Raw food and Weight loss

Have you heard of Freelee the Banana Girl? The fruitarian became an internet sensation after she created the Raw Till 4 Diet, a regime that encourages people to eat only raw food until 4pm each day. While her take on the raw food diet is a fairly extreme one - read eating up to a dozen bananas a day, there are elements of truth inside this diet trend that we can adopt and use in our own diets.

There are a great deal of benefits to sticking to a raw food diet: Eating only raw fruit and vegetables, seeds and nuts means that there is very little cooking to do, your complexion will reap the benefits of the vitamins and nutrients you are consuming, your energy levels will rocket and it will reduce any bloating from your stomach. It is a healthy way of slimming down fast and after ten days, you should see noticeable changes.

There are several variations of the raw diet plan. Yoga expert Siri Datta created The Delicious Raw Food Diet to sort out her own health problems. It then grew into a programme that has changed the lives - and the shape - of many others.

A fashion designer come yoga teacher, Siri was diagnosed with Candida, an overgrowth of yeast in her intestines. 'I was told it would take years to resolve my health problem and I was determined to experiment to see whether I could restore myself back to awesome good health with a raw diet that was at that time a bit of a fad in California.

Source : womanandhome.com/diet-and-health/341241/raw-food-diet

What Can I Eat?

Raw food weight loss allows you to eat just about anything from the fruit and vegetable realm, as well as sea vegetables and some soaked nuts and seeds.  If you think about it the list is endless, just take a stroll at your local Farmers Market or in the produce section of your local grocery and let your imagination take flight. 

The recipes range from simple salads to gourmet meals and everything in between. Consuming greens is very important because they are alkaline, loaded with nutrients, and act as a broom for the intestines. Since many people can’t handle the raw greens right away mixing them in the blender with fruit will make them more palatable. Eventually you’ll want to be at least 50/50 with greens and fruit.

Juicing is another wonderful way to get great nutrition while you kick start your weight loss program. There are loads of great juicing recipes that are simple and quick to make. I have owned 4 different juicers over the years, but find the Hurom juicer to be the best for everyday use. It’s easier to use and clean, which is really important because if it’s a pain to clean then it won’t get used. It is also able to juice leafy greens which I feel is very important. I have two juicers now, and the one that gets used the most is the Hurom vertical slow juicer.

Source : raw-foods-diet-center.com/raw-food-weight-loss.html

Plant Based Raw Food Diet For Beginners

The thrust of the raw food diet is the consumption of unprocessed, whole plant-based, ideally organic foods. A minimum of three-quarters of the person's diet should consist of uncooked food. A Raw Foodist- somebody who follows the raw food diet - believes that the higher the proportion of raw foods in our diet, the healthier we will be.

A significant proportion of raw foodists are also vegans - no foods of animal origin are consumed. Some raw foodists consume raw meat and raw animal products.

This article is part of a series called What Are The Eight Most Popular Diets Today?
There are four broad branches of raw foodism:

    Raw vegetarians - only animal products consumed are eggs and dairy; most foods consumed are raw
    Raw vegans - no animal products consumed at all; most foods consumed are raw
    Raw omnivores - both plant-based and animal based foods are mainly consumed raw
    Raw carnivores - meat products are eaten only raw

A raw diet consists of foods

The way its proponents talk, raw food can sound like a magic potion served in a salad bowl. "When I transitioned to an all-raw lifestyle," says Karyn Calabrese, a restaurateur in Chicago, "I felt like I could walk on water. I didn't just stop aging; I began to feel as if I were actually growing younger." The 64-year-old—who could easily pass for 40—is brimming with energy. It's enough to make you want what she's having, which might be a portobello napoleon with "blue cheese" made from cashews, or an avocado puree with wakame and olives wrapped in nori.

A raw diet consists of foods (typically produce, grains, seeds, nuts, and beans) that haven't been heated above a certain temperature, usually somewhere between 104 and 118 degrees. Cooking destroys enzymes that raw foodists believe are essential to human health; without those enzymes, the thinking goes, we're not getting the full, life-supporting benefits of our food.

But this theory overlooks an important fact, says Andrea Giancoli, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "While it's true that cooking causes enzymes to unravel, the same thing happens to those enzymes as soon as they hit the acidic environment of your stomach." She says raw foodists enjoy so many health perks for a simpler reason: They're eating a lot of plants. Comprehensive lifestyle studies—like the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, which lasted 20 years and followed 6,500 participants—have found that plant-based diets greatly reduce the risk of chronic diseases and conditions.

Source : www.oprah.com/food/Should-You-Go-on-a-Raw-Food-Diet-Raw-Food-Diet-Benefits

Weight Loss, Detox or Health - The Benefits of Raw Food Diet Are Many...
What's Your Motivation?

Weight loss, detox or health. What's your motivation to get started on a raw food? To know your motivation is an important first step because everything else - your raw food diet plan, recipes and kitchen tools - are affected by your motivation.

