Developing Your Raw Food Diet Plan

Before getting started on your new eating adventure you’ll want to have your raw food diet plan in place and ready to be followed. If you don’t normally eat a lot of raw foods already, gradually switching raw for cooked foods over a few weeks or more may be necessary for your plan to work out.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to try to help you do here…

Small changes can add up to big changes and changing everything all at once can be tough to do. So, begin by understanding your current food habits by asking your self “What raw foods do I already consume” and make a list. This is the first step in creating your raw food diet plan.

Once you have the list for your raw food diet plan the next step is to analyze what raw foods already in your life and the quality of them. Can they stay or do you need to replace them too?

Here’s an Exercise for Developing Your Raw Food Diet Plan:

Let’s say that you wrote down that you already ate salad. That’s good right? Not so fast – depending on where your salad comes from and how it’s made, it could be downright bad for you. From food borne illness bugs like e-coli and salmonella to pesticides and preservatives lettuce and complete salads alike can be good or bad for you.

So, how do you know what’s good or bad? The fact is that if you did not personally grow, harvest and prepare your own salads you can truly never know for sure. Another fact is that few people are going to do that so you have to a find a balance of a little bit of education and trust.

Commercially prepared and package lettuce and salads are not going to cut the muster. Neither are fast food restaurant salads. So, back to your list for your raw food diet plan; you’ll need to cross off all salads that are not made by you or someone you highly trust to serve clean healthy food.

Do this with all raw foods already on your list. It will reveal what habits you already have to assist you in making the switch to your raw food diet. The key is to continue with what you already like while you start to turn non-raw food versions into more preferable raw versions.

Changing Over From Cooked to Raw Food

Let’s say that you love and eat salsa regularly but you always buy it in a jar. To fit into your raw food diet plan you can easily make drop-dead delicious salsa fresh at home with very little fuss.

You can still have it – just scratch the salsa in a jar from your list and add in your easy to make and fresh raw food salsa. After a few times of making it you’ll never want to go back to that disgusting jar stuff ever again. Fresh made salsa is awesome.

Plan your switch to a raw food diet carefully and start changing your foods out gradually over time. Start with replacing just one meal a day or declare one day a week as a nothing but a raw food day. This will help make implementing your raw food diet plan a successful one.

Shopping For Your New Raw Food Diet Plan

As you begin switching out the foods you eat from cooked to raw, you will want to pay close attention to your shopping habits. But just because you’re changing over to raw, it doesn’t mean you have to find all new places to buy your food. You just have to start changing one or more of the items you buy.

Many stores today carry lots of organic fruit and vegetable choices now and as popularity has been growing, the prices are coming down to reasonable levels. Organic used to be very pricy when you could find it but today many farmers are helping to fill the gap by making organic produce more widely available.

One of the best ways to buy, and frequently at a lower price, is at a local farmer’s market. Here you’ll be able to find some of the freshest locally grown food and support local farmers as well as local small local business owners. Some areas have weekend only farmer’s markets and others are open every day of the week.

Another great way to eat super fresh and save a little money at the same time is by visiting a “pick your own farm”. These are great places to take kids along to teach them the value of harvesting your own food. The farmer gives you a basket; you pick the food from their field and pay a small price in comparison to a grocery store for the basket you just filled up.

Pick your own farms are a great money saver, they’re educational, good for a little exercise and can be lots of fun for the whole family. And so can your own personal backyard or sun porch garden to replace a portion of your grocery store list.

Don’t forget about shopping online either. You can find deals and a wide variety of raw whole food items by shopping on the internet – just be sure you do your research and do business with a reputable companies and brands.

Kitchen Technology for Your Raw Food Diet Plan

If you want to go on a raw food diet but can’t see yourself eating certain items cold and completely raw you can do add a little bit of heating to your plan. No cooking allowed but a quick blanch can change things up for you in a good way.

Take broccoli for instance. If you despise having to eat it cold, boil some water, drop the broccoli in, give it a stir and say out loud “this is going to be great” and quickly remove from the water. Season it with a dribble of olive oil, black pepper with a tinge of sea salt or lemon juice for a surprisingly good taste and texture.

That’s a raw food recipe that can work with a number of vegetables to spruce up the flavor and texture while taking the “boring” out of it.

Other than those typical kitchen items a juicer is a nice addition to your raw food diet plan. You’ll want a good quality juicer that extracts the most amount of juice possible out of the produce you put into it and it must be easy to clean. If it’s a pain to clean then you’ll likely use it less often.

When using a juicer with fruit you’ll want to pay attention to calories as the juice contains a concentration of sugars. An apple may only be 90 calories but when you juice four of them for some fresh apple juice they can add up quickly.

Don’t through all those valuable fiber leftovers from the juicer away either. And that brings us to the next piece of raw food diet kitchen technology – namely, the food dehydrator.

What you do is take the leftovers from the juicer; in this case it’s apple, mix in a little ground cinnamon with a tiny bit of stevia for a sweetener mixed in. Next, flatten it out, dehydrate it and break up into smaller pieces that are not only delicious but really good for you too.

