Much like Stephen Colbert has put BEARS on notice…I’ve put NUTS on notice.
I’ve been vegan for the last 8 years or so…which means that I choose not to eat any animal products like meat, fish, poultry, eggs, butter, cheese, or other forms of dairy.
And since late February (just a few months ago) I’ve been eating a totally raw vegan diet. This means still no animal products, and also no cooked food.
So it involves eating food in its freshest state:
- fresh and frozen fruits
- fresh veggies
- raw nuts (brazil, almonds, cashews, macadamias, pecans, walnuts)
- raw seeds (sunflower, chia, sesame)
- super foods
I’ve been loving the raw food diet and it’s done wonders for my weight, my energy levels, and the amount of healthiness I feel. Also my skin looks amazing, is so much smoother, and I’ve been getting lots of compliments on it which is new for me.
Important Note: This isn’t a diet I started because I wanted to lose weight. It’s a diet I started because I was listening to my body and it’s the food my body was craving and ready to eat more of. It so happened that I’ve lost 22 pounds eating this way and exercising sensibly – which is awesome. But it wasn’t my main goal in starting to eat this way.
And before you start thinking that you don’t like diets of any kind…remember, you’re already on a diet. Whatever you eat IS your diet. It’s just a matter of whether the food you’re eating is helping your body or not. Some people’s diet consists of coffee, bread, and meats mostly. That’s their diet. So diet doesn’t have to be a bad word. We’re all on some kind of a diet. The word diet means what we eat. Nothing scary.
So I’ve been a fan of the raw vegan diet and it’s been fun and easy for me. But in the last week I’ve been noticing a bit of upset tummy and nausea…so I’m doing an experiment and I’m going NUTLESS for 2 weeks. (And thank you for wondering, but I’m definitely not pregnant.)
I’ve had some stomach issues in the past, as well as some nut sensitivities, so my hypothesis is that maybe the nuts are hard for my tummy to digest or something like that. So I’m going to see if the nut-free eating style helps my tummy feel better.
So for at least the next 2 weeks I’ll only be eating:
- fresh fruits
- frozen fruits
- fresh veggies
- super foods
- enzymes
Yesterday was the first day I did this Nut-Free Raw Food approach:
Day 1 Menu:
- Chocolate Bliss (super food drink)
- 2 Organic Fuji apples
- Salad: baby lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, black olives, cilantro
- Salad Dressing/Topping: olive oil, nutritional yeast, Braggs, garlic salt, pepper
- Watermelon
- Chia pudding w/agave & banana
- Enzymes
Results: No belly ache. Sweet.
I’ll be reporting here from my blog with my experiment results as well as the raw food items I eat each day so you can see what a nut-free raw food diet can look like.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
oooo – Mona – thanks for sharing your journey. Looking forward to following along!
I’ve got inner promptings to go more raw too these days and have added green smoothies to my menu. Yum!
Sweet! What kind of green smoothies do you like to have? I started with just spinach as the greens. And lots of frozen fruits. I have a book called Green For Life. It’s the best one I’ve found about bringing more greens into our diets through smoothies. The greens are so good when we blend them because the cell walls of the greens get broken up in a way that our body can make better use of them. Yay green smoothies!
Mona – I’m curious, where do you get your protein from in a raw diet? I am hypoglycemic so I rely heavily on legumes and nuts for protein. I am a “flexitarian”, I eat meat once or twice a week but usually am vegetarian because that’s what my body craves. I totally adore lentils and beans and peas and nuts…
@Melanie – You can get a lot of protein from nuts and avocados on a raw food diet. Definitely. You can also sprout things (like lentils or peas) on a raw food diet. You soak them and then they start growing little spouts out of them. They’re tasty and crunchy. Good to sprinkle on salads. You can also buy them already sprouted at health food stores sometimes. They’re in the cold section (not frozen) but near the carrots and stuff.
And like I was doing before, most people on a raw vegan diet eat nuts. I was eating them for the last 3 months and doing great. Just trying the no-nut scene to see if it affects my belly in a positive way. So if you were to bring in more raw foods you can enjoy LOTS of nuts. Granted, they wouldn’t be roasted nuts. But most of the nuts that I was eating in my raw food diet weren’t just straight up nuts. They were nuts that I put in sauces in the blender, or dessert type things with dates and nuts and bananas all mashed up together. So I very rarely just sat down and ate nuts. But I put nuts in a lot of things in the blender to make them creamier. I can share some recipes if you’re interested in seeing how I used nuts more. Also – it’s worth doing some research about the hype we hear about protein. If your body is craving some protein, that’s one thing, but just in general to think we need tons of protein and that something awful is going to happen if we don’t get protein in the ways we used to getting it…I don’t buy into that.
I’ve been basically just looking in the fridge and freezer to see what looks good. So far I’ve done Spinach, berries and a frozen banana; Grapes, banana, romaine, strawberries, and today I had spinach, grapes, strawberries. All of them were great! I’ll check out that book – thanks for the reference!
