Raw Food Diet and Stress

You might want to think that the ‘Raw Food Diet” is the Ultimate Diet of them all and you might well be right.

Not only because it is a fantastic way to eat but there have also been numerous cases where people have reported healing themselves with this wonderful way of eating.

Many common digestive disorders, problems with skin or hair, and even auto-immune diseases might be healed when you follow an 80 to 100% raw food diet over an appropriate period of time, this of course depends on your current physical and dietary health condition.

But before jumping in to it, let's firstly see how the ‘Raw Food Diet’ is linked to the levels of stress that your body is under.

1. When you change from your 'typical' whole-foods diet to a natural raw food diet, your body will start detoxifying itself, and it will do this pretty rapidly. Even though, overall, this is a good thing, your body will experience a significant amount of stress during the first few weeks of adjustment.

2. If you make your transition to a raw food diet more gradually, for example, say by following 50% of raw foods in the first two weeks, then 75% for the next two (e.g. having one meal as 'cooked') and then finally 90-100%, your body will thank you for it.

The level of stress from the change of diet will impact your body less than if you had made a quick transition, therefore you will probably experience fewer detox symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches and flatulence, skin breakouts, etc.

3. If you are currently going through some major changes in your life, for example, moving to another city, changing your job, or going through a divorce, then changing your diet might be the last thing you should to do right now.

Any serious change in your life will keep your stress levels pretty high, and any serious change to your diet might further raise your stress levels and actually harm (not heal!) your bodily condition. 

Be aware of yourself experiencing any of the ‘symptoms of stress’ before adding any more traumatic changes (i.e. raw food diet) to your life. If you are unsure what the signs or symptoms of stress are, then you can check them out at http://www.stress-explained.com/stress-symptoms.html).

4. Be aware that healing your body might require make a 100% raw food diet commitment for a significant period of time. However, if it's cold outside and you are struggling to maintain eating salads as a main part of each meal, then have part of your meal made with hot whole-grain foods instead.

Craving hotter meals might be the way that your body saying 'Keep me warm as I'm having a hard time doing it for you'. By allowing this in your diet when spring is comes along, then you will naturally find it easier to commit yourself to high-raw food diet and your body will have experienced a lot less stress along its way.

5. As a long-term researcher into stress management, I would give you a final piece of advice. Our bodies don't like to under go big changes in our life style and any change to this will be stressful to your body to a certain degree.

Several years ago, I believed in making rapid shifts between the diets (i.e. from 'typical' SAD diet to an 80-100% raw food diet), which was made overnight. Now I understand that making serious changes should take time. We are stressed enough in our daily lives, and the last thing you want to do is to keep adding more stress to your poor body.

 So choose and follow the diet that you believe will be the most beneficial and the most healing to your body, but take enough time when you introduce the necessary changes. If it takes several weeks, then so be it. Your body will thank you for it. 

Raw Food Benefits