Fruit or Fat? + The problem with quinoa, black beans, brown rice?

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Permalink Reply by nycgrrl on July 25, 2008 at 9:32am

Adam-
this post is excellent and insightful. I have been moving more towards 811 as time passes. I did an 811 challenge with el-bo for a few weeks and while I really loved the way i felt, i had trouble with ingesting enough calories. I just didn't 'want' to eat more. I am moving towards 811 again, as perhaps when i did the transition I was too new to raw foods. One of my issues is lifelong depression. I am off meds (after 15 years on them) and feel in my body that omega 3's are critical for me. So I eat hemp seeds a fair amount. I am also training for races. Ran a 4 miler last weekend and building up to a half marathon.

also, are you saying the occasional bowl of quinoa is verboten on 811?

any other suggestions you have for me would be welcome. Sorry to hijack the post!

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Permalink Reply by VOID on July 25, 2008 at 1:55pm

hey nycgirl,

Thanks, glad you found it helpful. learning to get enough calories can take some time if you're not used to calorie counting. Because we are so used to high density low volume high calorie foods, when we start 811 which is low density high volume, due to the water content, it takes time to stretch our stomach enough. Were used to feeling drugged from the food pretty quickly. I had to use nutridiary.com for a couple of weeks to make sure I was getting enough and keep learning after my evening meal whether I had eaten enough that day based on whether I was craving sweet foods/starchy foods. Then the next day I would have to eat more. It takes some time, but thankfully not very much time. You get used to it pretty quickly.

Omega 3's are very important for health, particularly mental health, you are right. whether you choose to eat hemp seeds, nuts, or avocado, as long as you keep it within the reasonable amount, you will be certain to get enough. Using nutritiondata.com you can easily see that providing you eat sufficient calories you can get enough omega 3 and 6 not probs.

Even more important with depression is consuming enough fruit and not too much fat. This is because serotonin (the happy chemical) which you have clearly not been producing enough of for a long time, is mostly produced in the intestines (80%). This only happens when your beneficial bacteria levels are in order. This requires a diet high in Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) which is an indigestible fruit sugar. This is the food that your friendly bacteria prefer to eat. In addition a diet high in carbs, which you get from fruit when raw vegan, produce tryptophan, which is the aminoacid precursor to serotonin. The insulin carries the sugar to the brain and the tryptophan jumps on board to cross the blood brain barrier more easily and you end up feeling great. High serotonin levels mean depression will not exist for you :o)

Quinoa cant really be eaten raw unless sprouted. if youre eating 811 cooked style then of course you can eat a bowl of quinoa, but if you want to get 100% raw, you just gotta keep learning to eat more fruit calories!!! After a while, you'll be amazed that you could ever eat quinoa, its so bland.

Take Care

Adam x

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Permalink Reply by Morn on July 25, 2008 at 1:55pm

Again thanks for your post. It seems you deeply respect the work of Dr. Graham and I deeply respect the work of Dr. Young. When I first went raw he was the first person (besides) Alissa Cohen that I stumbled upon and followed to lose the majority of my weight. Dr. Young says that there is no difference in your body between natural sugars and sugars of any other kind. Sugar is sugar and it doesn't matter if it is honey, jellybeans, a berry or a piece of melon. In any form micoforms love it and it will ferment into alcohol and other mycotoxins and therefore create the acidic environment. He also says that fruit gets sweeter as it ripens because the complex carobydrates are fermenting into simpler and sweeter onces which are then fermented further as yeast evolves and the fruit is actually turning into alcohol and mold - rotting basically. And the nut thing well he breaks down each nut by kind in his book and a lot of them are not alkaline as well. The only fruits that he recommends that don't do this are lemons, limes, grafefruits, tomatoes and avacados as they alkalizing. I am hearing what you are saying but you can see my reluctance as well based on the differing of opinion in the community. I however am not closed minded just frustrated and because I am not a scientist, I don't know if I will ever understand what is truely going on in the body and what is really right. And in the long run I don't want to cause harm to my body. But I will say that in juice fasting I never felt better and I was never really hungry and I had cut out all fats and was at my ideal weight so I may have to experiment and give the 80-10-10 a try. I will check out nutridiary.com.

