Eat a Raw Diet for a Day

“About 5 years later I became curious enough to try again. This time I educated myself by reading about the raw food diet from experienced raw foodists. I bought a couple raw cookbooks and experimented with recipes for several weeks in advance. I bought a juicer and an Excalibur dehydrator. This allowed me to successfully complete the 30-day trial. After a short period of detox, I felt absolutely fantastic on this diet — better than I’ve ever felt in my life. I probably lost 5-10 pounds in those 30 days as well. I knew I was onto something, but at the end of the trial, I still returned to eating cooked food because eating raw was too much work. I was spending 1-2 hours in the kitchen each day making complicated recipes with 15 different ingredients.”

“My first attempt at a raw diet was in ’97 or ’98. I decided to do a 30-day trial and lasted only 3 days before giving up. I failed because I was eating mostly vegetables and simply couldn’t get enough calories. I had no knowledge of how to eat a proper raw diet, so I just ate more of the raw foods I previously ate. I made really big salads and fruit smoothies, but I ended up spending a lot of time in the kitchen preparing food, and I was constantly hungry. It was hard to get even 1,000 calories a day this way. I concluded that raw foodism just wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to spend all day eating.”

“And what a difference it made. Within two weeks of eating raw, I had twice as much energy, bouts of euphoria, more even-keeled moods, and rosy skin. I was shocked. I had never imagined that all the hype could be true. I had imagined it would be impossible to go without cooked grains, hot soups, and toasted bread. I had never told myself I couldn’t have those things if I wanted—it was an experiment—but suddenly I didn’t want them anymore. In fact, I had never felt quite so happy with my diet.”