Rawk Village

If this type of strict accountability isn't for you and you are obese, check out Rawk Village. We offer two types of membership at this time: General Membership which is based on peer support. We also now offer a 2X a week accountability program with Carlene at Rawk Village's Ivy Hall. Both of these programs require that you are a female with 50+ pounds to lose. We are a unique community in that we are open to obese women only. This allows a sense of privacy and security not found elsewhere. These are both fee based programs.

If a strict boot camp mentality isn't for you, but you want guidance from someone else who has lost a lot of weight with raw, check out my buddy Angela Stokes' programs.

Check our guru page for others who offer support and information on raw foods.

RFBC and Rawk Village are not for everyone, so if you are serious about changing your life, research raw food and find the method that works for you.

I am sorry to say, we will not be opening camps to help people quick smoking or break other addictions as some have begged me to do. We are about Raw Food, and I am about Obesity.

Check out the rest of our site for information on our programs so you understand what we are about, and then decide if you are ready to commit to a new life.

Do you want to lose weight?
Have you tried everything and are seriously contemplating surgery? Are you willing to try one more thing?

If you answered yes to these questions, then maybe here is where you will find the magic you have always hoped was out there. It is magic, by my standards, but it is also takes work - your hard work. That's why I call it a Boot Camp. You won't be let off easy if you join. Excuses can be made, but not accepted. If you're part of this group, you are expected to do it right, to make it past temptations, to fight urges to withdraw. If you quit, you quit, we won't bug you, but while you are a member we will expect nothing but your best.

My name is Carlene Jones. I beat obesity with raw food, and you can too. Call me a drill instructor, say I expect way too much of you, but know I'm here, as is everyone else who is part of this group, to help you beat obesity too. I'm tired of surgeons and pharmaceutical companies offering us solutions to obesity that line their pockets. They care more about our money than our life long health. So I decided, I found a solution, and I'm going to share it. That's what the Raw Food Boot Camp is about - the obese helping the obese. We know the issues, we know the concerns, and now we know how to beat this horrible, humiliating, life-depleting disease.

If you're willing to succeed. If you're willing to do hard work to be thin and healthy. Then read on. If not, then I wish you the best in your life and your decisions, Raw Food Boot Camp is not for you.

Why is it the obese, never succeed on diets? I'll tell you my ideas, and you see if any of them fit for you.

• I don't have the patience to take two years to lose all the weight. A pound or two a week is just too slow and I get disenchanted so I choose to fail. I need fast weight loss.
• There is not enough food and I am hungry all the time.
• It takes too much effort to weigh, portion out, and prepare each day's meals.
• Serving sizes are made for a child not a full grown adult. I am never satisfied.
• There is no hope, I will be morbidly obese for life. No amount of sacrifice and deprivation will work for me.
• I'm actually happier morbidly obese.

These were my excuses. I'm sure you have many of your own, never mind all the emotional reasons you eat. But on this diet, none of these excuses panned out.

• It did not take me two years to lose the weight. It took 9 months - 136 pounds. Which should have been 8 months, but in December I ate a high fat raw diet and only lost 3.5 pounds the whole month. That was my average for a week while doing low fat raw. So not counting my ill-spent month. I averaged half a pound a day. Something I expected and received. Tell me raw food isn't a fast weight loss diet. It's as fast as gastric bypass surgery or bariatric surgery. As long as you keep it low fat. No more than 20% fat per day.
• I ate as much as I wanted whenever I wanted. When hungry I ate. When full I stopped. If I had gastric bypass or bariatric surgery I would have had to schedule my drinking and eating and limit each drink to about half a cup and each meal to the equivalent of a scrambled egg to prevent vomiting and rupture.
• Because raw food is a simple diet there is no measuring, no slicing food into portions, no cooking, no clean up, no mess. Simple and easy.
• There is no such thing as a serving size. Eat as much as you want.
• Raw Food offered hope. Yes I did sacrifice and at times felt deprived, but it did work and I am now thin and fit. And it only took 9 months!!! That is unheard of even for women who have had gastric bypass or bariatric surgery. And I lost all of my excess weight, unlike the 75-80% offered by surgery.
• I had no clue what happiness was. I am now out living a life I thought forever outside my realm of existence. There is no way morbid obesity was better.

It isn't easy. I won't lie to you, but it works and you will stay healthy unlike surgery. In the beginning many people experience headaches and fatigue while their body gets used to the change. I hear it all the time from people: "I can't afford to have three or four days where I'm tired." Well, compared to surgery and a life of never being able to eat and drink at the same meal, what is a few days here and there on your way to perfect health? What is it compared to the rest of your life encased in fat? Trust me, the sacrifices you make on this diet will reward you in so many ways that when you look back on it, you will say: "Piece of cake" or rather "carrot."