On another note I do however, have a life and don't currently feel like I am filling my life's void with food as you suggested. Since going raw I do feel like I have overcame in this area. Am I perfect -no but my whole world doesn't revolve around food anyone like it once did. I eat now mostly because I am hungry and out of necessity to feed my body. Is my world perfect - no. I definately need to continue to grow as a person. Do I still have addictive tendancies (yes I can if I don't watch it closely).

Due to the economy here in Michigan I did just recently lost my job (last week) so I have a lot to figure out for me personally. I need to spend more of my time on that issue (of what I want to do with my life) instead of focusing so much on food - so there is the hesitation about taking the time out to learn something new. My kids are home for another month so I will most likely wait until they go back to school to get a new job so I have a little bit of time. Quite frankly the 80/10/10 thing is overwhelming to me (probably because it is a new concept to me) and I may be making it a bit more complex than it needs to be. The mono eating idea is a good idea to get started with it all thanks for that suggestion. But I still need to figure out what it is that you dress your salads with since I eat a lot of salads in my diet already. What do you do for this? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Ok - I do want to thank you for your time cause I know it can be time consuming responding to these. If I thought I had it all figured out I wouldn't be wasting my time doing this. I know I need to tweak and refine my current diet so that I can get to and maintain the weight I want to be at so I am open just a little reluctant. But you and some of the others have given a few good suggestions and I really do need to give this diet a real fair effort so I know if it is for me or not. Ultimately that is what we need to do right - try it for ourselves. I just dug out my book again and I will finish reading it. Thanks

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Permalink Reply by VOID on July 25, 2008 at 2:13pm

I do like alot of Dougs work, it is true. His diet is the closest approach I have found that makes sense. Alot of people seem to believe that sugar is sugar, and sugar must be acidic...Im afraid this is nonsense. The thing people forget to remember is that ALL FOODS TURN INTO GLUCOSE (sugar). Whether you eat complex carbs or fats or proteins, if its to be used for fuel it all turns into sugar. Theres a very good reason for this: Glucose is the ONLY fuel the brain can use. It will use ketones when ALL foods and drinks except water are unavailable for extended periods of time, which it manufactures itself from fat to produce something that it can closely resemble as sugar, but it will only do when there is NOTHING else available. fruits and vegetables are some of the only alkaline foods out there. If all sugars were acidic then that would mean everything we would ever eat would be acidic, and we would be dead pretty quickly if that were the case. Or we would all have osteoporosis. Please remember that if nothing else, EVERYTHING turns into sugar.

People like to make generalisations. They notice one type of sugar is acidic and so they think oh therefore they must all be. That is nonsense. I mean literally it just doesnt make sense when you consider what I have just said.

To say that all sugars are the same is ridiculous. Refined sugars (ie sugars without fibre, such as honey, molasses, sugar, white grains, juices etc) are the same, because the body processes whole foods only in an optimal state. Sugar without fibre in any form, will cause the body to produce excess adrenaline and cortisol, to stimulate the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin to prevent coma/death from high blood sugar levels. They will also damage the liver because the body treats fructose when its not accompanied by fibre (fructose is in ALL sugar forms to some degree) as alcohol, a toxin which it has to store in the liver as fat. High adrenaline and cortisol levels will make you more acidic, so in this way fruit JUICES could make you acidic.

But doug doesnt recommend fruit juices or any other form of refined foods. ONLY whole foods.

Fresh whole foods are not acidic. They are alkaline, because they require an alkaline environment. Only high protein foods, such as grains, meats, dairy, nuts and seeds are acidic in the body.

I mean just listen to you senses a moment. Your mouth salivates when it smells fruit. We are designed to notice a full spectrum of colours unlike many other animals because this identifies nutrients. Fruit tastes amazing, it produces saliva because it requires an alkaline environment to digest.

Yes, 811 is very easy, sounds like youre making a mountain out of a molehill. USE your imagination. Its yours for a reason. Salad dressings are very simple, there are some great suggestions In the book I think arent there? I dont usually dress my salads, occassionally ill use some lemon juice, or if Im feeling like it, Ill blend a little avocado with some tomato, or blend some mango and tomato together, or orange and avocado, or blend some berries. I like to keep it simple. They taste great too.

