Balance: I do not believe in the idea of having to intellectually balance anything in one's raw diet. The taste is the primary factor that I would consider when choosing my next raw meal. In my view, our tendency to ignore our instincts is what really makes us sick.

For example, I have days when I feel like eating fruit only and have no desire for greens whatsover. Then, I have days, when I feel like having some tender greens. I choose to follow my instinct, rather than preconceived ideas on how much greens I should have. I feel that this is the right way to approach nutrition.

Being gentle on the senses: I had learned to ignore my senses through years of abuse by various insensitive practices, eating cooked/processed foods being one of them. However, after becoming a raw foodist and later realizing that feeding oneself healthily can be a simple  act of following one's body instinct, I understood that my senses is my guide to a healthy lifestyle. How does it work? Very simple. For example,

• if something burns my toungue when I put it in my mouth, then this is my body saying it is not the desirable food. So, irritants such as garlic, onion, chili, have left my diet.
• If, after eating something, I feel bloated, then this is my body saying that whatever I put in my tummy, was hard to digest. So, I opt for foods that my body finds easy to digest, such as sweet, ripe fruit, and tender, juicy greens. I prefer eating mono or combine foods that go together well.
• If a meal makes me feel dehydrated, which is not a nice feeling, then I learn not to repeat the same mistake. I learn that it is better to opt for water-rich foods.

And so on. You get the idea. It is all about being connected with your body, feeling your body, and responding to the signals that you feel.

Blending: I prefer not to blend my foods. I eat fruit whole and mono, because this is the way I like it. I also prefer my greens mono. Sometimes I like salads (simple and without dressing) and when I make them I make sure that whatever greens and veggies I put in them, taste appealing mono. That is, I do not disguise the taste of one food with another, and so I make sure that my body gets what it really needs, as the foods that taste unappealing are the ones that the body does not want right now (or perhaps ever). Also, I do not graze all day (like I used in my early years of raw), but eat only when truly hungry, on the average 3 meals a day.

Eating this way I feel really well nourished. I feel very healthy, energetic and happy. My digestion is excellent. I feel strong. My mind is preoccupied with my life, not food. I feel I truly thrive.

Bloated tummy: Besides poor digestion due to long-term unhealthy practises, this can be caused by any of these factors:

• eating unripe fruit or veggies
• poor food combining (mono eating is recommended)
  
• not chewing very well
  
• eating when not truly hungry (too early in the morning, to soon after a meal, or continuing to eat after the satiation has been reached already)

Choosing what to eat on raw: Your body knows best. If there is some raw food you need, it will taste good and feel good inside our body. Conversely, if something does not appeal to you, don't eat it. As simple as that. This is how all the animals in the world pick their next meal. So can we.

"Eating things you don't like because somebody tells you it's good for you is to favor another person's opinion over nature. If something tastes bitter or bad, it doesn't matter if all the raw/health gurus in the world agree that it's the best human food on the planet. Your body knows what they don't. (...) The way to be healthiest, in fact, is to follow our
preferences. You may trust that if something tastes good -- and it belongs in one of these categories: fruit, vegetable, nut, seed -- then it is food for you." (Nora Lenz)

Cold: No food or medicine is going to fix your cold. Your body is a self-healing mechanism. Cold is a sign of the body detoxifying. You can help this process by getting sufficient rest.

"The best means of promoting elimination is to go to bed in a well-ventilated room, keep warm, and take nothing into the stomach except water and this only as thirst demands. Fasting and rest will not only make the cold sufferer more comfortable and reduce the likelihood of complications, but they will definitely shorten the duration of the cold and do all of this without the production of unwanted side effects." ( Dr Herbert Shelton )

Cooked food cravings: Strong, over-powering urge to have some type of cooked food. Cravings should not be acted upon, as they do not indicate that the body needs to eat what we crave. Rather, they indicate that the body needs to get rid of the toxins from what we have once eaten. These are the sign of detox and occur when the toxins enter our bloodstream, when the body decides to get rid of them.

The food that is craved should be avoided, or the detox will be hindered. Only healthy appetite (as opposed to the extreme urge experienced during cravings) for fresh fruit/vegies that we find tasty at the moment, is a good guide in choosing what to eat.

I learned that eating cooked on one day, leads to my body detoxing and hence cooked food cravings appearing on the next day or so. This can easily lead to a vicious cycle. One eats cooked, detoxes, craves cooked, eats cooked, detoxes and so on. The only way to break this cycle is to resist the cravings for the initial period, which may last say a couple of weeks. After that, it will be much easier. Fasting can be help speed up the detox phase. I also find that staying raw is much much easier if I eat lots of juicy fruit.

Avoiding spices, salt etc. helps in overcoming the cravings too. I discovered that the core of my cooked food addiction is the salt. When I crave cooked, I in fact, crave the salt. Letting my body to go through the detox, at a pace that I am comfortable with, is the only solution.

Cooked food cravings most efficient tip: There is a moment, before one reaches for the junk food, even before one makes a decision to reach for the junk food. A thought in the mind appears. One focuses on that thought and then the desire is born. Like in meditation, if one sees such thought but instead of focusing on it and hence creating the desire that is the engine of the process of the junk food cycle, one acknowledges the thought and lets it go, focusing their attention elsewhere, then the cycle gets broken. This breakage of the cycle is a process that involves the consciousness. One engages their conscious, aware mind and makes a conscious, aware decision to let the thought go. Please try this. It works!

Cooked food desires: These are created by our mind recreating past patterns, and the best way to deal with them is to clear the mind. I found that eating satisfying simple (spices-free) meals such as sweet, juicy fruit, and delicious salads, prevents such desires from occuring. I also discovered that starving my body by not providing enough sweat fruit, leads to my body feeling malnourished, and wanting to eat anything, even cooked foods.

Cost of raw food: Unfortunately, the prices of fruit can be ridiculously high here. There are some ways to reduce the expenditure (buying in bulk, looking for deals etc) but I still spend more than I used to before raw. Luckily I have a good salary and can afford it. Nevertheless, I have not resigned myself to buying fruit produced by others and am investing in growing my own, which not only reduces the cost, but more importantly, gives me the access to top quality, freshly picked, tree/bush-ripen, organic fruit. We planted several fruit trees and bushes in our garden and each year we keep adding more. Apricots, plums, apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, cherries, figs, persimmons, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, youngberries, blackberries, grapes. Every year we get a larger crop. One way a fruit lover can get abundance of yummy fruit is to go for holidays to fruit-abundant places. To me a far better way is to surround myself with a fruit garden which will last for years to come. Could you perhaps find some ways of getting locally produced fresh fruit and veggies? Grow your own, find a local community garden, do weekend work in an orchard or gardening for someone with fruit trees? The cost AND the quality of home-grown fruit will always be heaps better than that of bought produce. Besides, growing your own changes the fabric of your local environment and is a great way to contribute to changing the planet to a greener place.

Exercise: Essential part of healthy lifestyle. Make it fun. Do what you love and enjoy it! Do not over exercise. Our ancestors probably spent exercising lightly while foraging and heavy exercise was never done for the sake of improving health.

"That daily exercise is essential to develop and maintain good health is one Hygienic principle upon which there seems to be universal agreement. Even the medical profession encourages regular exercise as a means of prolonging youthfulness and promoting cardiovascular well-being. The overall merits of regular exercise are fully recognized, and we have no need here to further expound upon them.

However, there exists a great deal of confusion regarding the relationship between exercise and health. Many people equate health with physical conditioning. The classical American model of male health is represented by a robust well-muscled physique, with erect posture, great strength and power. Without necessarily deriding this ideal, I must insist that it is not synonymous with health. There is not always a direct proportion between the level of physical conditioning and the level of overall health. Physical conditioning is only one aspect of health. The best athlete is not necessarily the most healthy. The one who runs ten miles is not necessarily in better health than the one who runs only five, or one, or for that matter, none at all." ( Ralp C. Cinque, D.C. ) 

Feeling tired: Tiredness can be caused by a number of factors:
* Having some cooked now and then leads to detox, and associated with it feeling of tiredness. To get over it, one needs to be all-raw for at least about two weeks to notice an improvement.
* Poor food combining (in particular combining fats and fruit) will also lead to tiredness (as well as bloating). Note that if you do not leave enough time between the meals, the previous meal gets combined with you current meal.
* Eating herbs, spices and other irritants/stimulants. For example, garlic kills your good intestinal flora, which will make you feel tired. Coffee/cocoa in the short term will stimulate, but will make you feel tired later. Can you see the cycle?
* Dehydration will lead to feeling tired too. If you feel thirsty after a meal, this means that whatever you've eaten was not optimal. I find that fruit are the best hydrating foods.
* Eating raw foods that do not have appeal to you, because you think you should eat them. When you do that, you feed your body what it does not really need. Food that your body does not want, is harder to digest, and eating it will make you feel tired.
* Last, but not least, not enough rest/sleep, of course!

Food combining: Properly combining your foods will improve your digestion. A few basic rules to remember are:
* sweet fruit/starchy foods and fats do not combine well
* melons should only be eaten mono
* fruit should only be eaten on empty stomach
(Note that if you did not allow enough time for your last meal to be digested, then what you eat next gets combined with your last meal.)
I believe that one can easily learn about these rules by observing their body. For example, bloating is a common sign of poor food combining.

Fruitarianism:
Q: Should I become a fruitarian? Can I thrive as a fruitarian?
A: In order to thrive, you need to follow your body, the signals of your body, your instincts, the wisdom of nature that is embedded in you. No mental decision on dietary patterns is going to make you thrive, as ignoring your body signals on daily basis will cause your body lacking the nutrition it needs or rest it needs, leading in the long term to disease. So in order to thrive, you really need to follow your senses and eat right now only those raw mono foods that appeal to them right now. So if the greens taste yuck, do not eat them right now, but if their taste is very appealing, then this is the signal your body needs them. I have times when I feel no need for greens at all, and these are the times when I have access to best quality fresh, ripe, juicy fruit. Long-term thriving fruitarians have access to top quality fruit, and it is often said that in the lack of those, other foods such as greens and vegies may well serve good purpose. Afterall, the body needs nutrients and if it can't get it from fruit when it is of lesser quality or variety, it will need to get it from other raw foods.

Fruit flies: There is a perfect solution that works miracles. I've used it successfully for years. Here it is.

Fruit fly miracle solution:
 1) Get a glass jar, put some very ripe or rotting fruit in it.
 2) Get a piece of paper, form a cone with a small hole on one end and a big one on the other (use scissors and sticky tape). Put it on the jar, the small hole downwards. Make sure the paper fits the jar tightly.
 3) Put the jar near the place you keep your fruit. Observe. The flies go after the fruit in the jar, and have no problems going through the large hole into the cone and then through the small hole into the jar. The other way however, their brain power is insufficient to work out the exit algorithm and they get stuck.
4) Every couple of days or so take the jar outside and release the flies. If you don't, they will have babies inside the jar, and you will notice them crawling around.

No more fruit flies. :)))

Hunger: People entering raw foods discover new meaning of it. It was quite a surprise for me to discover that the feeling of full tummy which we experience after eating cooked foods, contrary to what I believed for many years, is not the sign of being saciated.  Rather, it is the sign of stomach overburdened by hard to digest foods. And, the pain in my stomach, is not the sign of hunger but detox. After eating raw foods for a while, I learned that after eating raw meal, my tummy still feels light, yet I do feel satisfied (and no longer want any food). Hunger is very similar to the feeling of being thirsty, and it can be felt in the throat, rather than in the stomach. With this is associated a gentle desire to eat foods, rather than an intensive urge to eat something right here and now.

In my fourth year of raw I learned that I feel much much better when I eat when I am truly hungry. I realized that I had been overeating in the past. So, I decided to pay attention to this component of my lifestyle. For example, I noticed that I really do not feel hungry until about midday. This tells me that my body does not need any food in the morning.

