There is no need to diet. In fact, the few diets that do work only manage to keep the weight off people for a relatively short period of time. What is required is a steady diet of foods that provide the body with the exact nutrients it needs. If we do this, the body is not constantly crying out that it is starved for nutrients of every kind.
Almost every diet I have run across tries to trick the body metabolically into losing weight. They combine this protein with this carbohydrate or they eliminate fat or carbohydrates entirely from the diet. Sometimes protein is eliminated or foods are rotated or re-combined in the diet and all this is suppose to cause people to lose weight. Ironically, all that has ever been needed is a natural diet of Raw Fruits and Vegetables, anchored with powerful, high protein foods such as Spirulina and Chlorella. It is the healthiest, most natural and economical way to live. Raw Foods prevent disease, provide the body with rejuvenating nutrients and allow for a balanced body that will not become overweight. Being overweight is not natural for a human. Only certain animals gain weight to make it through the winter such as bears. Obesity is an extreme condition where the body is completely out of balance in every way. It has been so starved for nutrients that the body's most basic daily chemical reactions no longer occur. Instead, these enzymic and hormonal sequences and reactions are greatly altered if not entirely missing. What could we expect to receive from that kind of scenario other than a complete mess resulting in diabetes, cancer, obesity, arthritis, etc. What we lack most in our diet are enzymes, which only come from Raw Foods. They other thing we lack is an adequate amount of water, which we are often trained to avoid from birth.
Our eating habits traditionally couldn't be further from what they ought to be if we want to remain healthy and be at our natural weight. We began consuming highly processed foods nearly a century ago and it has taken its toll, considering that one in three people will get cancer in their lifetime. This is a staggeringly high percentage considering that cancer was still relatively uncommon before 1920. The more processed foods enter into a country's diet, the more those people begin to develop cancer. For instance, Korea has taken on the western fast food, processed food diet over the past 30 years and the result has been escalating stomach cancer rates. Japan sees the same trend for the same reason. Take a fast food meal of pizza or a burger and fries. There is little or no nutrition in either of those. They are void of fiber, which is critical to human health.
"I can think of nothing worse than a fast food burger meal of substandard meat, white bread, french fries and a soft drink. I ate my share of them before I learned how horrible they truly are for your health. Neither the meat, french fries nor white bread has any dietary fiber. Strike One. If you skin potatoes, slice them thin to expose their surface area, freeze then deep fry them in oil, there is no fiber, nutrition, minerals, nothing left but a wad of acidic starchy waste that is impossible to digest. It can take weeks for them to move through the digestive system. Strike Two. The caffeine and acid level of soft drinks shuts down the digestive system precluding the possibility that the body might actually absorb any nutrients. Strike Three. After having spent the money, you're less healthy and more acidic than when you started. Bon Appetite!" Confessions of a Body Builder, p. 46. B. McCauley, Ó2000, SE Inc. Press.
I will be the first to admit that the Raw Food Diet approach is not conventional, but it really is not a diet in the traditional sense. It is simple a natural way to eat and live. Eating that way will return the body to its natural state and weight loss will occur naturally and healthily. We have been cooking our food for millennium and cooked foods will certainly always be a part of our diet. Part of the question is, how much can we limit cooked foods in our diet. The ideal is to eat a 100% Raw Food diet, but that is difficult to achieve, even for someone like myself who has been actively promoting the Raw Food diet for years now. Eating Raw Foods is a way of life and to begin to eat the healthiest food you could possibly put in your body, you need to change your lifestyle. You start by limiting your cooked food diet as much as possible. To do that you should start each meal by eating as much raw foods as possible. That means trying to have a larger salad than you might be use to and don't use lettuce, it's a weak food that contains little, and in some cases, no food value. This primes the stomach for the cooked foods that are many times more difficult to digest and extract nutrients from than Raw Foods.
Eventually, we stop creating metabolic enzymes because of the body's constant demand for the digestive enzymes it needs to attend to high maintenance cooked foods. All Raw Foods are self-digesting, meaning that they require no special attention or extra enzymes to be digested.
"Civilization has revolved around a cooked food diet, one mostly void of enzymes, for thousands of years. Today's typical diet is so laden with cooked foods that the body is constantly overburdened with the difficulty of digesting that food because it has no enzymes. The consequence is that other areas of the body are robbed of their enzymes in order to meet the enzyme demands of digestion. The depletion of certain metabolic enzymes happens because the body is busy producing digestive enzymes, which are given top priority because it is paramount that more nutrients be constantly supplied to the body in great numbers, especially as we age." Confessions of a Body Builder, pg 36.
The Raw Food Diet is a far more economical way for the average person to eat compared to a traditional cooked food, processed food diet. Regarding nutritional content, processed foods, those that come in jars, boxes, cans, etc, are astronomically expensive compared to the nutrients that are readily assimilated by the body from Raw Foods.
"It is interesting to note that when captive wild animals are fed a diet resembling human food in the sense of it being largely heat-treated, they develop diseases similar or identical to those found in human beings." Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity, by Dr. Edward Howell, p.121.
