12 Steps to Raw Foods Part 5

END YOUR.

DEPENDENCY.

ON COOKED.

FOOD.

Step 1.

BECOMING AWARE OF.

THE PROBLEM.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

-John 8:32.

The first and probably the most difficult step is to closely observe oneself, to explore if one has a dependency on cooked food, to evaluate the level of this dependency, and to admit that there is a problem. We cannot fix a problem without knowing what the trouble is. To diagnose correctly is very important. Imagine that your car has stopped in the middle of a bridge. You wouldn't start changing the tires or pulling the engine apart without specifying the problem first. Most likely, you would gladly pay money just for the diagnosis alone.

Similarly, when people feel the need to quit eating certain foods, and they have not yet realized they have developed a dependency on these foods, they start acting without adequate tools and are likely to fail. In order to help you clarify for yourself whether you are able to manage your eating habits, I have developed a special questionnaire.

Cooked Food Dependency Questionnaire.

Please answer "Yes" or "No" to each of the following questions. If you want to answer "Sometimes," "Maybe," or "Rarely" then answer "Yes." Please be honest.

If you are not hungry, but someone offers you your favorite delicious food, do you accept the offer?

If you know that it is not good to eat before bedtime, but there is some delicious food on the table, do you eat it?

Do you eat more food than usual when you are stressed?

Do you continue eating until your stomach feels completely full?

Do you eat when you are bored?

Do you notice restaurant signs even when you are not hungry?

If you are made an offer for a free dinner, do you always accept the offer?

Do you usually overeat at all-you-can-eat restaurants?

Have you ever broken a promise to yourself not to eat before bedtime?

Would you spend the last $10 in your pocket on your favorite food?

Do you reward yourself with food for accomplis.h.i.+ng achievements?

Do you eat extra food rather than letting it go to waste?

If you know that eating a certain food you really enjoy will make you feel ill later, do you still eat it?

If you answered "Yes" to three or more questions, then you may have a dependency on cooked food.

Raw-fooders also sometimes answer "Yes" to more than three questions. For several months and even years after adopting a rawfood diet, most people continue viewing food as a comforting element. Then, little by little, they begin to create other sources of comfort and pleasure in their lives, and their focus might s.h.i.+ft away from food after a while.

In this first step we are only searching for an indication of a dependency in our eating patterns. If you notice signs of it, please observe your behavior without any judgment, feelings of guilt, or remorse. This program is not aimed at dumping your self-esteem, but rather finding the best possible ways of coping with your eating habits, and eventually building up healthy relations.h.i.+ps with food. This is only the first step.

Here is another questionnaire for you. Please answer the following three questions. It is very important that you do so quickly and honestly. It is even better if you answer these questions with a friend.

Have you ever overeaten in your life? Yes or No?

Did you like how you felt afterwards? Yes or No?

Can you promise me here and now that you will never do it again? Yes or No?

To tell you the truth, I have yet to meet the lucky person who has never overeaten in his/her life. If you are not that fortunate being, then please try to recollect in detail your bodily experiences after a big meal. Perhaps you didn't like how you felt after overeating. You probably felt as if you had a brick in your stomach, had nightmares later that night, and looked puffy the next morning. Maybe you even swore to never overeat again. But when I ask if you would do it again, you will most likely nod, "Yes!"

Often we act as if food has become our main pleasure. To celebrate our birthdays, anniversaries, or other occasions, we organize fancy and abundant feasts. When we attend a birthday party, we expect to be nicely fed. How would you feel about a party where no food was offered?

"Food" has become synonymous with "celebration" and "enjoyment." For holiday dinners we plan delicious meals, spend extra money, and prepare the most mouth-watering items to eat. We even have an a.r.s.enal of special festive dishes such as tortes, chocolate truffles, ice cream, and candy, along with an extended a.s.sortment of appetizers. Often we look forward to eating as if it were the most essential part of the entire celebration.

We try not to think of how we are going to feel the next morning. Naturally after a big party we feel tired, sleepy, and even sick. In many cases we attempt to fix our poor condition with coffee or medicine. However, all this suffering doesn't stop us from planning our next holiday meal. Such an irrational performance clearly demonstrates many people's inability to manage their eating behavior, or in other words, a dependency.

To better understand any possible challenges you may have encountered in the past in your efforts to maintain a healthy diet, let us bring to light some of your previous experiences with food. Please answer the following questions, preferably on paper. Take your time, as you need to collect as much information as possible to properly evaluate your relations.h.i.+ps with food.

