Steve Pavlina’s Insights on Raw Food
Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 1:19 pmI don’t know if any of you follow Steve Pavlina’s Blog on Personal Development but I was turned onto it a few months ago after Dhrumil interviewed him for WLIR.
It has since then become a regular blog favorite of mine.
For those of you who don’t know, Steve is an expert in personal development (he just wrote a book called Personal Development for Smart People, in fact) and is a big fan of 30 day trials. In recent months he decided to go 100% raw (after being a vegan for a number of years) and also just finished a 30 day juice feast.
After reading his blog the other day, I was completely blown away by his level of insight on how different raw foods and meals affect him and his mental/physical/spiritual energy. BLOWN AWAY. (A tad envious too, might I add, but that quickly turned to admiration and enthusiasm!)
After being 100% raw for a month or two, going on a juice feast for one month, and going back to raw for one week, it seems like he has really figured out how to manipulate his energy by changing the macro nutrients (fat, sugar/fruit, and greens) in his meals. I don’t think I’ve even been figure out and apply this to a “T” yet. But after reading this, I think that I can learn a lot from Steve. We’re quite similar. I need a lot of fat in my diet to feel balanced and grounded as well, and too much fruit with no fat makes me very hyper and hard for me to sit still and write.
I remember the first time I learned about how to attain certain goals by changing your fat/sugar/green intake was while reading David Wolfe’s book, the Sunfood Diet Success System, and learning about the “sunfood triangle.” I suppose I never really experimented too much with this because they were all long term strategies (2 weeks to a couple months) for goals such as deep cleansing, dealing with candida, going into deep meditation, losing weight, etc. But I think Steve’s personal breakthrough here has really taught me that every meal is not just fuel and nutrition for the body, but is also an opportunity to fine tune the body’s energy until the next meal.
We really are completely in charge with the raw food diet! This is so awesome.
Here are some of my favorite parts of this post:
“Since I transitioned back to solids, I seem to have much more clarity about how certain foods affect me, and now I’m able to use this knowledge to my advantage. I think this happened because I got used to the subtle effects of different juices when my body wasn’t still digesting previous meals, so I could see how fruit and greens affected me differently. I learned to switch between fruit and green juices in order to create certain energy shifts.
“By selecting meals based on certain ratios of fats, greens, and sweet fruits, I can deliberately change how I feel energetically. This is really awesome knowledge to have because it allows me to intelligently plan my food intake based on what I want to do each day. When I make each meal, I think about what I want to do afterwards and how I’d like to feel during that time. Then I can select foods that will produce those feelings.
“If I want to do some writing at my desk, I’ll combine a little bit of fruit with greens and fat, like a green smoothie with banana, berries, and coconut. That keeps me feeling mentally alert and energetic but still grounded. For some reason this combo also leaves me feeling very happy. Some raw foodists say you shouldn’t combine fruit and fat, but my personal results suggest the opposite — these seem to combine wonderfully for me.
“Mixing fruit and fat helps prevent my energy from yo-yoing too much. It slows digestion and gives me a more even burn.”
There’s so much more that I found to be very useful information but I’d have to copy and paste the whole thing here so I’ll just encourage you to read everything under the bold text “Eating for the Right Energy Signature” as soon as you can to really appreciate and hopefully take away some insights that will apply to you.
I just love how he ignores food combining principles and the whole 80-10-10 thing because he KNOWS that what he’s doing is obviously working for him. He isn’t doubting or second-guessing himself like most new-to-raw-fooders do.
I’ve heard similar points from David Wolfe before, like eating a big green salad for dinner can be very calming in the evening, or eating very lightly (or nothing at all) can be best for optimal thinking. So a lot of it makes common sense to me. Yet, I am still very appreciative of Steve for putting all of these different pieces of advice in one place (and doing one person actively applying it all to his body for optimal efficiency).
Way to go Steve! I think a lot of us could learn a thing or two from you (not just in the diet area either!)
P.s. Taken from the post : “Note that these effects only apply to raw foods. The cooked counterparts of these foods would have totally different effects. Foods experience major biochemical alterations when you heat them.”
I encourage you to start taking notes on how your mind/body/spirituality react when eating different combinations of raw foods or raw foods versus cooked foods. Please share with us some “truths for you” that you’re come to realize if you’re willing! Maybe they will ring true to others like Steve’s rang true for me :)
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