The Raw Food Diet is a very simple diet, you could make it complex, but there is no need. All food is eaten raw: uncooked, unsteamed, unblanched, unroasted. It is also a vegan diet. That means no meat, no dairy, no eggs, and yes, no dairy means no cheese. So what do we eat? Everything else. We eat as much as we want, whenever we want of whatever we want of fruits and vegetables with some seeds, nuts and sprouts.

There are a few conflicting views about raw, not whether it works or not, but how to do it successfully. Check out the guru's page to find links to the pioneers of this revolutionary diet. For us, here at Boot Camp, we are going to take the middle ground. I am not saying you will never be able to have the high fat recipes in Alissa Cohen's fabulous book or that you won't ever be able to try all of Gabriel Cousen's pates and marinades; I'm saying, just not yet. When you are finished losing your weight, and know a lot more about raw you will have to make up your mind how you spend your stabilization period. In the end, whatever works for you is what is best.

To lose the weight, and to do it fast I am recommending no more that 20% fat in your diet each day. On raw it is easy to consume more than 50% of your daily intake in fat by going overboard on nuts, oil and avocados. There are many people who eat high fat raw and lose weight, but for most of us who are morbidly obese, high fat just doesn't work. There is a free nutritional analysis tool you can use: www.fitday.com. As part of the boot camp commitment you are asked to use this program and keep track of your daily intake of nutrients. We don't count calories here, just distribution of nutrients, and even for that we are really only interested in limiting our fat intake. 20% of fat per day should be satisfying without going overboard.

Protein is a huge controversy between meat eaters and vegetarians, vegans, and raw fooders. When you tell your doctor, friends or families about going raw their first question will be: "How will you get your protein?" Studies have shown that vegetarians do not require as much protein as carnivores. Plant protein is assimilated more efficiently than meat protein and protein is not leached from our bodies as it is in diary consumers. We just don't need as much. Green leafy vegetables, seeds, and nuts will provide all you need. There is a raw hemp seed you can buy and put in smoothies if you are concerned about your protein intake, but if you eat enough leafy greens you will not have to worry about it. And if that doesn't convince you, well let's be honest about it. We have enough fuel stored in our bodies; it's going to be a long time before we need to worry about not getting enough of anything. Another thing you will hear is that you can not build muscle without high levels of protein. There are plenty of raw marathoners, weight lifters, and tri-athletes who prove this idea completely wrong - please check out the raw athletes page for a few links.

No diary? How will you get your calcium? Okay, we grew up on milk, cheese and yogurt, but you do realize we are the only species who drink milk after being weaned? Cow's milk, goat's milk, they are for cows and goats not people. There are plenty of vegetable and fruit sources to provide adequate calcium; this is not something you have to worry about. Will you crave dairy? If you're used to eating it you will, and you will say: "If I'm craving it my body must need it." Well smokers crave cigarettes and heroin addicts crave heroin, do you really believe their bodies need these killers? I'm not saying dairy will kill you, but it can make you ill. Many people who give up dairy find lifelong ailments disappearing the longer they live without it. Hey, I love cheese too. I even dream about it, but my heart is healthier without it and the fat in it will definitely keep me obese. This will be a craving you will have to fight off. Your body does not need, although it may crave, saturated fat!

The best source of Vitamin D is the sun. You do not need a supplement. You do need to get yourself outside for at least fifteen minutes a day with some skin exposed. Your arms and face should be good enough. Even winter sun will keep you healthy.

Iron supplements are not even recommended for most people who eat the Standard American Diet (SAD). You will get plenty of iron in your leafy greens and do not have to worry about it. Anemia is not common among raw fooders who eat a variety of greens.

B12 is the only vitamin that raw fooders and vegan have a hard time getting. It used to be that we could pick it up from the dirt we grew our vegetables in, but that is no longer true. If you have been eating a SAD diet and are going to try raw food to lose weight, you will not have to worry about B12 deficiencies for a few years. But, it doesn't hurt to supplement this one vitamin, you will not be getting it in your diet. It is the only nutrient not supplied by fruits and vegetables, at least not any more.

