Weight loss exercises - Do I need to exercise even though I'm eating raw food

Weight loss exercises - do I need these to lose weight even if I'm already eating raw vegan food?
The word "exercise" is loaded with a lot of meaning or emotional charge for a lot of people who don't exercise. Many negative associations come up, and mostly these are the reasons why they don't exercise - not enough time, it hasn't worked before, I'm too tired to exercise, I don't know where to begin, I get sick when I exercise, etc.
For people who don't exercise regularly, the reasons cited above make sense. They have perfectly valid reasons why they don't exercise. Truth is, no one has to exercise. The moment you "have to" do something, it stops being fun. You don't have to exercise, but you could, if you want to get results faster.
Instead of waiting for several months to see results, you might start noticing that your pants are getting loose in a matter of days or weeks. You start seeing your jawline and cheek bones after a week or two. You begin to feel a little more energetic, and you find that you feel more refreshed upon waking up. These are the results that could actually motivate you to exercise some more.
But for most people, the real challenge is starting to exercise. How do you push yourself to do something that you don't even feel like doing in the first place? 


1. Ask yourself what form of exercise you might enjoy.


2. Look around and see where you might do this exercise.


3. Look at your closet and see if you have something to wear.


4. Ask your friends to see if they would want to join you.


Ask yourself what form of exercise you might enjoy.
Some people think that exercise is boring, specially when they see people staying on treadmills for an hour or more. You do not need to spend hours on treadmill. Would you rather swim instead? Do you enjoy playing tennis or badminton? Do you enjoy riding a bike? Have you ever thought of learning karate or capoeira? Initially, what matters is just to pick one, any one, that you think you will enjoy. It has to be enjoyable for you.


Look around and see where you might do this exercise
The gym is not the only place to work out at. For people who don't have the time, money, or inclination to sign up for a gym membership, see if you can start right at home. Maybe you can start by getting an inexpensive rebounder and just jump up and down for 10 minutes. Or maybe you can jog around the block when you wake up. There is no need to spend a single cent to begin exercising right now. 


Look at your closet and see if you have something to wear
I find it to be a bit humorous that some people hesitate to start exercising because they have nothing to wear. Really, this is just an excuse. You can lie down on the floor wearing your pajamas and start doing crunches long before everyone else wakes up. Or if you really must have a complete outfit, there's a sale happening somewhere almost every week, and this would be a great time to shop for clothes. 


Ask your friends to see if they would want to join you
For some people, it's easier to start if they have someone to kick their butt. Find out if your spouse or some other family member would be interested to run with you, or maybe swim a few laps with you, or maybe even just go up and down the stairs a couple of times with you.


Weight loss exercises need not be complicated. They need not be expensive. There is no need to invest in a home gym or buy an expensive piece of do-it-all equipment that you see on home TV shopping.

The important thing is, to borrow Nike's tagline, is to "just do it".


When you start eating raw food, your body will begin to detoxify. All the live enzymes you've been introducing into your system will start doing their job of cleaning out the junk from your body. When you exercise, you naturally start to sweat. This helps your body to get rid of the toxins that are flowing out of your fat cells. 


Being on a raw food diet is the perfect complement to doing a couple of weight loss exercises.

Raw Food Diet - Will I lose a lot of weight on a raw food diet?

Raw food diet is fast becoming a new buzz word everywhere. Some are embracing this new lifestyle because they have no choice. They're sick and they've heard that it can heal their bodies. Others try it because a lot of famous celebrities are openly admitting that raw foodism is much better than plastic surgery when it comes to making them look a lot younger. And of course, more and more people are seeing that eating raw food is one of the best ways to lose weight.

Why is it that adopting a raw food diet will cause you to lose a lot of weight very quickly? 

1. A raw food diet is naturally healthy and nourishing.

2. Raw foods do not contain man-made toxins

3. Raw foods help to make your body more alkaline.

Let's look at each one of these in detail:

A raw food diet is naturally healthy and nourishing.

Uncooked fruits and vegetables are naturally low in calories, high in fiber, and low in bad cholesterol. Time and time again, you've heard that that's the kind of diet that's ideal. When you eat a pineapple for example, you know that there's a lot of fiber in there, it doesn't have animal fat, and considering that there are no added sugars, you know that it's naturally low in calories. And since raw foods are not heat-treated, they retain their enzymes.

When we eat foods that have no living enzymes in them, our body has to use up some of its own enzymes to digest our food. Now this is not good at all. Our bodies need those enzymes for other functions. This means while we are trying to digest our enzyme deficient food, our bodies would have to stop doing other critical functions like detoxing and healing simply because the enzymes are preoccupied with digestion. This is the reason why some people feel sleepy after eating a heavy meal. Your body needs to stop its other activities just to attend to the task of digesting all of the enzyme-deficient food that you just ate.