Dehydrators are great for all kinds of uses. You can turn a seasonal trip of farmer’s market great buys into a years worth of dehydrated apple slices. From apple wafers or slices to homemade fruit roll-ups, a food dehydrator is a valuable piece of kitchen technology for the raw food enthusiast.

To wrap up our kitchen technology here, a blender or food processor for making smoothies, meal replacement shakes, salsas, slaws and other raw food recipes gives you a large variety of choices when preparing your meals.

Make Your Raw Food Diet Plan a Reality

Going on a raw food diet is a lifestyle change that everyone chooses for different reasons. And in these days of an over processed food supply, raw whole food is something your body can identify with in a historical and intimate way.

Whatever your reason for going raw; better health, more energy, weight loss, mental clarity and focus, you can do it by creating small steps in your raw food diet plan. Just take it slow at first and do small manageable steps that you can deal with one step at a time.

Focus on one raw food item or meal at a time and before you know it, your raw food diet plan will be complete. So go back to “The Pathway to a Raw Food Diet” to read it again if you need to, then start writing down your own plan and take your first step to a healthier life.

Eating Raw Foods is a Great Choice

Eating raw food is a great choice because they are very easy to digest as they have naturally occurring enzymes that aids your body’s digestion and its ability to increase nutrient uptake.

Raw foods in their natural state make them very digestible. What’s more, it takes your body very little energy to do so.

Raw foods are loaded full of nutrients in comparison to cooked foods. Junk foods are the worst and should be at the bottom of your food chain; meaning eat them sparingly if at all. Most junk foods are just that – junk food, and are primarily empty calories with little to no nutritional value.

When You Want a Snack – Reach For Raw Food!

When you start eating more raw foods you have a choice of eating them whole or juicing them. Juicing allows you to ingest more concentrated nutrient levels but in turn you lose the fiber that’s so important. Even if you juice though, you can still snack on some raw food to give yourself some bulk.

Raw Foods Promote Natural Energy

When you increase your intake of say something like carrots and celery you will immediately notice a huge increase in your energy level. You can eat practically any vegetable or fruit and increase your energy level.

Ideas on Getting More Raw Food in Your Diet:

Vegetables – We touched on that above a bit but basically everything from Artichokes to Zucchinis works. There are lots of recipes to combine both vegetables and fruits to keep your life full of variety if you choose the raw food diet.

Fruits – if you’re juicing them be wary of the concentrated sugars found in most fruits and think moderation. Just realize that if you’re juicing eight apples to make a small glass of apple juice you’re getting most of the calorie content of eight apples and a practically empty stomach.

Raw, organic fresh fruits are an excellent source of nutrition and a wonderful source of energy but be sensible and follow the guideline in the “A Healthy Nutrition Plan Starts with the Food Pyramid”.

Salads – mix it up, red leaf, green leaf, butternut, iceberg and romaine, mix it up and eat lots of fresh leafy organic vegetables. An ideal dressing is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil with a few herbs and spices, maybe some lemon juice, balsamic or red wine vinegar. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar all by itself makes a great salad dressing.

Juices – If you looking to put raw food into your diet you can forget about cans, cartons and bottled fruit juices. As a matter of fact, you don’t even want to make fresh raw juice at home in advance. The best value comes from the freshest fruits and vegetables being juiced and consumed as soon as possible. This is the very best way to get all of the minerals, vitamins and enzymes that your body needs. When it is not possible to make your own, turn only to fresh, cold processed organic juices from trustworthy companies that preserve the nutritional integrity of the whole raw food.

Raw Nuts and Seeds – raw organic nuts and seeds when we eat them in moderation provide lots of benefits. They contain proteins, necessary fats and calories for energy. Be sure to eat raw, not roasted nuts but be careful not to overeat and use them sparingly. Seeds like flax and sesame can be mixed into your salads for some added crunchy flavor and great nutritional value if you chew them well.

Lastly, talking about important raw foods would not be complete without mentioning Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera has been dubbed the name “miracle plant” and for good reason… Aloe Vera provides so many benefits there have been entire books written on the subject.

Because of the power of this plant, companies have gone to great lengths to preserve the nutritional integrity of the plant in a juice form and have bottled it for our convenience and use. The best bottled Aloe Vera juices will have 100% organic cold processed “inner leaf fillets” at the top of their ingredient list.

Including Aloe Vera into your diet is a smart decision indeed but most people are not going to grow, harvest and juice Aloe Vera plants for their consumption even knowing it’s as beneficial as it is.

The problem is that they’re not typically available at your local market.

From healing burns and cuts on the outside to aiding digestion, providing high nutrient absorption and the healing of your body from the inside out there’s probably not another vegetable you’d want more in your diet if you only knew all of the many benefits it holds.

Staying in harmony with the purpose of this section, local raw foods are best and the soonest you are able to consume them once they’ve been harvested the more nutritional value they hold for you.

Eat fresh and enjoy the many benefits available to you when you choose to add in or exclusively eat raw foods in your diet.

The last and final section is the “Conclusion to the Healthy Nutrition Guide” where we’ll summarize a bit and hopefully get your vote to allow us to continue to help and serve you in the world of health and fitness.