How much can you change in 6 weeks?
Just for fun and some inspiration, I’m bringing this older video back to life!
In 2010 we kidnapped my mom for 6 weeks, here are the results!
Kung-Fu’ing those cravings!
Hey My friends! Are you confronting junk food temptations on your raw path? I’ve been there and it can be a pain in the butt, but there are some ways we can deal with all the tasty, but crappy goodies that surround us!
Wether it’s the baked goodies in the break room at work, the maze of fast food joints we have to drive through, or the sodas and candy at the check out counters of nearly any retail store you hit up (including, twistedly, plus sized clothing outlets!) there are less than ideal eats everywhere we go! At home we’re bombarded by advertisements for pizza and burger joints on tv and many local joints so kindly leave their fliers and magnets in your mailbox. Well here are some strategies that I used to comfortably side step all the junky munchies that abound!
First thing I would do when confronted by a less than ideal option would be to think about why my raw food options rock so much, rather than focusing on why the unhealthy eats suck! This kept the things that I wanted to eat in my mind, leaving lil’ room to think about what I didn’t want to eat! When we waste our time thinking of the negative side of unhealthy eats, it just gives them more air-time on our internal radio and invites our inner rebel to pipe up and defend our former food choices and encourage us to eat them for the sake of being “bad”! So let’s avoid that mental game by thinking of what we want to eat!
Next on the home front I pimped out my kitchen making it a constant reminder of the awesomeness of rawsomeness! Bowls of fresh fruit, a fridge stocked with beautiful greens, my favorite raw and healthy living books decorated a shelf below the food processor and ya remember those pizza place magnets? Well we cut them up and glued them to the back of photos of our favorite raw creations, slapped those on the refrigerator and now we got our own subliminal advertising!
Strawberry Pie with Banana Ice Cream! One of the photos we used for our fridge magnets!
When leaving the house I would be sure to pack some of my favorite raw treats, some fresh fruit and often a chocolate or green smoothie with me. And I always brought more than I thought I would need! This worked out really great because when I would be confronted by something junky, I could fill up on the good stuff and have no room left for cravings! This trick works great for grocery shopping, mall walking and at the movie theatres… I didn’t tell you that! But, seriously, for the price of a medium popcorn and soda you could treat yourself to dinner at a raw restaurant! While I was out I would also scout out places that had healthy options, so that if I forgot to bring my stash, I could pick up something else!
For my work lunches I always put a lot of attention into making them awesome and tasty. because it’s easiest to be raw at home, I would save my awesomest treats for when I would be faced with less than ideal options! Rather than saying things like “Thanks for the cake offer, but I have carrot sticks.” I could say “Thanks for the cake, but I already have some chocolate filled cinnamon rolls!” You should’ve seen the faces when coworkers tried them and realized this is what raw treats can be! I also liked to put a lot of love and positive intentions into my packed lunches because it made me that much more enthused about eating it the next day!
The Chewy Chocolaty Goodness Bars from my Sweet Support E-Book, are a worthy opponent to beat out candy bar cravings!
Lastly, but not leastly, if you find yourself eating something you’d rather not have don’t waste a minute beating yourself up! If you beat yourself up often, you’re going to invite that inner-rebel to pop up again and defend you by bashing your new healthy lifestyle! Rather than beating yourself up, take that time to boost yourself up instead! Some of my favorite raw recipes came from slipping, eating some junky snack, and pondering “How can I make a rawified version of this?”. There’s no need to be hard on yourself, just whip yourself up a green smoothie when ya get home and let the negativity slide!
Keep rockin’ in your healthy living adventures! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Don’t Forget to Add the Love!
All of us getting into healthier eating have probably heard the phrase “You are what you eat.” about a million times by now and it is an important thing to consider, but beyond all the nutrients, phytochemicals, minerals and macronutrients there is something that we should never leave out of our eats… love!
Think about it. Why are you going through the extra work of preparing your own food? Why are you looking for healthier options? Whether it’s for you or your family it all comes back to love! We make our health a priority because we care about ourselves anough to make sure we’re eating the good stuff and we do the same for our family… we can say it’s because a health guru said we should, but the real underlying reason is because we care! We want to enjoy life, feel good and realize our true potential! So we should contemplate that while we rock out our tasty healthy goodies!
When we focus on the loving reasons we prepare our eats we infuse that energy right into our food and I’m not just talking in some intangible new agey kinda way… I’m talking literally! I mean just check into emotions effects on water crystal formation! And we’ve all heard how plants respond to loving intentions! There’s some awesome info out there and it makes sense on so many levels to put that emotion and gratitude into the meals we create for ourselves and our family.
We all know that a sweater woven by us for someone who cares for us always feels warmer, produce grown by farmers who are passionate about their work always tastes best, and Mom and Grandma’s food always makes us feel good because it was made with love! We can create that same effect by pausing, taking a deep breath and remembering all the loving reasons we’re concocting our own foods. When we do that we enjoy the whole process so much more and we end up with a creation that contains that special ingredient!
Here’s a Vid I did for the Geeked Fu Challenge about adding that special ingredient!
Prep techniques that ease your raw transition!
Hey everyone! Back again with more strategies for making your raw transition easy, comfortable and fun!
If you’ve read my article about Enzymes and my page on Why Raw, then you know that one of the most awesome benefits about raw foods is that they ease the burden on our digestive system and our enzyme pool. By making life easier for our digestive system we increase the amount of energy our body has to do other things from healing to having fun!
This is awesome, but for a lot of us our body may need a lil’ help getting back in shape for breaking down fiberous eats after years of cooked food. Have you noticed that you or people you know have that experience when they jump on the healthy eating bandwagon and hit the salads hardcore that they can often feel bloated, gassy and just blah and you’ll usually hear them say things like “Health food just doesn’t agree with me.” ?….Well they’re partially right. Their bodies certainly want those healthy eats, but they may be suffering from a lack of Hydrochloric acids and healthy sodiums that our body uses to break down the tough fibers in some raw foods…especially greens!
This lil’ issue can often discourage many from following through with adding more fresh foods to their life, so I want to share what this is all about and some of the foods that can get your tummy pumped up for breaking down some raw goodness!
1~ Blending! One of my favorites! This easy raw food prep technique turns tough raw foods (such as greens) into tasty and outrageously healthy green smoothies, blended soups, and tasty dessert smoothies. Blending makes the texture of some foods more palatable and allows your body to access nutrients that may have taken quite a while to chew out of the. Blended food also gives your body chance to gradually increase it’s stores of digestive acids as it practices on these lightweight pre-broken down goodies! I found this particualarly true when I began drinking green smoothies on a regular basis. Prior to rockin’ the green smoothies, I maybe ate salad once a week as part of my raw transitional diet (and certainly didn’t crave it!) , but after about a month of drinking about 32oz of green smoothie a day, I found myself eating the greens out of the colander before I could even get them in the blender! I was originally bewildered by the claims of long term raw foodies that they adored greens, but I now find myself with the same “affliction”! I want to note here that my first batches of green smoothies had much more fruit then greens, but the number of greens quickly went up! The point is..start with what feels right to you! This way you’ll be more likely to want to follow through with your raw adventure!
Soaking nuts and seeds~ Many nuts and seeds (with the exception of hemp seeds) contain enzyme inhibitors to prevent premature sprouting in their natural habitat and potentially to prevent animals from fully digesting them (in hopes that they will later be deposited elsewhere ..complete with free fertilizer!). These enzyme inhibitors can also make them not so easy on our stomachs. Amanda and myself experienced a bad case of bloating after preparing a raw nut based pate recipe we seen online that used unsoaked nuts….from then on we started soaking our nuts! I have recomended soak times for nuts and seeds in my ebook “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” but, I’ll break down a bit of the basics here. Nuts with a lot of tannic acid and taste a bit bitter such as almonds, walnuts and pecans should be soaked for about 6-12 hours and then rinsed off before using and seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower can be soaked as lil’ as 2-6 hours. This will leave your raw nuts and seeds more biologically active, cleaner, easier to digest and tastier!
3~ Marinating…oh yes! I loooove marinated veggies! Using salty or acidic marinades we can create numerous tasty dishes, such as softened veggies for wraps, mock stir fries, and raw dishes that have that same wonderful texture as if they’ve been cooked! This not only makes them more tasty, but waaay more digestible! I like to shred carrots with a julienne peeler and toss them with a lil’ salt and garlic powder, allow them to soften, and toss this tasty shredded carrot filling in a romaine leaf wrap and dip ‘em in a mock peanut sauce! Shredding and massaging tough greens such as kale with lemon juice and a lil’ salt can transform it inton a delicious salad base! You’d be surprised at how many veggies that were tough to eat raw and un-prepped can easily become something that’ll have you lookin’ forward to your raw dinner!