And you thought that all raw food diets were the same! But the more you're trying to find the right diet, the more confused you get. There seem to be so many different ideas out there. Fruit or no fruit, high fat or low fat, vegan or not? And what about an alkaline foods and pH scale?

So, you will be thrilled to look below and find that I have carefully planned how to achieve the most important raw food benefits.

So, let's decide on your most important reason for going raw.

Benefits of Raw Food Diet : improvement health raw food diet     improvement health raw food diet     improvement health raw food diet

Weight Loss    
Health
   
Detox

Most of the diet planning and recipe gathering has already been done for you. All you need to do is name your most important benefits of raw food diet: weight loss, health or detox and Voila! You have the perfect raw food diet plan and recipes to get started! You're ready to buy yourself a new wardrobe!

Here are the top three benefits of raw food that people on this diet have. You will find a diet plan with many recipes that all fit into each specific benefit.

Having a specific reason for going raw can make the diet so much more effective and fun. It also helps create a feeling of commitment and gives you a focal point.

If you don't know which main benefit to choose or you don't want to have one particular benefit, you could go for the weight loss one, because it's the most flexible and easy one to follow. And you'll get some of the detox and health benefits there too.

The motivation you pick will affect every other aspect of the raw food diet. It decides the raw food diet plan, recipes, kitchen tools and duration of the diet. So choose well!

Source : www.thebestofrawfood.com/benefits-of-raw-food-diet.html

Facts about Living Raw

Is there a difference between living foods and raw foods?
Living and Raw foods both contain enzymes. In living foods, the enzyme
content is much higher. Raw, unsprouted nuts contain enzymes in a "dormant"
state. To activate the enzymes contained in almonds, for example, soak them
in water for as just 24 hours. Once the almonds begin to sprout, the enzymes become "active" and are then considered living. In the context of this web site,the terms are used loosely.

Starting a Raw Food Diet

The raw food diet. Just these words makes me smile. Ever since I'm raw, I feel like I've uncovered one of the biggest - yet simplest - secrets.

Now, after only three years, it seems so absolutely logical, natural and obvious. I need no science, research or specialists to convince me that the raw food diet is what I want to eat for the rest of my life! My experience and results speak for themselves.

On this page, I'll write down some raw food basics and frequently asked questions (FAQ).

What is a Raw Food?

We call food raw if it is:

    Uncooked - never heated above 42 C/118 F degrees.

and preferably:

    Unprocessed - as fresh (or wild) as possible
    Organic - no irradiation, preservatives, pesticides or GMO.

Why eat raw food?

"Why is the benefit of eating food raw?" is another question I'm asked a lot. The most important reasons are to me that heating your food above 115 degrees F (45 Celsius):

    Kills enzymes. Enzymes help you digest your food. Your body can create enzymes but that process takes a lot of energy. This process makes you feel tired and heavy after a cooked food meal. Further, the enzymes your body makes are not as efficient and effective as the ones that were destroyed in your food.

    Consequently, your food is not be broken down as well and thus harder to digest. This also results in food starts rotting in your intestines, that parasites have more chance to survive

    It is further believed that your body has a limited amount of enzymes that it can produce. If the supply is finished, body organs will function less and less. It will accelerate aging.

Source : thebestofrawfood.com/raw-food-diet.html

What are Living and Raw Foods?
Raw and Living Foods are foods that contain enzymes. In general, the act of heating  food over 116  degrees F destroys enzymes in food. (Enzymes start to degrade in as little as 106 degrees F).  All cooked food is devoid of enzymes, furthermore cooking food changes the molecular structure of the food and renders it toxic.  Living and raw foods also have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked.

What are Enzymes?
Enzymes assist in the digestion of foods.  They are known to be the "Life-Force" and or "energy" of food.

From the dictionary:
Noun: Any of the various complex organic substances, as pepsin originating from living cells and capable of producing certain chemical changes in organic substances by catalytic action, as in digestion.

Why are Enzymes Important?
Enzymes are important because they assist in the digestion and absorption of food.   If you eat food that is enzyme-less, your body will not get maximum utilization of the food. This causes toxicity in the body.   (Can you guess why over 75% of Americans are overweight?)

Doesn't the acidic ph of the stomach destoy enzymes?
Viktorus Kulvinskas, one of the world's foremost and most experienced active researchers into enzyme nutrition has information showing then stomach acid merely deactivates food enzymes.  The enzymes are then reactivated in the more alkaline small intestine.  Many people who eat all raw foods, sense a world of healthful difference in our energy, digestion and connectedness with nature by eating enzyme-rich living foods. When we stopped eating cooked protein foods which require large secretions of stomach acid (which is not healthful for several reasons) our stomach doesn't produce much stomach acid.  Many people who eat  raw foods eat a low protein diet and are free from the stomach acid secretions and have much more energy and a lighter disposition.

http://www.living-foods.com/faq.html