So many of us are addicted to diet soda and coffee. It is recommended that you give these products up, they are not good for you. But, if this is your one weakness, do the next best thing and limit how much of these products you consume. Diet soda is nothing but chemicals, you will never be truly healthy if you're consuming it. And coffee, well we all know it's bad for us. Water is the preferred liquid. Fresh squeezed juices are good too. Keeping soda, coffee, and caffeinated tea in your diet will slow your weight loss progress, so choose how to handle this wisely.

Refined sugar is just a no no in any healthy eating plan. Raw fooders do use agave and honey to sweeten their foods. As for weight loss, sugar is an empty calorie regardless of how you get it. The quicker you break your sweet tooth addiction, the better. Fruits are high in fructose. If you eat enough fruit in your daily diet you should not crave sweets. It is better to break an addiction than to substitute for it. Later when you have control of your eating and have lost the weight you can pick and choose what to add back into your life. But trust me, a year or two without something like cake in exchange for a lifetime of being fit and healthy, well... there's just no comparison. You can live without refined sweets.

Sodium. A lot of raw fooders eat products from the sea, or use Celtic Sea Salt (this is a specific high mineral content salt product). But salt is not necessarily good for us. Yes, we need some sodium for our electrolyte levels, but we do not need a hundredth of what the average SAD eater uses. As for weight loss, a couple of stalks of celery a day will insure your health while no added salt will keep you from retaining fluids. Once you lose that excess fluid, you will feel a lot better. There are two products a lot of raw fooders use, Nama Shoyo a type of soy sauce and Braggs Aminos. These both add flavor to food, but are high in sodium. Less is always better when it comes to sodium intake. Save these products for later after you have lost the weight and are experimenting during your stabilization period.

So what am I telling you? No sugar, no salt, no dairy. No flavor!!! Wrong. Right now you have addictions. Not just an overall food addiction but a flavor addiction. The thought of unflavored food sounds boring, and for the first week, or maybe even the first month that may be true. Prepare yourself for that, but then one day your taste buds will come awake and an apple will taste better than pie, a ripe tomato exploding in your mouth will make you moan, cutting open an orange, seeing it's juicy sun kissed meat will cause you to salivate. You will change, your mind will change, your cravings will change, but they won't until you have broken the addictions. That is where willpower and determination make or break a raw fooder. Nothing happens overnight, nothing worth having is easy. If you do this diet, if you fight through the cravings and the supposed boredom, and stick with it, you will lose weight. How fast and how much is all up to how long you stick with it and how simple you stay. People who make high fat recipes and gorge themselves on dehydrated deserts just don't lose the weight as fast. Keep your goal in mind. You are here to drop the weight, to do it fast, and to learn how to incorporate raw living foods into the rest of your life.

Fruit is going to be your main source of calories. Vegetables are very healthy for you and supply all the minerals and amino acids you need, but they are low calorie foods. One of the reasons raw works so fast for us is that fruits and vegetables are low in calories. A banana, one of the higher calorie fruits, is only 100 calories. Now, I'm not saying you need to count calories, you don't. I have done very low calorie diets with exercise and never had this type of success. There is something about raw food - many say it is the enzymes - that promotes thinness. I am living proof of that. You will find as you progress on this diet that certain foods will keep you from losing weight, while others help to speed it along. I find I cannot eat more than a handful or two of nuts in one day or I will not lose weight the next day. Too many bananas and I'm done for too, but boy can I pack away those oranges, sometimes ten a day. Same amount of calories, but my body seems to identify them differently. How? I don't know, but I've learned what works for me and what doesn't.

