Raw Food Power

Find your Raw Power! This means living with your inner light turned on, being enthusiastic and deeply present. Are you living from your unleashed, fired-up, uninhibited self? Are you being brave and bold, confidently showing up in your encounters with others? Are you living with passion, seeing the best in others, smiling, showing your playful side, telling the truth, speaking to the often unspoken subtext between you and another? It’s fun to feel wildly alive! This takes courage, for sure. And practice!

How does one achieve this state of unabashed raw power?

• eating foods that are alkaline, green, have protein and nurture you to feeling light and energized
• moving your body actively and passionately every day
• maintaining an affirming internal dialogue savoring your successes each day
• practicing daily gratitude
• including pleasure daily
• approving of your body
• “yes-ing” yourself and others
• trusting your intuition
• creating bliss each day
• intentionally using language to serve your highest choice
• finding what’s right, instead of what’s wrong

Here are some steps for you to claim your inner raw power with food:

Nutrition is key to energizing yourself when you make the right choices. You can actually feel lighter and eliminate cravings with raw food. More nutrients, minerals, amino acids and enzymes are maintained in raw foods and are very healing to our bodies, improving cellular function and increasing energy levels. Heat from cooking our foods destroys many of these benefits.

Most people rely on sugar (including fruit & lactose from dairy) and carbs to fuel them, which feels good at first, but ultimately has a cumulative, negative effect on our insulin and blood sugar levels and creates cellular inflammation – which is what all chronic diseases have in common!

You don’t have to go to a completely raw to lose weight, lower blood sugar and regain health. You can slowly starting adding more natural, unprocessed foods to your diet by not eating foods out of a box or bag and “going green” with your diet.

Here’s my suggestion on lowering carbs and sugar, increasing alkalinity and experimenting with raw foods:

• Shop the outside aisles at the grocery store – fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, eggs, dairy, seeds and nuts
• Choose more alkaline foods – Kale, spinach, almonds, kiwi, lemon, avocados, spinach and sprouts are my favorite. Foods that are alkaline reduce inflammation in the body and balance your blood ph, which is typically too acidic from eating fruit, dairy, meat, coffee and alcohol.
• Add one additional green vegetable serving each day – start substituting a dark green vegetable in your diet for one of your carb or fruit servings
• Add spinach to an omelette in the morning
• Add a green drink each day and try a raw Happy Shake for breakfast
• Have a salad at lunch with a lean protein on top (with some healthy fats like avocado and walnuts)
• Try some of these simple raw recipes I’ve collected
• Try making kale chips instead of eating bagged chips. My son actually loves them and I have to get him to stop eating so many! Recipe here.
• Instead of chips for guacamole, use celery or cucumbers to dip
• At dinner, eliminate the starch with your meat/fish entree and have an extra serving of a dark green vegetable, along with a dark green salad. Same applies when you are out for dinner!
• Check out more of my food suggestions and recipes here.

You can do it. Small steps. One small green addition each day. Habits develop slowly. Just practice and don’t get into all-or-nothing thinking. Start reading labels and start adding as much green as you can…and pay attention to how you feel after you eat. Are you tired or energized? With small steps and “research” you will find what feeds your raw power.

Here’s a tip to cultivate the raw power in your body:

Some movement every day, even if only five minutes, is better than nothing. So try this five minute morning and night routine my friend Dianne, Sensual Wellness Coach/Pilates/Yoga teacher extraordinaire, turned me onto. It’s called the Five Tibetan Rites. It’s 5 yoga movements, done 21 times each. Start slowly with 3-5 each and build up to 21 as you can get dizzy doing this exercise. This series is warming, strengthening and energizing! And it’s quick! Here’s the description to print it out and here’s the video version.