For the last 3-4 months I have been experimenting with my diet quite a lot.
I have splitted my experiments in to 30 day trials.
In April, it was mostly vegetarian.
In May, it was mostly vegan.
In June, it was mostly raw.
In July, it was 100% raw 811rv style
This month of august has been everything but 80% raw. So that includes meat, butter, salt, superfoods, mcdonalds, dairy, gourmet. All the crap but mostly eating raw fruits like bananas, oranges, grapes. I love berries but can’t afford them. I don’t really like papayas or honeydew melons or avocados too much which I’ve come to realize this month. And all that crap food has always been a disappointment but I am always drawn to it when I’m hungry yet after it makes me feel guilty for comprimising my health. Addiction? Oh yeah.
Next month (September) I want to go back to 100% raw but I am thinking about trying it with superfoods like Goji, Honey/Pollen, coconut, Maca, cacao, etc. I just bought GOji and pollen/honey yesterday and tried it for the first time. I used to avoid these foods but thought what the hell. Oh my god they taste good. But healthy? I am not sure yet. Obviously there’s a big fuzz about this on the internet. They may seem expensive but then again you don’t have to eat them that much. RawMatt says he lived on just honey and water for quite awhile. Then some say it’s bad to eat dehydrated packaged stuff but if you just take water out, is it really that bad? At least the nutrition seems quite high according to the charts on the packages.
I also like how Wolfe is sort of pushing the envelope on the ultimate diet. He gets critiqued for his salesmanship and “evolving” (some say changing) beliefs but maybe we are not meant to eat like monkeys, hence basic fruit. Maybe we are meant to get to difficult places and find Superfoods to push us to a higher level of consciousness. Then you have Graham saying we should eat like we did when we were running around naked and acting like savages. It comes to a question of should we accept the best we have or strive to make it even better? The current diet is of course far from being even “the best we have”, which makes us look quite stupid, considering it’s our choice.
I live in Finland. The variety/quality of fruit/veggies is not the greatest. If I lived in Costa Rica, I would go 811, no question. But here it is not necessarily that great. To be honest I didn’t feel THAT good on the 811 diet (on my 100% July diet). It was still better than the other ones. It was simple and clear but quite expensive. No fitness gains. No euphoric states. No spiritual revelations. Yet I expected more, perhaps too much? Or maybe I didn’t do it long enough. Who knows. It is essentially a great diet but would it hurt to throw in some superfoods also?
I’ve also noticed I’m really, really addicted to foods that I know are bad for me. I am thinking about taking a 12 step process to get through that addiction which drives my choices and behaviour too much. I would actually like to start a FAA (food addicts anonymous) support group here in Helsinki so if you know anybody who lives here, please put them in touch with me. I could use some help in this matter. This month has been quite a ride.
I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs but the food thing is a problem for me. I know I should be 100% raw but after July I went back to my old ways. I still eat probably healthier than 99.9% of everybody else here! However, that is not saying much.
Right now I am somewhere in the middle of the DOUG GRAHAM 811 vs David Wolfe SUPERFOODS hype. I really want to forget all the gurus and hype and just figure out for myself which is what I’ve been doing behind the scenes anyway. I honestly think all the science and studies are quite poor and inconclusive when it comes to all gurus and so called leaders of this movement as well as people on internet forums who think they have no chance of being wrong. The best experiment is always our own bodies. Yet they call all this information scientific. But where are the references to all these studies they talk about? It’s very annoying to read information like that. Perhaps they think that science means their personal experiments. Not that they’re wrong but it’s just not science. Sorry Doug. Sorry Dave. Sorry if you are some other specialist who feels great.
So what do you guys think is the continuum of health?
Is superfoods and live foods still better than 80% raw diet while eating other crap? Or are superfoods actually bad for you? There are so many ways to live raw or on livefood that we should just call it something else. Those terms are becoming as useless and ambivalent as the word god. I think Dr.Graham is a bit unrealistic when talking about the ultimate diet because it’s just not possible necessarily for everyone in it’s optimal form and not everyone can live in Costa Rica and afford his million dollar FASTING vacations. Is even a poor version of 811 better than anything else?
IT’s all just so confusing.
Again, the best scientist is you and me. The best and most convincing experiment is ourselves. Of course that is still not actual science that can be objectively stated which would be nice to have in the food world and health.
