Raw Food

Five Steps Towards Successful Weight Loss
A little while back, someone asked me the following interesting question about releasing excess weight and I thought some of you might be interested in reading the answer here – enjoy

Q: You released around 160lbs of excess weight with a raw lifestyle. Can you share with us the five steps you consider were the most important towards your successful weight loss?

A: Mmmm, great question I would sum up the five most important steps in my own weight loss journey as the following:

i. Realisation – for me (as with many ‘addicts’) it took hitting rock bottom in terms of my health and well-being, before I realised I couldn’t go on like I was. I used to eat countless thousands of calories a day – mainly junk foods – and I was destroying myself. It took a diabetes scare at the age of 21 to help me realise I could benefit from changing my habits

ii. Willingness to Change – once I had realised and acknowledged what I was doing, I became WILLING to make different choices, to get different results.

iii. Raw Foods – I was introduced to the concept of eating raw foods, straight from nature, just like all other animals do – and it TOTALLY resonated for me as truth – I decided to start the very next day.

iv. Persistance – once I was on the raw food path, I could easily feel it was the best thing for my healing, yet many around me were not very supportive of what I was doing. I persisted, despite their comments and jokes, as I felt this was best for me. Once others around me began to see my weight loss and happiness, they let go and let me get on with my choices more easily

v. Maintenance – it took about two years for me to release the 160lbs/70kg of excess weight and since then, my weight has been more or less the same, for over six years now. MOST people on the other hand, who lose weight, re-gain it again. I feel that this is a HUGE advantage of beirawreformnew.jpgng a raw foodist; this is the natural way for the body to be fed, so the body takes care of itself optimally, with the best nutrition. It is not challenging to maintain this level of health now and I feel very blessed

Can you identify yourself anywhere in this patterning?
All best wishes to all of your personal journeys…

Three YUMMY Raw Food Recipe Videos
We’ve been sharing more raw recipes recently over on The Raw Food World TV Show…(much to Mr. M’s apparent chagrin I’d love to share three of these recent videos with you here in case you missed them, as people seem to be enjoying them…
Easy Method to Make Sauerkraut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yuMoUptpw
Raw Halva: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRq7snknLDI
YUMMY Raw Kale Chips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpy9gbp5KyU

Soak 1 lb. sesame seeds overnight in the fridge.
Grind in your food processor until crumbly.
Add raw honey ~ 3/4 cup? Yacon syrup, stevia, coconut nectar, crystals,or any sweetener
Process some more.
a dropper of chocolate extract
~1 Tab. cinnamon
add yacon powder to thicken, if desired
roll into balls and dust with yacon powder mixed with maca, or lucuma powder

Who Are You Listening To…?

Posted: 31 May 2010 04:56 PM PDT

One concept I try to encourage people to think about in my talks, is WHO you are listening to in terms of guidance for your food choices. On a larger level, this might be thought of in terms of listening to family, friends, partners, doctors, mainstream nutritionists, the media and so on…and on a more intimate level, we might think about which part of our beings we are taking our cues from, in terms of what to eat, when and how much…
This more ‘personal‘ level is what I’d like to focus on here. It seems to me that most people listen primarily to a combination of their taste-buds and their minds, when determining when and what to eat…and yet, food is essentially fuel for the physical body, rather than the mind…and the physical body tends to work towards optimal physical health… Your body wants to be healthy, rather than in a state of dis-ease…however, while your body might be yearning for leafy greeeeeeeeens, small portions and lots of fresh juices, your mind and tastebuds may have a completely different agenda

Most of us reading this quite likely grew up in circles of processed food sugar/fat/salt/additives/

colourings addiction frenzies…and we may have plodded along that kind of path for a few decades before considering a change in direction…so, with this kind of background in mind, it is understandable that our tastebuds may be more than a little ‘perverted’ in their desires, especially when we initially switch to eating more raw…

As for our minds, well…if we have any kind of emotional ‘stickiness’/dependency around food, our minds may surely be calling for food for any and every reason – because we’re happy, sad, lonely, upset…or we feel like we ‘deserve’ it, we’re celebrating, we’re stressed, anxious, miserable…you name it
Seldom do we seem to eat because we’re genuinely physically hungry…indeed many people do not even seem to recognise what true physical hunger even feels like – it’s like a pulling in the stomach, which intensifies if left unfed…

