Help with weight Gain

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Permalink Reply by tanawana on December 21, 2007 at 10:30am

If it were me I'd do more muscle building exercises and go easy on any aerobic calorie burning exercises. Sounds like muscle is what you need.

You can always try blending your foods to get more calories if that is needed. I keep blending very simple when I do. Bananas, water and maybe some romaine leaves.

Have you ever tallied your calories to make sure you may not be undereating?? I don't like counting calories but sometimes it shows things we don't see.

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Permalink Reply by Gabrielle on December 20, 2007 at 6:30pm

Hello Julie,
I did not have the same experience as you but my partner who is already thin and athletic lost some weight when he started going raw. He got a little scared and wanted to go back to a regular SAD diet but I was determined to not have this happen. After some research I and some trial and error I found the answer Green Smoothies. At least 3 cups a day with a ratio of (60% fruit and 40% greens).

A little bit about what I found out:
We all have our perfect weight so on the perfect diet we should be at that weight but our stomach acid called hydrochloric acid (stomach acid which is different than alkalinity in the blood but both are important) are very often out of balance and have low assimilation of nutrients found in food (depending on your body this can cause weigh gain or loss).

Another important element is having an alkaline body even if you are raw it doesn't mean that your body is alkaline. For example most nuts are acid forming but lemon is very alkaline! Disease thrives in an acidic body.

Green smoothies are the way to go because they restore proper stomach acid and alkalize the body. How great! It is difficult to eat the right amount of greens and we probably cannot chew enough to get all of the nutrients we need fro them...so this is why blending is necessary!

If you haven't had a green smoothie before maybe it doesn't sound delicious but they are heavenly!My favorite at the moment. 1 pear, 1 banana, 1 orange, buckchoy, spinach and water.

Great books if you are interested on the subject are
Alkalize or Die byDr.Theodore A. Baroody and Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko

I'm for green smoothies all the way! This worked for us.
Last note; Make sure you add a variety of greens because they al contain different nutrients and minerals that complement one another and not so many sprouts.

Gabrielle

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Permalink Reply by julie on December 21, 2007 at 2:13am

Thank you Gabrielle, I have just got the Green life book I will have to give them smoothies ago, yours sounds nice!
I bought a bunch of Kale yesterday & avocardos at my organic farm yesterday. As I write I am having hot water & lemon, I do worry though about the lemon with my teeth as the enamel there is thin, when I used to be Bulimic, any advice on that one would be great?

Love Ju

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Permalink Reply by Rawsome on February 2, 2008 at 8:18am

Brush your teeth after you have things like lemon (I hope you aren't using commercial toothpaste, btw. Something like bicarb in water would be one way to neutralize the acid in your mouth). Some people claim their teeth remineralize on the raw food diet. Certainly greens have had a great effect on dental health, as you will read in "Green for Life."

I, too, lost a lot of weight when I went 100% raw. 30 lbs in 3 weeks. I was at one of the OHI facilities, so I know my diet was impeccable. As I consulted with my doctor about it, we elected to add some sodium to my regime since I was experiencing severe dehydration (I'd drink water and pee it out again 2 minutes later and my skin was "tenting" and I felt not just abnormally weak/detoxing but very, very "wrong") and some weird neurological symptoms. When that didn't fix the problem, I added a meal with cooked food every day, then every other day. I maintained that loss over the next 3 weeks of modified raw, and when I went to see him again, we tested for heavy metal toxicity. My body was so toxic that when I went 100% raw it started dumping toxins too quickly for me, and it was dangerous for me in my particular situation. Please have your doctor check on this for you. Heavy metals can damage important organs on their way out of your body, but there are ways to protect yourself using IV chelation, far infrared saunas, topical patches like acupeds that detox through the skin, and drops like Biochelat that have been shown safe even in children. Chlorella and cilantro are other important tools in the metal detox arsenal.

I totally agree that you need to make sure you are able to absorb your food. It doesn't sound like your body is doing a good job of that. The problem could be that you still have too thick of a mucous lining in your intestinal tract, and/or the presence of microbial infection and/or parasites.


Support yourself first: Maximize your absorption of good nutrition with foods that assimilate easily
green juices would be helpful for all these conditions. 1-2 pounds of greens per day (less than a kg) should give you all the protein you need as well as an abundance of key minerals. Smoothies are wonderful, but green juices are more like "mainlining" green into your body. Doesn't Natalia Rose have a really nice Green Lemonade recipe?
Like it or not, some people won't heal on all raw regimes for different reasons. If staying all raw keeps your health and weight plummeting downward, you may need to halt raw foods temporarily before you waste away! You can regain some strength while figuring out your next move. If you decide to halt your raw intake, consider homemade broth from organic meaty bones, using a little bit of healthy raw apple cider vinegar in the water to soak the meaty bones in before cooking long and slow over a low heat. The vinegar will help draw the minerals out of the bones into the broth, and the broth itself will create free amino acids that have the same hydrophilic properties as raw foods. If you have to go further into cooked foods, I highly suggest you read "The Body Ecology Diet" before proceeding.
It might be very interesting if you try taking some digestive enzymes to see if that helps you gain weight. As you will see in "Green for Life," greens help restore hydrochloric acid levels in the stomach. If you are missing pancreatic enzymes, your body will have decreased ability to deal with intestinal sludge and cancer cells, as well as helping to digest your food. The juices are meant to provide you with nutrition at the lowest level of digestive ability. Adding enzymes and watching your body's reaction can help you learn whether your body is needs extra enzymes for digesting raw foods in more solid forms.

