The food we eat has a tremendous impact on the energy we have throughout the day. Eating a healthy diet is all about feeling great, having more energy, improving your health, and boosting your mood. Good nutrition, physical activity, and healthy body weight are essential parts of a person’s overall health and well-being.
There’s no questioning the importance of healthy food in your life to avoid diseases, infection, or even exhaustion and some of the most common health problems arise from a lack of a balanced diet are heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.
Raw, living whole food, blocks and in many cases can reverse these diseases – which are considered lifestyle ailments, as they were relatively rare one hundred years ago, until we started processing our food.
Of course, the transition to a brand-new way of eating is critical to its successful implementation, and it may take time, as most of us are unaccustomed to eating primarily whole foods. However, once you undertake this journey, the payoff for consuming nutrient-rich, calorie-low, easy-to-digest, live food happens very quickly: within weeks, you will feel more energetic, healthy and upbeat, and look more vibrant and slimmer. In contrast, the result of eating nutrient-poor, calorie-dense and hard-to-digest food that starves your body of the life force inherent in whole, uncooked, unprocessed food is flab, fatigue and disease. Don’t let that happen to you.
What is a raw food diet?
Raw foods are foods that have not been cooked or processed.
While there are varying levels of raw-food diets, all of them involve eating mostly unheated, uncooked and unprocessed foods. In general, a raw-food diet is made up of at least 70% raw foods.
The diet often includes fermented foods, sprouted grains, nuts and seeds, in addition to raw fruits and vegetables.
Studies show that raw foods are more nutritious than cooked foods because enzymes, along with many nutrients, are destroyed during the cooking process.
What are the benefits of eating raw food?
Our human bodies are better adapted to primarily raw-food diets than to diets containing substantial proportions of cooked foods. Enzymes are crucial for all of the biochemical reactions that happen in the body—digestion, energy production, nutrient absorption, detoxification, hormone production—all of which are critical in ensuring your optimal health and beauty. Enzymes can even help to repair our DNA and RNA, which increases our vitality and improves the turnover and repair of our skin cells.
In contrast, lack of enzymes in your diet can create a buildup of toxins, which may dull your complexion, slow your metabolism, and decrease the renewal of skin cells, which leads to accelerated aging.
The "food enzymes” in raw (and very lightly cooked) foods help our bodies digest these foods, easing the body's workload and conferring significant health benefits in the body. Enzymes are a special class of proteins, needed for many critical bodily processes at the molecular level. Heating food above 140° F (60° C) kills most enzymes in food, while some get destroyed at about 113° F (45°C).
Why are raw diets good for your health and what are the benefits?
People have many different reasons for adopting the raw food diet but the results they get are all very similar, as everyone reports having more physical energy during the day, increased mental focus, more clarity and the ability to focus more on your work and get things done. However, emotionally is probably where people experience the biggest change - people feel a lot happier and more resilient.
This is because as the emerging science of the gut-brain interrelationship, which scientists are only just understanding now, show how interrelated the gut and the brain are. When you eat right it really affects your mood and brain.
Boost metabolism
When we nourish our body by fueling it with the right Raw Foods, the body spends the energy supplying the cells with the best nourishment. This takes off the load from the body trying to get rid of harmful toxins that come from food that is full of toxins and preservatives.
This, in turn, helps speed up metabolism.
Strengthens the immune system
Eating raw, living foods discharges toxins from your body. This reduces the load on your immune system to relieve the body of unwanted foreign attackers. As a result, the body can concentrate better on eradicating viruses and bacteria, and cancer cells.
With the raw food lifestyle, most people find that they can eat as much as they want and maintain their ideal weight, and cravings disappear.
Healthier skin
Beautiful, glowing skin starts with how we eat, but these anti-ageing foods can also help with more than that.
When we pack our diet with vibrant foods loaded with antioxidants, healthy fats, water, and essential nutrients, our body will show its appreciation through its largest organ: our skin. After all, the skin is often the first part of our body to show internal trouble, and there’s only so much that lotions, creams, masks, and serums can do before we need to take a closer look at what’s fueling us.
It’s time to slow down signs of ageing and truly glow from within!
Reduces Inflammation in the body
Inflammation happens to everyone, whether you’re aware of it or not. Your immune system creates inflammation to protect the body from infection, injury, or disease. There are many things you wouldn’t be able to heal from without inflammation. Sometimes with autoimmune diseases, like certain types of arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, your immune system attacks healthy cells.
Sometimes, fighting inflammation can be as simple as changing your diet. By avoiding sugar, trans fats, and processed foods, you can put yourself on the path to feeling better.
Long-term inflammation can lead to a number of symptoms and affect your body in many ways. Common symptoms of chronic inflammation can include:
Body pain
Constant fatigue and insomnia
Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders
Gastrointestinal issues, like constipation, diarrhea, and acid reflux
Eeight gain
Frequent infections
How can people start introducing raw foods or raw meals into their diet? “I imagine going completely raw from eating meat is quite a big and frightening step to make”.
As the old saying goes, ‘prevention is better than cure” and by embarking on a mission to eat healthy foods, you can ensure that you live a healthy life. A balanced raw diet enables you to perform all physical and mental functions while ensuring that you live a better quality of life, free from most ailments.
The Transition: Start small.
For most people, the scariest part of it all is the thought that “I’ll never get to eat X again.” But when you embrace a diet/lifestyle change like this, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Start with small steps! Challenge yourself for 10 days: It could be a 10-day vegan challenge or vegan before 6. Or if you want to start really small, Meatless Mondays.
Next time you’re in the fresh produce aisle, choose a vegetable you’ve never cooked with before. Even if you have no idea what to do with it at the moment, take it home and do some research.
If you are not ready to embrace the Raw Food lifestyle, but you are ready to move to a short-term healthier eating program, the 30-day- Raw-Food trial could be just the right plan to cater to your requirements! Chances are that you won’t want to go back to your previous diet.!
Enlisting a raw food nutritionist advisor is very important to ensure you are transitioning correctly. On-going support and guidance from an expert is key to make the transition or to implement the 30-day trial successful.
Enjoy the journey!
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