With all this red meat and vegetarian and fruits and vegetable talk, i've been very curious and eager to try and change my eating habits, at least as a trial.
I've read from numerous people here of the improvements theve noticed from having a more natural diet; improved energy, mood, weight loss, etc. I have faith in that natural eating is the way to go; after all, we are just creatures that inhabit this earth and our eating habits and foods have deviated from the natural and what nature intended due to scientific advancements. We are adaptable creatures, however, but i think going back to our roots is the best option for the functioning of the body.

A little background:
My lifestyle is pretty sedentary, I guess... For most part of the day, i'm just chillin at home on the computer or smoking. I just started working the night life now on weekends (9PM-6AM, Fri/Sat), so that's starting to take a toll on me, and i hit the gym in a bodybuilding fashion (very intense, heavy weight) about 2-3 times a week, 2 hours each time. Age is 20 and 160 pounds. I smoke cigarettes Sometimes i'll take creatine supplements and whey protein powders. I feel pretty good throughout the day, i'm an uppity guy; i've felt better though.
Here is my general diet and pretty much the staple foods i consume throughout the day/week:
whole wheat/whole grain bread sandwiches with deli meat (ham/turkey) and cheese, I have a couple of these a day.
milk with special k protein cereal
eggs, rice, pasta
beans and corn from a can
a decent amount of red meat (argentinian here) and burgers and tuna
Bananas/apples every other day about.
Have been eating fast food more than usual lately...

I don't think my diet is terrible, but i feel like im lacking the most important food groups: vegetables and fruits.
I just dont really enjoy vegetables, which makes it hard for me to incorporate them. Also, I live in a large metropolitan city, and makes it a hassle and quite expensive to start incorporating this.
My goal is to go mainly all fruit/vegetarian with the occasional food my mom will cook for dinner (which can be anything) but i dont know where to start. I've heard of juice diets, which could be a good option?

What fruits and vegetables do you guys consider crucial and most beneficial for ones health? What would be a good variety?
Would buying these foods at publix/winn-dixie negate the benefits of this? Any suggestions on where i should get my food at? These stores are also expensive with their selections
Since i lift weights, how would this affect me and should i include anything additional to complement this physical exercise?
Would doing this diet change overnight be a bad idea or should it be a gradual change?

All suggestions, comments, links, are welcome; nothing more valuable than the word of experience!
Thanks <3

Theres too much to answer in one post so Ill just touch on a few points really quickly. Key is doing it step by step, going from junk-diet to raw overnight would be quite a challenge.

I would first omit what I would deem most unhealthy. The sandwiches you mention are very delicious but cold-cuts are about one the worst type of food one can consume(from the glue to hold it together to other soup of chems to quality of meat itself). I would start replacing all the processed meat products(coldcuts, salami, bacon, wieners and the like) with raw meat that you have to cook yourself at first, before going veggie.

Its great that you don't consume excessive amount of high-fructose corn syrup daily(juices, pop, sweets) but eliminate sugar bombs that are Cereals(even that 'organic whole grain goodness' with Heart-Healthy logo on it). Maybe if its just nuts/dried frut Musli thing... if it has any kind of processed flakes(wheat or corn) avoid.

Perhaps work on gluten next... this is a hard one. I personally grew up in eastern europe so bread was always a staple food to be consumed with everything(with soup, with main meal, and with a tea as a dessert after) so kicking bread wasn't easy for me. It's just such a powerful calorie-dense satisfying food that lack of it creates a lot of inconvenience in general. Dairy - another hard one but at least get rid of large amounts of milk with your cereal.

As youre slowly eliminating processed ready-to eat food it will have to be replaced with self-prepared food. Perhaps learn to cook in bulk firs. Not sure about your metabolic needs... myself I can't live on just raw... like salads, fruits and nuts. Unless I eat a high-carb plate(pasta, potatoes, rice, or some kinda of grain like oat) satiety just doesn't kick in for me. Obviously pasta/oat/other gluten grains had to be cut out but I still use lots of potatoes and wild rice(to a lesser extent) as the backbone of my main meal. Usually these were accompanied by some kind of meat preparation(like chili or ground beef) so all I had to do is switch these for a 'veggie chili'. Being a full-time student then I couldn't dedicate a lot of time for food prep(and lazy too ) so one method was to simply buy random veggies that are used in cooking(onions, carrots, tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms, beans, garlic +random spices) and throw everything together in a 15-liter pot(fry onions first tho) . I swear it never came out bad (flatmate tested), even though ingredients were seemingly random. I don't think you can fail unless you oversalt/overspice(and in a year of practice you become pro). That becomes a really convenient "main meal" for me, ie a big plate of mashed potatoes with a veggie spread on it, that lasts up to a week in the fridge.

