How To: Try a Raw Detox Diet!

A couple of readers have asked me how to get started on a raw cleanse with the intention of weight loss, so I will walk you through my initial detox week with emphasis on weight loss benefits.

If you thought that going raw simply means putting the frying pan away for a couple of days and munching on cold foods, boy, have you got a think coming. Aside from fresh produce, most things that you can buy at a store are NOT raw. By definition, raw food has not been heated above approximately 114 degrees F (this cutoff varies) to keep the enzymes in food from denaturing.

Some foods you may think/hope are raw, but aren't:

Peanut butter made from "Roasted Peanuts" is NOT RAW because the peanuts have been roasted. Nuts are only considered raw if it is specified on the package. You can get them at natural food stores. I have been staying away from raw peanuts because of aflatoxin, but this has to be verified. Raw almond butter is pretty easy to find. You can even get raw walnuts at Safeway.

Dairy is NOT RAW unless it is unpasteurized and specifies "raw" on the label. Be careful with this!

Sugar, honey, spices, vinegar, olive oil is not raw. Olives have been cured and are not raw.

Coffee and tea are HOT and are not raw. I believe that the process of making these out of the plant involves heating them above 118 F, so don't think you can cheat by munching on the espresso beans or making ice tea with teabags.

Dehydrated legumes in bulk food bins: I am not sure if chickpeas and other bulk beans that you can buy at a Whole Foods or natural foods market are raw. I soaked my chickpeas from Whole Foods for 4 days, waiting for long tails to pop up, but apparently the sprouts are very small (see image here.) I will update you when I soak my second batch.

Weight Loss:

If you are going for 5 days tops, you can probably make it eating almost exclusively produce, with some nuts thrown in to get your fats. Produce actually has a lot of protein if you are eating enough of it, so you don't need to worry about eating a ton of nuts to get your protein.

Some key players:

-Spinach, kale, other greens: iron and PROTEIN :) Note that greens have ridiculously few calories, so eating any amount of them to make it count will make you feel super full. Pace yourself.

-Bananas and mangos: fairly calorie dense fruits. Apparently a lot of raw foodists eat bananas like there's no tomorrow. I can't really eat a lot of fruit or I start feeling sick from all the sugar. Maybe you can adjust to this if you push through, but I am still living my life, and I don't intend to spend a week of it nauseous.

-Avocados: if you can get your hands on these, you are set. I have been eating an avocado approximately every day on this diet.

-Coconut oil: since it is apparently AWESOME and helps you lose weight. It is also clearly more calorie dense than lettuce, so it will help you fill up without feeling bloated. Pop a half a tablespoon into your blended creations.

-Whatever else is ORGANIC and on SALE :)



Sample "recipes":


If you think that not heating your food means saving time, you have a second big think coming. You can ingest calories much more effectively if you make smoothies or juices, rather than chewing everything, because you will be so hungry that you will swallow food before the 20 recommended chews per bite, leading to an unhappy tummy. If you want to get really fancy, you can soak, sprout, dehydrate, the options are many!

-Spinach Banana Smoothie: This is one of my favorites. Blend a banana, a bunch of spinach, some cilantro or parsley, lemon juice and/or rind, cayenne (my cheat). Put blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries into it to make a "soup" and eat with 3-4 celery sticks instead of spoons, biting off the celery each time you scoop with it.

-Guacamole with orange pepper chips: Combine a lot of avocado with much less chopped garlic, cilantro, and lemon juice. Scoop with orange bell pepper (or any other color, orange peppers are just the cheapest) instead of chips!

-My cashew milk recipe: After doing some research, I came up with this recipe:
 1/2 cup cashews
 2 cups water
 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
 some coconut oil
 some RAW honey (or agave if you are vegan)

Soak cashews for at least an hour and rinse. Combine all ingredients in blender. This will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. You can dilute the cashews farther if you want this to be more calorie dense.

Serving suggestion: stir the milk before pouring because cashews tend to separate slightly from the water.  Fill up a bowl with some raw granola (I like Living Intentions Chia Ginger Superfood Cereal) and add fresh berries if you like!


COMING UP SOON: Some logistics and things to consider, as in, advice for YOU!

Weekend W-RAW-up

For lunch on Friday, I had another spinach banana smoothie (SURPRISE!), as well as a piece of toast with an egg on it.

Here's my spinach and banana smoothie:

I don't have a picture of the egg, but just picture an egg with a halo around it and you get the picture. That was the most divine egg I had ever tasted. Perfectly cooked with coconut oil instead of olive, silky and smooth, it tasted like sheer perfection. I swear it made my vision even sharper than all the raw nutrition I had been consuming all week.

Dinner involved a ham and cheese panini, but it must not have been enough, because I was FREEZING all night.

Saturday involved some raw "cereal" for breakfast, a burger for lunch, and a burrito for dinner. I felt great! I was so much warmer, happier, more energetic. I've decided that two raw meals and one cooked meal every day is a good long-term balance that I can happily maintain.  My taste buds would be happy eating raw all the time, but in my opinion, the side effects are a sign that something is wrong and not just a "detox period."

Anyway, if a detox period of indefinite duration includes:

-Ridiculous moodiness;
-Afternoon lack of energy (this never happens to me);
-Simultaneous hypothermia and hot flashes a.k.a. "sensitivity to hot and cold";
-Gnarly dry skin and breakouts,

Then I don't think that I want to live my life in a transitional detox state!

Benefits to 2 raw/1 cooked:

-I kind of don't drink coffee anymore. HOW can this happen and WHAT is the world coming to?! I have been happily hooked on the brown IV drip since I was sixteen, and I have never voluntarily bypassed my morning cup and still felt great and alert.
-You basically get to eat whatever you want all the time. When you are eating raw, chewing is like a second job. As soon as I finish with a meal, I am looking for my next snack. This is what hunters and gatherers must have felt like! I'm sure that foraging for the cheapest avocado in the Mission is no less straightforward than discerning among edible and lethally poisonous plants while dodging tiger attacks or arrows from neighboring tribes.
-And when you get to your cooked meal, you STILL get to eat whatever you want because no way are you not starving after eating raw for the past 18 hours.
-Morning vitality and great endurance minus dry skin, shivering, or mood swings. Please tell me what there is not to love. NOTHING, I say! The RAW-volution is here! 

B-RAW-Kfast Day 5

So, I woke up this morning determined to eat something cooked but ended up eating raw because it's all that there was in my house and convenient. I just wanted a bowl of cereal, and all I had was raw sprouted granola and cashews to make milk. (Well, I didn't even make milk because Dean was still sleeping and I don't know who would want to be woken up to the sound of cashews stick blending at the crack of dawn on a Friday morning.)

So instead, I mushed up a banana and some ginger juice and used that as the "base" for my granola, with blackberries and raspberries thrown in.

Yum?

I was feeling a little weird this morning. That is why I wanted to switch back to cooked.  By weird, I mean kind of shaky and strung out. In a physical, not emotional way. I woke up feeling happy because I decided that I could eat whatever I wanted. Currently I am drinking hot non-raw tea with non-raw orange clover honey.

Whether I eat cooked or raw for the rest of the day, I will try to make the meals themselves be more like "cooked" meals. (Example: raw cereal with raw milk instead of a fruit puree for breakfast).

My skin is still incredibly dry, so I put olive butter all over my face this morning. Ingesting a tablespoon of olive oil probably may have done just as well. Also, I took a B vitamin since I figured I may be running low on B 12, and that seemed to help me feel better. 

FouRAWth Day

Muahahah.

Whew! Aside from any midnight munchies, I have now survived four days of this tRAWial (that's trial for you unenlightened folks). First course: food with some pictures! Second course: beginning raw-elations, or mulling over what I have raw-alized this week.

OK, enough of this silliness. Let's get down to the raw business.

BRUNCH: (In the true sense of the world) 10 AM: Smoothie with spinach, half a plantain, parsley, lemon juice. Threw some raspberries and blackberries into it to make a soup and ate that up.

Drank about two cups of cashew milk because I was still starving, at which point I began to feel very full.

SNACK, 11:30 AM: Banana blended with ice and water at Starbucks. Here's my cup:

The left side says Ice H2O Banana and the right side says Blended. I kept it as a souvenir!

LUNCH ISH, 1 PM: Raw Revolution chocolate coconut bar. How the taste of these so closely resembles crack, I'll never know.

SNACK, 3 PM: Apple and pear devoured about 5 seconds after purchasing them in the organic produce aisle at Safeway.

My arms were killing me in Pilates but my legs, abs, and glutes were doing just fine. There really is something to this increased endurance thing!

DINNER, 5:30 PM: Spinach and banana smoothie with blueberries tossed in, eaten with a celery stick instead of a spoon.

Don't you wish your food looked this beautiful?

REST OF DINNER: Apple with walnuts (and walnuts is merely a euphemism for "RAW CHEESE").

EVENING SNACK, 7:30 PM: Large organic orange, followed by guacamole with orange peppers as dipping implements:

There is twice that amount of guacamole left for tomorrow.

