Scott's Raw Journey

INTRODUCTION TO MY BLOG

My name is Scott and I arrived to this world in the year 1966. I am from Chicago USA, originally but now I currently work and live in the southwest. My entire life has been a journey of sorts. Life has seemed like a school full of lessons to learn. These lessons never seem to end, so rather than worry about the destination, I have been paying more attention to the journey.

One of the most dramatic lessons I have been learning has to do with changing and improving diet, and how those changes effect health and wellbeing, wellbeing including physical health, emotional stability, mental peace of mind, spiritual awareness, and finding the balance between these aspects. I am convinced that there is a direct correlation between diet and wellbeing.

I believe that everyone is on a unique path, and that it is inappropriate for anybody to judge another. We all have our own unique lessons to learn. So in sharing certain aspects of my journey via this blog medium, my intention is not to proselytize a lifestyle or convince anybody of anything. Rather, it is being created for those who may be interested in or inspired by the information. I intend to share information that I think is useful and important, for those interested in discovering the benefits of improving diet. And also I will share what has worked specifically for me on my journey.

I tend to make a distinction between EATING TO LIVE vs. LIVING TO EAT. Many raw foods sites emphasize recipes and the preparation of great tasting food. I don't feel the need to re-tread this readily available information. My emphasis is more on EATING TO LIVE, in other words, the point where food doesn't dominate your daily concern, where the body never feels hunger because all its nutritional needs are being met in the most efficient way. Getting to this point usually requires moving beyond the LIVING TO EAT paradigm, which, I have found, takes some time. And I'm still working through it myself. Other raw foods sites with an emphasis on LIVING TO EAT are helpful for those who are transitioning away from their addiction to cooked food and poor nutrition. But for some, the raw foods diet will be just another transition. Those on this journey are discovering new destinations beyond anything we've imagined possible. Transitioning to a raw foods diet is just the beginning for some! It is my desire to create a blog that will be useful for anyone interested in improving their current situation, and to fill in some gaps of understanding in this movement.

Since I started tinkering with my diet, and with fasting and colon cleansing, I have been experiencing an amazing personal transformation, which still continues. In order to experience this, I had to leave my hometown of Chicago, get away from my friends, quit being social, stay out of relationships, and go ever more inward. I’m not sure if my friends realized what I’ve been going through over the past few years. And since I really didn’t understand what I was going through myself, how could I explain it to anyone? So I basically dropped off the face of the Earth and kept to myself, in order to sort things out.

I don’t claim to have discovered secrets of the universe. Or maybe I have and I don’t know it yet! Or maybe I know I have and I’m not saying so. But something is telling me it’s time to share. I especially want to dedicate this blog to all the amazing people I have met over the years. I feel truly blessed to have had some very difficult learning experiences. Every single person who has been a part of my life has contributed to my personal growth in ways they will never fully comprehend. Hopefully they are enjoying their own journey, and that somehow I was able to reciprocate in some way.

For some, what I share will find a sympathetic resonance. For others, it will be as if I am speaking a different language. My intended audience, especially for the APPETIZER blog, are those with whom I've crossed paths, who may not know what I've been up to. But of course, anyone is free to partake of the APPETIZERS. The MAIN COURSE blog will be more in depth and address issues that I find relevant and should be of more interest to those already pursuing this lifestyle.

I guess I should take a quick moment to mention my age since so many of us base our opinions of others on age. In some ways age doesn't matter, but in other ways it seems to. I am 41 in the Nov 2008 photos. I'll turn 42 in December 2008. People often guess my age to be 20 something. So by stating my age I'm hoping to add some credibility to my words, from one who has had more life experience.

Everybody loves to look at before and after pics. The idea of putting up these pictures seemed weird to me at first. I didn’t even know that I would have any dramatic BEFORE pictures. But I came across some old photos, and lo and behold, I couldn’t believe how different I looked. Unfortunately, I don’t have any shirtless BEFORE pictures! That would be interesting to see. I guess the lesson is, if you feel that you are about to embark on your own raw foods journey, take your shirt off right now and have somebody take your picture. You’ll be glad you did after you shed some weight!

The photo on the left is from August 2001. The photo on the right is January 2005, after a year and a half eating a vegan diet.

Left side, February 2001. Right side, August 2006. That’s me in the middle, after lots of cleansing and eating mostly raw.

These profile shots blow my mind. Left is from August 2001. Right side is from April 2005, vegan for almost 2 years.

