Overcoming Cravings On A Raw Food Diet

Soon I’ll have the 4th month anniversary of my raw food diet. This has been an exciting time for my body and mind and I think it’s only the beginning. The positive effects I outlined in my other posts describing the health benefits are going steadily, while the side effects, like detox simptoms are slightly fading away. My weight is constantly at the same level and my focus periods are getting better and better. I’m able to work more and feel more relaxed at the same time. To be honest, I barely know what a headache is and I haven’t been ill since this raw food diet started. My emotional flow is constant and even if I’m experiencing emotional detox from time tot time, it’s going better every time. After each emotional detox period I feel stronger and balanced.

There was however, a quite resistent aspect of this diet that concerned me a little and that was about cravings. I wrote before about that and I will write even more today, as I think I found a way to overcome those cravings. Keeping a raw food diet for a month or two is a manageable thing. But after you start to overlap some yearly eating habits, after you enter into a different season, for instance, your body will try to recall what it knows it’s eatable at that time of the year. Since I was taught for almost all my life that in winter we eat a lot of meat, for instance, my body is starting to ask for more meat. The actual needs of my body are easily met with fat rich raw foods like seeds or nuts, and I eat plenty of fat rich raw foods these days. The need is at a psychological level. There is an emotional link between a certain type of foods and my psychological reaction.

It took me some time to understand that. And a little bit more to decide how to break this. And this is how I started to do it.

The Power Of Example

I feel fantastic on this raw food diet, I really do. It’s one of my best periods in terms of health and lucidity. I don’t think I felt like this from my teenage period, when I was doing a lot of exercise and write every day. I feel gorgeous.

But sometimes I tend to forget this. I mean I feel so good that I can’t really imagine how it’s like to feel bad. I’m not tired at all and when I go to bed I usually fall asleep in less than 3 minutes. I sometimes monitor people around me and notice some visible spikes in their energy levels, followed by long periods of apathy. The spikes are mostly related to stimulents like coffee or cigarettes, they last for several minutes, while the apathy periods can last for several hours. Those periods are so clear to me, I can really grasp how the other person is feeling. This empathy boost must be related to the diet too. So, when I see how other people are doing around me, I remember that I used to do the same. I lived the same life and I was convinced that there is no other way of living. (more…)