Next step increasing the proportion of raw foods overall(with raw being main goal)... Slowly reduce cooking time of stuff in general. I now undercook potatoes for example and very very lightly cook the veggie prep. Start increasing the intake of raw-food inbetween to replace the "main meals". I know lifting heavy at the gym keeps the munchies up all day so having a lot of random fruit and nut handy is essential. That also leads to spacing out cooked/prepared meals to replace with the raw stuff. I now eat the potatotes 1-1.5 a day usually with just obsene amount of salad/fruit inbetween and its getting easier and easier. btw 'bulk prep' idea includes salads too. Get a huge bowl or a pot to make a 2-3 portion salad in the morning to help with the leafy greens consumption, that kinda deters you from grabbing random stuff knowing that you gotta finish the salad before the end of the day.

Research into superfoods is great too but look for bulk... Tablespoon or two of chlorella/spirulina can replace a meal on its own.

Ofcourse this is not ideal but it's just an example how Im slowly getting there, maybe youll find some of the tips helpful.

Greatly appreciate the thorough post!

I'll definitely keep note of some of your methods to ease the change in.

I find cutting out gluten, bread, and other common carbs very hard because theyre just so practical to prepare and they also complement many foods. I used to be pretty good about preparing my own foods with onions/spinach/garlic/carrots/corn but i've lazied out I'm working on getting that going again...
I keep a low sugar diet; as you stated, i consume very little amount of juices, soda, and sugar filled foods. The "healthy" cereal is low in sugar as is most of my food. I see sugar as a poison x.x

So potatoes, rice, nuts, fruit salads, and salads of all varieties on the list for now.

I dont plan on keeping a super strict diet, i just want to modify my main consumption of foods; i know my social life and family meals will deviate me from the plan but i dont mind a tasty meal every now and then

Thanks again, more input welcome

you can buy a food dehydrator and learn how to prepare your own raw vegan breads with nuts and seeds and onion etc that contain no grains at all. Cutting out grains entirely was a great thing for me. I just dont do well on grains.

If you dont care about things being raw you can make the same breads and just use an oven. This sort of bread will be thin and wont rise though like normal bread..and it takes time to make, but is way better than anything you can find in the store.

Just do a search for raw gourmet food and breads etc..there is so much stuff you can make that will fill any carb craving you have.

Actaully you should NOT crave carbs..if you crave carbs there is a problem-you are undercarbed and need to eat more carbs! Carbs are VERY important it is just the source of the carbs that matters..breads and pasta etc are a poor carbohydrate source. Fruit is the best source of carbs..you need to eat ALOT of fruit to meet your carbohydrate requirements so that you dont feel tired all day etc..

Some people are into low carb diets but I think that is unhealthy and crazy. God, I have been there and done that-felt like crap.

Sugar is definatily not a poison. It is not good to cut out al sugar from your diet..fruit is important and loaded with sugar-you need carbs! You are right though REFINED sugars are to be avoided and are not good at all. I like raw organic bee honey..agave is not so great in comparison despite what you might here, but it is fine to use in some recipes..organic maple syrup is better for you than agave..so maple syrup or some quility honey if you want something to sweaten your tea etc..just avoid any and all refined sugars and you will be fine.

