Raw Food Diet Plan
Time to continue with the Top 100 Weight Loss Tips. Here's article 61 in the series that is designed to bring you one hundred ways to approach your own desire to lose weight.
This one is going to focus on the raw food diet plan and see how useful it is as a legitimate means of shedding a few of those unwanted pounds.
Dieting with Raw Food
Well, first off, what exactly are we talking about when we say a raw food diet plan? Well, don't get too worried its going to be something that you're not going to like the look of. It does not mean taking a totally raw steak and putting it on a plate with a raw carrot, some raw potatoes and a bunch of raw asparagus spears!
Or taking a raw lump of chicken breast and eating it as is with a plate of uncooked fries. That would be disgusting as well as potentially dangerous with all the modern strains of harmful bacteria that exist, especially in some uncooked meats.
What a raw food diet plan entails is much more appetizing, as well as being, well, edible!
We're talking about making use of fruits and vegetables as nature intended them, uncooked and full of all the goodness and nutrients that most forms of cooking robs them of.
So you take those vegetables that you can safely eat raw and prepare them in a way that makes them more appetizing and even surprisingly delicious. That's because you may have never had them served up quite like that before and its a real treat for the taste buds!
Take carrots for instance. This is a vegetable that is traditionally chopped and boiled ending up as insipid chunks or orange on the plate and are often left uneaten. So let's change the rules.
Carrots taste great when grated raw into salads, or as a side dish mixed with a little coriander and black pepper to spice them up. Try it, you'll surprise yourself! Have you ever stood there in the kitchen shelling peas only to dump them in a pot of boiling water to end up with little shriveled green bullets? Then serve them up raw instead! They actually go great with grated carrot...
Imagine the Possibilities!
Use your imagination here. Cabbage is one thing that kids hate to eat because the pile of stewed mush on their plates just does not look like something they'd want to eat. So change the rules.
Try fine shredding raw cabbage together with grated carrots (those again) mixed up with a little cider vinegar (known as a very good weight loss aid) and black pepper. Or mix them up with a little freshly made mayonnaise to make a coleslaw (just don't overdo the mayo!) that tastes great.
Salads are a great way to include more raw foods. Don't just make them with some limp lettuce and a tomato, get creative!
Add some fresh watercress, chunks of avocado, grated carrot (oh yeah, how versatile is that vegetable!) shredded cabbage, chunked peach, apple and apricot, a handful of fresh raspberries or blueberries (never be shy to experiment with adding fruit to salads as it tastes great too), chopped raw spinach, chopped nasturtium leaves (and use the edible flowers as decoration) sliced cucumber, celery, radish, bell pepper, grated kohl rabi... the list goes on.
You can create salads that mimic the Mediterranean diet for a really healthy, life extending weight loss solution. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil and some cider vinegar over the top as a dressing. It tastes great!
You can try Chinese vegetables like chopped pak choi, bean sprouts and all the differently colored lettuces. You can even add grated raw butternut squash and grated raw sweet potato too!
What About Meat?
Meat is best not included in any raw food diet plan mainly for safety reasons (to avoid harmful bacteria that cooking usually kills). But if you must have it, then try some of the Mediterranean style cured meats such as the Italian parma ham or Spanish jamon serrano. These are not cooked like other hams, but are cured raw over a long period of time.
They taste delicious! Don't forget you can add a little cheese, although be careful to make the amount you use quite small because cheese can load on the calories. You can also carefully clean and chop raw mushrooms to meals to add another level of interest.
Note: Don't wash mushrooms in water - they soak it up and lose flavor. Wipe clean with a paper towel instead.
You can also include some raw fish, Japanese style if you like Sushi. If not, then don't!
The idea of eating a diet of raw foods is to improve your intake of dietary fiber as well as all the goodness and nutrients that are retained in fruits and vegetables that are not cooked. This works to improve your metabolism and aid in elimination, sort of like a natural detox. It also makes your body burn more calories because it takes more energy to digest raw food than it does to digest cooked food.
You have to make sure you drink plenty of plain water with this kind of diet to help your digestive process run smoothly. As with any diet, you must also get some daily exercise, because you still have to burn off lots of calories in order to lose weight and keep it off once you have lost it!
100 Weight Loss Tips number 60 follows in the next post!
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Posted on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 3 Comments
3 thoughts on "Raw Food Diet Plan"
Terry says:
Yes, lots of people immediately think of raw meat when you mention a raw food diet plan, but nothing could be further from the truth!
Jorge says:
I was at first reluctant to even think about what may be meant by a raw foods diet, but then I started reading and realized that it did not entail eating raw meat or dead animals!
I like very much the idea of eating raw vegetables and I like to eat fruit so this is an excellent type of diet for me to try. It is certainly better than standing in a hot kitchen and cooking food for hours.
Thank you
Jorge
Lizzy says:
This was really helpful. I am going through a really stressful divorce and house move, and totally lost my appetite, and found I could only eat- the things you described above!! I though I was going crazy so it is good to hear there is some science behind what my body was asking for.