Welcome!

2 Months have already passed, and yes, I’m still on a raw food detox diet

I’m actually doing pretty well.

Here is what I eat now everyday.

Breakfast:

Green Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 1 peach
• 1 mandarine
• handful of blueberries
• handful of rasberries
• 2 teaspoons of spirulina
• 2 teaspoons of chlorella/maca
• 2 tablespoons of flax seeds
• 3 tablespoons of agava nectar or 2 tablespoons of Gula Java Cacao
• 100g of salad, spinach, any green (3 handfuls)
• 400ml of water

This green smoothie is an absolute blast! It’s the most balanced meal I came across in a liquid state so it’s very easy to digest. In fast, this 1,5l smoothie has so much power that you can actually FEEL IT after you drink it.

Everyday I experiment with different fruits. Although I always stick with bananas, as they are really good for eliminating the superfoods tastes.

And what’s best about it is that it STICKS. It sticks for you whole day. You will experience the boost in your first 3-4 hours. Great for morning and to ‘wake up’. I think that even if you will just drink this smoothie, and for the rest of the day you will eat fast foods or cooked foods, after time, you will switch to more fruits and vegetables. Why? It has so many nutrition value that I doubt you will have even a SLIGHT desire to eat anything unhealthy.

My new discovery – Gula Java Cacao – is absolutely amazing. Tastes like a cacao with milk you were drinking as a child. Even if you mix it up with sea goodies like algae What’s good about it, is that it has a sweeter taste than a regular raw cacao. It just tasted better and it can eliminate the bad taste of a salad in your smoothie.

Snack:

A Big Bowl Of Sweets

• peaches
• blueberries
• rasberries
• apples
• pears
• kiwis
• ananas
• figi
• oranges
• mandarines
• nectarines
• melons
• dried fruits
• nuts like brazil nuts, cashews
• goji berries

It’s my favorite meal. Really sweet with an addition of nuts. I listed the most common fruits you can get in any store. Each day I mix them up. More diversity, better.

Dinner:

Green Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• other fruits, like peach, blueberries, apple
• 2 tablespoons of flax seeds or coconut oil
• sometimes, 2 tablespoons of wheatgrass
• 3 tablespoons of agava nectar or 2 tablespoons of Gula Java Cacao
• 100g of salad, spinach, any green (3 handfuls)
• 400ml of water
• dried fruits, nuts for a snack

Very tasty smoothie. Because there is no more superfoods, I can add more salads, and still get a good taste. Really refreshing and an energy booster.

Supper:

An Extra Big Bowl Of Greens

• few handfuls of any salad, green vegetables, parsley
• 2 tomatoes
• some cherry tomatoes
• cucumber or onion or bell pepper
• pumpkin seeds
• some nuts like cashews
• dried tomatoes
• ’sour-sweet dressing’

It took me a really long time to come up with a green salad that I really like. And I think I finally found ‘my recipe’. In any raw food detox diet you really want to focus on eating as much salads as possible. It’s the most common mistakes most new raw foodists do. I always to try more and more greens if I can. It’s one of the rare things were more is better

I always chop everything to small pieces. Salad, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, onion, pepper, dried tomatoes, it’s all sliced into small pieces. It will taste better once you eat it.

Adding ‘additions’, like pumpkin seeds (can be also sunflower seeds or other), nuts or dried tomatoes will add some nice diversity to your salad. Also, it will taste so much better.

What is a ’sour-sweet dressing’?

• 2 tablespoons of applesauce
• 4 tablespoons of ‘garlic sauce’ (garlic + lemon + water)
• 1 tablespoon of agava nectar
• 1/4 teaspoon of himalayan salt
• 1 teaspoon of ginger

Just mix it up together and you will get a very tasty, golden-colored, hot, a bit sweet & sour salad dressing. Don’t add too much ginger. Add more than 1 teaspoon if you really like hot spices.