I am still incredibly back and forth about whether I must eat cooked food now or if I can never go back to the pre-raw lifestyle. I'm sure that a lot of this uncertainty comes from the moodiness reported as a side effect of the raw food diet.

THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, HOPES AND DREAMS. 

BENEFITS: 

Vision: As I have mentioned, the clarity of my vision is through the roof. Colors are incredibly vivid, and the clarity is around me and in my mind. I had to stop taking vitamins because I felt like I was getting way too much Vitamin A or something and it was making everything too bright. But with a plant diet like this, who needs vitamins?!

Energy: Today is the second day in a row that I voluntarily did not drink coffee, and I feel great. I have had more endurance when rock climbing or doing pilates, and more energy when running - also due to excitement at how vivid the music sounded. Recovery time for muscle exertion seems to have been halved. 

Mind: On the bus this afternoon, I had some incredible realizations while catching part of the music in someone's headphones, the bus buzzing along, and people's conversations drifting in and out with their shuffling footsteps.  Filling my consciousness with these sounds was enough that I did not need to think; I realized that if I also added aimless thoughts, it would only be because of my antsiness about problems that I could not solve on the bus anyway. If I try to plan out my evening, I realized, I will just think in circles for the remainder of the bus ride, exhausting my brain, then think about it some more when I get off the bus to actually make the decision. I just wanted to sit there and meditate for a long time as a way of relaxing the brain. (Ever since an especially productive yoga class, I have felt like the mind is a muscle. I know that this is wrong, but it is a very useful analogy for the amateur meditator.)

SIDE EFFECTS:

Energy: It is 10 PM, and I am exhausted. I slept in until 10 this morning. Doubtful that I am still catching up on some leftover sleep deficit, more likely that I am burning out on burning all this food or not getting enough to eat even though I feel like I am stuffing myself all the time. (see next 2 points.

Bloating: I feel bloated 90 percent of the time. What's the point of any byproduct weight loss of this diet if you can't enjoy fitting into your jeans anyway?

Cold: Today was actually not that bad, but all the previous days I was absolutely FREEZING! According to Steve Pavlina (possibly my new idol, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/01/raw-food-diet-day-4/), many raw foodists report a sensitivity to temperature.  Well guess what? It means you are not eating enough, and your body does not have enough calories to keep you warm. 

Yes it can be a great way to drop a few pounds, but that was not my intention, and if I am shivering even when I am continuously stuffing myself, I need a diet that is more dense in calories. This is even with the cashew milk, raw bar, cheese, and avocado that I ate! 

Moodiness: Let's just call this the PMS diet, seriously. In an earlier conversation with my mother, I was expressing what seemed to me some perfectly rational concerns about the fact that my summer internship has not kicked in yet, and her only response was that this is a non-problem and I should eat a sandwich.

Skin: I can handle a few pimples (which are apparently part of the "detox" process), but the bottom half of my face has been incredibly dry and flaky no matter how much I moisturize. 

Hair growth: The hair on my legs has been growing at an amazing rate. I suppose fast hair growth can be viewed as a positive sign that your body is healthy, but this is not exactly what I was looking for.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

Price: I am averaging about $15 on produce per day, not including raw nuts, which go anywhere from $10-$15 per pound. Raw bars are 3 bucks a pop, and all the other schmancy goodies like raw cereal are prohibitively expensive on a starving student's budget.

Convenience: I did not realize how long it takes to blend things up. I have not noticed my time spent eating go up because I have devoured everything with the dental dexterity of a starving squirrel, but this did result in some stomach cramps from basically chugging up to several pounds of produce in under 20 minutes. I'm sure that budgeting less than 20 chews per bite of fibrous leafy matter is not optimal for digestion.

BOTTOM LINE: 

I think that my reason to keep going with this would be to see what other gems my brain might throw out, such as the meditation episode on the bus. Also, I would like to go without any caffeine for a while, and I am thinking that I may not have enough energy in the morning to do so unless I am eating all raw. But then again, my energy is so variable on this diet that this is not an actual reason.

While I suppose that some of the effects like dry skin and being cold are an adjustment period, I don't know if I buy the whole idea that your body needs to adjust to something which is supposedly GOOD for it by giving you indicators that something is wrong. 

Anyway, I will pass out (a whole 1.5 hours earlier than yesterday) and be completely whimsical tomorrow morning about whether I start off with a spinach and banana smoothie or some nice fried eggs and hash browns.

In either case, more food for thought (yum yum) to come tomorrow!

Raw-nodushie? Not by a long shot!

