What eating raw for 6 months did to me

“I’ll be back in 5 minutes. Try not to fall into depression,” she said and left the dinner table.

Soho House, London, 2010. We only met 20 minutes ago. That’s all it took for anyone to fathom just how deep, pathological and profound my anxiety was. Her speaking to me was a case of charity. Besides, we both happened to be close friends to the birthday girl across the table.

A strong dose of Fluoxetine (SSRI antidepressant) took care of those embarrassing symptoms. My problems are now gone, I thought and downed those meds every single day for years to come.

Alas, what I didn’t appreciate back then was that there is no such thing as a quick fix. Not when it comes to health or anything worthwhile for that matter.

The pain of reality, the reality of pain

You can’t separate one from the other. Reality exists as a un-fragmented heap. As such, it comes with mixed amounts of pleasure, pain, and other ingredients. You can’t extract a constituent part expecting the rest to stay intact.
Wait a minute, is there no place for medication? Should it not exist?

Medication has been around since the beginning of times. Denouncing something that saves lives would be shortsighted. I’m not condemning drugs wholesale. It’s how we use them that makes all the difference (how they are marketed and prescribed rather).

And let’s face it, prescribed (overt) drugs are not the only way we blunt our reality. Covert drugs are everywhere. In my case it was alcohol, it was coffee, cooked oils, salts, sugars, and fats. Plenty of ways to lull my senses and render reality more agreeable.

Later that year I attended a Vipassana meditation course in Dharamsala, India. Before starting, they ask you to forgo the consumption of all stimulants, pills, medications, phones, and books before your take the oath of noble silence for the duration of the course. By relinquishing all hiding places, you end up facing reality for what it really is. A raw and intense experience, filled with waves of pleasure and pain.

“Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever desire another? Without suffering, he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home. Pain is a prod to remembrance. The way of escape is through wisdom.”
~ Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda

Pain-killers, anti-depressants, alcohol, coffee, and to a large extend cooked food, provide immediate relief by stimulating our pleasure centers. This makes them profoundly addictive. What’s worse, the fact that we’ve consumed them for most of our lives renders us blind to the sheer extent of our addiction. We don’t remember life without them, we’ve always been hooked.

Whenever physical pain or emotional sadness bubbles up, our first impulse is to run away, shove it away, forget about it as quickly as possible, one bite at a time.

“. . . for those who are not brave must run from sadness and may never truly feel it — they spend a lifetime covering it over with entertainment and speediness and itching and scratching.”
~ Waylon Lewis

How can something change if you won’t recognize its existence?

Taking the red pill

In June 2016 I took a week off from work and replaced all cooked meals with fruits and vegetables. I swapped coffee for banana monomeals and phased out anti-depressants. A month later I commenced a 120-day long juice fast.

Some of the changes were immediate. I no longer needed my reading glasses, for example. My eyesight improved in a matter of weeks. The white marks on my nails disappeared, my ability to focus sharpened, mental fatigue all but vanished, and my complexion improved.

It’s not all peaches and cream

Sweet and delicious as fruits may be, they fail to numb, ground, or warm you up. This shortcoming compels me to seek other stress-release avenues. Things like exercise, sleep, and moving to parts of the world where the sun comes out more often.

Navigating those changes is exciting but not easy. The emotional and physical discomfort is oftentimes unbearable. My raw journey is mired by stubborn, intractable habits (where’s my morning coffee?), cognitive dissonance (should I have that falafel?), relationship tension (fruit flies in the kitchen anyone?) and plenty of detox (oh, the books I could write on this topic).

“You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember all I’m offering is the truth.”
~ Morpheus, the Matrix

Taking a raw approach, eliminating coffee and alcohol, cooked food, oils, sugar, painkillers, antidepressants, and medications is only a means to an end. You won’t be flying up with the angels because you gave up on some unhelpful habits. This is why I try not to use the term “raw diet”. It’s not a diet. I’m not sure what it is. I suppose it’s more of a … way of life. No wait, it’s a sea-change that can transform your reality.

Here is what I’ve learned after 6 months on this journey.

1. Earn Your Wellbeing

I could get away without exercise in the past. I didn’t feel that great but antidepressants, cooked food, coffee, and alcohol numbed me enough and I soldiered on.
Without those crutches, I have to get into my running shoes and clock those miles every single day. Or else I feel crap. Humans are designed to move when they are not sleeping. Movement is life. When it comes to wellbeing — mental, physical and emotional — you have to earn it.

2. No man is an island

You are the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time with. So choose wisely. Some raw fooders drastically changed their environments once they adopted this lifestyle. They quit their jobs, sold their stuff and set off to join fruitarian communities in Thailand and Costa Rica.

Those are outliers for sure. Most of us are not able to forsake family, jobs, colleagues and friends anytime soon. So we work with what we have. We find a way to co-exist and thrive with the people closest to us. This leads us to the next point.

3. The worst vice is advice

As Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s financial partner) is known for saying: the best way to be smart is to not be stupid.

As soon as I noticed all the amazing benefits of eating raw, my first impulse was to convert my loved ones too. It didn’t work.

Alongside politics and religion, food is one of those topics that polarize humans the most. What we eat defines who we are. Slamming someone’s eating habits is an offense to who they are — traditions, beliefs and whatever it is that they hold dear.

Attempting to change the people around you is a losing battle. It is you that has to adapt to the environment you live in, not the other way around. Don’t make a big fuss of your new lifestyle. If someone is curious about what you’re doing then, by all means, share what you’ve learned — humbly — keeping in mind that what works for you might not work for them.

The ultimate way you can influence others is by thriving and being the best that you can be.

4. Learn

Educate yourself on the fundamentals of plant-based nutrition. Start by studying the work of established scientists and MDs. For example: Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Neal Barnard, T. Colin Campbell, and Dr. Michael Greger.

Mind you, not every doctor advocates a 100% raw lifestyle. Many provide allowances for lightly cooked, steamed or boiled vegetables, for example. Find your own balance, see what works for you, make your own choices based on your own experience. The important thing is that you are making conscious tradeoffs.

For example, sourcing high-quality fruit in cold climates is significantly harder. As a result, many “raw fooders” find that steaming sweet potatoes and other tubers is a good way to stay “carbed up”, satiated and warm in the winter.

5. Raw does not always equal healthy

Raw “gourmet” restaurants focus on replicating traditional dishes into their raw equivalents. It’s impossible to do that without dehydrating food and adding plenty of oils, nuts, and salts.

The consensus seems to be that all oils (including olive oil) should be avoided, while fatty foods should be kept to a very low percentage of calorie intake. Most of the pros I’ve mentioned earlier agree that a dehydrated diet is not healthy either.
Keeping it simple with ripe fruits and fresh vegetable seems to be the way forward.

6. Avoid dogma

Avoid labels at any cost. When you go to a restaurant refrain from declaring that you are a vegan, or that you are a fruitarian or anything that separates you from everybody else. Many chefs openly hate vegans for being obnoxious, holier than thou and impossible to please. Don’t be that person. Tread lightly, respectfully, and stay open.

In Summary: Remember why you’re doing it

The focus here is not on achieving 100% raw diet. Rather it’s the exercise of navigating reality in a more conscious way. Focus is on flowing with, rather than fighting against our environment. Change what we can, accept and work with what we cannot.
This is the part of the article where the author is supposed to write an inspirational closing. Something along those lines: “Take heart, a new and intuitive appreciation of life lies ahead of you!”

I’ll spare you the fanfare. There is nothing glorious about the raw diet, not in the short term anyway. Do you appreciate your health? Then you owe it to yourself to understand raw nutrition a bit better.