Have you ever tried to quit eating any particular food (bread, chocolate, meat, popcorn, ice cream, coffee, cheese, sugar, etc.)? Yes or No?

Did you try to stop eating this food more than once? Yes or No?

If yes, can you think of why you had to make more than one attempt?

To quit eating certain foods is not as easy as it seems, even in cases of lethal danger. We all are aware of people who undergo life-threatening surgeries, have their stomachs stapled, take questionable diet pills, or smoke dangerous substances to suppress their appet.i.tes. Millions of others force themselves to throw up after they overeat, or fast for a few days on water, only to go back to binging. If there were no dependency on cooked foods, these drastic measures would be unnecessary.

Once I was helping for nine months as a volunteer at the Creative Health Inst.i.tute (CHI) in Michigan. During this time 132 people who had cancer went through the program at CHI. All these people were placed on a strict raw-food diet with an emphasis on greens and sprouts (a diet developed by Dr. Ann Wigmore-see Chapter 3). Most of these guests felt better within a matter of weeks. Their tumors began to shrink, and they had more energy. Some of them even applied for new jobs and submitted applications to college. When our guests returned home, they continued on this diet for a while. But when the holidays came, they all slipped off. All of these people died because they couldn't stay on a raw-food diet. They left children and loved ones behind because they were not able to resist their cravings for cooked food. I knew each one of those people personally. I was teaching them to grow sprouts and drink wheatgra.s.s juice. I talked to their families, which were supportive because they witnessed a positive change in the health of their loved ones. I especially remember Cynthia, a thirty-year-old schoolteacher who had solid support from her whole family. Her three sons pleaded, "Mom, we're going to make juice for you. Just stay on this raw-food diet and stay alive." Her husband said, "Stay raw, we will eat with you." She couldn't stay on the raw-food diet. Her cancer came back. Cynthia sent me a "Thank You" note before she died.

These stories show that a dependency on cooked food is often stronger than fear of death. It is more powerful than the fear of disease, no matter how great the suffering and pain. Understanding how addictive cooked food can be helps conquer this dependency. The following exercise is instrumental in finding additional information about your eating patterns that are not always obvious.

On a new page in your notebook, try to remember a minimum of five instances when you were hiding from others what you were eating.

To help you with ideas, read some examples from my workshops, written by my students: Erica: During Halloween, I tried to eat my children's candy when they were at school "so that they would have less sugar for themselves."

Matt: I'd been trying to stay raw for six months already. Then my sister visited me and brought my favorite donuts from Puck's, wrapped in cellophane. In the middle of the night when everybody was sleeping, I went to the kitchen and decided to eat one. But the cellophane made this crackling sound, and it was so loud, I was afraid everybody in the house would wake up. However, I managed to eat three of them without being noticed.

Helen: I never buy cooked food, but when I go to the store, I go for the bulk bins and sneak a candy. Sometimes I circle around the store, coming back for another piece.

Tony: My wife and I had been sticking to raw food now for three months. And then my co-worker brought pizza for lunch. The smell of it got to me and I couldn't stop thinking about it. So after work on the way home I drove through Pizza Hut and bought myself a slice. I didn't want my wife to know that I'd had pizza because I was afraid she would want some too. So on the way home I stopped and threw away the wrappers. Then I had a horrible aftertaste and it was not even as good as I had expected.

Ann: I had been raw for one month, and my husband was not supportive. He constantly made fun of me. My resolve weakened, and I started to crave m.u.f.fins. I decided to eat one, but I didn't want anyone to know, so I drove to a bakery I knew on the other side of town. I bought a m.u.f.fin and ate it inside, looking carefully to make sure there were no acquaintances in sight. I disposed of the wrapper but forgot about the crumbles on my dark raincoat. When I came home my husband instantly asked me, "Ann, did you have a m.u.f.fin?"

I cried out, "Have you been spying on me?"

He replied, "There are crumbles on your raincoat!"

I turned red.

Rebecca: I invited Victoria to stay in our house after a workshop. So I decided to clean my pantry. I had there some boxes of cereal that were not raw, and I didn't want her to see them.

Ingrid: I have been on and off raw food for almost a year now. About once a month I begin to crave fried potato skins, home fries from the deli that come in a box. I pick them up and put them under my car seat. Then I go to pick up my son from day care. It's a long drive home, about thirty minutes, and I usually can't wait, but I don't want my son to see me eating those, or he would ask me for some and I know they are not good for him. Since he is strapped in the toddler seat right behind me, I manage to eat without him seeing, and I polish the entire box off before we get home. I feel so stupid doing this, plus my fingers get sticky and I have to clean the steering wheel. But for some reason it happens again and again.

