How to Start a Healthy Raw Foods Diet in 4 Easy Steps

This is John Kohler from okraw.com and today we are going to talk about a very important subject: How do you start to live a healthy Raw Foods life style? That's a question that often comes up for people that are either getting into a fresh and new and never-even-heard about it or people that have even been doing it for a while and maybe they want to get better at what they are doing.. So, I am here to share with you what I have learned over the last 15 years being on a 99.99%Raw Foods died myself. It is really easy, it doesn't take big internet super websites to sell you the latest and greatest Raw Foods concoctions and packages, bottles or jars... what it takes is what we are looking at right here: I mean nature. I'm at a local park, nice water behind me, right behind the camera a whole bunch of black-berry bushes... what it really takes is fresh foods, that are available in nature. So, if you can't get out to nature and harvest your own fresh foods, which is probably one of the best things to do, you can grow yourself. So I have. I teach people how to grow their own food at home. Ant time of the year you can grow fresh sprouts in your kitchen whether they are in soil, or... you know.. jars or sprout-bags or other ways. But eating fresh food is the most important concept in Raw Foods that most people miss. They go to the Health Food Store, they look for the Raw Food section. Well, you know what, they should be going to the Produce Section. Over the Produce section it should say Ran and Living Foods over the Produce Section. Because that is what they are. And most people think: "Ah, Raw Foods are the foods in the Raw Food Section." No! We want to be eating Fresh Produce. I look at a lot of things in life very pragmatically. And it's really simple, it's just like this: animals and nature... I'm seeing birds and other animals on this walk here today... and they eat foods out of nature. Birds eat the berries of the trees, chipmunks collect the nuts... All the animals eat foods that are in nature. And so do we! We want to be eating the foods that are in nature. But we are being so conditioned by our consumerism society that we need to consume, consume, consume and buy, buy, buy and that we need to go to the Store or Health Foods Store, or Grocery Store, or restaurants to get our food. Well, nothing can be further from the truth than that. We want to go to nature for our food and it is only when Companies and Businesses and people that want to get money of you get involved... When they want to harvest the food and sell it to you; whether they would wild harvest, which is also pretty rare these days, they grew it themselves, or they processed it, packed it or bought it and are re-selling it and did not add value service like making the dehydrated crackers out of raw flaxseed that they bought. You know, we want to get back to the closest point where food comes from. And that is nature...that is where I am today and that's what I thought I could come here to make this video. So, I know you're thinking "Ok, John, how doest that help me? How do I start Raw Foods?". Well, you can start by wild harvesting your own food on your local area, growing your own sprouts or growing your own garden to have your own food. Because that is the best! I am going to teach you the best and the shortest path to health that I have learned. I mean, if you are going from here to New York you are not going to go through Texas and New Mexico and then go to New York. That is a really indirect line and there is many people and Raw Foods teachers that maybe don't teach the most accurate and direct line to the goal. Which, in my opinion, the goal should be Health. You are what you eat, after all! So, I am going to teach you the best and the quickest way to get to that place of Health and taking a straight, direct line. So, how does knowing that nature and foods that come from nature help you on your Raw Foods path? Well, the reason why I bring this up is because it all starts with a solid foundation. Knowing that food comes from nature is one of the key things that I think That has made it possible For me to be successful on Raw Foods. Because there is other people in the Raw Foods that may lead you to believe you need to buy products that are not found in nature. Things in cans, bottles and jars. And it is a fairly big move. They have a lot of money behind them to promote these products that you buy in packages. Why? Because somebody makes a profit out of them. And when money gets involved things get convoluted, in my opinion. I want to teach you the most direct route to being the healthiest you can be on Raw Foods because that's what I needed to do. I had a life threatening illness and I needed to learn how to rebuild my health on Raw Foods. So, that has been my research for the last 15 years, on how to do just that. I am happy to share this information with you because I am happy to be alive. I was given a second chance of life. And my second chance of life was for a reason. I think we all have purposes to be on Earth and one of my purposes is to share this knowledge and to help others into living service. And that is why I make many of these videos I do. So, you might be thinking "John, how does all that stuff about nature and food coming from the wild will help me start Raw Foods? ". Well, you know what? In my opinion it gives you a solid background and a solid foundation on where all the foods come from. So with that mind set you could now see what you should be eating. And that will be hopefully concreted in your memory now. Because if you don't remember anything else from this video, remember that what we want to be eating is fresher