Saturday, November 26, 2011

Keeping it RAW, Keeping it REAL

We still have a population who's health is failing despite a multi-billion dollar health and supplement industry. The mindset is that aging is inevitable and that diseases just strike the unfortunate and that one has cope the best one knows how.

When we meet someone-- if we even have this priviledge-- who has aged well, we tend to attribute it to genes or reason that it's just a fluke. We don't want to believe that perhaps something that we've done to ourselves has caused us harm and that we have control over changing it. That's too scary. And yet at the same time, it's incredibly empowering if you think about it. You are in the driver's seat of your own life. You create the script, choose the actors, the backdrop and determine the outcome of your life. Even including the quality of your health and appearance. It's up to you.

We live in an age of volumes of information. This is good and this is bad. It is good since we can access knowledge that previously was unattainable to us from all over the world via the web. It is bad, however, because of the sheer volume. The conflicting information and the downright smoke and mirrors put up by those with ulterior motives of lining their wallets with our hard-earned dough, have created a confused public that knows no more about creating health than they did 50 years ago and it shows.

What is needed is real-life examples of how to live healthfully and successfully by those who are actually doing it. Not the examples shown by the rich and famous with their personal trainers and chefs. Not those who are retired and have tons of time on their hands and no responsibilities. But we need people with jobs, responsibilities, schedules to juggle, family and friends who eat unhealthily who tease them, and people who have had health challenges that they've dealt with successfully by nutritional means rather than with popping pills and surgeries to show us how they do it so we can copy what they do and get what they have.

After having been introduced to the documentary made by Joe Cross "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" where he documents his journey of weight loss and recovery from a painful and embarrassing skin condition by fasting or rather,  feasting,  on raw fresh fruit and vegetable juices for 60 days and along the way not only getting ridiculously healthy himself, but inspiring a truck driver with the same skin condition and even more weight to lose to try it too, it dawned on me what was missing from the movie: was how to make this work in REAL life---both of the men were shown being able to sleep in bed and rest or take 30 days and just focus on getting better. Neither one were shown going to work everyday and having hectic lives to lead while making these changes.

The vast majority of people don't have that luxury and have demands on their time and energy that cause them to feel overwhelmed at making new changes in their diet and lifestyle and prevent them from finding the time to research their options and design workable alternatives.

That's why I wanted to start this blog. How do we make it work when we are BUSY, stressed, tired and just plain old overwhelmed?

We start by finding those who are doing it and then doing what they do. So I figured I would do a 30-day smoothie feast for the month of December while working full time.

Now, what better way to start the new year than with a raw vegetable and fruit smoothie feast?

I will blog my daily routine, my daily intake, my results and what challenges I face and how I overcome them.

You can post your questions and challenges down below and I will address them in future blogs.

I will keep it as real as possible and share tips that has helped me to not only change to eating healthier, but STAY eating healthier.

Here's what I promise:

Total transparency. I will let you know amounts of food eaten, and how much that food cost me.

I will let you know what time I get up from bed, how long it takes me to prepare my food and clean up and what time I go to bed.

My goals? To flood my body with nutrients from raw leafy greens and vegetables to replenish vitamin and mineral stores that when depleted, can lead to disease.

This, I believe, is the crux of disease actually, in addition to toxemia. While most of us eat way too much fat, sugar, white flour, coffee and saturated fats as well as Omega 6 oils, we also are depriving ourselves of much-needed micronutrients of vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to function and repair itself. They are the basic building blocks that the body uses to rebuild itself. When we deprive ourselves of those nutrients, the results are aging, slowed healing, low energy and disease. We are a nation of overabundance calorically, but deprived beyond even some Third World Countries nutritionally. In fact, despite many being obese, nutritionally, we are starving.

We need to feast on the plant kingdom to get what we need on a daily basis. That's what animals in the wild do and they are fit and healthy. We all KNOW we need to eat so many servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but virtually nobody does it. Why? We don't know anybody else who is doing it and showing us how. How many deer to you see in nature barbequeing their food?

I almost always get people wanting to try my mango slaw when I bring it to work. There are so many nutritious raw recipes that are delicious. People just haven't been shown how to eat this way. Blending dates, apples and cinnamon together makes a apple strudel that is to die for.

We are flooded with scare tactics in the mainstream media disguised as information that tell us that we are not getting enough if we are vegan, raw or if we delete animal foods from our diets. Eating junk food diets of white flour and soy burgers and french fries, even though vegan, IS unhealthier than eating a meat and potatoes with veggies diet---I know because I actually plugged in the numbers in a nutritional website and realized why some meat-eaters feel so bad when they go "junk food" vegan-- they are getting less nutrition than when they were eating meat. No wonder they go back.

Even some raw diets are way off on their nutrients: either way too high in Omega 6 fats, or not enough selenium, Vitamin E or Niacin. They start to get symptoms of deficiencies and then think they need to "detox" even more so they go on a water fast which makes them even MORE deficient. This is insanity.

We need good knowledge to make good choices and then we need to be shown ways of implementing them.

The plant kingdom has an abundance of colors, tastes and variety to choose from to delight the palate and provide raw materials for the body to use to heal.

We need to learn that what most of we put into our mouths on a daily basis is not FOOD at all----it's cardboard.  Plants, however, provide everything that a body needs to thrive.

Out of all the approximately 5000 mammals in the animal kingdom, roughly only 5% or 250 are carnivores. The others eat a predominantly plant-based diet and this not only builds, but fuels, their remarkably powerful bodies that never show the same signs of aging that humans do and they do not get overfat.

When you compare the sleeping requirement for those animals that eating mostly plants versus those that eat exclusively meat, why we are lagging in energy becomes a little more clear: giraffes eat only vegetation and sleep only 2 hours a day. Lions, who are carnivores, sleep almost 20 hours.

Dr. Max Gerson got even more spectacular results with his patients health than Joe Cross did with his juice feast with his skin: people who had stage 4 cancer and were sent home to die, were given a new lease on life through the daily ingestion of copious quantities of raw fresh vegetable and fruit juices on a daily basis  and consumed no vegetable oils, saturated fats or refined sugars or drinks.

We can mimic these same great results. Norman Walker lived into his 9th decade of life through drinking daily vegetable juices. And we know about Juice Man, Jay Kordich, who has shared this knowledge with thousands and  is vibrant and active in his eigth decade of life.

None of us wants to lose our health or vitality we had when we were younger. But few of us are living in a way to ensure that that will happen and it doesn't just happen through osmosis.

As Karyn Calabrese, who herself is in her 60's and deliciously vibrant, always says: "If you don't take care of the body you live in, where you gonna live?"


So, we'll talk about how to prepare and get started for the December 1st date and I'd love for you to comment below if you'd like to join me in my journey. :)

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