Beginning any new diet can be very difficult. It requires planning, preparation, and tracking in order to stay focused on your goal and not lose you will power. On top of that, a new diet means teaching yourself new habits and breaking old ones. Sometimes the requires a complete overhaul of your current eating habits, and sometimes it doesn’t. The hardest thing about many diets isn’t figuring out what not to eat, it’s figuring out what to eat instead. Many people give up on diets because they simply don’t know what to replace junk food with, or they get bored quickly with the few menu options they do know. All diets require variety, it is the spice of life you know.
The raw food diet is no different. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to quit because I just couldn’t figure out what to make and was sick to the teeth of apples. I finally purchased a raw food diet cookbook and reached out to online forums for some recipe idea to keep me going.
In any diet change, I recommend you start slow. Replace your daily snack with fresh fruit for a week, then move on to replacing soda or coffee with fresh juice and smoothies and so on. Going cold turkey makes it that much more difficult to stick with it, so just move slowly. Here are 4 very simple recipes you can try to get started.
Fruit Medley Cereal:
2-3 strawberries, diced
1 half handful of blueberries,
1 half handful of raspberries,
1 kiwi, diced
Milk:
1 banana
½. Blend banana and coconut milk (or water) until you get the consistency of milk. Pour milk over berries and enjoy. You may adjust the amount of liquid to get the consistency you like. I like mine a little thick.
Summer Afternoon Smoothie
1 cup fresh orange juice(usually about three oranges)
1 cup fresh cantaloupe or other melon juice
1 cup fresh spinach
1 cup frozen chopped bananas
Ice (optional)
Blend all ingredients in blender until smooth. Add ice if you’d like a Jamba Juice smoothie consistency.
Green Lunch Salad:
1 cup spinach, torn
½ cup diced tomatoes
½ sliced cucumber
Dressing:
1 cup fresh cilantro
½ cup fresh lime juice
1 small garlic clove
Pinch of salt
1 cup olive oil
Prepare the salad and lightly toss in a bowl. Blend cilantro and garlic in food processor, then blend in oil and lime juice. It helps to store the dressing in a separate container and put it on the salad just before you eat.
Better Fettuccine Alfredo
Noodles:
3 Zucchinis, peeled
Use a vegetable peeler down the length of the zucchini to make long, flat fettuccini-type noodles, until you reach middle with seeds. Discard the center or use for another recipe.
Alfredo Sauce:
1 cup macadamia nuts (soaked overnight)
1/4 c walnuts (soaked overnight)
1/4 cup cold pressed olive oil
2 tsp sea salt
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp fresh ground pepper
water for sauce consistency
Blend all ingredients in processor or high power blender. Pour sauce over noodles.
*You may also wish to add 1-2 mushrooms sliced and sauteed in a bit of garlic, basil and light olive oil. Place them on top of your fettuccini or stir them into the sauce.
Even replacing 3 dinners a night with raw food dinners is a great start. Once you become used to the preparations and begin to see weight loss, you can move to replacing breakfast. However you decide to start, there is lots of help for you online or in your local bookstore so stay with it!
