for isn’t as “oppresive” as thinking “i have to eat”.
Dates! (for calories, if you need them) Also, have you tried eating fruit by itself? It digests pretty quickly when eaten on its own; even when I eat a lot of fruit, I usually feel ready to eat again within an hour. Maybe that would help with your feeling of food just sitting?
hi LizK…. proper food combining helps with digestive issues.you may want to check out www.trustedhands.com they have some good charts for beginners,intermediate and advanced food combining. just click (here) also some good advice on proper food combining ,and chart at www.alderbrooke.com (here)
hi liz. i have just been reading “raw success” by matt monarch. it explains some of these issues you are going through. for one, ideally humans are designed to eat less. so it makes sense that you weren’t eating too much. however, eating this way can cause us to be more sensitive and perhaps too sensitive to the outside world. second, it can be very hard to go back on cooked food after raw. but if you must eat cooked, avoid all processed starches and sugars. it sounds like you are doing this by eating whole grains like rice. try quinoa too. i realized for me after going raw that i can’t digest beans. so you may want to try just grains at first.
you may want to see someone who can help you with digestive enzymes and balancing the digestive flora in your system. a good naturopath could help you with this.
take care, and you are not a failure in fact you are doing good job listening to your body!