So when we feel an intense pull to eat, we might do well to ask ourselves WHERE this desire is coming from – is this our mind and tastebuds asking for entertainment, or is it actually our body asking for some more nutrition? So often we seem to listen to the whims and demands of the mind and tastebuds over the genuine concerns of the body…yet we can only ignore the body for so long though, before issues start to show up in the form of illnesses, sluggishness, excess weight and so on…

If we want to side-step these sticky patterns, we might do well to ask ourselves a few QUESTIONS as and when we feel the pull to eat…questions such as: when did I last eat? Have I fully digested that last meal yet? How much water have I drunk today? …and so on…take a few moments to inquire of yourself around these ideas and then, if you do decide indeed to go ahead and consume something, there are three questions I love to encourage people to consider first about their food choices, all of which could be grouped together under the idea of ‘could I be making a better choice right now…?‘

Here are the three ideas to consider:

*how could I make this meal lighter? (e.g. instead of grabbing a handful of nuts, or a heavy nut+dried fruit bar, how about whipping up a greeeen smoothie in a few minutes instead?)

*how could I make this meal greeeeener? (Search for ways to get more leafy greeeeens into you – juices, smoothies, salads, soups, greens hidden in salad dressings, green powders sneaked into desserts, cookies and so on

*how could I make this meal more nutrient/mineral-dense? (e.g. how might you be able to add seaweed into a meal – kelp sprinkled over a salad, dulse in a soup, salad wrapped in a nori sheet? Instead of grabbing just a banana, how about blending that nana up with some yummmmy nutrient-rich kale or parsley and topping with a few goji berries…? …and so on…)

I hope these ideas have given you a little extra ‘food for thought‘ when it comes to making food choices…so many of us seem to ‘automatically’ reach out for food in any given situation, following the promptings of those monkey minds and twisted tastebuds…well, perhaps now you’ll feel the desire to listen more to that beautiful body of yours and get lighter, greener and more nutrient-dense by the bite

ENJOY

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 10:56 AM PST
“A phrase that really resonates for me was dropped into my head a few days ago: “Feelings First”. I don’t know if this is used often elsewhere or by other people…it really resonated for me when it came though…to honour the importance of feelings in any given situation – that’s what comes first – my feelings, your feelings, the feelings of those around us…it doesn’t matter how much money is at stake, the potential gains, or how much you might want to do something for some set reason…if the feelings aren’t flowing in a way that feels optimal, then maybe another path might be a wiser choice…

For example, let’s say that in a couple, one partner really wants to do some certain activity right now, like doing the laundry or washing the car…and the other person is not feeling good, for some reason. In my experience, it is much wiser to address the feelings first…clear the emotional block and then usually things can flow on much more easily from there…whereas if there is a choice instead to try to bypass the feelings and push on with the other activities, whatever they are, the uncleared feelings may stagnate, infest, get more complex and even maybe explode at some other point. The washing can wait – as much as you might want to do it right now, it will still be there in 10 minutes or so and how much lovelier it feels to proceed in an atmosphere of clear, healthy emotional resonance, rather than with the feeling that there is a thorn in the shared emotional bubble…you might think that stopping your intended flow to clear the emotional field is going to ‘slow you down’ in some way, yet in my experience the opposite is usually true overall – taking the time to clear the air first empowers a much more loving, productive space to unfold from there, with everyone feeling good…so…simply put: “Feelings First” ”

One thing that really rang true from me, from Angela’s words, were, in wondering what to eat, or when to eat, or how much, go with your feelings first – no numbers. Not the numbers on the scale, or the counting calories, just….how do you feel after you eat a certain food. And go with that.

Watch Angela Stokes make a papaya green smoothie:
papaya, a few of the seeds,
romaine
chia flour
sprouts
water

Posted by Matt Monarch at 2:10 PM 2 comments

The ‘Women Go Raw‘ team came to visit Angela Stokes in Ojai a few days back, on their biodiesel solar–powered RV tour ..these lightworker women are doing some wonderful movin’ and shakin’ to spread this healing message…they went to play in a park together and below is a little video of her  interview with them – enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxTaVyfbofA