My Nutritional Journey- By Brittney Thompson

I think we can all agree that the more fruits and vegetables we can work into our diet, the better. Where things get tricky is when we talk about how it should be prepared and how much is enough. Is a few bites of canned green beans with your dinner enough? Is a sliced up banana in your cereal adequate? Or maybe you feel like you should try to work in a small salad with your lunch every day? Does it matter if your veggies are smothered in butter and salt or your fruit salads are sprinkled with sugar? You get where I'm going with this. For a moment though, ask yourself, do you want to give your body the bare minimum that it needs to get by, or do you want to give it everything you can? Our bodies are vitaly important to our lives and not taking care of it has consequences. When I asked myself that question a couple years ago I realized that I didn't want to just get by. I read Dr. Furhmans "Eat to Live" and his "Eat For Health" books and have learned a few things:

• Calories don't matter as much as nutirients do. If the nutrients per calorie are high then you will automaticaly eat more but consume fewer calories. By making sure your eating a high nutrient diet you are ensuring a healthy calorie intake.
• Raw foods contain the most nutrients. Basically, what this means is that you can have pretty much as much raw food as you want. They are low in calorie but super high in nutrients. It's like getting the most bang for your buck, except with food!
• The majority of your foods need to be fruits, veggies. and legumes. This means that the bread or meat portion of your plate should be smaller then the fruit or vegetable or legume portion.

I highly recommend going to Dr. Furhrmans site and learning more about his nutritarian approach.

After learning these things, I began trying to eat a minimum of 60% raw. Sometimes I did more, sometimes I totally failed, but most of the time I was at about 60% raw. I interpreted that as basically eating a large salad with both lunch and dinner and a smoothie for breakfast. Then a few months ago my mother in law mentioned she was "going raw". I was a little baffled as I pictured a life without sandwhiches, desserts and, well, flavor! Don't get me wrong, I am a die hard salad eater, but I'm also passionate about cooking. She started telling me about how amazing she felt. More energy, less aches and pains... I then really started looking into it. I found people who had avoided bypass surgeries, stomach stapling, overcome diabetes! I was more than intrigued. I had read all this before in Dr. Furhman's books, but hearing come from someone I knew? This is something I needed to think about and consider. Everthing I had read was pointing me in the raw food direction. If these people were overcoming these health issues, what could I possibly avoid completely?

Now, I wont bore you with all the nutritional ins and outs of an all raw or nutritarian diet, if you are interested you can Google it, there is lots of indepth information out there. What I want to really talk about is my own personal journey to a healthier lifestyle. All the information I have read has pointed to the obvious conclusion that the more raw foods I eat the better. I am not an all raw eater. I am also not an "only fruits and veggies" raw eater. I am happy to consume raw grains and dairies, where others consume only plants. I am breastfeeding and though it is possible to be all raw while doing this, I have decided that it is not something I want to attempt at this time. What I am doing is trying to consume up to 90% raw. At the moment I vary between 60-80% with a few total "junk days" in between. Thankfully those days are becoming fewer and farther between! I am trying to switch out some of my favorite foods with raw alternatives. For example, raw cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts and raw oatmeal is delicious! I feel fantastic, my skin is improving tremendously (to see some raw facial products, click here. ), I am 3 months post partum and have lost just over 40lbs with almost no effort and I have discovered a world of truly decadant, guilt free desserts.

If I have learned anything in the last couple years it is that we need to be focused more on our health than how we look physically. So, if you are intrested in going all raw or just incorperating more raw foods into your diet like myself, stay tuned because I will be posting some truly scrumptious raw/mostly raw food recipes and updates on my personal journey to a truly healthy lifestyle over the next few months.

Is eating more raw fruits and veggies important to you? How do you incorporate them into your life?

Post Written By: Happily Domestic contributor, Brittney Thompson