Thoughts on Raw Food

I never tried a 100% raw food diet before. At some points in my diet I may eat about 30% of calories from raw stuff but not very often.

There are some pretty extraordinary claims about the magic of raw food diets to prevent disease or even cure. I’m pretty skeptical about these claims but still there may be a grain of truth in all this.

Even though I’m a always cook your food kind of guy I’m down for experiments on myself every now and again. I’m not going to go on a 100 % raw food diet but I am going to try and get more of my calories from raw fruits and vegetables, and maybe eggs depending on the quality of them. From some studies I read, only about 1 in every 30,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella so I’m not too worried. Plus, I’m not infirmed or a young child so salmonella probably wouldn’t kill me anyway.

Cooking food has a long history in the human timeline. There is evidence that humans have been cooking since pre-history. Some scientists make the claim that this, along with the consumption of meat, is what allowed us to get enough calories to support this big brain of ours. It’s a plausible theory. Cooking does make the proteins in meat more digestible and it breaks down the cellulose that encases much of the nutrients in vegetables. Our stomachs don’t deal with cellulose well so cooking makes more calories available in that carrot or piece of celery. Another benefit of cooking is that it kills any harmful bacteria that may inhabit food.

The reasons to cook food make sense but I can’t help but wonder what is lost when we cook. There must be some nutrients that are lost because they can’t stand the high temperature of cooking. If you look at anecdotal reports of people achieving great health after switching to a raw food diet you can’t help but wonder if there is some truth to their claims.

I’m not going to go crazy here. I won’t eat raw meat or anything like that but I’m going to see if there are any noticeable effects from eating more raw foods. These n=1 experiments aren’t very scientific, I know, but they do tell me something about how my body responds to food. I may fool myself sometimes but I do discover things by experimenting with my self.

Thoughts on Fat Loss

I've tried everything under the sun for fat loss. You name it, I've done it. I tried:

Paleo Diet
Low Carb -High Fat
Low Fat - High Carb
A near Fruitarian Diet (about 50% of diet composed of fruit)
Warrior Diet (fast during day, feast at night)
Bodybuilding style diet (small but frequent meal spread thru the day)
Fasting (fasted for periods between 16 hours and 48 hours)

Surprisingly, all of them worked to some extent. However, the best by far is the Paleo diet. The Paleo diet is the only diet that got me really thin (sure it was 5 years ago. But still...). I never got to the point where I could see my abs but I was pretty close.

Some people think that a moderate approach is the best for fat loss. There's a general consensus that it's best not to go too crazy when embarking on a fat loss diet. Sure, eat healthy but have a doughnut once in a while.

This is the worst possible advice you can give someone who is serious about fat loss.

I remember a Dan John article a few years ago (read it. This guy knows what he's talking about) where he explained that moderate is never good when it comes to body compisition goals. Extreme is where it's at. If you want to lose fat - and I'm not talking 5 lbs. I'm talking more like a spare tire around the waste - and get as lean as possible, you have to attack it with everything you got.

Rationalization plays a big part of failed diets. We human-beings are amazing bullshitters. We could convince ourselves that pretty much anything we stuff in our gullets is "not that bad". To be succesful, you have to draw some lines and never ever cross those lines. Act like the rules that you made were sent down from Mount Sinai, etched in stone tablets and carried by Charleton Heston himself. If you say to yourself that you will have no more than 20 carbs a day. Don't go a single carb over 20. Sure, going a few carbs the arbitrarily set 20 carbs is not going to sabotage your efforts but if you blur the lines, when push comes to shove, and your brain is telling you that you need carbs, a few carbs will turn into 100 carbs. Your brain is the best bullshitter you know.

Right now, I've been slacking in the diet department. I go a little too fat a few months ago when my primary goal was muscle building. I was making excellent progrees so I wasn't too concerned about the fat gain. But eventually, as I stopped going to the gym as frequently and didn't bust my ass nearly enough, I got to the point where I was fat enough to be winded by a few flights of stairs. I really let my conditioning let go.

Oh well, lesson learned - Eating an entire box of Velveeta mac and cheese is never a good idea.

During the day I go fairly low carb. I might have a few pieces of fruit but I mostly eat meat. Then, at night time I'll let go a bit and eat some carbs, usually in the form of cookies (terrible, I know). This works as a maintenance diet for me but I'm really not losing any fat. The only time I actually went down a few notches on my belt is when I went 100% Paleo. I took a break from it because life was getting stressful and I felt like I was going to lose my mind if I didn't get any damn carbs in my stomach.