Good questions Fractalyzed, Im pretty much in the same boat as yourself.



jamie, if you dont mind me asking, how much is ALOT of fruit? obviously you eat different things and amounts on different days, but do you have a rough amount of fruit you would eat in a day?

cheers

https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=378137#post378137 do not take my advice on diets/nutrition posted bellow for that reason, let this be an alarming example on how to not do things properly

The way I found out about this was through some weird glitch that led me to www.leftinthedark.org.uk and then after that to http://www.30bananasaday.com/forum and have been nice guides as I have not really ever actually eaten any fruits as part of my dieat and the whole subject of fruit was rather unknown. I am not a Guru though

(EDIT: Now I have been editing this post quite few times as I have been feeling notsogood on how to be about as the sites do not post all the information free and they have ads. I believe in freedom of information and thus this disclaimer. I got this way mainly by scavenging the net for the free bits of information and any really healing info should never cost anyone anything, also the net should be free, open and a human right! Using of mental adblock is adviced.. I decided to leave the links since there is a lot of good info in the sites. sidenote: Selling "health" is imho one of the most f*cked up things there is..EDIT2: Reading books are good and makes one know more/smarter/knowledge/along those lines sort of stuff so books are good )

I am now eating a lot of bananas, kiwis, dates and sometimes tangerines. Bananas and kiwis more than dates and tangerines. Bananas and kiwis being my staples I also eat various other fruits, tomatoes, spinach, lettuce and few teaspoons or little more of hemp seeds. For the first time ever I actually am feeling like getting healthier. Also the body composition has changed dramatically for the better.

I have had number of weird body symptoms in the past. For example: blowout of the appendix, acne(still have the sholder area scarred heavily, some parts of the skin thinner than others and some blobs of hard material that did not develop as a pimple, in the skin. Overweight, mental difficulties, bad self-esteem.

Psychedelics did help with the mental parts, getting the light to the end of the tunnel, but did not do anything about the body symptoms. To get to the light and not suffer during the whole distance was the problem for a while.

Only thing that was a shocker first was the detox symptoms and drop of body weight as I just jumped to it after hearing about this from the net. I had to do the change immediately. Now that I think about it it would have been easier if just going about the transition more slowly.

The things that I have learned so far:

The information on how to do this is available in the Internet to start the transition safely enough. Different books have usually a lot more data than in them than that is put in the Internet.

It is good to get a lot of actual food in the start. Also if you have really hard time transitioning to not eating meat and want to be on the safe side in the beginning then maybe methylcobalamin or hydroxycobalamin to fix B12-levels if you think you are running low (might be a good idea to go test B12 levels). And now the recent update on my own research living in the north in the winter: D-vitamin as no sun here is important to supplement, can really hit you rock bottom if prolonged durations in the dark.

At least 2500 cal a day to as much as you need, if for example you exercise a lot. Better to get enough calories from fruit than not get enough from organic fruit. Same with water, enough from tap rather than no water at all.

If eating a lot of fruit, get a lot at once and learn from mistakes how long does it take to reach correct ripeness(some descriptions, wonder if there is a whole website for fruits with ripeness scales). Some bananas might ripen really fast while others not so. Also choose warmer place than colder to speed up ripening. But remember, do not let the fruit go overripe and bad! Learn from mistakes.

Always have fresh, ripe fruit around. If you run out then you need to change your shopping strategy.

You need to drink a lot of water every day. At least few litres every morning is especially important to remember. Try for example to drink just 1 and then try how it feels to drink 2 more. How it feels to gulp them down and how it feels to sip them. You will get the idea how it should feel when not dehydrated and how it feels when you drink really much water. Humans have to learn how to drink. Remember to drink enough!

If you do not have water filter then you should thinking about maybe getting one. The toxic load is bigger to your body when drinking tap water. Search and ask the lab results of the tap water to see what you have been ingesting during those years. Something like RO machine seems to be a easy choice to get the ppm down. Also there are distillers and some other kind of water purifiers but the comparison page I have not yet found that does it neutrally and accurately, maybe you have better luck finding while researching or some science minded person might have the answer already ready to be transmitted to you.

Best to get a natural spring that is certified clean and get it from there if you have that kind of possibility.

Alright here's what I've heard about this subject!

What you should do :
Drink water, (distilled at best)
eat fruit
eat nuts
eat oils
eat hemp

green stuff is always great, if you don't eat sufficient green stuff,
supplement with spirulina or wheat powder.

I stopped eating (for the most part of my diet) :

Meat, milk-products (from time to time I eat also these), fastfood (some burger from time to time can't hurt)
any sort of softdrink, especially "sugar-free" are to be avoided like the pest.
no "table-salt" instead - raw pinkish-salt.