So around 2:45 PM today I came dangerously close to calling it quits at the end of today and summarizing what I learned from the raw food diet. I was tired of feeling cold, bloated, and moody all the time, sick of how expensive it was, really wanted a warm plate of rice, and doubted that one more day of suffering would really result in any spectacular raw-velations. (HAHAHA)

Then we had a nice chat in Pilates class which really drew attention to the benefits I have been observing and the weirdly intense ways in which these benefits have been manifesting themselves.

Case in point: I slept in until 10 today, finally catching up on the sleep I have been lacking from about 2 months ago. Is that because I did not drink coffee yesterday or because I am playing rabbit this week? The world may never know.

Anyway, I realized that I don't have any rice at the house anyway, and defrosting toast out of spite to the raw food community is not exactly going out with a bang.

So as of right now, I feel good about finishing out these 5 days and then thinking about ways to integrate raw foods into a longer term plan. I haven't decided if that will entail extending the trial or switching to a partially cooked, but still very wholesome, meal plan. 

Raw-velation!

So, something miraculous happened this morning.

I did not drink coffee.

Or, more precisely, I did not want coffee. OK, let me elaborate. I woke up feeling not all that wonderful, not tired in particular but could tell that a cup of coffee is not what my body wanted to make it feel better.

BREAKFAST, 8 AM: I scarfed (or more like slogged through) a piece of raw chocolate, a banana mushed up with cashew milk and some blueberries, two oranges, and a ginger nori carrot cracker. I felt hungry and cold when I finished but could not think of anything that I would want to put in my stomach without it feeling bloated. I felt like I got enough calories because the cashew milk was pretty dense, and my body was just going crazy from the volume of the fruits. As I sat there I realized that actually, I had a LOT of energy and need to do something to dissipate it, be that fiddling or running around.

So I went for a fabulous run where the colors seemed brighter and my music was more in my ears and ringing more true with all my emotions than ever before. Man, it seems that I was living an overcooked version of myself for my entire life until three days ago.

SNACK, 11 AM: Apple and pear.

LUNCH, 1 PM: I guess you could call it a soup. Blended zucchini, half an avocado, parsley and cilantro, slice of lemon and some lemon ginger juice, put raspberries in it, scooped it up with celery/attempted to make lettuce wraps but gave up because it is just way too messy.

Lettuce wraps are not first date food, let me tell you. Well, unless licking things off from all over your body is your idea of a first date.

Anyway, even with the avocado the meal was not very calorie dense, and I felt bloated yet starving until I ate some pumpkin seeds while walking around.

SNACK, 2 PM: Banana blended with ice at Starbucks. I got so much attention after I said I was trying the raw food diet.

DINNER, 5 PM: Sashimi with seaweed salad and miso soup - my cheat.

I got home and realized that I felt more tired than I had all day. I definitely blame that on the cooked food cheat, while at the same time refusing to believe that we are this.. evolved? to eat raw food?

SNACK, 6 PM: Apple, pear, cacao nibs.

While climbing, I felt like I had much more endurance than I should - an apparent consequence of eating raw or my imagination?

SNACK, 9 PM: Apple and cold processed greens bar.

Foods I missed today: Mexican and beer for the camaraderie, but in terms of taste, COOKED RICE. In a way, I don't see myself continuing raw after 5 days (my goal), but in another way, now that I know that it is possible to FEEL THIS WAY, I don't see how I can ever go back.

I could see myself doing 5 days a week, but maybe the other two days would just defeat the purpose of the detox. I need to look more into this.

I could, conceivably, go raw plus rice and beans (and, oh, the occasional multiple beer.) Would probably need to throw eggs and animal products in there because my body does not do so well without them, and sashimi is NOT financially sustainable.

BOTTOM LINE:  I feel weird at times, but overall amazing and psyched for day 4!

Raw-enous Day 2

Since I bought raw chocolate yesterday, I was able to resume my normal routine of eating a piece of chocolate when I woke up. I was surprised to observe how large the 50 calorie portion was and the virtual lack of sugar, instead a whopping high percentage of fat and saturated fat. Anyway, WHATEVER.

The rest of breakfast: ~8AM? Salad with chickpeas, spinach, onion, celery. OK, so I'm still not sure if the rehydrated garbanzo beans from the bulk food aisle are TECHNICALLY raw, but they are cheaper than almost anything else you can eat on the raw food diet, low in fat and high in protein! They also weren't all the way rehydrated when I ate them but I just crunched away.. I was hungry!