foods as possible. All the other animals on Earth... they eat foods fresh. Think about it. They go out and they eat some plants and it's just fresh off the plant. Actually the plant is still alive while they are eating it; most of the food is eaten fresh. But in our standards world now, with commerce and shipping... food is harvested in California then it is shipped in a truck across the country to the other side of the country... Food is shipped all over the place and by the time you get it, it is just not as fresh as it could be. That is why growing your own food or wild harvesting food in your area is so, so , so important. Because it gives you that extra little advantage that most people are not given. Even if you do a Raw Foods diet out of Whole Foods that is better than the American standard diet out of McDonalds. But is not as good as a Raw Foods diet coming directly out of your front yard. Why? Well, there are things called product-chi, biophotones, life-force that are actually in the foods. And that all the others animals get when they eat foods. Because they are eating their foods fresh and they are literally picking it and eating it right then and there. And we are not getting it. That is something not really talked about a lot in Raw Foods. So, the fresher quality and highest quality foods have the highest vibrancy life-force and also nutrition. There are studies that show that on 24 hours of picking produce certain nutrients, up to 50% of certain nutrients are lost. Does that mean that all the lettuce or the whole foods at your local Food Store are bad? Absolutely not! It is always good, better, best! A step to the Whole Foods is way better than Produce stuff on the supermarket in some cases. But it is not as good as harvesting or growing your own. And I want you to strive for the best you can possibly do. The best you can do if you live in Brooklyn or New York City... you can grow your own sprouts, you can go to the Farmer's Market... that is probably better that Whole Foods. You want to be eating the highest quality food at all times, whenever you possibly can. So, how do you start and get into Raw Foods? How do you get more Raw Foods into your diet? Instead of thinking "How do I get more Raw Foods into my diet?" think "How can I get more Fresh Produce at the highest quality as possible into my diet?" So, whether you need to... if you live in New York City you have amazing resources... Wildman Steve will take you in a walk in Central Park and show you all the wild foods to eat. In the Park. And that is probably one of the best things you can do if you live in the New York City area. Or, go to your local Farmer's Market because those foods are often fresh picked the day or sometimes the morning of the Farmer's Market. That is much fresher. What else can you do to increase your percentage of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables in your diet? Well, first you have to get the highest quality, so go to the supermarket, go to the Health Foods Store, go to a Whole Foods... if you don't have a Farmer's Market, if you are not growing yourself. And then just start eating it! It is very simple. It is not that hard. We want to eat minimally processed or unprocessed food. So what that means is that you don't want to buy anything that is in a container, package, or bottle, or jar. And anything that has a label. You want to eat things that are unlabeled. Because you can just look at it and know what it is. Oh, that's a head of lettuce, it needs no label. That's an apple, it needs no label. That's an orange... that's a pineapple... that's a...whatever that is, you don't want to eat foods with labels. You want to eat Fresh Produce. Think about... instead of "How can I eat Raw Foods?", "How can I increase my Fresh Produce percentage?". It is really simple, there are many ways to increase your Fresh Food percentage. You can be like "Ok, John, I have got all these products. What do I do with it?" Well, you can just take the fruits, the are the greatest snack, just grab a fruit and eat it. That is a great snack, better than cookies , better than Snickers bars, better than anything. So, traveler fruits, hanging in out in your car, at your work, at your job. Have a bowl of fruits on your desk or whatever. It looks great and when you are ready to eat, they are right there. Besides just eating whole fruits and vegetables, because most people won't grab a cucumber and start eating it for their lunch... I would do that sometimes if I am wondering in my garden and see fresh cucumbers... Which you can do is you can eat your snack on fresh vegetables if you like them. That is a very great way to do it. Often times I make a dip to dip in with my vegetables. So I will have a bunch full of vegetables and I will make a dressing, for example. One of my easiest dressing is a Raw Macademianuts blended in a vitamix with fresh orange juice. And I will blend that up and make just a nice orange cream sauce. I will dip a vegetable into some sauce and eat it. If you can't make the cream sauce you can always take something like guacamoles, or salsa or pico de gallo and dip the vegetables into that to eat more vegetables. Definitely a good way to do it. So, eat whole, easiest way to do it, no equipment required. Second way: process them. You could use a knife to cup up the vegetables, so, for example for kale. Although I do sometimes eat the whole stuck of kale, I will take a piece of kale and slice it up into small little strips called chiffonade. But, anyways, it is a really easy technique to basically make small ribbons out of all the kale... and then when you change the texture of the food it also tastes different. Another thing I do is take a spirale slicer tool