Now that I've gone raw, I'm so skinny

[Guest guest]

Is raw really that different?

 

Americans generally have two features in common: they are overfat and

undermuscled. There are good reasons for both of these unhealthy

conditions. Going raw can help with both, but in both cases, going

raw is simply a start.

 

People are overfat because they consume more calories than they

burn. It is that simple, almost. They are also overweight because

they hold on to excess water. In the body, the solution to pollution

is dilution. One method of coping with those toxins that are more

than the body can eliminate is to dilute them in water and store

them. This excess water weight is easily lost, and is not the issue

of this article.

 

Overfat people usually tell me that they " don't eat that much,

really. " They are probably telling the truth, when it comes to the

actual volume of food they consume. The SAD has three main features

that make it easily recognizable: low water, low fiber, and high

fat. Each of these three features reduce the total volume of food

while increasing the number of calories per bite. It therefore takes

very little food volume to provide more than enough calories for the

day, hence people gain, on average, a few pounds every year.

 

The SAD, vegetarian, vegan and most raw diets tend to have these same

three features in common: low water, low fiber and high fat. As raw

fooders we find a meal of fruit unsatisfactory because we are hungry

soon after consuming it. This is no fault of the fruit. Any meal

where insufficient calories are consumed will leave the eater hungry

soon thereafter. We have shrunk our stomachs to the point of

deformity through the continual consumption of concentrated

foodstuffs. By removing the fiber (juicing), by removing the water

(cooking or dehydrating), and by increasing the fat levels above 10%

of total calories consumed (cooked or raw, plant or animal, fat is

fat), we mimic the SAD with many of our raw food dishes. This is

surely an unhealthy practice. Both water and fiber are essential

nutrients. Therefore removing them from our food must be to our

detriment. All health experts worldwide agree that we must make

dramatic decreases in our fat consumption if we ever hope to achieve

health.

 

The solution to the shrunken stomach problem is to eat more volume of

fruit, but this takes practice and determination. It requires,

essentially, that you go on a flexibility training program for your

stomach, allowing it to enlarge to the point of being able to

comfortably accommodate the food volume required for a proper meal of

fruit. Most folks find that within a few months they can easily

double and often triple the total amount of fruit they can consume at

a meal, without consuming anywhere near as many calories as they used

to consume from more calorically concentrated sources.

 

We go on the raw food diet and lose weight like champions. This is a

mixed blessing. Most of us have weight to lose and are pleased at

the initial weight loss. However, if we are losing weight

consistently and dramatically we must be drastically under consuming

calories. At some point we must learn to eat enough volume of raw

foods to satisfy our caloric demands, else we fail as raw fooders.

Unfortunately, this form of failure on raw foods happens all too

frequently. Usually, we blame the addictiveness of cooked food or

our own weaknesses rather than acknowledging that we were eating a

nutritionally unbalanced and unsustainable raw food diet. Along the

way, various unhealthy habits can develop such as overeating of fatty

foods, occasional bingeing on cooked foods, relying on refined and

concentrated food sources, and the sedentary lifestyle that often

accompanies the malnourished state.

 

We are crippling ourselves

 

Labor saving devices have become the standard in America. Shopping

carts, rolling luggage, moving stairways, vacuum cleaners, automatic

doors, household conveniences such as automatic hot water; we use

these things without giving them a second thought. Even our labor

saving devices often have labor saving devices. (Ex. - Power

windows, steering and brakes for our cars, remote controls for

television, sit down lawn mowers, battery powered toothbrushes and

screwdrivers). Using them has had disastrous effects upon our

fitness. Never before in history have we, as a people, been so

unfit, overfat, or unhealthy. In both test case and real life

scenarios we have found that a significant percentage of our

population is too unfit to make it down a few dozen flights of

stairs, even if it means saving their own life.

 

The inertia of the sedentary lifestyle must be overcome if we hope to

achieve better health through raw living than that which we brought

to it. Losing excess fat certainly is a step in the right

direction. Eating foods that require less fuel for the digestive

process frees up more fuel to use for activity. Still, I am asked

all the time, " what do I eat to gain weight? "

 

After discerning that the requested weight gain is not to be in the

form of fat or water, the question is refined to, " what do I eat to

gain muscle? " The answer is, " There is no food that will cause one

to gain muscle. This can only be achieved by performing the

appropriate strength demanding activities " . Unless demands are

placed upon the muscles, the brain will perceive no reason to direct

growth of the muscles and the muscles will likewise acquire no

reason to hypertrophy.

 

" I went raw but I got so skinny that I went back to eating cooked " , I

hear again and again. I can only reply that most people are skinny,

they just hide that fact under a substantial layer of fat. We have

become used to seeing fat people, they are the norm. So used to it,

in fact, that people who are not fat look abnormal to us. They look

too skinny. Though for my height I am absolutely a normal weight

(5'10 " , 150 pounds) I have been told that I am " thin, skinny, too

trim " and once even, " emaciated " . (This last by a man 5'10 " , 300

pounds).

 

We know the shape that we think humans should be, what appears to us

as " normal " . The undiscerning eye usually does not differentiate

between a person with a low degree of musculature whose body fat

levels are double or triple normal from one with adequate muscular

development whose body fat level is healthy. They look basically

similar, especially when they are inactive and even more so in street

clothing. The telltale indicators of low fat with muscular

development; well defined vascularity and the shredded or ripped look

to the musculature, are simply not noticed or even visible until

bodies go into action.

 

Muscular development takes time. It is rare for a body builder to

gain more than one pound of muscle in a month. By the same token,

barring a total cessation of physical activity, muscular loss of size

also is a slow process. Of the three caloronutrients: carbohydrate,

fat and protein, the body will always use carbohydrate and fat before

consuming protein for fuel. Hence, when we switch our diet to raw,

the likelihood that the body will consume its own muscle tissue for

fuel is practically zero. At least, that is, until starvation is

initiated, which is not until all available carbohydrate and fat

sources have been utilized. When people say to me that they got so

skinny on the raw food diet, I can only smile and say, " You have

probably always been skinny, you just couldn't tell because you were

fat, too. Congratulations on losing the fat, for it was only then

that you noticed how undermuscled you are. "

 

If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else

gets. For uncommonly healthy results, one must be willing to live an

uncommonly healthy life. Anyone who puts in the effort involved in

building muscle will see the muscular development and will reap the

concomitant rewards. This can be done in various ways and will be a

focus of a future article: Four methods of increasing strength

related performance.

 

In health abundance naturally,

 

Dr. Douglas N. " Mono-Man " Graham

www.doctorgraham.cc

All raw, all the time, count on it