Hello friends!
Yesterday was the start of the astronomical summer in the northern hemisphere, so allow me to wish you happy summer!
The summer is hot, it is scorching, but it is the best season, especially when you are situated close to a big body of water, in which you can swim. Yes! It is all good!
But there was something else, apart from the coming of the summer, which I wanted to discuss with you today. And this is my one year anniversary of going raw. Going what? OK, I guess that I should explain myself here.
It was June last year, and it had already been 4 months since I became a vegetarian. I consider the elimination of animal foods from my diet the best thing I could have done with my diet. It was a great decision! I felt much better, both physically and emotionally. But there was something wrong.
Yes, being vegetarian did not sound good enough for me. As I am always looking to feel better and to be better, I soon found some shortcomings in the vegetarian diet. First, vegetarianism allows the consumption of refined sugars, oils and complex carbohydrates. Every time I ate some sugar product or heavy bread, or some cake, or used oil on my salad, I felt heavy. I felt a heaviness not only in my body, but in my head as well. And emotionally I was not feeling that good either. So what was wrong?
Well, I was not consuming animal foods, which was good, but I was at the same time polluting my body with refined sugars, oils and complex carbohydrates. I will not go into details about the demerits of these types of foods here. What I will do instead is share my experience in how I managed to get myself to feel better. So what did I do?
I had been reading about the raw food diet, and I always wondered, how could one live only on raw fruits, vegetables and nuts? Sounded impossible to me, as I am sure that it sounds impossible to you, if you are not a raw food eater. So I read some more, and found an interesting proposal from one of the so-called raw food gurus. The summer is a great time to test the raw food diet, he said, as there is a great variety of available fresh fruits and vegetables. And one should definitely give it a try. It can only be for a week, or a month, and at the least it will be a great cleanse to one's system. Try it out, he said, but I am guessing that you would not want to quit once you start feeling the benefits!
Good, I thought, I will give it a try! It was the middle of June last year, so I decided that a good time to start this raw food diet would be the start of summer on June 21st. So I started it. It was not easy in the beginning, as all the people around me were against me following this diet, but I persevered, and here has passed one year. So how come I did not quit after the one month challenge?
Well, I took the one month challenge of the raw food diet, and despite of losing some weight, and being discouraged by the people around me due to my strange habits, I felt much better on this diet. I felt better both physically and emotionally. I felt refreshed, I felt energized, I felt emotionally stable. It was a good feeling and it has continued up to the present, so I never considered stopping my raw food diet.
So is there something you are missing in the raw food diet. Don't you miss your proteins. No. In fact, there are plenty of proteins in fruits and vegetables, but if that were not enough, I have raw nuts, which have at least as much protein as animal products, and without the cholesterol or other unhealthy things. But indeed, there is one thing missing in the raw food diet. And that one thing is the vitamin B12, which is only to be found in animal products. But there is good news, too. You can get this vitamin through supplements! This is how I get my vitamin B12, and this makes it needless for me to consume animal products, or any cooked foods for that matter.
Of course, this post is not meant to exhaust the whole topic of the raw food diet. I only wanted to let you know that I have completed my first year on the raw food diet, and it has been great so far, so I continue my diet. Also, I wanted to let you know of the possibility to check out the raw food diet for a week or a month this summer. And if you have some questions, or comments, by all means comment on this post.
Have a great day and a great summer!