Summary of the first 2 months on a raw food diet

There are many things I like about this diet and some not so much

First off, I lost some weight, like 4-7 kg. I was not really happy about this as it’s hard for me to gain any weight. I’m planning to gain 5-10 kg in next coming months. It will be harder though, as most likely gain weight = gain muscles. It’s really hard to gain lots of fat on this diet.

I actually lost all the fat I had in my body. I would say even too much. But that’s how the detoxification works. Actually, it’s still happening in my body. I gain 1 kg and lose 0.5kg. My weight is not constant. I’m just going to observe it for now.

My strength has increased. It may be just because I work out everyday. My stamina has increased too when I’m running. It’s nothing that significant. But I feel really strong and really good most of the time.

My energy is really high during the first 6 hours of the day. It’s from 6am to 12pm. Then it goes down a bit and after my dinner smoothie it goes up. I currently sleep 7 hours a day and it seems enough for me.

There is something in spirulina that gives you a ‘hightened awereness’. I don’t know what it is. It’s almost like a drug, but very subtle. It sticks for a whole day but you really see this effect in the morning. It may be my morning jogging, then work out, then green smoothie, that can be this ‘holy combination’. I really don’t know. But it feels so good.

My skin looks smoother than before. I really never cared too much about my skin but I noticed a difference.

Cravings for sweets, bread, meat, cooked food decreased after first month and after second I totally forgot this kind of food exist. I actually crave now the supper meal that is a big bowl of greens. Absolutely love it. And you sleep like a baby after it

I got more in touch with my body. I know when I eat some food that doesn’t digest. When I feel a desire to eat some kind of fruits/vegetables I eat it. Few weeks ago I ate a lot of kiwis and ananas. Now, I can’t eat it. I eat other fruits. I just know when it’s too much.

People around me got really interested in my diet. My family, friends really started to get interested in this new, ‘live food’ lifestyle. That’s really amazing to see. I even met my friend’s friend who want to start a raw food diet. I think there will be more and more interest in this kind of ‘caveman’, ‘back-to-the-basics’ approach to nutrition. No more ’seasonal diets’ but back to what really works. What always worked. That is healthy & organic fruits and vegetables

More insights coming soon

Here is my quick update on day 18 of my raw food detox diet. I wasn’t updating this blog daily as not many new things really happened. I’m feeling better than before, more energy and better form in exercises. The cravings for food like bread  and cheese started to vanish. I established my own raw food diet based on my taste and preferences.

Here is what I eat now on breakfast:

‘Elixir of Life’ Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 2 kiwis
• blueberries
• 1 peach
• 2 teaspoons of spirulina
• 2 teaspoons of chlorella
• handful of cacao beans (optional)
• 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
• 2 big handfuls of spinach
• 1 cup of water

This smoothie is absolutely awesome and tastes delicious. Bananas eliminate the taste of superfoods like spirulina and chlorella. Additionally sour kiwis goes well with more sweet blueberries and peach. Cacao beans can be a nice extra kick to this smoothie but don’t add too much of it or it will become bitter. I would balance cacao beans with some natural sweetener like raw honey or agava nectar. At the end I’m adding some coconut oil for fat and spinach because greens are always good From my experience this smoothie will give you a very nice energy boost and kick in the morning. It’s good especially after an intense workout. It’s over a liter of high quality, high nutritious green smoothie that has sweet fruits, fats, green vegetables and superfoods with a lot of protein. Perfect post-workout smoothie for me!

Lunch:

Big salad containing green salads, cabbages, spinach, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, radish and other with dressing

Dressing containing olive oil, half of squeezed fresh orange, parsley, other herbs, stone salt, cayenne pepper

Snack:

30 minutes before snack 1 shot of wheatgrass (every other day)

1 big bowl of fruits like banana, kiwi, peach, blueberries, raspberries, watermelon and other + some nuts or goji berries

Dinner:

Big salad containing green salads, cabbages, spinach, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, radish and other with dressing

Dressing containing olive oil, half of squeezed fresh orange, parsley, other herbs, stone salt, cayenne pepper

So that’s my detox diet. I try to change green vegetables and fruits on each meal every day as diversity is always good. I think that’s quite balanced live food diet. It contains enough fats from olive oil, coconut oil and nuts in almost every meal. Also you can see the pattern that I eat fruit-green-fruit-green in my 4 meals. I started to shift to more greens and salads as it’s much more important than sweet fruits.