Taste Rules
We eat Cooked Foods for once reason: Taste. We eat meat for taste exclusively. We eat dairy products, which should be completely avoided, because of taste. Dairy products create large amounts of mucous in our bodies and have been linked to many diseases, including cancer. Eggs are a very acidic food containing inferior protein types that are difficult to digest, because we cook them.
Cooking foods, however, removes 90% of the rejuvenating properties of the food and transforms it into mere sustenance, not something that renews. Your food may taste better because it is cooked, but your health will suffer because of it, now and even more in the future. Eating Raw Foods is about longevity, but even more it is about quality of health today and tomorrow. Food tastes better when it is cooked and it tastes better when it is contains fat. Once we recognized this, at least we understand what we are doing to the body when we eat cooked foods, especially when our diet is largely composed of cooked foods. When we begin eating Raw Foods and supplementing the diet with Spirulina and Chlorella, the basic nutritional needs of the body are met. Once that happens, the body stops constantly crying out to us that we need to take in more nutrients to meet the body's basic requirements. Weight loss under these circumstances naturally and healthily follows.
The Importance of Fat In the Diet
It is crucial that 10-20% of the diet is comprised of Fat. However, animal fat is essentially useless to the body. Only fat that comes from fresh fruits and vegetables is good for the body. If the fat has been cooked, then it has been denatured and therefore is altered from its original state. While it still has benefit to the body, it has greatly diminished its value from its natural state. This is also true for any food, once cooked, its nutritional value is greatly diminished. Profound things happen when fat comes in contact with the body's cells, but whether that effect is of benefit is determined by whether it is a vegetable fat or animal fat.
"Essential fatty acids are required by the body and are found in abundance in the vegetable kingdom in foods such as avocado, sesame oil, olive oil, flaxseed oil, black and wild rice, almonds, hazelnuts, Spirulina and Chlorella. These are monounsaturated fats with antioxidant qualities that fend off arterial damage from LDL cholesterol." Confessions of a Body Builder, pg 46.
What is wrong with other Diets?
There are three kinds of foods required by the body: Fat, Carbohydrates and Proteins. Other than organic chemicals substances, enzymes and water, there is nothing else that the body requires. And all three of these are required by the body with each meal. Removing one of them completely will cause the body to be thrown out of metabolic balance. It may lose weight quickly, but hormone levels will be thrown out of balance, pH may drop, enzymes may not be produced in sufficient numbers. The possibilities are endless, but what is certain is that doing something as unnatural as completely removing one of them will throw the body out of balance. And once the food group is reintroduced, there is no telling what will happen to the delicate balance of the body due to this removal and reintroduction.
For example, eating a lot of sugar at once will cause a surge of insulin to be produced by the pancreas, which will cause a "sugar crash". Done often enough exposes one to the risk of developing diabetes.
How To Begin a Raw Food Diet
- We begin a Raw Food diet by eating 2-3 grams Spirulina and Chlorella before every meal. Augment your traditional breakfast of cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, eggs and bacon with fruit. Fruit contains simple carbohydrates or sugar that will be burned easily and immediately by the body, which will provide us with a lot of energy. Sugar is the fuel of the body and sugar provided to the body through raw fruit is organic in nature and will never cause a problem for us. Refined sugar found in soft drinks and nearly every processed food on the market is quite a different story and should be avoided. It is acidic to the body and causes an overabundance of insulin to be produced, which will eventually cause an unbalanced state in the body. We balance by eating alkaline foods such as Spirulina, Chlorella, fresh fruit and other Raw Foods.
- Remove meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy products as your main protein source, which are acidic, and replace it with Spirulina and Chlorella, which are alkaline. You can also get rid of your vitamin and mineral supplements once you begin taking Spirulina and Chlorella since they contain all the vitamins and minerals your body needs in a natural state that makes them so much more powerful than the extracts and concentrates that most vitamins and minerals are made of.
- Begin each meal with a salad of any kind as long as it is full of Raw Foods. Lettuce is a weak filler and should be avoided. Eat heartier greens such as kale, spinach, greens, parsley, and sprouts as the base of your salad. Fill up on the salad as much as possible to make it as large a part of your diet as possible.
- Eat fatty foods and starchy carbohydrates in the evening because they are more difficult to digest and will provide you with a better night's sleep. Eaten during the day, they will cause fatigue and drowsiness.
- Always take a tablet that contains the bacteria for your stomach. There are 7 different bacteria in your body and each performs a different function in a different part of your digestive track. Your body CANNOT take in nutrients and keep its digestive track clean without these bacteria present at all times. If you have bad breath, your digestive track has stalled and your food is rotting in your stomach. A tablet with this friendly bacteria will clear that problem within a few hours of taking it.
- Add fresh squeezed juices to your diet. They CANNOT come from a carton or from concentrate if you intend to get any true benefit from them.
Consuming Raw Foods is less a diet than a lifestyle. You are replacing the foods that have been denatured by cooking with those that the body must have to remain healthy. And no diet in the world will work, nor will it be healthy, without adequate amounts of the most important element required by the body. The best water to drink is Ionized Water.