I used to tell people that I could do anything cold turkey. If I could just give up food, never have to eat again, I could do it. But I couldn't do that, so I couldn't succeed because I am not good at moderation. If I could have eaten one piece of pizza and not four, just one or two pieces of fried zucchini instead of the whole order, then I would never have gotten to 259 pounds at 5'1". Even if I could have ordered the half sandwich/soup entree instead of the pastrami grinder and fries, life would have been different. Of course doing these thin minded things to diet never worked, because one taste always made me want another and if I ordered that non-fattening meal I was never satisfied. For me it was fatty foods, for you it may be sweets. What I'm saying is that even though I always wanted to say I didn't eat enough to warrant my weight, I was always drawn to high fat foods and was never satisfied with just a taste. I knew cold turkey was my only way out. And I've got to say, going raw was very close.

By giving up cooked food and reverting to uncooked, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds I broke my food addictions. Or maybe I changed them. Instead of eating four pieces of pizza, I now have four oranges. Can you see where that makes the difference? Just like an alcoholic I will probably have food issues all of my life. I have to face that. With raw, I have found a way to control this while satisfying myself. By choosing raw you are making a commitment to yourself, for the rest of your life. You are choosing life over food. Food will become a sidebar in your life and if you let it, joy will seep in to fill the rest of it.

Will I be 100% raw for life? I don't know, but now that I have lost all the weight and am out enjoying myself daily doing things that I love and feeling so good about myself, I wonder why I wouldn't want to be. Do you need to be 100% raw for the rest of your life? Well, right now, I wouldn't worry about it. Save that decision for later, just be 100% raw for now. When you get to your goal weight and you stabilize it for a period of time then decide. But one thing I can say for sure is that now that I have raw, I will never be morbidly obese again because if I gain a few pounds, all I have to do is return to raw for it to melt away once again. Now that gives me confidence!

So what is the boot camp about? It's a place of commitment. To join you must submit an application. Once accepted, and after payment of your membership fee, you will be added to our private area where we openly talk about being raw, our physical and emotional challenges, exercise and anything else we want to. It's private and by invitation only because being morbidly obese is different than being overweight or thin. There are things about us and our bodies that we just don't want to share with people who will not understand or who will judge us.

We offer you support. You will be working hard, sacrificing, feeling deprived, and exclaiming the euphoria of fast weight loss on raw food with people who are doing the same thing.

Why Lower Fats?

In all of our programs we insist that everyone eat lower fats in their diet. There are many raw foodists out there that successfully eat high fat raw diets with no adverse affect to their health or weight. For us, the obese, the higher fats stop or stall our weight loss. Most of us feel that when we eat high fats we do not feel as energetic as when we monitor our fat intake. We also have found that the more fats we eat the more we crave fats and sweets, and the harder it is to stick to the program. So if you join RFBC, plan on living a low fat version of raw while you are losing the weight. This may mean that raw food potlucks are not going to work for you as most recipes brought to these events are made with a lot of fat. Trust me, weight loss and high fat just don't work for most of us. You may be that one exception, but at boot camp there are no exceptions, so everyone is on a low fat diet.

What, no dates?

This is another contention among raw foodists. Again those that are naturally thin can eat as many dates and other high sweet fruits as they want. At Boot Camp they just don't fit in. Most of us at Boot Camp if not already over the border are borderline diabetics. We can't handle the high fruit. Maybe someday after you've been raw for a while a date now and then won't spike your blood sugar, but for now while you are losing the weight, they are off the diet. That means no power bars and most of the raw food goodies that are on the market today. Another reason they are off the program is that for those who love their dates, it seems it is all they ever eat. We are about changing our eating habits, not substituting them with raw food choices. To check your favorite fruits Glycemic Index (GI) go to www.glycemicindex.com and click on their database. Make sure to check a food's Glycemic Load (GL) as well - you'll find an explanation for how this works at the site. For some foods like watermelon, its high GI is countered by its low GL making it a very favorable food at Boot Camp.

Bananas

We actually almost had a banana war at Boot Camp. Dr. Graham advocates bananas as a source of energy. People at camp love their bananas, but we have found that for most of us with weight issues, more than one or two bananas a day stops or stalls our weight loss. Dr. Cousens has them on his high glycemic index list, yet from our research we have found them to be moderate. That doesn't seem to matter with the weight loss. Even those who were staunch supporters of unlimited bananas in the end conceded that they thought it was the large consumption of bananas that was stopping them from losing weight. We try and limit our bananas to one or two a day while losing the weight. This can be upped when doing heavy exercise like running a marathon.

Remember we are here to lose weight and to do it healthfully. At RFBC we do not advocate one guru or raw theory over another. We read and study them all and find what is best for us as individuals to lose weight and gain health. Everyone is different, we respect that. The low fat is mandatory at Boot Camp, as are the no high GI fruits. The majority of Raw Food Boot Campers follow a high fruit low fat program. This is what worked and still works for me and many have found it is what works for them as well. Others are afraid of eating so much fruit and opt for a more vegetable based program. Whatever program you choose, what matters is that it work for you and you find your way to a healthy trim new life. Once you get there we'll start working together as a team to help you maintain it.

Now that you know what Boot Camp is about. Take a minute to read Who Doesn't Make it at Boot Camp and the Rules of Boot Camp before deciding to apply.

I can't wait to meet you!

©2008 Raw Food Boot Camp