Smoothie in the morning has a good balance in terms of fats-green vegetables-sweet fruits. Lunch is all green vegetables and fat. Snack is all fruits and some fat. Dinner is all green vegetables and fats. I’m thinking into doing some only vegetable smoothies and introducing more smoothies into my raw food detox diet. I really see a big difference from the time I introduced this morning smoothie. The digestion is really easy and you feel the difference right away.

I’m getting pretty used to the raw food detox diet. The meals are starting to taste better, especially salad mixes. I feel a bit better than before, more energy and better performance. Nothing radical is happening.

In my detox diet I’m using David Wolfe’s concept called a Sunfood Triangle.

It helps you to balance most crucial and essential nutritions in your diet. Even though raw food is a natural diet, excessive eating of one thing is never a good idea. The Sunfood Triangle suggests to eat 33% of chlorophyll (that’s green leafy vegetables), 33% of sugars (that’s sweet fruits) and 33% of fats (that’s fatty fruits, nuts, seeds, coconuts). If you can stick to this proportion your body with function in the most optimal and efficient way.

It’s important to remember that each of these 3 categories play a key role in your organism. Deficiency of any of these nutrient can result in lower performance, sicknesses and diseases. Most raw vegan people are consuming too much sweet fruits and not enough salads and green leafy vegetables. From my experience I know that I could eat much more sweet fruits than salads because of the taste. The problem is that eating not enough chlorophyll will results in deficiency of some crucial minerals.

This Sunfood Triangle is made for a regular person. If you are looking to lose/gain weight, the proportions will vary.

Overdose of chlorophyll, sugar or fat can negatively effect your organism. Here are the most common symptoms.

Symptoms of a chlorophyll overdose:

• spaciness
• laziness
• feelings of being too cold

Symptoms of a sugar overdose:

• excessive urination
• light-headedness
• tooth sensitivity
• anxiety
• constipation
• sores in the mouth
• grogginess

Symptoms of a fat overdose:

• liver stagnation
• sluggishness
• oily pores
• constipation
• feelings of being too hot
• strong body odor

I made some research on green smoothies, vegetables juices and other things to speed up detoxification for raw food detox diet. Here is what I tried out today.

Green Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 1 peach
• 5 strawberries
• 2 handfuls of spinach
• 1 cup of water

I tried a vegetable juice before but it tasted really bad. Also my blender didn’t quite mix all the greens completely so the taste was pretty bad. In comparison this smoothie tasted really good!! Banana really overcome the bitter taste of spinach. In fact you won’t even feel that there is any spinach. The color may be not too convincing but this smoothie tastes like a banana smoothie. Peach and strawberries help to give more sweet taste. You can experiment with different berries and ingredients but banana is one of the fundaments of this raw food recipe.

Almond Milk

• 40 soaked almonds
• 8 pitted dates
• 2 tablespoons of cinnamon powder

Chocolate Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 2 tablespoons of raw cacao
• 1 vanilla
• 2 cup of almond milk

It tasted really good and creamy. I could drink just 1 cup and felt full. It has a lto of fat because of almonds.

Another thing I was researching today was green smoothies. I wanted to know the best recipes for tasty and rich smoothies that have a lot of green leafy vegetables and salads. I found a great book called “Green For Life” by Victoria Boutenko. She goes really in deep why green smoothies are the best solution and how to do them easily. It’s also one of the best selling books on Amazon in smoothies category.

Another site I discovered is called Juice Feasting. David Rainoshek, the creator of this site is a raw vegan for many years and developed many interesting concepts how to go around your first steps in raw food. He actually created a 92 day plan explaining everything about raw food with ready recipes  and even online community and coaching. He advocates to use only green smoothies in first 90 days of detoxification. It eases the detoxification process and accelerates the process. Additionally David came up with an idea called “Spectrum of Diet” that I found very interesting. You can find more about spectrum of diet here.