Raw foods do not contain man-made toxins

Think of french fries and donuts. When carbohydrates are heated at really high temperatures (such as when you fry them), acrylamides are formed. This is a toxin as far as the body is concerned. And here's the bad news - this is not your typical garden-variety toxin. New research shows that acrylamides are carcinogenic! When we take in acrylamides in huge doses, we are actually putting ourselves at risk of getting cancer. And when we eat too much, the enzymes whose job is to detox our bodies can't do their job precisely because we've stuffed so much food into our system. 

With a raw food diet, we don't have to worry about ingesting things like acrylamides and other substances that our bodies were never designed to live on such as high fructose corn syrup and aspartame.

When we eat raw food, we give our bodies the rest that it needs to recover from all the work that it had to do to clean up our bodies.

Raw foods help to make your body more alkaline

Just a simple chemistry lesson: our bodies are either acidic or alkaline. When we eat a lot of sugar and meat, our bodies become acidic. This is the perfect environment for all sorts of diseases to develop in our bodies. When we eat uncooked fruits and vegetables, our bodies become alkaline. When our bodies are alkaline, we start getting healed, we start losing fat, and we start to slow down the rate by which our bodies break down and grow old. Acidic - not good. Alkaline - good. That's a simple rule to remember.

When you start eating more uncooked fruits and vegetables, and eat less meat, processed food, canned food, fast food, and manufactured food, something magical happens to your body - you start losing weight! And this is the kind of weight loss that doesn't make you look like you haven't eaten or slept in days. This is the kind of weight loss that gives you a lot of energy and makes your more youthful.

Some people are hesitant to make the jump to eating 100% raw because they think they'll miss all the good food that they love so much. But whoever said that you have to be 100% raw right this moment? Introducing a fruit into your diet today is a great first step. Eating a fresh leafy green salad instead of mashed potatoes with your steak is another great step. Take small steps. Taking small steps is much better than not taking any step at all.

In the next few days, we'll talk about more baby steps that you can take to successfully transition to a raw food diet.

Raw Food Recipes - Where do I get new recipes?

Raw Food Recipes - it's absolutely critical that you amass a huge collection of raw food recipes as you begin to experiment with this new lifestyle. The question is, where do you get this information?

The first thing that you need to do is to be aware of your learning style. What do I mean by this?

- Do you learn best by watching videos of how other people prepare food?

- Do you learn best by reading books on the subject?

- Do you learn best by watching other people do a demo right in front of you?

Of course, the amount of time and money that you're willing to invest in for your health will also determine the type of training material or program you will immerse yourself in.

My first exposure to raw food was through a book with a picture of what looked like a green concoction on the cover and I was drawn to see what was in it. Before reading this book, I have never mixed drinks or made smoothies, but as the author explained how easy it was to make a green smoothie (fruits and leafy greens thrown into a blender), I realized that this is something that I can do on my own. You can't go wrong with the amount of fruit or leafy greens - just go out and try it.

Then one day, while attending a meditation class, the person sitting next to me saw that I was drinking a green smoothie and she asked me if I got the recipe from a famous raw food teacher in our area. As we talked about my smoothie, she introduced me to a woman who taught classes and gave raw food recipes to people who might be interested in living a healthier life. I attender her class, and on that weekend, I realized that being vegan did not mean eating rabbit food. On the contrary, raw vegan food, if prepared properly, tastes so good! Immediately, a whole new future opened up for me as I saw the possibility of eating really awesome food while staying lean and fit.

Naturally, I wanted to learn more about raw food recipes, and that led me to search the internet for free raw food recipes. There's an abundance of sources on the internet, from Youtube, to personal blogs, to some really awesome websites of culinary schools.

I had no idea that raw food lifestyle has taken the whole world by storm! Famous people like Anthony Robbins, Jason Mraz, Steve Jobs, Sting, Woody Harrelson, and Alicia Silverstone were all raw foodists! Inspired by this, my resolve to adopt this new lifestyle got solidified.

If you're new to this, you would naturally want to build your own library of raw food recipes. The easiest one to make is something that takes less than 30 seconds to prepare. All you need is a blender, some water, some leafy greens, and some fruit. Don't worry about the ratios right now. The important thing is to put in some leafy greens into a fruit smoothie. My first attempt at making a green smoothie used this recipe:

500 ml of water (or coconut water)

1 pineapple (or mango)

2 bananas

a handful of leafy greens (spinach, or whatever grows locally in your area)

Blend until you don't see green chunks floating around. That's it!

For an ordinary blender, this might take 30 seconds. For a high powered blender like a Vitamix, this could take less than 10 seconds.

It tastes like a pineapple banana smoothie. It doesn't taste like spinach at all!

This is a great way of adding leafy greens into your diet.

Now you may be asking, why do I need to add leafy greens into a fruit smoothie?

Leafy greens are just so full of nutrients and enzymes. Chlorophyll has been described by some people as liquid sunlight. Ever wonder what makes apes, cows and horses so strong? The greens. These animals are naturally vegan, and they happen to be really strong.

