Third Meal of the Day & Snacks

Usually your third meal of the day will be your evening meal.

There are a couple different things you may want to do:

Heavy

If you are really, really hungry you may want to have a more heavy, satisfying meal.

This could be a large salad with some nuts, olives, or avocado.

Or it could be a more complex type of raw recipe if you are in a transitional phase.

If you are still eating cooked food, you may choose to eat some complex carbohydates like rice, potatoes and steamed veggies.

Light

If you already had a heavy meal at lunch or just want something sweet, fruit is the perfect choice here.

You could have a lovely fruit pudding of bananas and mangos whirled around in the food processor. Optional: make it tropical by adding young coconut meat or sprinkling dried coconut on top.

Or you could do a nice fruit smoothie, or a cold fruit soup. Strawberries blended with orange juice, agave nectar, honey etc. makes a wonderful soup.

A bowl of grapes or sliced melon is another refreshing light choice.

Snacks

When you don't eat enough to satisfy you to the next meal, and especially during transition, you will be prone to snack or even have smaller meals in between larger ones.

People tend to eat the worst when they are "snacking", whether it is a lick of something they are preparing for others, a bite of pizza, a cookie, a piece of bread, etc. snacks almost always are the cause of people "blowing" their diets. So, being prepared, mentally and physically with plenty of choices will help avoid these pitfalls.

Here are some suggestions:

~ 1 cup of dates

~ 2-3 bananas

~ Baby carrots or celery sticks with optional nut butter, guacamole or hummus

~ A handful of sun-dried raisins

~ Romaine hearts

~ 12 oz. fresh orange juice from 3-4 squeezed oranges

~ Sugar snap peas

If you are transitioning and want something a bit heavier or heartier:

~ Home made trail mix (nuts, seeds, dried fruit, coconut, etc.)

~ Homemade raw cookies, truffles, fudge or brownies

~ Just Corn (freeze dried corn by Just Tomatoes brand - great movie snack)

~ Sulfite and sugar-free dried fruit from the health food store, such as mango cheeks, pineapple rings, tart cherries, figs, prunes, apricots etc. These may not be techinically raw as they are dried under higher heat settings but work for beginners or transitioners.

Second Meal of the Day

If the first meal of the day was very light and juicy, then you might be wanting something a bit heavier for your next meal.

This varies from person to person, but for me, I sometimes desire something pretty filling, such as a dense fruit like bananas or mangoes, or a great big salad.

If you are not used to eating a lot of fruit in a sitting, then the salad following a plate or bowl of fruit would be a great idea. If only a salad is eaten for lunch, you may crave something sweet right afterward, so either a glass of orange juice, or some cut up melon or any other kind of fruit is ideal right before the salad.

This time of year is my favorite for fruit. Peaches, berries, melons and plums are available right now, and getting them during the peak of the season is the best thing on your palette and wallet. Any of these fruits would make a perfect lunch, either plain, in a smoothie or made into a luscious pudding or even a sorbet by freezing and running through the food processor.

However you choose to eat, enjoy your lunch with the freshest and ripest fruits and veggies and eat until you are completely satisfied!

First meal of the day

Instead of moving on right away to second meal or lunch suggestions, I thought'd be a great idea to throw out some suggestions to those who might be finding the first meal of the day a bit of a struggle.

When you are used to waking up and eating heavy cooked foods, a lot of animal protein or even cold cereal like granola and almond milk, eating fruit can be a challenge.

So here are some ideas that you may want to think about.

1 - Variety - there should be lots of different fruit options available. So if you don't feel like eating half a melon, then grapes or pears (or whatever you picked out at the store) should be easily accessible. Make sure there are at least 3 different fruit choices for your breakfast.

2 - Abundance - there should be enough fruit around to get full on. Eating 2 oranges may not be satisfying for everyone - some people will want to eat 10 of them.

3 - Ripeness - Eating a hard pear or mango is just not very pleasing to someone who is very hungry. Bananas that are all yellow are very starchy and can be hard on a stomach. Fruit needs to yield to slight pressure and bananas should have spots on them. Some people can handle very ripe fruit while others don't care for the flavor, sometimes it gets some getting use to.

4 - Space - many people will throw their hands up and reach for a quick bowl of cereal if the kitchen is messy with dishes and junk all around. Make sure your dishes are done the night before and the counters are nice and clean. If you want, you can put a cutting board and sharp knife out to entice you to cut into your fruit first thing in the morning.

5 - Hesitation - many times we are not hungry when we first wake up. But then, if we wait, we'll often get so hungry that we are not in the mood for fruit, if we are unaccustomed to eating it on a regular basis as a meal. So if you are new to eating fruit in the morning, try to have some before you get hungry to curb your appetite. This way you won't make a mistake or get an insatiable craving for something you should not have. It really works. Once you get used to eating fruit for meals, it becomes so much easier to reach for it when you feel famished.

6 - Lightness - The feeling of a full, heavy stomach after eating is common to a cooked eater and bad food combining. It doesn't mean anything healthy to have a full feeling when you are done eating. If you aren't used to feeling light after a full meal, you may feel unsatisfied. These things take a while, they don't happen overnight. Once you get used to the way you feel after eating a meal of fruit you will really like that feeling, so allow an adjustment period.

7 - Boredom - if you get sick or board of eating fruit straight up, try using a blender, adding juice, or pureeing some fruit up in a food processor for a pudding. Sometimes it's more fun and satisfying to eat a banana-mango pudding than eating bananas and mangoes, or orange juice blended up with strawberries than eating the fruit whole. After a while you may want to eat the fruit whole and feel more satisfied doing so.

8 - Too Sweet - there aren't any hard and fast rules that you have to eat sweet fruit in the morning. You may want to eat bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. or maybe you want to make a veggie juice or soup. Follow your palette.

I hope these ideas and suggestions gave some insight on eating your breakfast!

What Am I Supposed To Eat Then?

This is a follow-up to my last entry about eating too much fat. After reading this, many people new to the raw food lifestyle may be scratching their heads wondering what in the world can they eat?

First I'm going to preface this by mentioning that reducing your fat intake does not have to be a sudden thing. This may be a more difficult feat for some than others, so if drastically reducing an already high fat intake is a challenge, take it slow and steady. Log on to a free nutritional analysis site, like http://www.fitday.com/, http://www.nutridiary.com/ or http://www.sparkpeople.com/ and put in everything you ate for a few days just to see your percentage.

If you ate a recipe, then enter all the ingredients in measurements and it will give you a percentage, even if you didn't eat the whole recipe, it is the percentage that you want to look at. If you ate over 60% of your calories from fat, then you are eating way more fat than is recommended, and you may want to aim for no more than 40% fat for the next few weeks to make things easier. You can start reducing it after that as you feel comfortable. Most health experts advise no more than 10%-15% calories coming from fat.

Just a note, that you do not have to keep entering your daily intake for more than a few days. Once you enter a few days' worth of food, you'll see what needs to be tweaked. The key is, that the more calories you eat in a day, the more fat you can eat.

If you weren't hungry at all but had a couple of handfuls of nuts, then you could be eating 70-80% fat, just because all you had were the nuts, and nothing to offset them. The amount of calories you take in is entirely up to you, but if you are very active, the amount of calories you should be eating is your weight x 10 plus what you are burning off in activity.

Example - if you weigh 150 pounds and are active, you'll want to get eat at least 1,500 calories plus extra to make up for the calories you burn in activity. However if you are not active or don't feel like eating anything, your calorie intake will vary. So this is just a guideline.

It is so common today that prepared raw foods, recipes, and products available to the public tend to be very dense and abnormally high in fat. Years and years ago, the pioneer raw foodists were eating fresh fruits and vegetables as meals, and smaller amounts of fats. This I believe was the ideal kind of raw diet. they weren't supplementing with superfoods and oils as many are today.


Now it is popular, even chic to be eating coconut oil, hemp seeds, pumpkin butter, superfood smoothies made with cocoa and a lot of fats.

There are many recipes out there that are loaded with nuts and fats. One in particular I've seen gain popularity is a cheesecake recipe. The main ingredients consists of lots of cashews, macadamia nuts and coconut oil and a liquid sweetener. Many folks were trying out this recipes and exclaiming how it tasted just like the real thing. However, this recipe contained over 65% fat. Whether you eat one bite, one piece or the whole cake, the percentage is the same.

Out of curiosity, I made half a recipe for the holidays a couple of years ago. I anxiously tried it and to me, it didn't even come close to a cheesecake. In fact, it tasted very fatty, as if I was eating a stick of sweetened frozen butter (it had to be kept frozen in order for it to stay firm).



While enjoying recipes are great, sometimes people with eating disorders or who may have a hard time with food addictions really need to take caution with some of those recipes. People were eating cheesecakes, puddings and pies for breakfast while patting themselves on the back for "staying raw". In my opinion, a bowl of natural cooked oatmeal would have been far healthier as a breakfast option.



Which brings me back to the original topic, "what am I supposed to eat?"


So for today's entry, we'll start with breakfast.


Many raw fooders believe that adding a fat to their smoothie is beneficial. It is not uncommon for people to add tablespoons of fat, such as coconut oil, flax seed oil, or flax seeds themselves to a smoothie.


There are many problems with this, the first being that most people don't require that amount of fat, especially when breaking a fast. In addition, mixing fat with fruit is a recipe for many problems, at the very least a bad case of indigestion and gas, and at the worst blood sugar problems which may contribute or worsen things like candida and diabetes.


Here are some ideas for breakfast:

• Fresh squeezed orange juice

• Young coconut water - this has a little more fat, but it's still under 10% calorically

• An all fruit smoothie. You can use orange juice or plain water as the base, add bananas and mangoes for creaminess, then any other kind of fruit like pineapple, peaches, berries, frozen fruit and ice cubes if you like your smoothies cold. I prefer to keep the variety to a minimum, usually no more than 3 kinds of fruit.