You can see the interview with David Rainoshek here

Because my meals didn’t change that much from yesterday and 2 days ago, I’m not going to mention it again. I’m feeling similar as before, nothing really changed. In this post I would like to share more information about the detoxification process and the side effects you may experience.

Detoxification process can give a lot of benefits to your organism. What is does is remove obstructions from your organism. These obstructions were first created from eating cooked food. Cooked food elements spread through your body over your lifetime and create negative blockages. You can experience detoxification in just few hours after eating organic, healthy food.

Most commons detox side effects you may experience while being on a raw food detox diet are: coughs, headaches, bad breath, weight loss, unclear thinking and cold symptoms. All the toxins are being eliminated through different ways like bowels, urine, mouth, lungs, skins and kidneys. It’s important to remember that any time you will eat something cooked, the detoxification process will stop immediately. Be prepared for some emotional releases. Many foods that you eat could cover some of the emotional issues. Being on a raw food all your emotional problems will be revealed and you have to deal with them right in this moment.

Many people report that the major detoxification side effects last for 2-4 weeks and after a month they see big improvements in health. First 2 weeks may be the most intense. If you want to try raw food diet, make sure to do it progressively. Changing from fast food diet to raw food diet may be too intense for your organism. Some people suggest to try vegetarianism for first few months and after that switch to raw food.

It’s known that every 2 years, 98% of your atoms in your organism and replaced. Also every 7 years 100% of your atoms are completely replaced. It means that every 7 years you have a completely new body. Full detoxification may take 20 months if you are 20 years old and 40 months if you are 40 years old.

So far I experienced weight loss ( I lost couple of kilograms), sleepiness, lower energy.

I will post more about the detoxification process soon.

Check out this video that explains more about the detoxification process.

Second week of my raw food detox diet journey has begun

I started to prepare meals that I really like and follow some recipes. I’m testing each meal and observing how my body reacts to it. I guess that’s the easiest way to figure out if it’s good for me or not.

Breakfast:

Fruit salad containing melons, orange, kiwi, walnuts, banana

Lunch:

Green salad containing spinach, kale, cabbage, tomato, cherry tomato, cucumber

1 slice of essene bread

New sauce “pesto oro bio” containing dried tomatoes, basil, oregano, olive oil, parsley, pepper, fresh tomatoes, vinegar, garlic, sea salt

I bought this sauce in a store. I must say that it tastes really good with green salads and reduce their taste. You can do similar sauce on your own but you will need a lot of ingredients and figure out the right proportions.

Snacks:

Fruit salad containing strawberries, rasberries, banana, melon, kiwi

That’s god’s meal

Dinner:

Green salad containing spinach, green salad, dark salad, romaine salad, tomatoes, cucumber, yellow paprika

Pesto oro salad dressing

2 slices of essene bread

That will be it. I will be posting more about my raw food diet tomorrow.

That’s my 7th day on raw food detox diet and I feel a bit weaker than usually. Maybe it’s also because of the high temperature right now. Anyway I tried some new raw food recipes and got few more things I would like to share.

Here is what I ate for breakfast:

2 kiwi

1/4 green melon

1 banana

1/4 grapefruit

1/4 orange

some watermelon

That was quite a refreshing breakfast. A variety of tasty, mostly sweet fruits. I cut each fruit in squares and put in a big bowl. Diversity in your raw food diet can be a key. I found out that the meal can be much tastier if I just add more ingredients that have different tastes. Banana, kiwi and orange is an amazing combination. Watermelon goes well with mango, melons and any citrus fruits. Grapefruit was a bit bitter for me, I’m going to use it only for smoothies.