Jessica: At my work in my office, I have chocolate candies hidden deep in my desk cabinet behind all the papers. When no one is looking I eat them.

Lucy: I have been perfectly raw for six weeks, and my family supports me. So when we went to a family reunion, they let me prepare my own food and they didn't push me to eat their food. It was very hard for me to look at my favorite dishes from childhood, vegan though not raw, but I managed not to touch them. However, in the middle of the night I went to the kitchen where there were dishes that had some leftovers, and I gobbled them. Then I went back to sleep.

Bob: I used to be a great vegetarian cook. So after I'd been on raw food for almost two months, my friends asked me if I could prepare them my best dish, cheese dumplings with mushroom cream sauce. It was my best friend's birthday, so I decided to do so. The morning of the birthday, I started cooking. While I was waiting for the dumplings to boil, I decided I needed to try the sauce to make sure it was exactly right. I tried it again and again until there was so little left, it was not enough to serve, so I decided to finish it. While my friends were eating the dumplings without the sauce, they kept saying how good it was, but how wonderful it would have been to have the sauce.

I practice this exercise in many of my workshops. After each testimony, I ask the rest of the group, "How many of you can relate to this story?" Almost everyone in the entire audience raises her or his hand. I find this exercise helpful for a more thorough observation of the variety of behavioral patterns surrounding foods. This exercise is instrumental in estimating our level of dependency on certain foods, because it helps us recognize that it was our craving for a particular food that forced us to perform such weird actions as hiding, lying, and even stealing food. It is always helpful to understand the real motives behind those actions and to become aware of the severity of our personal addiction.

I have noticed that it also brings a sense of relief and even elevates partic.i.p.ants' self-esteem when they realize that attempts to hide one's eating patterns are rather typical for many people. Most people have tried to eat healthier and have failed at least once. As a result, they begin to subconsciously believe they are not good enough, and that they should know better. I believe that any guilt is unnecessary and destructive. Instead of wasting time feeling guilty, let us perform the necessary steps to eliminate these harmful habits.

Let us start observing our actions, and especially our thoughts. For example, pay attention to how we choose one food over another. Perhaps at the health food store we see an organic mango and it's, "Oh boy!"-$2.99 for one piece. Often we think, "How expensive!" Then we turn around to the deli and see freshly baked croissants for $2.99. We think, "Oh, what a good deal, I'm hungry." It is helpful to find out what reasoning compels us to choose a nutritionally poor croissant over a piece of nouris.h.i.+ng fruit. Possibly we long for quick pleasure, or strive to numb an empty feeling inside, and that mango might not bring us an expected satisfaction but the croissant will. According to research done at Cornell University, when people have a dependency, they feel a strong need to consume a certain substance not to feel pleasure, or a high, but merely to feel satisfied, or to function normally.1 If this is the case with choosing a croissant, then the sooner we recognize the problem, the better.

The process of becoming aware of one's dependency can be so painful that people call it "hitting rock bottom." Maybe you have heard that one has to "hit rock bottom" in order to end an addiction. Perhaps you know some persons who drank for many years, ruined their health, lost their families and jobs, their loved ones begging them to quit but they couldn't. Then suddenly they "hit rock bottom" and a miracle happened: they became sober for good. Have you ever thought of what makes that "rock bottom" such a powerful place? I used to think that finding "rock bottom" depends on the depth of despair or even closeness to death. Then I noticed that everyone hits his or her "rock bottom" at different levels of addiction. Some people get emphysema before they quit smoking; some are able to quit at a very early stage of addiction; and some lose everything and die but never quit. That means that hitting the "rock bottom" is not connected to disease and despair but to something else. What is that magic wand that returns people to the fullness of life?

The miraculous transformation happens when a person perceives the problem so clearly that he/she is not afraid to admit it to others. That is why admitting the dependency is the core of all the 12-Step programs. Often it takes a lifetime of suffering before a person arrives at the point of awareness of their real problem. Some people are afraid of admitting the truth; others don't understand why it is so important. You probably have heard some alcoholics say, "I can stop drinking any time I want. I just drink to relax." Or maybe you have heard smokers declare, "I can quit smoking but I really enjoy it and I feel fine."