Don't forget!
Your body knows best!
I also suggest going RAW! Stop cooking, instead blend your food - altough i don't do this myself, cause this tastes mostly pretty "yuck"

you dont know how to prepare raw gourmet food if you think it is yuck!

You're right!

Yea kyro definitely check out some recipes on the web if you want some tasty food. Once you experiment a bit and look this stuff up for a while you can come up with some fine tasting things.. like pizza.. chocolate(cacao) smoothies/coco (i like cacao powder, coconut oil, and honey mixed in hot water).. and raw cereal using homemade almond milk, berries/banana pieces, dried cherries and walnuts (so good). You can make these and other things in ways that actually tastes better than the other stuff

A lot of people think i/they would get sick of salads after a while as well.. and this would be true but i happen to love guacamole and my salads are monsters that i change up a lot when i eat them..i've learned that a nice balance between a wide variety of things can come up with some awesome tastes. usually i use spinach with guacamole, a bunch of honey, maybe some cashews, and (depending on what i have atm) a mix of things like apples, tomatoes, oranges, onions, berries of all sorts, dates, and turmeric and black pepper

I eat giant salads as well..like a gigantic salad bowl full for lunch that most people would use to feed like 5 or 6 people.

This is how my day goes.

Smoothy-2 banannas, some berries(wild if in season or stored), cacao, maca, spirulina, bee pollen, maybe some raw honey, some kelp powder and dulse seaweed flakes, an avacado or coconut and some dates..

Then I might just eat another bananna or 3. It depends.

Then maybe 2 hours later I will have a giant salad with kale, spinnach greens or lettus, carrots, onion, avacado, maybe some beets shredded, hemp seeds, a bit of dulse flakes, basil, a few tomatoes, cucumber, celery..I will use wild dandylion greens and flowers in place of lettus when they are in season alot of the time. I add like a tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle of pure sea salt or rock salt and then eat it.

Then like an hour later I will eat maybe some durrian or pomegranite or both..I just eat fruits all day basically. Also I live in an area of Canada where durring the right season there is TONS of organic local fruits..so when in season we eat alot of just local stuff. In winter I think we eat more tropical stuff. Lately I eat alot of durrian.

For dinner I will have another giant salad and also a smoothy..sometimes I make soup as well...maybe some more fruit.

For soup I will use like 4-5 tomatoes, some onion, some young coconut flesh or avacado, and add some sea salt or rock salt, tumeric, and other spices like basil etc to make tomatoe soup and blend it.. and I just warm it a bit while stirring to make sure I dont burn it..you just want to warm it a bit.

I like to just eat fruit the rest of the night after that becasue I find I sleep much better that way.

Sometimes I will have a small bowl of organic miso soup sometime in the day but lately I feel like it is not needed..just more fruit.

AS you can see, I have not been eating many nuts at all..just some hemp seeds..I love nuts and seeds but for some reason I dont do too well on them. I noticed that if I start eating alot of cashews or almonds etc throughout the day my back will hurt at night. Some people do really well on them though so if you do than nuts and seeds are really great mineral dense foods. For me I find a handful of hemp in my salad is all I really need to get by and that never bothers me so I am just eating more and more and more fruit.

I drink herbal tea all day long like an addict, and always drink wild spring water I collect.

Note that I was NOT like this when I went raw. Minxx ran a raw vegan kitchen for like 2 years at one point so is an amazing raw gouremt chef and I ate TONS of raw vegan pizza and cheescake and onion bread and chocolate etc..after 14 months of just raw food though I have found that my body is naturally transitioning to just wanting more water dense fruits and veggies and does not want all the dehydrated foods so much anymore. I will eat it occasionally as I dont think it is really bad, but I do find that fresh water dense food feel the best.