Lunch:

Salad containing kale, spinach, cabbage, tomato, cucumber, onion, yellow pepper, flax seed oil, walnuts

2 slices of essene bread

Dark tomato sauce

The sauce was pretty good. I would add a bit more spice as it tastes mostly just like a tomato. Essene bread is a great replacement for a standard bread. Essene bread is one of the most nutritious bread there is made from sprouted grain. It doesn’t contain a flour and other chemicals used in natural bread. It’s not cooked either. I bought it in a store but you can also make it on your won, here is how. You can read more about essene bread here. Lately I experienced some cravings for bread. The essene bread did not eliminate my cravings as it’s a bit different, different taste and I guess with no ingredients that I’m ‘craving’. It didn’t feel like a real bread and I’m curious why is that so. All in all essene bread tastes pretty good but differently than a normal bread.

Snacks:

Fruit salad containing kiwi, banana, orange, watermelon, honeydew melon, walnuts

That was an wesome fruit salad. Be careful with mixing a lot of different fruits. Some say that your digestion system may not like a big variety of fruits eaten in a one meal. If that’s the case you may wait few weeks or months until your digestion system will be stronger. Introducing 1 or 2 fruits at the beginning is a good start.

Dinner:

Large salad containing kale, spinach, tomato, cucumber, radishes, basil, flax seed oil

2 slices of essene bread

Dark tomato sauce

That was a pretty tasty dinner. I’m going to work on getting a bit more spicy sauces but I’m pretty satisfied with this meal.

In next week I want to customize this raw food detox diet and pick up the best recipes I found so far. I will experiment with new recipes too and share it here. I still see a lower performance in my exercises etc so I guess I’m still in a detoxification process. It’s not really that strong as some people experience. Sometimes during the day I can get very sleepy and just can’t do anything. It’s pretty weird as I’m sleeping over 10h a day.

Nothing really changed from yesterday. First week of my ‘easy’ raw food detox diet is coming to an end. I found a lot of interesting recipes for meals, bread, sauces that I’m going to use. But first let’s go into my meals.

Breakfast:

1 big green melon

Half of avocado

Green melon is pretty similar in taste to a honeydew melon. It’s almost as sweet as a yellow melon. I’m thinking into changing avocado to other source of fat. Avocado doesn’t taste that good Mixing it with smoothies or salads is the only way to go.

Lunch:

1 cup of wheatgrass juice with 2 apples and 2 tablespoons of coconut oil

Mixing wheatgrass with apples can definitely help to reduce the wheatgrass intense aroma. Wheatgrass is a famous superfood in raw food community and it has a lot of benefits on your health. This meal totally filled me up although it seems like not a lot.

Snacks:

2 apples

15 almonds

Simple snack, enough to feel full. Apples goes well with any nuts, almonds are one of my favorite.

Dinner:

Large salad with kale, spinach, tomato, cherry tomatoes, celery, 2 tablespoons of flax seed oil, basil and parsley leaves

Salad dressing consisting of: 1 big tomato, half of lemon, 2 cloves of garlic, tablespoon of oil, handful of fresh basil leaves, handful of fresh parsley leaves, a pinch of stone salt

That’s the first time I did a dressing for myself. It may be more difficult to do a salad dressing all with raw food and without any diary ingredients. Still I found dozens of amazing dressing recipes online. I tried Tomato and basil salad dressing and it tasted really good. It has quite moderate, a bit spicy taste that will transform the taste of bitter salads. I added a bit too much of olive so it wasn’t the same as in the picture. I’m going to experiment with more salad dressings in the future.

One of the things I discovered are flax crackers. Flax crackers are made from a flax seed with some lemon and water. The thing you will need in order to make crackers is a dehydrator. Dehydrator can make any food dried, from vegetable, fruits and mushrooms. The price for a dehydrator goes from $50 to $500. You can go on Amazon and see the reviews of top selling products. I’m planning to buy some cheaper dehydrator as I would really like to add some bread, crackers with the salads. Bread is quite addictive food and even though I didn’t eat it for 6 days I’m still thinking about eating it. Being raw foodist you can make a bread from sprouts too. The example can be an italian bread.

