The Reluctant Raw Foodist

.. or should I say self- torture..? I am amazed at how many posts I see on extreme dietary restriction. If you continue to eat “400 calories today” you will hurt yourself and your body will rebel and binge. This is not a way to lose weight! This is a way to illness.

You would not torture your best friend. Why would you hurt yourself in this way? 

You are worth it!

I have made a page for my posts on  ” Starvation” and “Dieting” this morning. The Link is called “Starvation Diets” . See top of my blog x

Fasting with adequate water may well have benefits. I have read a lot of books on this and certainly Dr Furhman, among others, is an advocate for fasting. Owing to my condition, my Specialist will not allow me to fast for more than 24 hours now.

As I said in my last posts, our bodies are designed to go some time without food naturally so we have time to forage to find food. Fasting is therefore a natural process. I believe, however, that long periods of fasting should be medically supervised owing to possible health risks. The body can start to shut down bits of itself when in starvation mode.

Initial weight lost by fasting is usually “water weight”. The body will retain its fat stores (energy stores)  in readiness for the time without food until we find it again.

A juice fast will allow the body more nutrients and calories than water only. Hence it may be more gentle on the system.

My personal issue with juice is that it is a big sugar burst on the system because juicing removes the fibre which slows down sugar absorption in the body. I used to drink my homemade fruit and vegetable juice with great gusto and wonder why I was in agony with joint pain over night and doubled up with diarrhoea and stomach pain during the day.

For this reason I have not attempted to juice fast as such. I think of juice fasting as something healthy people can undertake. Rather than drinking just juice I now  add back some of the fibre either into the juice or by eating it ( I use pulp for cakes and things)  and I prefer smoothies so that I get all the fruit and vegetable fibre. 

Those with arthritis, diabetes, other autoimmune diseases who are thinking about juicing or juice fasts may wish to consider this and consult your health specialist. 

Healthy animals eat. They do not over eat. They do if they have had a long period of starvation. My old rescue cat, Bandit, was starved to the point of death for years. He now eats too much and is fat. If he was a wild cat ( as opposed to an ex alley cat) , his eating would be regulated by what he could hunt and his diet would be live creatures but now he is fed out of cat food packets which contain soya and other processed products. He binges, he stuffs himself, and given the chance he goes round to neighbours and steals food from other cats’ bowls.

We, humans are similar. Food in our countries is in abundance and because we have learned to process food and make it highly calorific we can over eat and grow fat. Cup cakes, cheese cake, sweets and the like are not something we would find in the wild!

We can also lose weight by calorie restriction. By this I mean eating an optimum amount of calories. However, we are impatient these days. We want to lose weight quickly even though it took us a while to put on the weight. If you think about it losing weight fast is not going to be a natural process so the body is going to resist. We restrict calories too much and the survival processes (described in my last post) kick in. Our rate of weight loss slows down so we restrict calories  even more.

Food is body fuel. It keeps everything running smoothly. Deliberate starvation to the point where you are denying your body sufficient calories and nutrients is therefore highly dangerous. 

Highly nutritious healthy food keeps everything going. Eating healthy food allows the body to regulate and to optimise. 

On my healthy diet I have gradually lost my excess weight. When I tried to beat the system and over restrict calories I initially lost too much weight then weight loss stopped and I started to binge almost uncontrollably. When I ate too much (and added back some supposedly healthy junk food) I started to put on weight again. Eating enough and healthy I go to my optimum size. For good measure, my immune system no longer lets me eat some types of food. I can now choke (to death) on some foods such as peanut butter and I get arthritis flairs from high histamine foods.  It is actually pretty much impossible to beat the system with bodies! They fight back.

Eat food, eat real food, eat healthy, eat enough but not too much, is the way.

As I said at the start of the last post, this is my view. I am no expert but I do have the experience to offer you.