Such non-willingness to acknowledge the truth is called denial. We all know that smoking and drinking are harmful to the body, but people in denial are rejecting those obvious facts, and this breeds their further disorientation. On the other hand, admitting the truth creates relief and eliminates confusion. By admitting our problem, we achieve clarity about what to do next and gain the power needed for further steps. There is no need to get into deep sorrow or become desperately ill in order to make a change-let us. .h.i.t "rock bottom" sooner rather than later.

When we have a correct diagnosis, we can start the positive transformation. The power is in knowing oneself.

Step 2.

NOURIs.h.i.+NG YOUR.

BODY TO ELIMINATE.

CRAVINGS.

"He that takes medicine and neglects diet wastes the skill of the physician."

-Chinese Proverb.

During the last two hundred years, humans have been consuming an increasingly larger percentage of highly processed, devitalized foods. As a result, many people have become chronically malnourished. That is why, regardless of our undeniable success in medicine, today's statistics on human health are frightening: "Within a decade, America will spend one of every five dollars on health care, according to government a.n.a.lysts.... The nation's total health care bill by 2015 will be more than $4 trillion."1 I believe that the epidemics of degenerative disease experienced today are rooted in the lack of proper nutrition that has already lasted for an extensive period of time. The numbers for degenerative disease and obesity are especially alarming in well-developed countries, where the population consumes large amounts of refined foods.

To cope with the malnourishment, the human body creates an additional urge to eat, and we begin feeling constantly hungry. Our cells are "crying" for all the nutrients we need. Sadly, we respond to this urge by eating more processed food, which promotes even further malnourishment, along with an increased dependency on processed food, greater cravings, and compulsive eating. For anyone involved in such a vicious cycle, the conversion to a raw-food diet appears to be extremely difficult because of the constant appet.i.te. That is why I recommend nouris.h.i.+ng your body for several weeks before switching to a raw-food diet.

I consider greens to be the top nutritious food on Earth. Blending is similar to chewing; therefore, eating blended food can make a dramatic improvement in your health. After being broken down in a high-speed blender, pieces of food become the perfect size for a.s.similation. Therefore, green smoothies are the best food to aid in a rapid restoration of the body's nutrient reserves. Recovering from inadequate nutrition will significantly reduce unhealthy cravings and prepare you for an easier transition to the raw-food lifestyle. In some cases natural supplements could be useful; however, I would like to caution against trying to subst.i.tute supplements for real food. The regular consumption of nutritionally rich whole foods will ease your cravings and enable your dietary transition.

I highly recommend consuming green smoothies on a regular basis, whether on a raw or cooked-food diet. I have already witnessed many cases in which people were able to greatly improve their health by adding blended greens to their daily regimen. From my observation, the best results are achieved by subst.i.tuting a quart of green smoothie for your breakfast meal.

Following are testimonials from people whose cravings were decreased or even eliminated by consuming green smoothies.

"My boyfriend and I have slowly been making our way towards foods that are alive, but we have been struggling. And then we began drinking these green smoothies. Now, after my food cravings have diminished, my toenail fungus has vanished, and my acne is a past memory ... we are happier, calmer, and loving our daily green smoothies. They made a dramatic impact on our family. I would recommend drinking green smoothies to everyone."-Natalie.

"For the past twenty years I've been on a quest to eat more natural foods, and my health improved drastically. But I still suffered from junk food cravings ... until I discovered green smoothies. Now my cravings are totally gone!"-Robin.

"Following Victoria's advice, I added lots of greens to my fruit smoothies, and the first day I did so my food cravings stopped. Bang. Just vanished. It was as if my brain's 'cravings switch' was flipped to the 'Off' position. Apparently my body had been craving minerals all those years, and once I started eating greens, the cravings stopped. I'm finally tr.i.m.m.i.n.g down!"-Robert.

"My wife and I surely love the changes that are happening in our bodies! Make yourself some green smoothies, and watch your food cravings vanish. This is the secret to losing weight!"-Mark.

'"The green smoothies are delicious. Yes, I like greens anyway, but I have personally witnessed non-greens lovers actually enjoying the smoothies I make. These same Standard American Diet people now regularly request large helpings of raw fruits and vegetables. What an easy way to make a difference in people's lives!"-Laura B.

Add green smoothies to your regular diet until you notice that you begin to naturally desire salads, fruits, and other raw foods. When you notice that cravings for your favorite cooked dishes become milder and more tolerable, you may consider yourself ready to transition to a raw-food diet.

You will find several delicious recipes for green smoothies at the end of this book. Please note that these recipes are provided just as basic ideas. Feel free to subst.i.tute fruits and greens to increase your variety.

Step 3.

ACQUIRING SKILLS.

AND EQUIPMENT.