There is a wealth of free information on the internet, and I have compiled all of this information into an ebook. Pretty soon, I will make this available to anyone who's interested. Aside from information on how to get started on a raw food diet, it will also contain lots of raw food recipes.

Raw Food Weight Loss - How do I lose weight fast with a raw food diet

Raw Food Weight Loss is all about losing weight fast by being a raw foodist.

While a lot of people have tried being vegetarian, or at least know someone who is vegetarian, there seems to be some mystery surrounding the idea of being a raw foodist. A raw foodist is someone who eats uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. It is not about eating raw fish or raw meat. Raw vegan is another way of calling a raw foodist.

People like Anthony Robbins, Jason Mraz, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson are raw foodists. They have healthy bodies that show exactly what one can get by eating raw, living food. But beyond the obvious  physical changes, living on raw food brings you mental clarity and emotional stability. The physical, mental and emotional transformation that happens when you eat raw living food makes it possible for you to live a truly extraordinary life.

Simply losing weight is a goal that pales in comparison to living a full and vibrant life, made possible by being FLESHY (Fit, Lean, Energetic, Healthy, and Youthful). Some severe diets leave us looking old and tired. Instead of becoming more attractive, crash diets may end up making us look even worse than when we were a bit heavier. A much more worthy goal is that of being FLESHY. 

Here's how we can achieve that:

1.  Be very clear with your fitness goals

2.  Eliminate whatever might hinder you from getting that

3.  Create the structure that would give you the body that you want

4.  Detox

5.  Transition to a raw food diet

Be very clear with your fitness goals

How much do you really want to weigh? What would be your ideal waist line? What clothes would you want to be able to wear? What would your blood pressure be? Will you be thin, lean, or muscled?

Before anything else, hold a picture in your mind of what you would want your body to look like. If you are not clear with what you want, it would be very difficult to achieve it.

Eliminate whatever might hinder you from getting that

Come on, deep down, you know what's sabotaging your weight loss efforts. It could be your love for desserts, your habit of having just a little too much to drink, your lack of sleep, your "healthy" appetite, or your food choices. Until you are determined to eliminate whatever might be hindering you from getting what you want, then all your efforts will just go to waste.

Let's say what's stopping you from getting the body that you want is your love for food. You love to eat salty and greasy food in spite of the fact that you know it's bad for you. Just ask yourself why you don't want to let go of that kind of diet. What could you be getting from eating that kind of food? What might stop you from trying raw food weight loss diets?

Create the structure that would give you the body that you want

What do I mean by structure?

Are you the type of person who needs to be reminded to eat healthy? Who will do that, when will they do that, and how will they do that?

Do you have the time to prepare healthy meals? How much time will you allocate every week going to the market to shop for fresh ingredients, making your meals, and bringing them to work or wherever you might need to go?

Is your budget set up in such a way that you have the funds to purchase some essential kitchen tools such as a high-powered blender, a dehydrator or a juicer?

When I say structure, what I'm referring to are the circumstances in your life that are creating the body that you currently have. If you work on creating or redesigning your habits, routines, budget, support system and schedule, then the body that you want will naturally arise from the new structure that you have created.

Detox

Let's say you're done with the first 3 steps. You're now ready to take action to get the body of your dreams. The next step is to detox.

If you look at someone with a really hot body, what you see are the curves, the muscles, and the taut skin. What you don't see is that their kidneys, liver, and colon are functioning properly to support their healthy lifestyle. Without healthy internal organs, a FLESHY body is just not possible.

There are many ways to detox and this probably deserves a whole new blog just to talk about the different ways of removing toxins from your body. However, we will focus specifically on the kind of detox that complements a raw food weight loss program.

Transition to a raw food diet

After detoxing, you wouldn't want to go back to your old salty and greasy meals. But at the same time, you're probably not ready to eat like a yogi who lives in the Himalayas. What you need is a diet that gives you the live enzymes that come from eating uncooked fruits and vegetables AND yet, tastes just like the food that you're used to.


You might begin by going to restaurants that serve healthy raw vegan food. But even better than that, it would work if you knew how to prepare your own food.

Let's say you like pizza and yet you know that the high carb dough and the cheese won't really support your fitness goals. The challenge now is how to prepare meals that are raw vegan and yet taste like the fast food that you're used to. You'll need to arm yourself with a lot of raw vegan recipes that are good for you. 


If you don't know a thing about food preparation, it would be best to take short courses on food preparation. If you know how to prepare your own food, this could spell the difference between quitting and really adopting a raw food weight loss diet permanently.

This blog intends to guide you through the different steps to get you that body that you've always dreamed of. To move from simply dreaming about it to actually having it, you will need to take action. 

I will share with you the challenges that I encountered along the way. Someone who has experienced these challenges will be in a better position to guide you to hurdles the same challenges yourself, sparing you the trial and error along the way.

What you need to do and how you need to do it will all be covered in this blog to support your raw food weight loss.