Hi Mona,
May I recommend Doug Graham’s book, 80-10-10? His title refers to a need for a minimum of 80% carbs (fruits and greens), max 10% fat, and max 10% protein. The protein (always the first question people have about the veg, vegan, or raw diet!) is met easily by eating produce; but for the nervous ones, know that greens have an abundance of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Nuts and seeds are high in fat, so it’s best to limit them, even when soaked, which they generally should first be.
Most raw un-cook book recipes are high in fat, due to the great amount of nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut, and oil in them to make them mimic the cooked foods folks are used to, and for transition it’s ok, but it’s best to shift into high produce mode sooner rather than later. Then you won’t need to depend on super foods.
I love green smoothies, as well, and like to use bananas for my base because they are sweet and creamy, add a second fruit, fresh or frozen, and then an equal amount, in bulk, of whatever greens I have. Spinach is great, but so is chard, arugula, cilantro, (arugula and cilantro blended are wonderful), celery, mixed greens, etc.
Nice site!
@Karin – Thanks for the 80-10-10 recommendation. I love finding new resources to check out. I’m with you on lowering the percentage of nuts and fats I’m eating. Like you said, good for transitioning in the beginning, but switching to more plant-based 80% is on my priority list now. I’m expecting that my energy levels will increase as I increase greens and decrease nuts/fats. That’s what I’ll be tracking here on my blog over the next 2 weeks for sure. Love that you came by and I’m glad you like my site!
Thanks for the info Mona. I’m going to start doing some research… @fargoirish is convincing me that a vitamix is the way to go! Because of my hypoglycemia, I usually stay away from sugars and focus on proteins. I try to eat small meals many times a day. It’s really helped stabilize my blood sugar levels and my moods and energy level. You have some very good tips about using nuts in recipes though, thank you! And I forgot about sprouts. I grew up eating alfalfa sprouts, so I know how to make them.
Is tofu considered part of a raw diet?
Hi Mona,
Thanks for sharing exactly what you’re eating and your process. I’ve moved in and out of a raw food diet, but have recently been diagnosed as allergic to almonds (goodbye almond hummus, sigh.) Your efforts are inspiring me to try it nut free.
Thanks!
@Melanie – Yes, the Vita Mix is SOOO good for anyone wanting to do more raw food stuff in their lives. Makes preparation really easy. I have one and I love it. So glad you’ve got your blood levels good by eating small meals throughout the day. I eat that way too. And there is actually lots of protein in greens like swiss chard and you can blend it up in a smoothie with berries and frozen banana and water. Turns our really nice. We can get our protein in ways that are a bit counter-intuitive to what we’ve been taught. And nope, tofu isn’t a raw food.
@Mahala – I’ll have to share a recipe with you for Zucchini hummus. No need for nuts at all. It’s very tasty! Does use raw tahini (sesame seed butter.) I’ll probably make that during the next 14 days and share the recipe here. Stay tuned!
How much nuts were you eating everyday? You should only eat about a small palm full of them a day if you have no other fats in your diet.
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@Mike: Thanks for chiming in. I was eating more than a small palm full a day and my system has already been sensitive to nuts in the past. So from my perspective, I’m not someone who should even be having ANY kind of nuts every day. At most I see myself eating them only a couple of times a week in the future. But we’ll see how it goes with this experiment. So far, I think my belly has been feeling more settled without the nuts going in there all the time.
Thanks, Mona. I do have a good Zucchini hummus recipe. Thanks for reminding me. Must. Get. Out. Raw. Books.
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Hi Mona,
Thanks for sharing your process around eating raw foods, Mona.
The whole raw food movement is so interesting. In ayurveda, you’re discouraged from eating uncooked foods because they believe it takes so much energy for the body to break down and absorb them, that it overloads the digestive tract. Yet I love salads, especially in the summer, and green smoothies, and fruit of all kinds.
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@Hiro That’s interesting about the Ayurveda approach with uncooked foods. Seems like blending the goodies up for a smoothie would fit well with that approach because that instantly makes them easier to assimilate in the digestive tract. I’m all for quick uptake of the good stuff in the body. Thanks so much for swinging by and connecting…
Reading over that list it seems SUPER low calorie. Do you find it difficult to get enough calories eating raw? Do you need less calories for the same amount of energy maybe? Or maybe there is something in the drink that’s higher calorie?
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@Laura – Hey girl! You’re probably right. I don’t know much about calories and I haven’t even thought about calories because it just doesn’t seem to be about that for me. Granted, as I shifted to raw food I noticed that my appetite decreased and I’m able to function without as much food or calories. I’ve enjoyed seeing this because it blows my stories from before about how I needed to eat a lot and get full and all that stuff. I hardly ever eat to the point of being FULL now. What’s the point in that? I eat what feels right and then I stop and then I eat again when I’m drawn to it. So it’s really a naturalistic way of relating to food and it feels right for me. In terms of calories, I trust that my body is drawn toward all the calories it needs to do what it needs. And if it requires more calories, that I’ll move toward those naturally and give them to my body ya know?
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