I found a surprisingly good tasting dry superfood blend from the MegaFood vitamin company that I mix with spring water and drink it as a shot. I can literally feel it hit me. In it, I get a variety of green veggies, "superfoods", fruits, detoxifying and energizing protective herbs, vitamins, EFA's, probiotics, and enzymes. I don't feel as guilty now for eating the occasional cheese burger! For me, moderation works. (and no, I don't work for this company, I just found a product I really like)

Here's the site if you want to check it out:

http://www.megafood.com/...nagement/organic-greens

Organic Greens for Men

SUPPLEMENT FACTS
Serving Size (12 grams) One Scoop
Amount per Serving % Daily Value †
Calories 35
Calories from Fat 3
Total Fat <1 g 1 %
Sodium 22 mg 1 %
Total Carbohydrate 8 g 3 %
Dietary Fiber 5 g 16 %
Soluble Fiber
1 g
Sugars 4 g
Protein 2 g 4 %
Vitamin A* (Beta Carotene)
1000 IU 20%
Vitamin C*
30 mg 50 %
Vitamin D*
30 IU 8%
Vitamin E*
15 IU 50 %
Thiamine (B1)* 1 mg 66 %
Riboflavin (B2)*
1 mg 58%
Niacinamide*
3 mg 15%
Vitamin B6* 1 mg 50 %
Folate*
80 mcg 20 %
Vitamin B12* 2.5 mcg 42%
Pantothenic Acid* 2 mg 20 %
GTF Chromium* 35 mcg 29 %

DailyFoods® Green Powder Blend
Organic Barley Grass (5:1), Organic Spirulina, Chlorella Cracked Cell
3500 mg ††

Organic Hemp Protein Powder (seed)
2000 mg ††

Organic Inulin Soluble Plant Fiber
1350 mg ††

Anti-Aging Super Food
Powder Blend
Organic Broccoli, Organic Spinach, Organic Kale, Organic Apple, Organic Tomato, Organic Lemon Peel, Organic Carrot, Organic Strawberry, Organic
Parsley, Organic Raspberry, Organic Cranberry, Organic Blueberry, Organic Pomegranate, Organic Onion
1345 mg ††

Men’s Rejuvenating Blend
Organic Ashwagandha Root, Organic Eleuthero Root, Organic Fo-Ti Root, Organic Milk Thistle Seed, Organic Nettle Leaf, Organic Holy Basil Leaf
240 mg ††

Balanced Omega 3-6-9
(from organic hemp seed)
180 mg ††

ImmuneSure™ Non-Dairy Blend
3 Billion Cells
Bifidobacterium bifidum, Lactobacillus
acidophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus,
Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus
** ††

Complete Digestive Enzyme Blend
Amylase, Cellulase, Pectinase, Glucoamylase, Lipase, Protease, Invertase
34 mg ††

Herbal Defense Blend
Organic Astragalus Root, Organic Shiitake Mushroom, Organic Schizandra Berry
25 mg ††

CereCalase® Nutrient-Enhancing Enzymes
Hemicellulase, Beta-Gluconase, Phytase
15 mg ††
† Percent Daily Values are based on 2,000 calorie diet
†† Daily Value not established

Other Ingredients: Organic Unrefined Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Whole Brown Rice*, Organic Lemon Peel*, Organic Carrot*, Saccharomyces cerevisiae*, Organic Broccoli*.

* FoodState® whole food nutrient ** At Time of Manufacture
Suggested Use: Add one scoop to 8 - 10 oz of chilled water, juice, or non-dairy beverage. Mix or shake well until dissolved.

This, IMO, is your worst dietary choice.

Use the money you'll save quitting to buy organic fruits and veggies or buy freeze-dried fruits/veggies like that superfood supplement I posted about.

First thing is first - cut the cigarettes, that's just not doing any good for anyone. Next you'll want to start drinking clean water, distilled or pure spring water is best, at the very least Reverse Osmosis from the big machines in the grocery store. These two steps will have an immense benefit on your overall health and quality of life.

I would recommend saving up that money you were spending on cigarettes and treating yourself to a good juicer, it's an easy way to add large amounts of fruit and vegetables to your diet.

In the meantime start buying moar fruit and vegetables, find the ones you know you like and look up various ways to prepare them online to start with. Then each time you are at the grocery store make it a point to pick up a fruit and a vegetable you've never tried before and learn how to prepare it with a quick google search, this will help in adding variety.

Fancy and exotic superfoods and supplements are great, but they also tend to break the bank. I would recommend making staples of things that are cheap and readily available and buying the moar expensive and exotic items as treats for yourself.

