Lettuce

I think it is very helpful to be able to see our habits and behaviors objectively -- as the natural results of previous circumstances, most of which were out of our control. Emotional detachment keeps us honest with ourselves so we can begin the work of resolving to break our bad habits (recognizing that this won't happen overnight and forgiving ourselves for that), and immediately taking steps (small or large) that will eventually move us closer to the goal of being free from our self-abusive behaviors.

Medicine plants in our heads this idea that we've got to give our disease a name before we can know how to proceed in dealing with it. However, you only need to do this if your aim is to suppress your symptoms. Obviously everybody here is more interested in doing the smart thing -- removing the cause. When we're transitioning to a healthy diet, we are sometimes faced with symptoms that seem to appear for no good reason. Sometimes we can tell easily what the cause was, like if we're eating raw for awhile then go back to eating something cooked or 'borderline'. The consequential suffering we experience is a clear signal that in order to 'remove the cause' we need only avoid making that mistake again.

Sometimes, however, a symptom can appear when we think we're doing everything right. These are valuable experiences because each time it happens, it should inspire us to review what we've been doing and determine whether we could be doing better. We should look for the obvious things first, like are we eating too much fat, too much dried fruit, too many ill combined foods, eating too late in the evening, too early in the morning, etc. If you're making ALL those mistakes, or many of them, you'll have to choose between making improvements to your diet or suffering the symptom. Sometimes raw fooders get too comfortable with one stage and think they can stay there forever. That's why we often hear of long-term raw fooders continuing to suffer symptoms of one form or another, in perpetuity. If you're making NONE of those mistakes, you can look at other possibilities like overeating (which I define as eating in response to anything besides genuine hunger, which means almost everyone overeats), eating when you're worried, sad, stressed, etc., not getting enough sleep, working out too much or a hundred others.

The symptom itself will sometimes help us zero in on the cause too, like if the problem is lethargy, maybe you're eating too much fat. If it's digestive distress, maybe bad combos. If it's yeast problems, too much dried fruit or starchy foods. Etc., etc. Of course all of these symptoms will be the result of many factors, but there will be obvious things you can change to address them.

To add to the confusion :), sometimes symptoms are not caused by mistakes at all, but by improvements. It is very common for transitioning raw fooders to experience 'healing crises', otherwise known in the normal world as colds or flus. After you've made improvements to your diet and your body is able to recoup some of its lost vitality, it sometimes uses some of this to clean out stored residues from your previous lifestyle habits. I had one of these after about 4 months of being raw. Severity and frequency of these episodes will vary from person to person, depending on age, diathesis, physical condition and many other factors.

(from Raw School forum)

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