Cooked food has always been a negative thing for me, but that never stops me from eating it when I'm not full. Over the years I have realized it's not emotional, it's not nutrient deficiency, it's not lack of willpower; it's just starvation. But I still always wanted to be 100% raw because I know that's best for my skin and body odor. So it feels bad when I eat cooked, because I know I'm not being optimal.
But I want to change that and I've recently met a couple high-carb vegans who eat lots of fruit, yes, but they also eat cooked and are totally comfortable with it. I haven't met lots of fruit people in my life, maybe 10 max before coming to Berkeley, and they were all pretending to be 100% raw but were definitely not, and/or would eventually change diets. I got a new perspective from some of my new high-carb friends.
They eat cooked food for health, because they need to, because it's healthy to get carbs in when you need them. So please help point me in the right direction so I can just get a better relationship with cooked food, instead of always worrying that I'm falling off the wagon.
This is what I'm thinking: instead of doing my raw thing for weeks at a time expecting that I'll do it forever, then all the sudden going off the deep end and eating oily bread and vegetable sort of foods or low-quality high-oil high-salt spaghetti sauce over low-quality pasta or really fatty vegan sandwiches on wheat bread, I want to actually intend to have a healthy cooked meal sometime. I want to have a massive bowl of rice tossed with fresh vegetables. This will probably actually help me be even more raw then I was before because I won't have to go through so much emotional trauma over eating it and stay locked in food negativity mood for days at a time. I want to actually plan to eat cooked food before I even have cravings.
Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? Experiences? Questions?
Replies
the days that i find myself on the dark side and eating cooked food (i am here now aiming to change that perspective! thanks for the support) are always during a day of stress- either i'm worried about money, or in an argument with my family, or just questioning my self-worth for whatever reason. or, i'm bored, which is emotional torture for me.
but what happened to 'there's no such thing as emotional eating' ?...
It's interesting you suggest to actually burn MORE energy as a way to stay raw. i do exercise but i definitely could do it even more! I wish that I could quantify it like I can with water and sleep- drink 4 liters a day and never experience thirst. sleep 8-10 hrs/day and never experience feeling tired during the day. exercise [insert type and amount here :)] and never experience feeling too high from fresh fruit and greens vibrations that i feel the need to chill out.
thank you jillian, this is very helpful for my self-exploration!
Often times what happens is, every couple weeks I find myself momentarily in a zone of wanting to turn my head off (in the past I would have turned to drugs). And so I go for fattening vegan food. I want to just go through these occasional lapses in positive focus with more ease and be free to continue loving myself through the worst of times. so i'm going to include cooked food with healthy intention and know that i'm continuing to move forward even during road blocks in life. I just want to make it easier for myself because sometimes forcing staying raw when I really really want to eat for sedation just drives me bonkers. I want to use cooked food to calm myself down, but be able to stay on a healthy path at the same time. Does that make sense?
yeah dylan fruit is so energetic : ) whole starches id say calming rather then sedation but you may be right " i just want to be sedated" ramones or just calm down sometimes
this discussion is making me look deeper into why i am not able to stay raw. if i go with harley's idea of 10g carbs per kilogram bodyweight per day then I need 703g carbs=2812 sugar calories. Assuming that makes up about 85% of my total calories, that means I need about 3308 calories of 811 style food per day. i'm in california and eat good ripe bananas and dates and everything fragrant and organic and beautiful from farmers' markets. So after consistently hitting and even exceeding that caloric target every day, drinking liters of water and getting 8-10 hours of sleep for weeks on end, getting sun and doing moderate exercise, why should I still be all the sudden hitting walls on raw every few weeks? i guess there must be other factors besides calories.
I'm trying to figure out how to eat healthy cooked food because I haven't figured out what those other factors are. never, not ever eating cooked just hasn't been a possibility for me thus far, and I've been trying for years.
People do tell me 'dude, you need to relax...' I get that a lot. I am still trying to figure out how to do that... I actively pursue with yoga, stretching, socializing, playing music...
I'm not trying to play like I'm in some sort of crisis and need sympathy and attention. My health is better than ever and only continuing to improve. But I am always seeing room for even more improvement! I want to iron out all the little details :)
I still intend to be close to 100% raw- for me it will be less like raw til 4 and more like raw til sunday. over the years i find the cravings come between every 1 and 3 weeks. but when the time comes, i will let it happen smoothly and happily, and the next day, feel totally comfortable just eating tons of fruit again! that's my intention.
before it was like i would eat raw for a couple weeks, then start to freak out and wonder why i wasn't a good enough person to eat raw, then eat bread and oil for like 3 days straight and then start to feel terrible and crawl, dribbling, back to fruit again, feeling like a failure. time to cut out the bulls*** and stay consistent and stable. first i just have to learn how to love cooked food. thank you all for your support and suggestions
hey Dylan,
remember that every single experience in life is fundamentally neutral and that you give it the meaning. your experience with cooked food is associated with guilt and a negative emotional state because you are defining cooked food by default as a negative thing for you. examine your relationship with cooked food further. find a way to include cooked food into your life. this doesn't necessarily mean that you must eat it; but at the very least, redefine the way you're viewing it so that it can give you a positive meaning.
Letting go of the sense of purity that comes with raw food is tricky. I think you need to listen to your body. I think it's great that you want to educate on the best ways of incorperating cooked food into your day before calling it a craving, but it isnt nessessarily. Not sure if you've read it, but i highly recommend reading the starch solution. It will enhance and motivate your new perspective towards cooked food. I incorperate high carb low fat cooked food into my evenings which i alternate with you fruity meals. Personally, I don't feel much difference in the morning, and i love that i can whip up recipes for my friends. Its all about the carbs baby. the good carbs! X
i have a 25 pound bag of organic brown rice for the reasons you mentioned embrace high quality cooked when needed : ) low fat high carb