Shortly after I got a stomachache that probably lasted for an hour or so. I attributed this to the half of an onion I cut up into my salad but looking back, I realize it may have been the un-rehydrated chickpeas. Well my next batch is going to soak until it sprouts!

Even though I wasn't hungry, I proceeded to fiddle with the cashews and stick blender to make some raw "milk" for later. It was ridiculously easy: soak cashews for over an hour, add 4 parts water, a dash of sea salt, and sweetener if you like (I used raw honey for the first batch and put in coconut oil instead for the second batch because I felt like it, then mixed them together.) If I told you anything else about the proportions it would go against my notion that cooking is like chemistry on acid, when divine inspiration comes to you to mix things together into an art form that is impossible to duplicate. Anyway, it had a taste and consistency that was well above and beyond anything I could have hoped for.

I drank my "cheat" cup of coffee later on that morning, almost feeling that the caffeine was excessive and only contributed to making me feel jittery. I am thinking about phasing it out (BIG GASP).

At 11:45, I devoured half a mango and an orange on my way to the Mission to grocery shop, suddenly feeling spacy and like everything I was seeing was too vivid. Come to think of it, my vision has been a lot brighter since I started the diet, getting uncomfortably so when I get hungry - but not in a "the-sun-is-too-bright" sort of way.

Halfway through shopping I stopped feeling hungry and was incredibly energized, focused not in a complete way but in that same vivid-vision way that made my movements clear and strong. Afterwards, even though I did not feel my appetite anymore, I had my lunch of avocado, spinach, and carrots. After a bit of walking, I devoured an entire chocolate bar and half a block of cashew kale cheese. This seemed incredibly excessive listening to my stomach whine about being full to capacity, but it was the least spacy I had felt all day, and I chased it all with an apple when I got home.

I felt stuffed to the brim but not particularly satisfied all afternoon. Around 6, I made a smoothie with spinach, zucchini, banana, cayenne, and lemon juice, and had lettuce wraps with green liquid and raspberries. The organic raspberries were crisp and as tasty as they were bright. I scooped the rest of the smoothie up with celery sticks.

Pilates class! Since this also happens to be pilates challenge week. I was absolutely freezing walking over. During class, my nose ran for the first 10 minutes and my face felt really red. I felt like my cold was back. At the end of class, though, I got warm and felt fine.

Another weird thing is that I was upset for no reason during class. It seemed that something about the lighting of the room made me feel depressed, even though I love pilates. Also, I teared up two or three times while finishing up The Giver this morning, but no idea if that can be attributed to diet or the fact that the story is INTENSE! Seriously, reread it. Go.

After pilates, I ate a pear, which only made me hungrier, so I got salmon sashimi with seaweed salad and regular salad. The regular salad had dressing, and eating it made me crave all things non-raw. I could tell that the dressing was not very tasty, but at the same time it was amazing and delicious. I definitely felt full in a too-many-calories sort of way, but an hour or so later it seems to have settled. I felt energized right up to 20 minutes ago. My lowest energy level was probably around 12 PM, about an hour after I had coffee. I am really beginning to think that I can phase out the coffee. Crazy!

When I was getting sushi, I craved rice like no other and wanted to go back to when your food options aren't stupid and few and limited. But all those food options are wonderful and incredible. Already I feel different on many levels, physically cleaner and physiologically more alert. Let's not get into spirituality yet.

I realized that I have to buy all organic produce (unless it has a thick peel) because otherwise I am just front loading my body with pesticides. So I bought up the organic produce aisle at Safeway tonight in preparation for breakfast tomorrow. It wasn't a matter of making healthy choices, I just went for everything that I liked out of the things I could eat. The girl behind me in line was buying chips and ice cream and looked over my items with a slightly guilty expression. I can't say that I crave anything else, but it is only because I have firm reasons not to eat it that have nothing to do with how I look or long term benefits (my reasons are pure curiosity and determination to complete the challenge.)

But at this point, I feel like I am already so in touch with my body that I can never go back to eating any other way. I have magically not chewed any gum because I am doing enough chewing as it is, and gum is clearly not raw - and I can just imagine how my body would flip out if I slipped it something that unnatural.

Cheats: I am not even going to google how un-raw seaweed salad is. Along with coffee/tea, I refuse to give that up. I can bypass hot seaweed in soup, but the cold stuff with olive oil and sesame seeds (whether store-bought or home-made) stays! Also, I really don't care that spices are not raw. I will slash my salt intake dramatically but pepper and cayenne and perhaps other things like tumeric are good for you and fire up your energy.

Bottom line: my moods and energy levels were slightly wacky, I miss rice, I will never give up seaweed salad, but other than that I am pressing on!