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Permalink Reply by Rawsome on February 2, 2008 at 8:28am

Part 2....
Root out causes of bad bacteria
Make sure you aren't getting chlorine or fluoride or anything nasty in your drinking water is another, as well as sticking to organic produce.
It may be that you still have candida problems, they may simply not be manifesting themselves in the same ways as before. I agree that getting some professional help is a good idea. Too much fruit is a classic reason for candida overgrowth, though there are others who say that too much fat in the diet contributes to the problem. It may, truly, be different for different people.
Bad bacteria thrive when there isn't enough good bacteria: Making sure you have a COMPLETE array of good flora to fight the bad bugs is important. In addition to the probiotics you may be taking, look into adding lacto-fermented foods daily (young coconut kefir, sauerkrauts, kim chee, pickled onions, rejuvelac). Investigate soil organisms, which were so key in Jordan Rubin's complete recovery from Crohn's, which almost killed him. (See his story in "The Maker's Diet" or peek at www.gardenoflife.com, which is his website.)

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Permalink Reply by Rawsome on February 2, 2008 at 8:28am

Part 3
Physically remove mucous layers, bad bacteria and parasites from the gut:
Drink plenty of clean water and green juices.
Use food to powerwash your gut - gently: papaya, pineapple, apple, figs, raw olives are just a few things that can help dissolve mucous and propel it out of the body. Obviously, you will want to stick with the foods that don't aggravate candida, if you still have some of that in your body.
Use fiber ( I see you already do, but bran usually only works for a short time. It isn't the best fiber for the job over the long term) Fiber products abound. Whether you choose to use them or not is a very personal decision. However, for a fun, fascinating and slightly disgusting look at the world of bowel cleansing, check out the thousands of testimonials and hundreds of PHOTOS of the creepy-crawlies that come out of people at www.drnatura.com. As for their product, I can also vouch that it does what it says it does, and tastes better and works better than any other fiber I've used.
Parasite-killing herbal supplements may be in order, though some people use raw food alternatives and essential oils.
Supplements like Oxypowder use magnesium to generate an oxygen-based cleansing reaction in the upper digestive tract, loosening years of debris so it can be expelled.
Enemas and colonics help rinse away debris from the lower tract. While the use of enemas and colonics has been debated for years, there are times when its use for acute situations is extremely helpful. If you are very toxic, you can poison yourself if your body's tissues release toxins faster than your elimination channels can process them out of your body. It would be best if you had someone experienced in this area to guide you in your particular situation, as it can aggravate some conditions as well as bring relief to others.

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Permalink Reply by Rawsome on February 2, 2008 at 8:29am

Part 4

Kill the bad bugs
There are a lot of different bad "bugs" out there. Fortunately, many seem to succumb to good diet changes. Some succumb to superior diet changes, like adding GREENS and probiotics.
Another anti-bug health food is coconut oil. It is antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal, increasing your chances of dealing with the root of your problem if it is a bug. And you can make some killer fudge with it and delicious mayonnaise.
Most people have enough "meat on their bones" to let their new diets deal with the bugs. It sounds like you might need some additional help. If your body is exhausted, you can easily be carrying around an infection and not show the usual signs of infection, like fever or inflammation. This is very dangerous territory. I'm concerned because you've lost so much weight and your immune system may be very out of whack. Before I began to increase raw food in my diet, and certainly before I knew ways to get lots of greens into my body, I had a lot more acute health problems. A product that helped me a LOT (healed a sore that wouldn't heal for 2 months within 48 hours, restored my energy at the same time - presumably by dealing with a low-grade chronic infection that was sucking all of my energy) is a product called Immune 26. (Actually I think they might have changed the name since I last used it, I think to i26, it has been quite a while since I have needed it). I use it occasionally when I am very, very ill or can't figure out what is going on. It is from a company called Legacy for Life. The product consists of powdered eggs that have been processed at a very low temperature to keep the enzymes and immune system boosters intact. The eggs come from healthy hens who have been injected with a wide variety of very nasty bugs (killed vaccines). A mother hen passes her immunity to these bugs to her offspring, in this case, the egg. This is more techno-fangled a "product" than I would normally advocate, but in my opinion it is much safer than antibiotics. I'm allergic to 3 kinds of antibiotics at this point in time, so I really appreciate having another option for emergencies. Unless you are allergic to raw eggs, it might do the trick if you've got a stubborn bug that your immune system is too weak to fight off. There have been a number of impressive clinical trials done with it. I don't know if they have it where you live, since you count in stones not pounds, but if you can get your hands on it, it might be for you what it was for me: a low-temp processed food that could kill off a mysterious bad bug when neither I nor my diet could manage the job. It isn't in stores, btw. Legacy for Life is a multi-level company.

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Permalink Reply by julie on December 21, 2007 at 2:25am

how much buckchoy, spinach & water do you put in Gabrielle?

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Permalink Reply by Gabrielle on December 21, 2007 at 6:15pm

1 cup of each or more....I like mine really Greeeeeennnn! I really want to know if this has made any difference for you Keep me posted

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Permalink Reply by julie on December 22, 2007 at 1:57am

Ok will do, cheers Gabrielle!

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Permalink Reply by supurrmananda on December 22, 2007 at 4:49am

the secret to combatting osteoperosis is to stop acidifying yourself with all the fats and to build some muscle by doing heavy weight bearing excercise along with adequate sunlight, dont be afraid to eat alot of fruit and cut out the fat completely www.foodnsport.com

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Permalink Reply by Jenny on February 2, 2008 at 4:05am

Hi I agree there is so much advice there is no one answer I found that out you have to become your own expert listen to yourself everyone who gives a dvice can only know from there own experiences the advice is always good but it is confusing I belive ita all about balnce of mind body and spirit. just do the best you can and most of all be happy .

Jenny x

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