Finding Your Raw Groove

I have a pattern. It seems to happen to me every year, right about now. First, I start to get a little cabin fever. Then, to add insult to injury, I put on a pair of pants, or look in the mirror and all of the slack I have cut myself over the Christmas holidays has caught up 10 fold. My 80-90% raw diet has turned into 40-50%, and the food that I am eating that is not raw is not healthy.
I am not always 100% raw. Nor are most of the raw food leaders that you know. Sometimes I am, especially in the spring, summer and most of the fall. At that time of year I follow a 95-100% raw diet. But when the winter hits, living where I do, I start incorporating more cooked foods.
Finding high quality fresh produce that hasn’t been trucked for thousands of miles is next to impossible where I live in the winter. The prices go through the roof. Combined with that,  I crave warm, dense foods. Root vegetables, and hearty beans and grains. If I stopped there, I would be ok. But then the holidays hit and I indulge. And little by little, the unhealthy temptations sneak in and before I know it, I need a reset. I need to find my Raw Food Groove.
What is a Raw Food Groove? The most important thing to know is that it is different for everyone. It is figuring out how raw food can  fit into your life-style in an easily maintainable way.  It isn’t about being 100%, unless that is your raw groove. It is about health. It is about figuring out how to make it work, so we don’t give up.
That is where finding your RAW FOOD GROOVE comes in. It is all about figuring out how to make incorporating more raw food into your diet can work for you. Over the next month, I am going to be working on my raw groove and I invite you follow along, take notes and work on finding your raw food groove.
Tomorrow, I am starting my reset. For a week, I will be detoxing. No grains, beans, or processed sugars. I don’t eat animals but if I did, they would be eliminated for this week, too. I will be eating fruit, veggies, some nuts and that’s about it. Hmmmm…sounds remarkably like my 100% raw diet! I am allowing for some cooked foods, soups, etc. Just cleaning out.
If you want to join me, would love to help you find your raw groove too!
A quick note: Voting for The Best of Raw ends tonight at midnight. You can vote for Rawmazing in the following categories: Best Raw Gourmet Chef (Susan Powers), Best Raw Website: Rawmazing (under media) and also Best Raw Book, Rawmazing Desserts (under media). Vote here: Best of Raw 2010.
Tagged as: gluten free recipes, healthy recipes, raw food cooking, raw food diet, raw food recipes, vegan recipes
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Finding Your Raw Food Balance

A good friend of mine posted a comment today on her Facebook page. She made tacos with walnuts and her ph level was more acidic. She was wondering if it was the walnuts. It could very well have been because walnuts are very acidic. But they also contain tons of health promoting nutrients. The good and the bad?

Let’s look at spinach, one of the most nutrient rich vegetables out there. It is full of vitamins, minerals and phyto nutrients. Spinach contains nutrients that fight inflammation and cancer. It also is full of anti-oxidants. Calorie for calorie it is said to have more nutrients than any other food. Sounds perfect? Not quite.

Spinach is one of the vegetables that is on the dirty dozen list, meaning one of the top 12 fruits and vegetables that pesticides are most frequently found on. Spinach also has measurable amounts of oxalates. Oxalates can cause problems for people with kidney issues and also interfere with calcium adsorption. It also contains purines which can lead to a build up of uric acid.

So, here we have the good and the bad of spinach. And lately, it seems you can read negative and positive about almost everything we put in our mouths. And I am talking about the healthy stuff.  So what do we do? Stop eating all together? Well, then we are left with air and water and everyone knows about the pollution issues associated with that!

Ok…I was a little tongue in cheek there but I think you can catch my drift. How do we deal with all of the information that bombards us? Moderation. Balance. Eat your spinach but not every day of the week, or at the exclusion of other greens. Mix it up. Go for variety. Eat a lot of different foods so you can get the different benefits from all of them. Cover your bases, so to speak. Oh…and buy organic spinach.

Tagged as: organic, raw food, raw food diet, raw food recipes, vegan, vegan recipes

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