Raw Food Diet And Weight Loss – Does It Work?
The benefits of eating raw foods to improve your levels of nutrition are widely accepted, but there are also benefits if you want to combine a raw food diet and weight loss. Read on and I will tell you what they are and why it works.
What causes weight gain?
Let’s start by looking at some of the contributors to weight-gain. One of the main contributors is eating foods that are nutritionally poor quality. In fact you may be overweight but your body could still be starving for nutrients. Instead of being full of vitamins, minerals and enzymes your diet is likely to be packed with carbohydrates, sugars and salts plus over processed foods.
What are the impacts of poor nutrition?
A poor quality diet has all sorts of negative impacts. Take the analogy of your motor car. Running your engine on good quality oil and gas will help make it last longer, put poor quality oil and gas into the engine and it will splutter, spit and wear out more quickly. Put adulterated gas in your engine and it will simply break down. Well the same is true for your body, it needs good quality foods. Sadly much of what you eat probably does not meet that description.
How is poor nutrition linked to weight gain?
One of the results of a poor quality diet is weight-gain. There are several reasons for this. Your metabolism gets sluggish and you get sluggish which is a vicious circle as the more sluggish you and your metabolism are the less energy you burn off. So by just eating the same amount you are going to gain weight. You may also feel hungry all the time because your body is crying out for the nutrients it needs. You will store more of what you eat as fat because your body can’t use the junk food you are eating for anything else.
How does cooking affect nutrients?
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Cooking often destroys the goodness in food so on the whole cooked food is less nutritious. Cooking can even change food so that it becomes harmful. For example this is true of fat and oil that has been heated to a high temperatures, such as when frying, which has been linked to one of the causes of cancer. Cooking may release free-radicals and even poisons that are not beneficial to our health in any way. At the very least you lose nutrients into the cooking water.
Which foods are best to eat?
Recent research into nutrition in food suggests that the most nutritious food is brightly coloured fruits and vegetable and the best way to eat them is raw. Of course raw foods also need to be eaten fresh and organic is better that non organic, due to the level of pesticides on non organic crops. The evidence that eating raw is good for you is very strong.
How does raw nutrition help with weight loss?
If you eat more raw foods than cooked foods you will find that the pounds start to drop off effortlessly. This is because your body starts to get the nutrients it needs so it stops storing fat. Your metabolism should improve so you burn off more energy and your food cravings for junk food decrease so you eat less ‘bad foods’.
How should I get stared in eating more raw food?
I recommend that you start off by doing a three day raw diet eating only raw fruit and vegetables. This will help to detoxify your system and get you in the right frame of mind to change your diet. Eat as much as you like, eat all day if you want to but stick only to raw fruit and vegetables.
From there go on to a diet that is at least half raw fruits and vegetables and only snack on raw things.
You will be amazed how much difference adding a lot of raw fruit and vegetables will make to how much energy you have and how much easier it is to lose weight.
Interestingly the foods that are high in nutrients are often lower in calories. Even when they contain more calories such as fruits like avocados and bananas and nuts and seeds the fat they contain is much healthier than that found in dairy and fatty meat products.
Here are seven rules to help you lose weight:
Eat four meals a day with at least half of each meal made up of raw fruit and vegetables
Eat mainly low calorie, high nutrient non raw foods
Snack only on raw fruits and vegetables
Never eat less than 3 hours before you go to bed.
Cut out all artificially sweetened drinks, cola type drinks
Drink only moderate amounts of alcohol and not every day
Drink plenty of water half an hour before and after each meal.
I hope I have persuaded you of the benefits of combining a raw food diet and weight loss.
If you want to find out more about which are the most nutritious foods follow this link
healthyweightlossways.com/what-is-a-healthy-diet-for-nutritarians
If you want help with planning a nutritious, healthy diet follow this link healthyweightlossways.com/strip-that-fat-review
Raw Food Diet Tips – Major Info You Really Should Know About
Raw food. Just the thought conjures savage cavemen ripping up the bloody flesh of a wild pig they’ve just captured. For majority of the population who are used to cooked meals, consuming raw food is unthinkable.
What exactly is a raw food diet? What does it do to the body?
A raw food diet, as its name suggests, is one where the fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and even some meat sources are consumed in its most natural state. What falls under the definition of “raw food” are uncooked foods and those that have not been heated above 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Those who follow the raw food diet believe that cooking food destroys its nutritional value. Heating food above the said temperature is also believed to be harmful for the body.
Aside from this, proponents also believe that ingestion of food closest to its natural or “unfired state” is better for the body. Not only are the vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other enzymes kept intact, the “life force” in these unaltered foods is capable of cleansing our systems of toxins and giving renewed vigor and vitality to our cells and tissues.
Practitioners of the raw food diet report feelings of increased energy, weight loss and improved digestion. Because it’s low in trans fatty acids and saturated fats, a raw food diet decreases the risk of heart disease compared to a traditional Western diet that features a great deal of frying. Moreover, its high-fiber, low-sodium, high-phytochemical content has also been known to reduce the risk of diabetes and cancer.
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Switching to a raw food diet, however, is not for the faint-of-heart. For the first few days to a couple of weeks while on the raw food diet, a person may experience, lethargy, nausea and cravings. Some even report skin breakouts and headaches so severe that it causes them to abandon the diet and switch back to cooked foods. According to raw food diet advocates, these are merely detoxification reactions. It’s the body’s way of eliminating all the waste and garbage that have been deposited in all its cells, tissues and organs. Fat deposits, food preservatives and all sorts of harmful substances that are the result of being on processed foods for long are weeded out and cleaned. Because of the process of elimination, weight loss is the tangible result. If you can get through this very trying process, then a stable, healthier system results. This is one in which less food is needed to sustain life but, ironically, the small amount consumed is able to give more energy than what was once thought possible. This is because raw food is said to be higher in quality compared to cooked food because it remains in its most natural form.
The raw food diet is not without its share of critics, however. Those against it cite the nutritional deficiencies that subsisting on nuts, seeds, beans, legumes and seaweed can bring. A raw food diet can be inadequate when it comes to meeting the body’s demands of calcium, protein, iron and some vitamins like vitamin B12. Besides, it is also not suitable for children, pregnant and nursing women or those with certain diseases like anemia and osteoporosis because of its low iron and calcium content.
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