These 4 pictures are rather telling. Notice how the eyes become bluer and brighter. (I don't wear contact lenses.) I used to notice how the eyes of 100% raw foodists glimmer and shine and wondered if mine ever would. The first picture from January 2004 is not even a year being vegan. I am at a bar, drinking and smoking. The 2nd picture from March 2006 is almost 3 years vegan. With all the cleansing I had been doing, I look rather skinny. The other 2 photos seem to show cellular rebuilding and weight stabilizing. We are told that most of the cells in the body are replaced with new cells. Depending on the cells and location in the body, they can regenerate every year or less. Damaged cells will usually replicate into more damaged cells. But if you repair your damaged cells, the new cells are closer to your original DNA, and those will replace the cells that are damaged. So what appears to be happening, is that by fasting and cleansing the colon, liver, blood etc, you begin a cellular rejuvenation process, whereby you initially lose more weight than you should. Then as the repaired cells take over, you can begin to experience a higher genetic expression, or rather, a more accurate one. It seems that optimal weight is then found.

These are all physical phenomena, of course, and as fascinating as they are, it is even more fascinating to experience what photos can’t express, namely, feelings of deeper connection to spiritual realms, emotional stability, peace of mind, balance of life, clarity of thought, etc. I don’t know if the raw foods diet, in and of itself, will lead to these things for everybody. But there appears to be a correlation in my experience. I would say that a 100% raw foods diet will likely support anyone with spiritual inclinations and those who find themselves becoming more and more detached from a sense of egocentricity.

My story isn’t that compelling really. Others fall into this diet for various reasons, usually health and weight issues. In case you don’t know, a raw foods diet means you don’t eat any cooked food. Cooking food kills the enzymes, or life force, of the food, and destroys most of the nutrients, depending on the type of food and how it is cooked. There are certain foods that are more easily assimilated in their cooked form, such as potatoes, beans or certain squashes. But the nutritional tradeoff is hardly worth it. All the nutrients the body needs can be found in raw living foods. Not only does cooking food destroy the nutrients, the body has to work extra hard in order to digest the dead food. Why can you eat a ton of cooked food and still feel hungry? Because the body isn’t nourished by it. If the body is receiving all the nutrients it needs, it will feel satiated. That is why it is common for people to lose weight on a raw food diet. They are getting their nutrients in a state that is easily assimilated into the bloodstream and less taxing on the digestive system. And since the nutrient density of raw living foods is more condensed, less food is required. Higher quality food means you eat less.

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This is an introductory article about Superfoods and supplements, since I am imagining my readers being new to the raw foods diet, or just reading this because they know me personally. I am going to assume that the person reading this is not a raw foodist.

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Living on a 100% raw food diet seems so natural to me that I can no longer imagine eating or desiring to eat cooked food. But I can imagine plenty of people reading that statement and thinking I’m being more than a bit extreme. It doesn’t seem extreme to me at all. I don’t feel like I’m forcing this diet on myself, or adhering to it to prove anything to anybody or for some ascetic purpose for that matter. It feels completely natural and easy. Since most of my friends and family are not raw fooding their way to optimum health, I want to share some basic recommendations for things I would do as the next best thing.

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Oftentimes people have an economic excuse for not improving their diet. They say that organic food is way more expensive for example. I have never had another mouth to feed, or mortgage or car payments to consider. I can't imagine the financial demands of having dependents, so I don't intend to suggest that anything that I've done will work as well for somebody with kids to raise. For those on a tight budget, I will share some thoughts that have worked for me. Basically, my strategy has been to work steadily and live frugally. I have always managed to find affordable living arrangements, in poorer neighborhoods, and bike instead of drive a car. Everybody’s situation is unique, so my strategy may not be of much help. But I think it’s important to consider some of the reasons behind pursuing a path to optimum health in a way that, despite one’s economic situation, the reasons will be so convincing as to not make money an issue.

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Myth is such an appropriate word to use with protein. Before I studied this issue, I accepted the generally held belief that the body needs a certain amount of daily protein intake in the form of a complete protein source, such as meat, or, if you are vegetarian, rice and beans. And like most, I didn’t really know what a protein was or how the body digested it or utilized it after being digested. Dispelling myths can be challenging. Myths can be a pillar to one’s belief system, and any sort of contradiction to that belief system can be taken as a personal offense.

Entire books have been written about the creators of the protein myth, and what their agenda may be in propagating it. Other books have been written about the compiling body of evidence that a low protein diet of plant-based foods is healthiest for the human physiology. (I recommend The Food Revolution by John Robbins and The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.) So as not to bog down my blog with this thoroughly researched material and factoids up the wahzoo, I will rather attempt to explain in simple terms a few concepts that begin to dispel the protein myth. The aforementioned books will shatter that myth beyond repair if you really want to go there, which hopefully you do.

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Recommendations for the highest quality immune-boosting foods and herbs are listed at the bottom of this article. However, to increase their effectiveness, please take a moment to open your mind to some concepts which may be uncomfortable.

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