How I Transitioned to a Raw Food Diet in 2009

By Sonya Sidky

November 26, 2009

As I complete this article on Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful that I have the knowledge to eat moderately from the cooked food items that will be present at today’s meal and skip over the turkey altogether. Furthermore, I am grateful that I have the time, cognitive and financial recourses available to make sure there is a healthy balance of wonderful raw items at the table today. I am setting my intention on enjoying treats in moderation and raw foods in abundance and carrying this mindset forward into the rest of the holiday season and beyond.

Transitioning to a raw food diet was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I currently eat a high raw, completely vegetarian and mostly vegan diet. I learned about raw foods from Steve Pavlina a few years ago and thought that it really made sense to eat plants versus animals; raw foods versus cooked foods; organic foods versus chemically and biologically polluted foods and so on. I really got serious about exploring raw foods at the beginning of this year.

The first step I took was to increase the quantity of simple raw foods that I included in my diet and at the same time cut out more traditional breakfast items such as eggs and toast. I ate fruit for breakfast and included cut up vegetables for lunch and snacks. The main raw food meals I made were salads. For salad dressings, I used raw red wine vinegar and cold pressed olive oil. I also started incorporating raw seeds and nuts into my diet. I placed most of my focus on increasing raw foods into my diet and not on weight loss. Reflecting back on the simple changes I made, I really think I did it the right way for me. I really did not lose a lot of weight in the first four months of 2009, but I do believe I got healthier and began to detoxify. When I ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, I noticed how much more beautiful my hair and skin appeared.

In March, I made a change that really took my raw transition to the next level. I bought a Blendtec high-speed blender. Since that time, I have had a green smoothie for breakfast about 99 percent of the time. I also often used my blender to create other meals such as a marinara sauce or whole juice. Around that time, I was also actively attending and hosting raw food potlucks (they started up in Madison in February 2009) and by late April, I cut way back on eating at restaurants and on the amount of cooked food I ate. Encouraged by the potlucks and having a high-speed blender, I also started making more complex and interesting raw food dishes. It also helped that I already had a very good food processor. In the world of cooked food, one of my favorite dishes to make was tabouli. So in the world of raw, I learned to make a wonderful raw tabouli using ingredients such as cauliflower and hemp seeds instead of cracked wheat and couscous.

By May of 2009 I knew a lot more about raw foods and was really increasing the percentage of my diet that was raw. I had already read several raw food books and spent hours researching the raw lifestyle online. I specifically recall listening to a podcast of a telephone consultation that Steve Pavlina had with a raw food expert. I had listened to the same podcast a year earlier and at that point there were several references to foods, supplements, raw food gurus, and other terms that were completely foreign to me. When I listened to the podcast again this year, there was hardly a term or person mentioned that I was unfamiliar with. It was a good feeling to realize just how much knowledge I had absorbed over a matter of months. I was encouraged! So in May I took it to the next level and began to loose weight. I got a dehydrator and started making simple dehydrated foods such as fruits and vegetables as well as dabbled into a few more complex recipes. Overall I did not use the dehydrator any were nearly as often as I used the blender. That is still true today although it is a goal to use the dehydrator more frequently.

In June, I joined Weight Watchers at work. This helped a lot with encouragement and accountability. One of the benefits of a raw food diet is that your focus is on improving your food choices and going higher raw which made it unnecessary to focus on calories or the Weight Watchers point system. Over the next several months, I got really serious about eating raw and released a lot of weight. Between May and August, I lost about 20 pounds. Somehow in August, my focus shifted from maintaining high raw to going completely vegetarian and mostly vegan. This means that I stopped eating seafood (I had already given up red meat and poultry years earlier) and greatly reducing my consumption of other animal products such as dairy and eggs. So after I completed my first Master Cleanse at the beginning of September I maintained a vegetarian and fairly high raw diet until I got to the Conscious Growth Workshop: Las Vegas. There, I was hanging around people who were more into vegan than into raw, so I was influenced accordingly. This was good in that it strengthened my vegan tendencies, but less than ideal for my desire to maintain high raw. As it turns out though, I also felt less desire to be raw during the workshop because I took great comfort in the cooked foods which helped to dull my senses and deal with my Sound Sensitivity issues during the hours I spent in the conference room over a three day period.

Currently I am at a crossroads of sorts. I completed Master Cleanse #2 this month and am using it as a way to steer myself back to being higher raw while maintaining a high level of veganism. I feel good that I have firmly established myself as a vegetarian. I no longer eat animal flesh. I am also happy to report that I had a physical exam and blood work completed earlier this week and everything looks fantastic. I often get questions such “where do you get your protein?” or “aren’t you concerned about getting all your minerals?” Well according to my recent blood tests, I have normal levels of vitamin B12 and folic acid and my cholesterol levels are at a very healthy level. One of the benefits I enjoy the most is having the ability to complete a difficult weight workout at the gym and have instant recovery time. No soreness the next day! I also need about two hours less sleep than I did before going raw. Bonus!

As I enjoy the journey that I am on to improve my diet which I know will never end, I also know it is time for me to start getting more serious about helping others make the transition by meeting them where they are and helping them take the next step up. I have already had several interactions in which I have helped people explore the raw food diet and those interactions have been some of the highlights of my own journey.

One final note, as we still have a good month plus left of 2009. To make this transition complete, I hereby declare that I am giving up cheese produced from dairy products. I have been doing a little too much sampling at the grocery stores recently and it is so unnecessary. I have the resources to make cheese out of nuts and seeds and if I want cheese, that is what I will do in the future. Either that or order it ready made from a raw food store. I would rather pay the price to put good quality satisfying food in my body than to pay the price of ingesting dairy and compromise my health and frankly experience the crabbiness that goes along with it. Refraining from dairy also helps the bottom line if you know what I mean. Eat well and be well!