Work on replacing things, once you've gotten used to incorporating moar fresh whole foods start removing things slowly like switch from dairy milk to a nice homemade seed milk (sunflower and sesame seeds are really cheap for example) Start eating a meal based on beans or legumes instead of a meat based meal a couple times a week. Make a gluten-free bread and get some yams and sweet potatoes instead of buying monoculture wheat bread and russet potatoes. Take it slow and look for ways to replace the things you already eat with healthier alternatives.

For the budget, try to buy whats on sale and plan your meals around that. Look into local farmers markets and smaller international markets for cheap produce. Spend some time reading through various recipes and trying to plan your meals out a bit, and make room for constantly trying new things.

This is just some the the things I've picked up along my own path towards good health. As always take what works for you and discard the rest. Hope it's helpful.

-Namaste

So can constantly buying organic fruits and vegetables that go bad after only a few days. That's why I buy the freeze dried ones. They're always fresh, no bother with washing and preparing them, same nutrient and enzyme profile, and it's easier to get a variety of goodies all in one bang. Just seems more practical to me.

freeze dried is not as good as fresh..you still loose something..fresh is the best, and freeze dried is not fresh IMO.

Just eat all the fruits and veggies before they go bad and then go get more.

I have some freeze dried spirulina and acai berries and they are good I use them in smoothies, but they ccant replace fresh food for me.

I am also not really big on super food powders etc that contain like 100 difference ingrediants. It should not really be necessary for one thing and combining that many things all at once to ingest all at once is not necessarily a great thing. It is just too much at least for me to food combine that way. 10 things is like the limit I usually combine at once. Mono eating actaully feels really really good but I loose interest in that real quick.

I'll tell you how I've been eating for the last month or so and I feel like a new human being.

filtered fluoride free water of course. In the morning I eat oatmeal mixed with honey, hemp milk, hemp hearts, bee pollen, fish oil and vitamin D ( it tastes great ) I then eat about 5 grams of chlorella and 1 gram of tumeric mixed with black pepper ( all in capsules ) after I eat the oatmeal.

I then mix a couple heaping tablespoons of maca with water and drink it before I head to work.


at work I eat fruits all day and 1 or 2 cans of herring fish snacks.

for dinner I usually have rice, vegetables and a piece of organic and ethically raised meat , a fruit smoothie, a couple more grams of chlorella and maybe another gram of tumeric + some garlic capsules.

Of course different things work for different people. I think your ethnicity can play a role in how your body responds to certain foods as well. Me being of Scottish decent for example I like to eat oatmeal while my girlfriend who is Asian eats more rice.

Jamie told me something once that really makes sense to me and that is to Love your food, be grateful for what you have, I think that makes a big diffrence.

If I could recommend one thing to do that will have an amazing impact on your health it would be to take chlorella everyday in large doses, most people take much to little of it.
It has amazing properties, basically its the best food source on earth. take 5-10 grams per day everyday and you will feel like a new person. Buying it from www.forestrx.com at 50 dollars per kg is an amazing value and when you pack your own 000 capsules it becomes easy and convenient to take large doses.

cheers jamie, thats really helpfull

It just seems more practical to get freeze-dried produce for the reasons I listed above, but to each their own I guess. Fresh does taste better, and ideally I would move to a warmer climate and grow my own.



Most home water filters you can buy don't remove the fluoride. You need an expensive reverse osmosis system or a distiller. I use spring water, it's more natural.

wow, a big thank you to everyone that has contributed!
This has been extremely helpful, not only for me but i'm sure for others as well!

We all talk about healthy living and forms of meditation, but i feel we need to elaborate and be more specific of ways to achieve better living for starters on the path to growth and this is exactly what i've been looking for.
I rather learn from the words of those that have actual experience with healthy lifestyle habits with real world results than some online resource that explains the science benefits and composition of foods on paper...

Thus far, i've started cutting back on cigarettes, cannabis, and blending some fruits every morning for a nice smoothie for breakfast along with some vegetables in my food to make it easier for me to eat . I'm going to keep tweaking, improving, and incorporating better habits as i learn more and build a healthier, more natural lifestyle.

Much love to all.
<3