As the title suggests, in this particular post, I am going to share my experience with being a raw vegan, mostly fruitarian for 50 days! 🌱
Now before I dive right in, I must warn, there may be some uncomfortable, maybe even gory details (read: pee and poop information), so if you are not interested in it, just skip it over. Since I am going in for full details, I want to be totally transparent here, and hence, won’t leave that particular topic out. 📖
Moving along, here are the benefits I have noticed the most. So first and foremost:
- Energy levels. Through the roof. Literally! Before I started eating raw, everytime I would look up videos and articles about eating raw, soaring energy levels would be one thing in common everywhere. And I would laugh it off, thinking it was just over rated. But as soon as I went raw, within 1-2 days, I began to notice I had ridiculous amounts of energy, so much so that everyone around me started commenting ‘Why are you so happy?’ and ‘What are you so excited about?!’. Its like you are high on life, it’s pure amazing, I don’t even know how to describe it! ✋
- No after meal crash. Which is just mind blowing! If you know my background, I went from a standard junk food based diet, to a healthy, mostly plant based diet, then finally moved on to a clean, 100% whole foods, plant based vegan diet. But every single one had that one thing in common, the after meal crash. Not exactly a crash, but I would feel quite tired after a meal. Its like my body just wanted to shut down. Know why? Cooked food. Concentrated calories. Harder to digest. Makes you tired. So simple, and it took me 22 years to figure out! Ugh. 👊
- Skin. So so much clearer, softer and smoother. It’s like going back to the skin you had as a baby, when you didn’t eat processed crap. 👋
- Weight. Now, I am a weight loss transformation (17 kgs, read my story in my first blog post). Over time, I developed an unhealthy obsession with the weighing scale. Hence, about a year ago, I made the decision to stop stepping on that machine. Coming back to the topic of ‘weight’, I do not check my weight, but I for sure do feel much lighter, and may have lost a little bit of weight here and there, but I can’t say for sure if the numbers on the scale have changed since I don’t step on it to begin with. ⚖
- More in tuned with my body. Now I know many of you will call this ‘hippy shit’, and I totally understand. 2 years ago, I would have too. Anyway, what my point is that when we eat foods without cooking them, we are eating exactly the way it was designed in nature, agree? And when our bodies receive nutrients without any changes to it’s original form, it is so much easier on the body, which means, all focus isn’t on digestion now, it is on all other aspects as well. And when the body is focusing on everything, you are not constantly thinking about food all the time, you are more aware of other body parts other than your tummy! Seriously!
- I feel cleaner on the inside. Whether we want to accept it or not, cooked food is slow. It doesn’t slip and slide out of the body like raw food does. It goes slowly through and takes its own sweet time to get out (no joke). But when you eat raw, the food itself is so clean, so pure, so delicious, so satisfying, so nutritious, you can’t possibly feel like it’s slow, stuck or is rotting inside! Fruit cleanses, inside out! 🍑🍎🍍🍌🍓
- Nails. The pinkest, prettiest and fastest growing they have ever been! To a point where it’s annoying that I have to cut it more often now. 💅
- Time saver. Eating fruit saves time. It is nature’s perfect fast food, isn’t it? Just grab and eat on go. If you absolutely really need something, it will be a knife and/or a spoon. The most complicated meal prep when eating fruitarian would be a smoothie. And we know how complicated smoothie making happens to be. Just dump and blend! So hard, isn’t it? ⌛
- Digestion and Elimination. Okay, we are going there. Digestion, flawless. Elimination, effortless. Why? Because high water content foods that rub into your skin (banana, mango, peach, plum, papaya, apricot, orange, lemon, kiwi, grapes, cherry, melon, watermelon, avocado, tomato, etc. etc.), it requires minimal effort to digest and exit. You eat it, the body absorbs whatever it needs, the rest it out. Boom! No effort. 💥
- Water. When eating cooked, I would drink 3-5 litres of water a day. I actually had to put effort into focusing on drinking enough water. And given my physical activity levels, I still would want to drink more water by the end of the day. Being fruitarian has completely changed that. I don’t need even 2 litres of water. There are some days when I don’t drink even an entire litre in a day. It was shocking to me in the beginning. But it was such a relief at the same time since I didn’t have to put that extra effort into drinking 3L of water everyday. The reason for not needing that amount of water is simple. You eat your water, so there isn’t much need for drinking it. When you eat cooked, dehydrated food, that food absorbs your water, hence you need to keep refilling. The one negative side to eating raw is that although you hardly drink any water, you pee quite a bit because you are eating high water content foods. It’s a good thing, but it can get annoying at times. 💦
- Smell. Pee doesn’t smell, poo doesn’t smell and there is no need for deodorant. You eat junk, you smell like junk. Eat clean, smell clean. Period. 👃
- Heal. Cuts, bruises and wounds heal much much faster. I have noticed this quite a bit because I keep cutting into my fingers or burning them often, and the rate at which they heal is just amazing! If normally a cut would take 4-6 days to completely heal, when on raw, by the third day, it would be completely healed, no marks remaining either. Mind blowing!
- Simplicity. This honestly is the best part. Nothing intricate, no drama, no complicated foods, no complicated people, no unwanted things to worry about. The simpler you eat, the simpler your life gets. No, you don’t need to go shopping for more clothes, jewellery, cosmetics, yada yada, you have all you need. No, you don’t need to go socialise with people that are not on the same page as you, just spend time with yourself. No, you don’t need to care about what someone thinks about you, chances are, they are thinking what you think about them to begin with. Life becomes so simple, there is no need for anything complicated. You are so much more clear minded and intuned with your physical, mental and emotional self, it’s just unbelievable! 🎊
My final take on Raw, although I am still fully raw, I will soon switch to high raw, which is mostly raw, with some cooked food incorporated once in a while. The only reason would be social situations, if not for those, I probably could be fully raw my entire life! Hopefully one day, I ll overcome the whole social situations deal and be 100% raw. Until then, will have to work with what I can. ✌
Thanks for reading, stay tuned for many new recipes coming up soon! 🔜
Until then, check out my older posts. ⏪
Also stay tuned for more negatives of a raw diet and my body’s reaction to its first cooked meal in 50 days!
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