Raw Food Ideas

How to Stay 12 Weeks on a Raw Food Diet

By Yuri Elkaim

If you want to lose weight, you have probably tried all sorts of diet plans, strange food groupings, calorie counting schemes and other ideas that, when you look back on them, had just about no chance of succeeding. But this one seems a little different, doesn't it? This raw food diet is not about counting calories or doing something counter intuitive. This is simpler, more basic. Take good foods, and do almost nothing to them.

But even simple ideas can be derailed by temptation, boredom or opportunity. The key, experts say, to making a change as drastic as switching to a raw food diet, is to stick with it for twelve straight weeks. If you can do that, your new routine will adopt the familiarity of an old habit, and you will be able to simply fall into a regular schedule of eating that will be comfortable and normal.

The key, of course, is to get to that elusive twelfth week.

Week two will show you the first tiny hints of boredom. You will still have that gusto for your new meal plan, and the increased energy levels you will likely begin to experience will buoy you even more. But towards the end of the second week, you might start to get some cravings for some old cooked favorites. Getting to the end of week two simply means concentrating on the good things you're seeing as a result of the raw food diet.

Week three will be harder. You will have tried all the good recipes you've found, and you will start to repeat the ones you like. But repetition is not as fun as experimentation. The energy level increases and better skin will be old news, and it will be easy to think that you could skip a meal, or even a day, on your new plan. The key to getting through the third week is to simply put your head down, and keep slogging through.

Week four will be the transition week. If you got by the temptations of boredom last week, you've passed the hardest hurdles. Around this time, those increased energy levels will be joined by some other positive body changes, including weight and inches lost. That alone should be enough to keep you going through week four.

At this point, if you are like most people, you will start the cycle again, but less intensely. Weeks five and nine will be less exciting than the first week; weeks six and ten will be a little less dull than the second week; and weeks seven and eleven will be hard to get through, but not as bad as the third week.

By week twelve, all of this will be old news. You will stop concentrating so much of your time and effort on meal planning, and by this time, you will be used to living this way.

Yuri Elkaim is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and author of the raw food diet book Eating for Energy. Visit http://www.eatingforenergy.ca to get started with his FREE "Energy Secrets" e-course and discover what your diet has been missing.

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