Another day in a raw food detox diet. I still experienced low energy and got moderate results from my exercises. It just doesn’t feel the same as normally. And it’s just first week

So here is my breakfast:

Juice from 4 oranges

10 walnuts with lettuce

Freshly squeezed orange juice is definitely one of my favorite juices, even better than a grapefruit juice. Great for vegan detox and gives a lot of energy. Walnuts with lettuce is an awesome mix, some fat in the morning can distribute the sweet fruits more slowly through the day.

Lunch:

Salad containing cucumber, tomato, zucchini, salads, cabbage, plus flax oil, herbs and squeezed lemon for dressing

I’m still trying to adapt to all these green salads. So far the best dressing I came up with is an oil mixed with some herbs and lemon. You can find some salad dressing here. I foudn some interesting dressings like quick mustard dressing and pomegranate basil dressing.

Snacks:

2 oranges

Some greens like spinach, green salad, dark salad

2 handfuls of goji berries

Goji berries come together well with any kind of salad. They have this specific, sweet taste that can be combined with any type of fruits and green vegetables.

Dinner:

Medium salad containing cucumber, tomato, onion, flax oil, herbs, lemon, celery

Blackcurrants with dried dates and walnuts

Blackcurrants are totally amazing, they give instant boost of energy and taste great with walnuts and dates. Very tasty mix for a raw food dessert.

That’s about it. Another day of raw food detox diet has passed. I hope to feel better soon but it’s just first week ;o I’m planning to test some more salad dressings, other recipes and report here what taste best.

Another raw food detox diet day. I’m feeling a bit different than normally. Definitely not with high energy or anything. No big changes have arose though.

Here is what I ate for breakfast:

Juice made from 3 grapefruits, 3 oranges, 1 pomegranate, some lemon and 2 tablespoons of flax seed

This is an amazing raw food recipe. Very cleanse effects, great energy booster and tasty! I never ate pomegranate before and it has an interesting, kind of sour taste. It goes well with more sweet orange and more sour grapefruit. Flax seed is a great source for fat so I added it as a bonus.

Lunch:

Mixed salad containing tomato, cucumber, radishes, flax oil, mixed herbs and other

Big bowl of blackcurrants

8 dried prunes

Really good meal. Mixed salad tasted much better with flax oil and some herbs. I found out some mixed herbs for salad in a store the other day and it changes the taste quite significantly. I never ate blackcurrants alone, most times I ate it with sugar and other things. Blackcurrant is extremely healthy (similar to blackberries) and can taste a bit sour. If you eat more it will taste much better as you get used to the taste. At the end I ate some dried prunes that were really sweet in comparison to blackcurrants. I felt really energized after this raw food meal.

Snacks:

1 big honeydew melon

Small mixed salad with kale, spinach, darker salad with some herbs and oil

Honeydew melon is very sweet. After eating the whole one it was too much sweet for me. I wasn’t that hungry during this time so I ate a bit of a mixed salad for some greens.

Dinner:

Large salad containing 80% green-leafed vegetables, 20 almonds and walnuts, onions and lemon squeezed as dressing, plus some flax oil and herbs

Big green salads are not of my favorite but almonds and walnuts gave a really unique taste.  Onion can be also a very nice addition for a better taste.

That’s day 4 of my raw food detox diet. Recently I looked around some recipes for raw food online and I found few interesting websites that have recipes with pictures:

• We Like It Raw – I found here some really tasty looking raw food recipes, desserts and even tortillas!
• Gone Raw – One of the best websites with delicious recipes. What’s cool about this is that everyone here can share his own recipe. You will find a big diversity of different recipes. Check out Berry Cream Cups, that looks yummy!
• Raw Food Recipes – That’s my favorite website. It has very original raw food detox diet recipes for fruit dishes, snacks, salads, cookies, crackers and even sauces and salad dressings.

What I found out after surfing through these websites is that a lot of recipes had an ingredient called ‘Himalayan rock salt’. What I discovered is that it can be a great addition for salads and it’s a much healthier solution than a standard salt. This salt come from Pakistan and has a red or pink color. What makes this salt unique in comparison to a table salt is that it’s not refined and it comes from a natural state. It also doesn’t have any environmental pollution. I will definitely try it out.