How do you know when you're no longer hungry when you eat raw? I know that I am no longer hungry when I lose the desire for foods. When food I eat suddenly loses its appeal and does not taste as good as at the start of the meal, it is the sign for me to stop eating.

Over-eating is taxing on the body as much as under-eating, and both can make you feel weak. Calorie calculators are very inaccurate, with the magnitude of error at least 40%, so no need to rely on these. If you are not going hungry all day, then you are not under-eating. If you eat when not hungry, then you are over-eating. No need to starve yourself to lose weight and no need to stuff yourself either, find the balance by listening to your body signals.

"Hunger is a normal, pleasant physiological demand for food that is felt in the mouth and throat as is thirst. Since it is a normal occurrence, it is not accompanied by pain or discomfort."
(http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/when-to-employ-fasting/part-i-when-to-fast.html)

Instincts: The instincts approach applies only to raw foods, without any condiments, herbs or spices, in their mono state. For example, if we are hungry and put some food in our mouth and it tastes unappealing, then we know the body does not want it right now. Only raw mono foods approach applies, because this is the way we evolved to eat and this is the way our senses process information. Cooked, salted food with spices may seem appealing for habitual reasons, but once we ingest it, the effect is not that nice at all, the body does not want those foods and responds by feeling toxic and over the time, ill. This may not seem so apparent in the initial transition to raw, but after some time we develop sensitivity to the signals of the body. As the result, the desires change and then we truly only desire fresh, juicy fruit and vegies.

Juicing: My attitude to juicing, based on my instinctive approach, is that juicing is not optimal. I once did juicing only with the intention of going for longer, but stopped after 2 weeks, when I felt a strong urge to chew. I could feel that my body was very unhappy and was sending me a clear signal about it. I trust my instincts. Juices feel to me fractured, damaged, incomplete foods. This is the nature based explanation, there are of course plenty of intellect based arguments why juicing may not be optimal, but the argument that speaks loudest to me is the voice of my own body.

Listening to the body: A shallow understanding of what it means to listen to the body leads to actually listening to one's habitual patterns and has nothing to do with following the nature. The approach that I take in my path is to listen to the signals of my body in a deep way. This isn't just the mere "do whatever works for you" philosophy. This is an approach that is respectful of nature and is the most healthy way of being with myself. It allows me to thrive in a spontaneous and effortless way. I follow my instincts and thrive as a result.

Q: What do you feel is the most overlooked health practice?
A: Responding to the body's natural instincts
(rather than rigidly following prescribed patterns that completely ignore the real and changing needs of the body in any given moment).

Over-eating: Eating when not truly hungry, a common mistake amongst raw foodists, eventually corrected by most, when they become more sensitive to their body signals. It is a myth that one cannot overeat on raw foods.

" I have never been an advocate for eating when you are not hungry or eating to meet an arbitrary number of calories that you think you may need. If the competitive athlete is hungry, then go ahead and eat, but it's never a good idea to eat beyond what your body is telling you it needs the way most athletes do.  Food in excess is always enervating and will always weigh you down." ( Dave Tener )

"Food addiction is what causes raw fooders to perpetually retain bad habits like making complicated raw recipes, using condiments like vinegar and salt, overeating (defined simply as the act of eating in the absence of true hunger), eating too early in the morning or too late at night, etc. While these practices are fine during transition or even for a couple years, they invariably lead to symptoms because the body will continue to slowly heal on a raw food diet (even though these habits are being indulged), and it will become less tolerant of dietary mistakes." ( Nora Lenz )

Over-exercising: Exercising excessively, ignoring the body need for rest.

