Since the basis of a raw food diet is for long term health, weight loss is really just a side effect – although it’s a very welcome side effect if you have struggled with being overweight for any period of time.
Once you decide that you are changing your diet for health, rather than just to be able to fit into a pair of skinny jeans for a special weekend, you wil l find that your struggle with ‘dieting’ falls by the wayside. There is a mental shift that takes place where your mindset changes.
You will find that your thoughts changes from feeling like you are depriving yourself of your ‘favorite’ foods — like cakes, cookies, donuts, chips — to having new favorite foods like crisp apples, juicy oranges, savory salads and crunchy almonds. When that shift occurs, your raw food diet changes from being a ‘diet’ to simply ‘the way you eat’. You won’t have to force yourself to make healthy choices – you will actually want to eat the healthier foods.
When you start on a raw food diet, it is important to be willing to allow this mental shift to happen. For example, if you associate dieting with restricting your food intake and eating less, you must be willing to remind yourself that when you are eating healthy foods, you don’t have to artificially restrict your intake.
In fact, it’s important not to try to limit yourself to only a few salads a day. Instead, your new goal should be to eat enough veggies and fruits so that you don’t walk around hungry at all.
Rather than thinking in terms of restricting your foods, try to think in terms of expanding the number and varieties of healthy foods that you eat. So you new goal will actually be to eat more each day – more and different fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds. When you look on it as an opportunity to expand your eating experiences and your lifespan, you can find new enthusiasm for your goals.