that basically allows you to take things like zucchinis and even things like butternuts squash, put then into this machine that will basically make longs, spaghetti like strips. And people into Raw Foods call that Raw Foods Spaghetti it is 100% vegetables that then are in this nice long spaghetti strands; and they have different ones that make different sizes. So, there are different sizes from thin ones to fat ones. Make a Raw Spaghetti then put a sauce over there to make it fun and to change the texture. So, changing the texture using a knife, a food processor or even a spiral slicer is another way to increase your Raw Foods percentage. So, another way to increase your Raw Food percentage is by blending. So, blending is an excellent way to increase your Raw Foods percentage and basically what blending does... it just concentrates and breaks down all the fiber so you can easily drink them. So, for the things called green smoothies, maybe adding some water... I like to use coconut water in the blender cad with some bananas, all both fresh and some frozen bananas and maybe like a whole head of spinach or a whole head of kale in there. You basically mask the flavor of the kale and there for you can get a whole bunch of kales in there. I mean, I have made green smoothies with things like orange juice and one whole pound of baby spinach... just blended that up. Orange juice just tastes sweet. And I even fed that people that don't like green smoothies or don't like smoothies at all -- and they liked it. Making green smoothies is really important. You can also make fruit smoothies. So, when you make the fruit smoothie you just put some fruits in there and blend that up. Obviously, we are not going to use anything like yogurt or anything. You could use nutsmilk, almond milk... I like to use coconut milk the best in my smoothies for myself. Blending is a really good way to get more Raw Foods in your diet, whether they are fruit smoothies or green smoothies. So, the next way to increase the Raw Foods or fresh produce in your diet is by juicing. Juicing is an excellent way to get more produce in. Why? Well, juicing removes the fiber and the others debate whether juicing or blending is best, well, I recommend do juicing, do blending and eat the fruits. Anyway you can get more fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet is better than probably everything else you could do in your life. Fresh fruits and vegetables are the most important thing in Raw Foods in my opinion. So, juicing. I, personally, juice my vegetables and I tend to blend my fruits or just eat them whole. Why? Well, juicing removes the fiber. When you remove the fiber you basically get a sugar influx or like a sugar rush. You are drinking sugar-water in most fruit juices. Is that bad? Well, depends on what you're doing otherwise. Any fresh fruit juice is way better than a soda or even prior a bottled fruit juice for that matter. But, it is not as good as a fresh green juice. So, most people probably won't be at the point where fruit juice is a bad thing, unless you have got some blood sugar sensitivities. But I don't necessarily recommend juicing a lot of fruits. But juicing your vegetables is really a good thing to do. Once again it allows you to concentrate how many vegetables you can get into you. So, for example, you could take a whole bunch of kale, juice up that kale and get the green juice ot the nutrition out one bunch of kale without the fiber. And vegetables, and specifically kales and some of the leafy green vegetables, are some of the most nutrients dense foods on the planet. And the more nutrients dense foods you could eat, the healthier you are going to be... because they have a spectrum of nutrients. And when you are thinking about cows and elephants... I mean, all they eat is green. All day. And they are really strong. But they eat a lot of them, so juicing can basically take those concentrated nutrients, take out the fiber and give you, basically, a glass. Which is not even that much. And you will get the nutrition from that kale or from the spinach or from the watercress or from the whatever vegetable you are juicing. A standard juice I like to make is something like carrot or celery as my base, some green, you know, kales, collards, spinach, dandelion, a rucolla, whatever I have and then some apple to make it sweet. But, you know, there are many different juicing recipes you can look up and check out online. So, those are some of the ways to get more fresh fruits or vegetables into you by: 1.wating whole 2. processing with an equipment or with a knife to cut up, to change it's texture 3.blending and 4.juicing. Those are the easiest ways, so, knowing how to eat more Raw Foods, how does that help me start on a Raw Foods path? Well, to me this is like the building block to know how to do anything in life you have got to learn step by step and build on your knowledge and build on what you have learned already. So, for example, let's say you want to get into body building. Would you just go and try to pick up a 500 pound barbell and squat it and lift it up? From, like, starting from not lifting anything in your life? Absolutely not! And when somebody is trying to go all like "Oh, I am going to go 100% Raw Foods , start tomorrow" and they try to do it, in most cases, there are exceptions of course, but most people are not able to do it because you have got to build up to be able to lift that 500 pound barbell. You have got to start up by lifting 10 pounds maybe first. Then do that for a while, then work up to 20 pounds, then get up to 100 and maybe or maybe not you will never be able to get up to 500 pounds. But you have got to start small and slowly increase. And that is the