"You must differentiate between living with a sole purpose of optimum health and living with an intent to become as fit as possible." ( Dr Doug Graham )

"It is my belief that the "competitive athlete," as I experienced it anyway, is overworked and generally enervated as a result. (..) 6-7 hours of training and physical exertion is abnormal, excessive, and disease producing regardless of who you are, what your diet is, and what type of shape you think you're in. (...) Exercise and physical exertion, like every other aspect of health, becomes pathological in excess." ( Dave Tener )

Plateau: A common phenomenon experienced by raw foodists, a period of stagnation when they seem to experience inability to progress any further for no apparent reason despite following the same patterns that previously had brought some positive changes. Plateau is a sign that we are ready for further improvements in our lifestyle. These improvements may include as examples:

• moving from raw gourmet to simple meals, or from combined meals to mono-eating
• becoming sensitive to true hunger, eating only when hungry and responding to the body signals for fast
• becoming sensitive to all the needs of the body, beyond the dietary, such as the need for rest and the sun
  

Ripe fruit: Eating only ripe fruit/vegies is important not only due to the fact that unripe foods are acidic and can damage the tooth enamel. More importantly, unripe foods cannot provide the nutrition that the ripe ones do. By making a mistake of eating unripe fruit (for example when I bought lower quality, cheaper fruit,  in order to save some money), I learned that eating these type of foods leaves me feeling like starving, and wanting to eat anything at all, even cooked. However, staying raw is effortless when I feed my body well!

Satiation: We know when to stop eating when we feel saciated. When this happens, we no longer feel hunger, because our body has satisfied its needs for nutrients. The associated feeling of saciation has nothing to do with having a full tummy that we experience on cooked. Instead, it is a feeling felt in our throat, not the tummy. Interestingly, I observed that if I have cooked now, I continue to feel the desire for eating no matter how much I've eaten, which does not go until I have something that is actually nutritious. These days, a few pieces of fruit will satisfy me more than a whole pizza. This experience is common amongst these who have been raw for a while and have learned to respond to the signals of satiation, previously ignored. Yes, the moment of realization can be quite funny. Imagine getting stuffed with a pizza and still feeling hungry ha ha! Then, having some fruit and awww, what a relief.... :)

Sickness, disease or detox:   

Q: Can one really never get sick if they stick fully to this diet for a long enough period of time?
A: I think it is useful to distinguish disease from detox, as the word 'sick' can be used to describe both. One can go through detox on raw of course. As far as disease, if one follows a healthy lifestyle, which includes not only the diet but all other aspects of it (plenty of rest for example), then the likelihood of disease is minimized. Whether that likelihood becomes a number zero may be questioned, as beyond our personal lifestyle habits, there exist other factors that may affect us. Nevertheless, the positive effects of these factors that are of our own doing are immense.

Simple eating: After being raw for three years, my dietary patterns spontaneously progressed to a very simple way of eating: a morning meal of one type of sweet fruit; an afternoon meal of one type of sweet fruit; an evening meal in the form of a salad, or young coconuts (blended). I tend to eat like this most of the days, and I am amazed how satisfying it is. Early in my raw journey I would think that this type of eating would leave me feeling hungry. Please note that my eating patterns continue to change, and I may well observe a few changes yet in the future.

Success on raw: The key requirement to success on your raw food journey is your ability to evolve.  One can never be an expert because there is always something to learn and unlearn, and those who call themselves an expert lack the ability to learn beyond what becomes their preconceived set of ideas. The only way you can be successful on raw is when you are open to listening to your body' natural instincts and learning from that. You may not be able to hear all the signals of the body straight away, but if you are open to change, you will learn.

I mentally grasped the concept of true hunger early in my raw journey, but learned to truly follow it a little later. I mentally grasped the following nature approach early in my raw journey, but completely clicked with it a few years later. My openness to learning is what made me evolve. I continue to evolve and I enjoy this spontaneous and effortless journey immensly. So my advice on the topic of success to you is: Listen to your body's natural instincts, be open to change, and enjoy the journey!

Supplements: I do salivate when I am hungry and see a watermelon. I have never salivated at the sight of a pill. This is the reason why supplements are not part of my diet.

Teeth and gums: Oral hygiene on raw food diet is simple. Gently brush and floss, preferably using fluoride-free toothpaste, or best, simply water. I also like rinsing with water and flossing after eating. Eat only ripe foods, as unripe acidic foods can damage the enamel. Water is extremely important to the health of your gums (and not only). I recommend avoiding dehydrated foods. If you do eat them, make sure that you drink plenty of water. But the best source of water are juicy fruit. I recommend a fruit-plentiful raw diet. My teeth and gums have improved dramatically since going raw.

