For the doubting Thomases and Thomasinas out there, I am going to talk about the joys of ten vegetables a day.
If you are squeamish, I suggest you do not continue with this article, as I am going to be very honest indeed.
I was a raw foodist for about three years. The only reason I stopped was a protracted period of broken hearted misery caused mainly by family strife, and a kind of self regeneration inspired by my hate-love-hate non-relationship with David Wolfe. He may be a bit of a plaster to the untrained eye, but evidently I quite like his style in my perverse, ‘I love a challenge’, kind of way.
I have been back on my ten a day for two days, and so far the shooting pains down my legs and in my hands have gone, the chest pains are slightly better, going to the loo is considerably easier and safer and the foggy feeling that goes with eating flour and sugar, which I gave up a week or so ago, has been eradicated. The eradication is enormously helped by the fast-moving vegetables, and a colonic a few years ago verified that a colonic merely speeds up what a high vegetable diet already does.
I am not doing anything particularly unusual as yet, the vegetables are either steamed in my uber powerful health dressing and a can of tomatoes, or raw with the same dressing. If I particularly need to jazz this up a bit, I tend to use tom yum paste, or whatever else comes to mind. Hence, although it sounds austere, it is pretty good actually. I also made a big batch of sugar free chocolate, which as long as I have it in stock, I do not really care about eating, a bowl of sugar free raw caramel, which will be eaten with fruit when I get around to it. I have not bothered with supermix so far, as supermix requires that I remember to drink it after soaking it. Food has not been a massive priority in the last couple of days.
The dressing is a medicinal concoction I put together during my raw period – there are a lot of very pungent ingredients. It has around 12 ingredients, each of which would make your hair stand on end for flavour, but they all have medicinal qualities. Supermix has 80. It is quite a struggle to remember them all at times.
Now originally when I did this, I was considerably sicker, so here comes the squeamish bit. In the first four days when I originally went raw, (I went for 80 percent or so) bladder weakness, presumably caused by a bowel issue, vanished, the pains in my joints and legs subsided, my skin started to clear up, and I generally felt more clear headed.
In ten weeks I dropped 70lb in weight and my skin entirely cleared up. My doctor at the time did not recognise me. After this I managed to start walking, which I was far too tired to do before, and I ended up losing 160lb in a year and a half of not really dieting. I had been quite depressed, due to the lack of objective help offered by conventional means, and the condemnation about your ‘lack of self control,’ when the real problem is that your gut bacteria has been completely compromised by conventional food.
When I attempted to be vegan for a period, it became a real struggle, and I did find that once a month or so I was a bit like a starving lion, which is OK for a few months, whilst you figure out whether this is conditioning or your body saying no really, you should go and kill a rabbit now, or whatever your cavewoman equivalent would have done, but long term, unless you want to think like this, you really have to figure out what you are lacking or eat some animal products already. I can tell you, if you are a social creature, that before you give up the animal products you can still eat out, almost anywhere without looking like a food nazi to other, less well informed people.
I can tell you that I was severely anaemic for several years before I went raw, even as a low carber, and being raw completely cleared it up. I can also tell you that in terms of my looks, I am probably about fifteen years younger than my actual age when raw. Some of the arguments against being raw are nonsense, and some, by trial and error, are a matter of personal choice. The vegan police are not going to come and arrest you if you cannot completely manage it. For me, eventually, 90 percent raw, with an allocation for fish or meat means that I never have to think about food, which suits me a bit better.
Fruit, which is perfect for some people, is not perfect for me. I find it ages me in comparison with vegetables only. I look considerably better, and feel better on a vegetable based diet. Fruit is nice, but you really need to be able to put some time into burning it off as fast as you can. I actually lost more weight eating ten vegetables a day than I did on smoothies, although the time spent eating alone is a bit tiresome. Eventually, on supermix alone, I became a bit too artistic, and stopped exercising, which was not terribly healthy, so a liquid diet, whilst very effective, is not really all that good for you.
Likewise, steaming your vegetables is not quite as good for your looks as eating them raw. You have to find a balance. If you look great, but find yourself obsessing about food to an unbearably boring degree, then it is probably time to make it bearable. Also, your diet should not bankrupt you, so if you find yourself buying a lot of superfoods and/or exotic fruit, (durians are £25 each here, as I found out when I bought myself three on my fortieth) then it may be time to tone it down a bit. The good thing, however, about making your own supermix with herbs and superfoods, is that you can tailor it to your individual health problems.
Finally, if you consider following this route to improving your health and well being, do it in stages. On week 1 get rid of the sugar and flour and follow a low carb diet, on week two get rid of the cheese, coffee and other ‘dirty’ stimulants etc., You will go through a lot of changes in physical chemistry, and it is far easier to have confidence in your process if you are gentle with yourself. The aim is permanence, and recovery, not crash dieting. If anyone argues with you, quote the World Health Organisation – it is 9-15 a day, not 5. Governments like corporate money.
Artist, author