• Mono fruit. You can eat one kind of fruit such as several oranges, several peaches, kiwi, grapefruit, grapes or whatever you desire. Although this is simple, you will be surprised at how enjoyable the flavor is. Eat as much you'd like, but make sure you are hungry first!

• Fruit salad - mixing 2 or more fruits. Bananas and berries, pineapples and oranges, peaches & pears, etc.

Most people prefer to skip breakfast, which is perfectly fine. Breakfast is only the most important meal of the day when you eat it properly. It is better not to eat at all if you aren't going to give yourself the appropriate type of fuel.





Sometimes I will just drink a big glass of water, which is a great way to cleanse the body after a night of detox. If you are waking up with a heavy head and a funny taste in your mouth, your body is in full detox mode and has worked hard the night before, so be gentle with it the next morning. Especially if you haven't done any kind of activity, there may be no real need to re-fuel. So eating light, or drinking water or juice may be the easiest on your body.

The next entry we will talk about lunch options.

Raw any way you like it

Note - I had written this earlier this year. I had it on my RawkyMountainHealth site. This is a good reminder of not to be too strict or too liberal when you are eating. It is so easy to go either way, that you can get frustrated or carried away with what you are doing, just a reminder that balance is the key here!

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One thing I have seen on many specific raw discussion groups is the mindset that there is one type of way to eat raw which works for every body.

You may notice that there are 2 different examples (for the most part) people going raw use who tend not to stick with it too long:

1) Eating simple and mono-mealing -

Strictly fruits and vegetables with small amounts of fats like avocados, and nuts and seeds; sometimes eating one type of food at a meal.

In this instance, it may be too extreme for some to go from a complicated cooked diet to such a simple one.

Eating too simply too fast in the beginning may leave a newbie bored or hungry for more complex foods that was eaten before starting raw.

A person can be used to eating small portions of dense foods like cooked animal products, grains and fats which are very filling, and not be used eating enough fresh plant food to fill themselves up.

However, for others, this works well IF their diet was already uncomplicated and hassle-free.

It requires almost no prep time, and can be easily adapted to most any situation away from home. This diet would enable a person to heal from disease and lose weight rapidly.

2) Wildcard diet -

Eat what you want as long as it's raw - eating heavier, richer seasoned foods, commonly using recipes as meals, not centering meals around fresh whole plant foods.

The second type of diet can really set up a person to start craving cooked food as many of these recipes mimic a favorite cooked dish, such as burgers, pizzas, cakes, etc.

The term "eat it as long as it's raw" can also be confusing to a newbie who doesn't quite grasp what raw food actually is. Some people tend to over eat "raw" things like nut butters, nuts, oils, "raw" energy bars, etc. instead of using fresh foods, thinking that they are health promoting. Many seasonings and condiments are used to appease a cooked palette.

It can be expensive between the equipment, ingredients and waste of a recipe that doesn't turn out well. Or it can keep a person's cravings alive, eventually leading them back to cooked foods.

However this can work well with those who need to be filled up if they are used to over-eating and/or eating dense or fast foods, and are actually able go through the process of moving on to simpler foods without turning back to cooked food. Detox and healing is slower and more comfortable.


In my years of raw food experience, I started off with the 2nd instance with much recipe-making and it has backfired. Moving on to simpler foods didn't happen with me, and I went through a lot of money on those recipes. The same thing has happened to most people I know trying the same route.

Now I have seen it work with a few people, so I know it is possible. But they are few and far between. There have been those who have tried the simpler way and have had problems as well. Many have stayed on the diet and had great results, but then crashed and burned in a matter of months.

Yet there have been many people who have come from a higher fat, recipe heavy "as long as it's raw" type of raw diet, gone off the diet, and then started back on raw using the simpler lower fat style with great success.

Many people I've found do not want to even try the raw food diet for two reasons:

1. They don't want to try it because they are turned off by the thought of only eating fruit and salads.

2. They are turned off or intimidated by the high cost and time of doing all those recipes.

If you are not sure which way to go, I suggest trying a balance -

eat what you want as long as it's FRESH (meaning something you find in the produce section, or has recently been picked off a plant),

and if you run into problems like cravings or wanting more or different, then try a simple recipe or two, and halve the recipe so that you don't spend too much money or time on something that you might not end up liking.

Give yourself a limit on the amounts of dense dehydrated foods like nuts and recipes. You might want to portion them out into bags so you don't get into a cycle of daily overeating non-fresh foods.

In conclusion, I don't believe that eating whatever you want as long as it's raw with wild abandon works for most people in the long term.

I believe that people who work toward a goal and incorporate some kind of control and/or discipline end up getting what they want out of any kind of dietary and lifestyle change.

"It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop" - Confucius

Last words of advice - even though you may change the road that leads to your destination, try your best not to stop or go back the other way. Just keep charging ahead and keep your eye on the prize. You may chose to take a few extra steps along the way, or take a couple of short-cuts, or even sit down and rest, but don't let that stop you from getting there.


Sharon Oliver ©2006