By Nomi Shannon, author of The Raw Gourmet
Reprinted with permission of the author.
www.rawgourmet.com
7. Beware of Extremism.
All or nothing at all isn't necessarily a healthy or logical approach. If someone tells you that eating 95% of your food raw isn't good enough, or that you are literally poisoning yourself if you eat some cooked food those are rather extreme attitudes. My opinion is that those who take these philosophies to heart often feel like failures if they can't be "perfect" and so slide back completely to a SAD diet.
I personally would rather see a person consume 50% raw food for the rest of their life than be 100% raw for three weeks.
Don't allow extreme attitudes-the all-or-nothing-approach to make you feel like you can't cut it, that you are a failure or less-than in your raw food attempts. Any amount of raw food that you eat daily is better than none at all. Perhaps you could shoot for never any less than 50% daily. Don't allow yourself to feel a sense of failure if you do not follow some ideology perfectly. The greatest cause of depression is striving for perfection and feeling bad when it is not attained.
Please do not think that what I am saying is that it is ok (healthy) to eat a lot of cooked food and or junk. What I am saying is striving for perfection can create a lot of unhappiness and feelings of failure which almost always results in giving up on the goal so that you don't have to feel those bad feelings. When someone is telling you that 95% isn't good enough, they are telling you that unless you are absolutely perfect you are not doing it right. This message boomerangs and results in many people giving up on raw food entirely.
Do your best!!
Choose Happiness!!
Do not judge yourself (or others).
If you maintain your happy outlook, treat your food as just that - your food, not your religion, you will find that sticking to your goals is much easier.
If you can't be all raw, all the time, you can still be high raw most of the time, all raw some of the time and happy with it all of the time.
8. Be Aware of Some Strangers.
Be aware of people you don't know who want you to pay them large sums of money to teach you how to set up a raw food restaurant, home or health retreat. Call three or four well-known people, such as myself, to be sure that this unknown person has a good reputation. The raw food community is a small one. Unfortunately, I have become aware of some people with talent who have turned out to be very angry menacing people. Check the credentials and most of all the reputation and history of anyone you are thinking of working with, or of allowing to live in your home that you don't know well. Ask for references.
Demand them.
9. Be Aware that there are people with eating disorders.
Be aware that there are people with eating disorders (anorexia and bulemia) using raw foodism to mask their problems. Being a raw fooder is not going to cure an eating disorder. Anorexics and bulemics have serious psychological and physical health issues that need to be addressed by trained personnel.
10. Be Aware
That in everyday life, preaching to others is unwelcome and an ineffective way to introduce the concept of raw foodism to anyone. Wait to be asked.
Create ways that invite people to ask.
By Nomi Shannon, author of The Raw Gourmet
With permission of the author, excerpted from an article in the April 15, 2003 issue of The Raw Gourmet newsletter, by Nomi Shannon. Check out the FREE 7 part email course that Nomi offers at her site, called The Raw Truth, each of the 7 brief "classes" includes a free recipe.
www.rawgourmet.com
rawgourmet@aol.com
I wish to express my sincere thanks to Ms. Shannon for allowing us to reprint this article.
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