Tentative steps

My first positive steps towards a raw, living diet was to up my intake of fresh fruit. I therefore started swapping my gluten-free muesli (containing heat-treated grains) for a couple of pieces of fruit for breakfast. Devouring information and recipes from Ani Phyo's Raw Kitchen book and her website, I started incorporating lunches of a green salad with maybe a nori roll filled with almond, carrot and ginger pate, along with some sprouted sunflower seeds, or maybe some raw hummous with sprouted chickpeas, raw tahini, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, as a dip for carrots. For dinner, alongside a jacket potato or some wholegrain boiled rice, I started adding grated raw root vegetables and some raw greens to the plate, with eggs, fish, avocado or cheese for protein. Dinner progressed so that it incorporated some more of Ani Phyo's fab recipes (mushroom risotto, using raw grated butternut squash for 'rice') or broccoli and brazil nut mash. We would even once or twice a week be tempted by a recipe for a raw dessert such as raw apple pie (with a crust of almonds and dates) or raw carrot, coconut cupcakes.

Although all of this food was fabulous and didn't make me feel that I was missing out on 'cooked' foods at all, it did leave me with a 'heavy and bloated' feeling. It was only when I started writing down a food diary so I could analyse what I was eating that I noticed that I was consuming a very high proportion of nuts. According to articles in Get Fresh! magazine too high a proportion of nuts, and the concomitant fat levels, it not good in any diet, raw or otherwise. From what I can understand, fat, be it raw, processed or cooked is still fat, and ideally we should aim for a diet containing 20% fat and not higher. Meals containing nuts, seeds and avocados, with maybe a dressing made with olive oil were taking my fat consumption to quite a high level. I therefore decided to reign in the fat consumption a little, and focus more on increasing my intake of fruit and vegetables.

More internet research led me to Victoria Boutenko's blog. Victoria strongly advocates 'green smoothies' (basically blended smoothies containing green vegetables, along with either fruit such as apples or sweeter vegetables to make the meal more palatable). Although I have yet to get a copy of any of her books, which is on my to do list, from what I can understand the premise behind the green smoothie is that in order to get the maximum amount of nutrients from greens such as kale, spinach, cabbage etc the fibre needs to be broken down sufficiently for our bodies to assimilate the nutrients, hence blitzing them in a blender.

Alongside this advice, I was also reading about the benefits of green juices, where the nutrients are very quickly absorbed into the body as they are extracted from the fibre of the fruit or vegetable.

As I already owned a Matstone single gear juicer and a basic blender, I decided to start having a green juice for breakfast and a green smoothie for lunch to see what effect this change would have on my energy levels and general sense of well-being...

Diet meanderings

I have always tried to eat a fairly 'healthy' diet. Although what is healthy to one person is unhealthy to another. I became a vegetarian at 15. Then at 21 I was diagnosed with coeliac condition, which meant that gluten was out and along with it most processed foods. I therefore started moving away from processed foods and towards home-made food. However, in terms of health, I think this was probably my unhealthiest period as the home-made food I was making (like many newly diagnosed coeliacs) was gluten-free equivalents of the cakes and biscuits I was now seemingly deprived of. However, even at this stage, I would forgo pre-packaged gluten-free cake mixes with there long lists of refined flours, stabilisers and preservatives, in favour of blending wholefood flours. It was also around this time that I started incorporating a little fish into my diet, as I was finding it increasingly difficult to eat out and not only be a coeliac but also a vegetarian (times have since changed and it is much easier to eat out, but back then people weren't as aware of the condition).
Putting on some weight from all of the wholefood, home-baked cakes jolted me into reading a couple of books by Patrick Holford on optimum nutrition and 'You are what you eat' by Gillian Mckeith and I started to realise that my 'healthy' baked goods were not doing me a whole lot of good. I therefore started to leave my baking tins in the kitchen cupboards and eat a bit more fruit and veg. Still not as much as I knew I should be, but better than I had been.
Fast forward a few years to the 'black' ME period. My hubby invested in a juicer and started blending me weirdly coloured concoctions of fruit (with a little veg thrown in for good luck, and maybe some wheatgrass), into which he would add some spirulina. We also started to eat a little more raw veg (not tons, but instead of steaming or boiling broccoli to have with a nut roast, we would chop it and have it raw). I tried to eat a little more fruit than I had been, but it was a struggle, as I couldn't get that excited about the taste or texture of an apple, when for so many years my palate had been delighted with gluten-free muffins. I also started sporadically sprouting seeds and pulses, although not to any great degree. So a typical day's menu would be something along the lines of a gluten-free muesli and milk for breakfast, lunch maybe rice cakes and hummus with a juice, and dinner would be something like lentil bake, boiled potatoes and some veggies or quorn in a tomato sauce (made using tinned chopped tomatoes, garlic, onions, herbs) with gluten-free pasta and veggies.
Which brings me more or less to where I was until a few months ago. I can't remember exactly where I started being aware of a 'raw food' or 'living food' diet but the awareness seems to have snuck up on me. I seem to recall a few years ago reading raw, vegan recipes in Lifescape magazine, which always seemed to need specialist equipment like a dehydrator and involved hours spent soaking, sprouting, preparing and dehydrating ingredients. Life was too short, I felt. Around this time I was then introduced to Conscious Chocolate's divine raw chocolate bars and learnt that if you are going to eat chocolate, then raw chocolate gives you lots of goodness which is missing from 'normal' chocolate bars. The raw chocolate sparked my interest and I added a 'raw chocolate' recipe book by American raw foodie Kristen Suzanne, to my Christmas wish list last year, as I was tempted to have a go and make some raw goodies myself.
This book led me to Kristen's website and blog which sparked a certain curiosity with raw food and the lifestyle which seems to surround it. This curiosity was fuelled by the constant feeling of tiredness I had, even though I thought I was eating a good diet which should be energising me. This also coincided with a decision to start trying to a family, which led to me raiding the library for any information I could find on how to ensure that I was healthy as I could be pre-conception.
Again, books by Patrick Holford seemed to make a lot of sense, and I decided to give up caffeine ( I was drinking about 10 cups of tea and 2 of coffee daily), incorporate flax, hemp, sunflower and sesame seeds into my diet to ensure that I was getting enough essential fatty acids, as well as trying to up my intake of raw food (although alongside my 'cooked' veggie meals). Kristen Suzanne's blog drew me in, as she is currently expecting and talks about how she is eating a high raw diet to ensure that both she and the baby are as healthy as possible. Other sources of information I devoured included The Fresh Network's Get Fresh magazine, Briggite Mars' book Rawsome, Kate Wood's book Raw Living and Ani Phyo's book The Raw Food Kitchen. From all sources the same message of 'raw food = more energy' was extremely appealing. I therefore decided to take some tentative steps towards a more raw, living diet...