Superfoods, elixirs, algaes and greens, Vita-Mix blended, whipped, and juiced. . . Whew. At first glance, raw food might seem like an awful lot of work and expense. Not so, as Philip McCluskey explains in one of the chapters of his soon-to-be-released new book, Raw Food Fast Food. The wonderfully healthy world of raw food is more than just a huge drain on your wallet, time, social life and it’s definitely more than just a passing trend.
I literally became literally half the man I used to be by switching overnight to a 100% raw vegan lifestyle, dropping from 400 to less than 200lbs in two years, and I didn’t break the bank or spend all my time in the kitchen while doing it. Sexy right?!
Here’s what we should all be wising up to as we think about our food and our lifestyles:
- Think whole and unprocessed. When you’re paying for packaging, oil for production, shipping and shelf-life. . .you’re paying for a lot more than just what’s filling your stomach. I hesitate to even call it food, because most items in the grocery store are more of a conglomeration of chemicals that color, scent, preserve and crack-ify it (crack-ify is the non scientific term for adding sugar, salt and fat unnecessarily to food in order to make it addictive.)
- You’re a million times better off with foods that have five ingredients or less, foods that a five year old would recognize (tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, etc.) and food that’s in its pure and unaltered state. You pull a head of lettuce from the ground and you can instantly eat it. This is the food that should make up the majority of your daily diet and the food that either by buying locally or growing yourself will end up saving you lots of cash.
- Think local. So you won’t be paying to have your food shipped/packaged/processed while you’re putting money back into your community where the benefits stay close to home and keep the local economy thriving. This may seem detached from you and your heath, but I promise the world is a tinier circle than we often think, and actions like these affect our health, finances and daily lives in huge ways.
- Combine superfoods with common ingredients. Maca, cacao powder, acai, goji berries, blue-green algaes, these are all amazing and super healthy and even though they might seem a bit expensive at first, they truly last a long time and are easily incorporated in small amounts (with huge benefits) into a myriad of recipes. Maca can be added to nut cheeses and shredded vegetables for power burgers, algaes and cacao are wonderful with fresh fruit or coconut in desserts (both for texture and flavor) and exotic berries from the Himalayas like gojis are amazing in smoothies. A little bit goes a long way and when your immune system is strengthened, allergies vanish, your weight goes down and blood sugar levels out, the money you’ll save on medication and doctor’s visits will be a pleasant bonus!
- Love what goes into your body and love what your body gives back to you every day. No more hating your body or eating mindlessly when it doesn’t taste good or you’re already full. Eat food that tastes amazing and nourishes you all at the same time, and stop eating before you feel satiated, give the meal time to settle and then see if you’re really and truly still hungry or if you’re just feeding your emotions/habits. I like to feel like I’m able to get up and dance or move around at any given moment so a good rule of thumb is if you’re too full to move, you’ve probably overeaten. But this ties to loving your body as well. . .to be able to move and dance and feel happy doing it, we need to let go of hating our bodies and instead being grateful for all they do for us. They continue to try and keep us healthy no matter what we do to them, and it’s time we gave them a lot more respect and unconditional love. When we feel love for ourselves, practice gushy and adoring affirmations in front of the mirror (or at random times throughout the day), we are filling the emotional voids that create the overeating and poor food choices. It’s a lovely circle of love, nourishment, and overall sexiness.
So what are you waiting for?? Get out and love yourself up!
Philip McCluskey is a motivational speaker, author, and a raw food badass! Being overweight his entire life, he surpassed morbid obesity and skyrocketed to a max weight of 400 lbs. Now he’s lost over 200 lbs, runs an online community called Lovingraw.com, and jet-sets around the world giving lectures, throwing parties, and inspiring people to discover their own inner sexy Rockstar.