secret of doing Raw Foods successfully. It is starting slow and slowly increasing. So, whatever your diet is now, you want to continue with it and you want to slowly, but surely increase your Raw Foods percentage using the techniques that I have just shared. So, whether you are eating, I don't know, hamburgers for diner, or, you know, chicken for diner, whatever, keep that up, that's fine. But, every meal, ensure that you eat a percentage of Raw Foods before your meal. When I got into Raw Foods, for example, I basically stopped eating my normal breakfast and I would juice 5 cups of juice for breakfast. And that was a great way to introduce me to juicing and Raw Foods. Then, for lunch, I'd had my normal lunch, mid-afternoon I'd have some more fresh juice and for diner I had my normal diner. So, that slowly acclimated me to eating more fresh produce or fresh fruits and vegetables into my diet. So, how do you start eating Raw Foods? Well, like I have just mentioned in my example, I started eating percentage and increasing my percentage of Raw Foods. So, I basically substituted my breakfast for Raw Foods and then mid-afternoon I had Raw Foods and at my two other meals Y basically still ate what I was eating. That's one way to do it and you can do it that way, but also I'd encourage you, with every meal you want to eat a good percentage, whatever your percentage is up to... your goal, you want to eat 25% more Raw Foods this month. Set that goal and work on just doing it every day. So, you have a monthly goal, 25% more Raw Foods, then break it down to each day. Each day I am going to eat 25% more Raw Foods. Here is my plan! I am going to eat Raw Foods or fresh fruits and vegetables for breakfast instead of my normal breakfast. If that is too hard, well, then eat a good percentage of your fruit and then your normal breakfast. So, cut up a whole banana on your oatmeal, or eat a banana before your French toast or whatever it is. It is fine. You just want to increase the fruit and vegetables percentage. Maybe an easy way is to make fresh vegetable juice. Because that would really increase the amount of vegetables you are going to consume into your diet. Or a blended smoothie, for example. And those are easy ways to concentrate more the Raw Foods and the fresh fruits and vegetables that are coming into you. Because you could juice or blend a lot more in most cases than you can actually sit there and eat, because it is broken down for you. Another thing that is very important is to chew your food. Chew each mouthful at least 15 times to break down all... especially the vegetables into a mush. Our bodies can only absorb nutrients in a liquid state, they can't absorb things that are still fiber rich, that are full of fiber. It is basically... those fibers are cleaners that go through us and help to clean us out. So, you want to slowly, but surely increase your Raw Foods percentage. 25% could be your goal for this month, then break it down: "I am going to do 25% more for this day only!". And then even shorting up from there, just look at this meal. "At this meal, I am going to do 25% more". Like that, you have the big goal, the small goal, the daily goal and then just the meal goal. If you eat 25% every meal, man, you are ahead of the packages. It is really simple to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. For example, if you have a big chicken diner, eat a big salad before your chicken diner, you will going to fill up on the salad first and eat much less chicken. Or whatever else you are eating. Hopefully, you are still not eating at McDonalds because that is bad... but if you are, eat a big salad first and then eat the McDonads and then you'll get half the stuff you'd normally get. You want to reduce the portion sizes of all the stuff you are eating that is processed or highly processed foods that come in a can, bar or package. So, even if you don't go 100% raw you want to eat the most fresh fruit and fresh vegetables as you possibly can and the least processed food that you can. Instead of getting soup in a can, cook and make your own soup from fresh whole ingredients. What I have learned in all this time is just that getting back to nature, like I am sitting in, eating things out of nature, eating plants that are in the nature in their least processed form...so, do we need to get pine pollen from the Himalayas? No! Because that is like the next latest and greatest thing that some people online are promoting... well, hey, pine pollen might not be that bad, but you can go and collect some pine pollen by yourself. Or, better yet you could grow your own plants and collect and eat their flowers which naturally contain the pollen and a lot of other nutrients. Because, once again, the pollen is an isolated food, it is not necessarily a whole food in the sense that you are eating a whole plant and everything that comes with it. When you are eating a flower, you are getting the pollen and all the anti-oxidants and nutrients in that flower as well. So, I hope you have learned more about how you can include more fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet because that is truly the secret to Raw Foods and the highest quality fresh fruits and vegetables. So, start sprouting in your kitchen, start growing that garden instead of your loan, in your background, wherever you can. Buy things at the Farmer's Market instead of the stores, get the highest... go on wild foods lead walks to learn about the wild foods growing in your area. Eat the highest quality and you are going to be the healthiest that you can be. Eat the unprocessed foods too. Very important! So, this is John Kohler with okraw.com . Keep eating your fresh fruits and vegetables, they are good stuff!