Is Your Refrigerator Getting
Enough Attention For Your
Raw Food Success? |  Email this Page |
By Lenette Nakauchi
The raw, living food, diet is a vegan, or animal product-free, diet consisting of plant foods that have not been heated above approximately 118% F. This food has all the life force energy from the sun and all its enzymes still intact when we eat it.
What’s in the Fridge is Key
One major breakthrough I’ve come across coaching raw food clients is that they are not doing enough grocery shopping to keep their raw food success in check. True, having a dry staple supply is important (for example: grains, nuts, seeds, superfoods, crackers, dried fruit, etc.), but having an abundance of fresh produce is really where the raw food diet takes off in healing, detoxifying, and energizing.
Are you consistently packing your refrigerator full of fruits, vegetables, and bunches of bunches of leafy greens each week? Do you have more than a week’s worth of fresh greens, vegetables, fruit, avocados, and herbs? Do you have more than enough options to make a variety of salads, green smoothies, and other fun and gourmet raw food recipes? Or are you constantly finding that you only have a couple pieces of fruit left in your fridge or at home, and hardly enough vegetables and greens to make yourself one big hearty salad?
This is the missing key for many people struggling to eat healthier and/or incorporate more raw foods into their diet. For sustainable raw food success, going to the grocery store at least one to two times per week, especially when shopping for the whole family, means that you and your loved ones will have plenty of healthy options to choose from for meals. It also means that you will be almost compelled to make your meals out of 80%+ raw, fresh ingredients, as opposed to dried fruit, dehydrated goodies, nuts and seeds, because you don’t want any of your precious produce to go to waste.
The More Fresh Produce, The Better
Eating more fresh produce will lead to a high-volume but low-calorie diet, more hydration, gradual and gentle detoxification, and weight loss. When you add in more fresh raw foods, you simply don’t have room in your stomach nor the appetite for junk foods! Stocking your fridge with ample produce also leads to more fun and creativity with raw food recipes. Having a variety of fruits, veggies, and exotic foods in your fridge all the time is definitely a treat!
What does this look like in your weekly grocery shopping cart? If you’re a 100% raw fooder, this may look like enough produce for 3-4 pieces of fresh fruits per day, 2-3 bunches of green leafy vegetables per day, 1-3 avocados per day, and 2-5 servings of fresh vegetables per day used for snacking, raw soups, and salads. This, of course, would depend on your body type, size, and activity levels.
Make it a Date!
So if you’re plotting out some new health goals, and one of them is to eat a diet higher in raw foods, I strongly encourage you to dedicate a couple hours each and every week to go grocery shopping. Write the shopping “date” down on your calendar if you have to. You and your diet are completely worth it!
About the Author
Lenette Nakauchi is a Chicagoan raw foodist who is passionate about sharing with others how to incorporate more raw foods and superfoods into their diet in a fun, healthy, sustainable way. She currently shares her passion through her
website, Go Raw Have Fun!, and through her superfood business, Elements for Life.