In my article today I go back to basics.
I’ll give you specific, concrete action steps you can take right now to transition to a healthy, hopefully raw or mostly raw diet.
Even if you’re a seasoned raw-foodist, I’m sure you will find some key insights in this article that will help you refine your diet and improve your program.
These steps are in no particular order.
1- Workout and Exercise
It is not possible to be healthy without being fit. We know this, at least intuitively, yet we tend to forget the importance of fitness in a healthy lifestyle by focusing too much on the importance of diet.
It is worth saying that your physical condition has a major impact on your digestion, assimilation, and overall “nutrition.” For example, your ability to uptake sugar, called “insulin sensitivity,” is greatly influenced by your level of fitness.
If you are sedentary, insulin sensitivity is greatly reduced. Therefore, sugar is not carried as rapidly as it should to the cells. This can lead to or worsen blood sugar problems of all kinds.
2- Eat Fruit Before Each Meal
One of the easiest ways to transition to a raw food diet is to start eating fruit before every meal, including lunch and dinner.
The idea is to eat fruit when you are the most hungry, which is at the beginning of the meal. Eat as much fruit as you desire then, and you will find that you will eat much less of the meal itself!
It’s what I call an “automatic transition strategy”. You start eating raw foods by eating fruit before every meal, just what your mom told you not to do when you were a child. But now that you’re an adult and the standard Western diet hasn’t worked for you, you need to go back to your natural instincts and satisfy your natural sweet tooth by eating as much fruit as you want before every meal.
3- Learn to Make 7 Raw Food Recipes That You Enjoy
It’s been found that most people know about 7 to 10 good recipes very well, and just rotate them throughout the months, adding in other stuff occasionally for variety.
Or look at when you buy a recipe book. You might try many recipes but eventually you’ll only retain a few that you’ll continue making for the years to come.
So what I want you to do now is to find 7 simple raw food recipes that you really like, that are easy to make and that are properly combined. (Insider Tip: My recipe eBook “Amazing Raw: Recipes For Life” is just about that. Find out more here)
4- Get Rid of Cheese and Dairy
Improving your diet isn’t about the things you add in. It’s mostly about the things you leave out.
I know this reality is hard to take, but even if you eat all these fruits and vegetables, drink those fresh juices and make those huge smoothies, you won’t really feel great until you remove those offensive foods from your diet that are hurting you.
There’s one thing you need to say goodbye to forever, and it’s milk and cheese. In another article, I talked about the top-5 worst foods, and cheese was one of them.
Really, I see it all the time. People have this thing for cheese. They still eat it occasionally, and they still are addicted to it. (Actually, cheese contains some compounds in it that make it addictive for real, not just in your imagination).
If there would be just one category of food you could remove from your diet and feel much better for it, it’s got to be cheese and milk.
5- Eat Fruit in the Morning
The morning meal is the easiest to switch to raw. Most people find that once they start listening to their body, they are actually not truly hungry in the morning. So having a fruit salad or a smoothie is perfect to give you some energy without overloading the body.
Contributed article by Frederic Patenaude
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