You're welcome, Im always happy to spend some time addressing things if I think it will be helpful.

Take Care

Adam x

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Permalink Reply by Morn on July 25, 2008 at 3:13pm

Thanks for the reply! I am short on time right now and will look at it closer later! Gotta run!

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Permalink Reply by VOID on July 26, 2008 at 3:20pm

Do I still have addictive tendancies (yes I can if I don't watch it closely).

We all can. The body is hard wired with a propensity for addiction. We are preprogrammed to get pleasure sensations when we discover something new that helps meet our needs, and tolerance after a while, with reduced pleasure so that we continue to strive to find new, more creative and more sophisticated ways to meet our needs. Addiction is a hijack of this, seeking pleasure continuously from a source that once met our needs, with a tolerance that is misinterpreted as a need to keep on using MORE of something rather than find a new solution. The key is to have a varied life. When all your needs are met fulling in a variety of ways, and you are continually developing the ways in which you meet these need, you reduce the likelihood of addictions, because we always strive to meet our needs in the best way that works at any given time. So if you have a better solution you will go with that. If you arent using a variety, you will go to ones that have worked previously or focus on one that is meeting your needs currently and subtitute one need for another.

You wont cause harm to your body on 811 providing you eat enough calories, exercise, sleep enough and eat a variety of foods.

Juice fasting however will cause harm if you keep doing that. Glad you benefitted from it when you did it but it can damage your liver if you keep doing it as fructose without fibre is treated by the body as alcohol and stored as fat. And as Ive said, 811 isnt about no fat. Just low fat. :o)

Hope you enjoy the book and that it answers some of your questions.

Take Care


Adam x

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Permalink Reply by Darrick on July 25, 2008 at 2:40am

HI John,
I am finding rawvegan simple.....sooo simple:
Today......
morning excercise: swim, yoga, stretch, pushups
fruit meal: 4kilos of mangosteens
afternoon excercise
fruit meal:3lbs of durian chunks
relax
sleep with the sun

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan on July 25, 2008 at 4:31am

Getting one's calorie needs met with mostly fruit is the best on many levels, in my opinion. Those may be land use, deliciousness, ease of preparation, freedom from taking life, beauty, health, ease of digestion and assimilation.

In the absence of excess fat in the diet, there's much evidence that fruit actually cures most health problems including candida, and sometimes even diabetes.

Cooked starches are not optimal for a number of reasons. They become "carmelized" and enter the body as sugar about as fast as white sugar would, and much faster than the sugar in raw fruit. Plus, you got a strain on the immune system with cooked food exploding the number of white blood cells to deal with denatured foodstuff.

Other serious problems with cooked food are: heated protein is coagulated, thus 40 to 80% unusable by the body, plus vitamins destroyed, damaged, or deranged to some degree. Minerals are less available and usable. Thus the elimination system is also burdened way beyond its normal job, because as Herbert Sheldon says, anything that is not usable to the cells as food, is poison.

I hope this helps.

Eating 80/10/10 doesn't mean that you can't have any gourmet foods, or any nuts, seeds , avos, olives, coconuts, etc. It just means that you are moderate with high fat items. And you do it because you love the way it makes you feel!

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Permalink Reply by VOID on July 26, 2008 at 3:21pm

Cheers Suvine! I do love compliments :o)

Take Care

Adam x

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Permalink Reply by nycgrrl on July 25, 2008 at 7:42pm

my trouble is i don't have the time to eat THAT much fruit....hmmm...i do like how i feel on 811 (or my version, which includes a bit of oil) but for me, it takes time to eat that much food...it's tough as i have two young children whom i homeschool,and i don't have much time left LOL.

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Permalink Reply by VOID on July 26, 2008 at 2:58pm

Smoothies make it quicker. But realistically, if you have time to cook, you have time to sit and eat some fruit. It doesnt take that long. :o)

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Permalink Reply by Anabrese on July 26, 2008 at 7:33am

It's really a case of experimenting to find out what works in the long run. Try different approaches and see what happens. Good reading will help too.

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