Taste: When hungry, I follow my natural instinct to guide me in choosing suitable raw foods to eat. If something does not appeal to me, I don't eat it. Life of a raw foodist could not be easier. Tapping on the knowledge from within the body is far more effective that any amount of intelectual study.

Transition: I have observed the following different phases in my experience with raw.
Phase I
The intitial short phase (a few weeks), I ate raw foods all day and a cooked dinner in the evening. Doing this helped me to adjust to a new lifestyle, before I started eating raw foods all day.
Phase II
In my first year, I ate more fatty foods, in particular nuts (in the first few months). Also, in my first year I used herbs and spices, including garlic and onion, in order to create various tastes similar to cooked foods that I was used to eating before raw. I used to make saurkraut, and ate grains. Although I liked to eat fruit only mono, my other meals were mainly combined meals (sometimes poorly combined).
Phase III
Gradually, I began to eat more and more fruit, and less and less fats. I spontaneously transitioned to mainly mono eating in my second year, with still some combined meals, but not as complicated as in the first year. I stopped eating grains. I used to eat fruit in the morning, a salad for lunch and dinner, and fruit between.
Phase IV
In my third year, mono eating became my typical way of eating. My diet became mainly fruit-based. I would eat sweet fruit all day and salads in the evening, or sweet fruit all day and young coconuts in the evening.
Phase V
In my fifth year, I experienced a peak of the emergence of emotional issues that were building up over the years. I addressed the needs of my soul and let myself live my life the way I love. This emotional development became far more significant driving force than all the dietary changes I undertook ever before.
Phase VI
In my sixth year, my diet has simplified further. Mono eating is my strong preference, as is sweet juicy fruit. I am happy to eat one type of fruit for days. I experiment with the greens, as I have not made up my mind on these yet.

My diet is still evolving, and I expect some more changes yet. I will report on them as I go. :)

My main transition tips are:
1) Eat raw foods you love.
2) Be open to change.
3) Transition at a pace YOU are comfortable with.

I believe that if you follow these simple rules, your transition will be spontaneous and effortless! I believe that your body has all the wisdom that you need to be healthy and that tapping into that wisdom is absolutely possible.

Variety: This concept has a different meaning in the raw food diet. One does not need to eat a variety of different foods in one meal, or even a day. In fact, mono-eating is the healthiest way of eating and eating mostly one type of fruit for several days is not uncommon. However, it is recommended that you do experiment with different fruit and vegies, including those that you thought you did not like, and try whether they taste good. Be open to changing your patterns and let your senses, rather than your preconceived ideas, guide you in your selection of the foods you eat.

Water: We all know that our body consists mostly of water, which is the often used argument in support of fruit-based raw food diet, which is so rich in water. However, there are more in-depth reasons why water is so important to our health, and why dehydration leads to disease. Water is not merely the component of our body. Water plays the crucial role in the vital processes in our body, without which we could not exist. It has been discovered that the protein literally trap water molecules inside them in order to maintain certain shapes, which in turn allows the protein to perform various key functions, "from fighting off invaders to catalysing reactions and building fresh cells" (1). Furthermore, water molecules play a crucial role in the functioning of DNA. Specifically, they communicate the DNA structure to the protein and affect how the protein bind to DNA (1). Clearly, the level of hydration will affect how these processes work, and this in long-term, our health. Hydrating well is not achieved by drinking excessive amounts of water, or drinking when we are not thirsty. Rather, it is achieved by a diet which is rich in water, and so hydrating. If you feel thirsty after a meal, then this means that whatever you've eaten has had a de-hydrating effect on your body, and hence is less than optimal. I recommend that you try eating hydrating foods instead. Juicy fruit are on top of my list. Salads are great too. I like having a few sips of water early in the morning when I get up and feel thirsty.

(1) Robert Matthews, The quantum elixir, New Scientist, 8 April 2006, pages 32-37