Nuts and seeds are an important part of this diet. I know I've already said keep your fat intake low, but you still need some and besides your leafy greens this is where you will be getting your protein. Ground flax seed is the best Omega 3 source out there. You should try and incorporate flax seed into your diet on a regular basis. The best thing to do is grind the whole seeds in a coffee grinder then sprinkle them on your salad (they taste nutty) or put them in a smoothie. 2 Tb of ground flax a day is more than sufficient. Ground Hemp Seed is also very good for you. You can buy this at the local health food store and put it in a smoothie. Other than that all nuts and seeds are good, but you want to make sure they are raw. That means they say RAW on the packaging. If they don't say raw, they aren't. Most nuts with the exception of pecans and walnuts usually come roasted and salted, you don't want these. Most health food stores have raw nuts. I know Trader Joe's and Wild Oats do. You can also find them on-line. The other thing about nuts is that they satisfy a need for crunchy (celery and raw carrots do too by the way), but be careful not to overdo. More than a small handful of nuts a day is way too much when trying to lose weight. Later you'll be able to indulge. On a side note, unfortunately, peanuts are something raw fooders avoid. They are known to hold molds that are just too unhealthy for us. You will have go give up raw peanut butter. Many substitute raw Almond or Cashew butter. Remember to count these butters as part of your fat intake. Adendum to nuts. After a year of working with members we have found that unless you have a medical reason to eat nuts, we don't promote eating nuts while losing the weight. They are fats and fats are addictive. Those who did not give up the nuts did not lose weight and quickly left camp.

If you want glowing skin and radiant health then you need to eat a lot of leafy greens. It is actually recommended you eat two bushes of greens a day, but that is a very hard thing to do unless you just love salad. It will take you a while to build up to this amount of greens, but once they become part of your life you will be amazed at the changes they will make. The easiest way to get greens down, and actually the most beneficial way is by putting them in a smoothie. A combination of 60% fruit, 40% greens is recommended for the perfect smoothie. It will be green, but taste like fruit. A good blender like the Vitimix is needed to make sure the greens are chopped finitely. This blender is expensive, but if you plan to be on this diet for a year or so, it is well worth the investment. Some people juice their greens. I actually find this more palatable, but juicing is messy and time consuming, so I do the smoothies.

Both Alissa Cohen and Gabriel Cousen's are big on dehydrators. I personally do not recommend you buy one, and I will tell you why. It is too easy to get caught up in the high fat, high oil, and high salt foods. Just think, if you have the ability to make yourself corn chips brushed with oil and salt and can justify them as healthy and raw what are the chances that is all you will be eating? I feel the same way about the sweet recipes as well. People rave over Alissa's fudge balls, but we have food addictions, if we get addicted to all this high end food for one we won't lose the weight as fast, and two we won't be changing our behaviors. For us Simple Raw is best, and here at the boot camp that is what we will be practicing.

We are not going to make recipes. We are going to eat most of our fruit as whole fruit, maybe have one smoothie a day to help us get down extra greens and some flax or hemp seed. We are going to eat as much raw vegetables as we want, and our dressings are going to be simple. If we need something warm, we will warm our bowls and pour pureed corn or some other type of raw soup into it to slightly warm, not destroy the food. There are recipes that we can have, some blended food, coleslaws and such, but for now while you are losing weight there will be no fudge balls, or nut based creams or milk. Later after you lose the weight and learn to stabilize your weight you can try adding some of these things back in, but for now this is about getting thin.

Diabetics and people with high or low blood pressure do need to monitor themselves very carefully. In the beginning diabetics find that the sweet fruits (dates, figs, bananas, etc) spike their sugar readings. After a while those reading should drop, but you need to be careful and test often. If the sweet fruits spike your readings you need to move down to the lower glycemic index fruits like apples and oranges and then once you feel confident you have everything under control carefully experiment with adding the higher fruits back in if you want. I have also found with myself that on days I overeat nuts my sugar levels go up. For people on blood pressure medicine, please be careful. Eating raw and losing weight will naturally lower your blood pressure. If you are taking medications your blood pressure could drop too low. Check regularly and speak with your doctor about lowering your meds to compensate.

After this first year we have also found that those that rely on bananas, raisens, agave, and honey to keep them satisfied do not have the weight loss others who live without these sweets have. Remember we are obese, our bodies do not work like others who can put down cups of nuts and fifteen bananas a day and lose weight. Life is not fair. This is our lot and we are stuck with it. So we either only feed the body what it needs to be healthy or we stay fat. Hmmm, hard choice?

Okay, so now what you are going to do is learn more about raw by researching. Do on-line searches for other raw food sites and read up on this amazing diet. When you feel you have a good understanding of the diet, and believe you can do it in the manner suggested above, come back here to Raw Food Boot Camp and join us. I will never tell you it's easy, I will never suggest everyone can do it, but if you think you can, if you want to try, please come back and we will help you succeed.

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