4~ Lastly, but not leastly… juicing! I saved juicing for last as it’s pretty much a no-brainer. Juices are a super digestible and totally easy way to give your body a blast of nutrients, phytochemicals and minerals. Depending on your juicer and or juicing technique, the finished drinks will have lil’ or no fiber and your body has lil’ or no work digesting it. This is awesome, but I would highly reccomend that you are bringing in fiber in a blended form (especially green smoothies!) as these pre-broken down fibers are needed to carry out the toxins and wastes that your body is going to be releasing as it uses those awesome raw goodies to do some house cleaning!
So rememember if some raw foods don’t seem to agree with you, then consider these prep techniques to allow your body the training time it needs to work up to it’s full digestive strength! As a bonus these prep techniques also make the nutrients in your awesome raw eats more absorbable…so you get more out of your food! There’ll be more to come about particular raw foods that help the transitioning process be super smooth…so see ya then! :0)
Gettin’ Geeked Up by being thankful! :0)
Hello lovely people! SO many people are always commenting on my ree-gosh~dang-diculously upbeat personality….I’ve heard it all before from…”Man, did you just win the lottery?” …or “What the heck have you been smokin’?” Well for the serious inquiries here’s one of the things that has me smiling very often…
Being thankful….seems like a simple enough thing…and often reserved for “Turkey Day”, but just contemplating all the lil’ things in my life that I’m grateful for totally shifts my perception right to where I want it…on the good stuff! This lil’ trick has been with me since waaaay back in pre-raw days and it always brings a smile to my face. No matter where I was at in life I could always find things to be thankful for…and the more I focused on them…the more grateful I became and it’s an awesome feeling! Not only does contemplating things you’re thankful for make you feel good, but if you’re thinking about people you’re thankful for then who knows…maybe you’ll reach out, let them know and pay the thankfulness forward!
As raw foodies nowadays we have a butt-ton of things to be thankful for! There are so many awesome free resources available online to get you started on the journey, loads of recipe demos, awesome raw communities, meet-up groups and an ever growing community of raw and raw-curious individuals! Suppliers of raw food staples and raw treats are abounding and the ever increasing demand is bringing the prices down! All the peeps with a new-found love of organic produce are supporting the sustainable farmers that are working to keep the world a beatiful place! Raw resteraunts, cafes and pre-packaged raw foods are popping up everywhere! And the stories of raw transformations are becoming more and more common! So if you’re gettin’ raw or just adding more raw eats to your diet….you have a lot of awesome things to be thankful for!
Have a grateful day! :0)
Raw Transitioning Tips!
Hello! I’ve been contemplating my beginings with raw foods and some of the awesome transitioning techniques and foods that made it an easy (and exploding-bowel-less) journey!
We’ve all heard detoxification horror stories….I won’t get into any of the graphic details…especially about the alien parasites that often burst from the buttocks of those attempting to clean up their diet. Haha! Just kidding on that last one….mostly. :0)
This was a concern of mine when I first heard about raw foods and it gave me a brief pause moment…as I didn’t like the idea of going through a brutal detoxification period where I’d be feeling lousy, dealing with headaches and making frequent bathroom runs. Especially not wanting to miss work or put off other responsibilities to deal with the consequences of hardcore cleansing. Luckily these thoughts only briefly paused me, but some people may be put off to the idea of raw living after hearing some tales of transitioning woes….that’s why I want to share some of the philosphy, strategy and foods that helped me ease comfortably into gettin’ raw!
Upon hearing of the effects of hardcore detoxing I thought….I think I’ll take the slow aproach and ease into raw eating. This worked out for me multifold!
1~ By starting off with a modest 50% goal I wasn’t pushing myself far out of my comfort zone and this allowed me to play around with raw foods and develop my own simple and tasty recipes, source local ingredients, and get into the groove of raw food prep, planning and whipping up stuff on the fly!
2~ I kept myself out of the cycle of the “all or nothing” effect where if you screw up…you have nothing to fall back on and no incentive to go forward. My aproach of easing into it and enjoying each positive step along the way has helped me towards many goals I’ve had in life and it lends itself particularly well to such things as a big dietary shift to eating an all raw diet!
3~ By easing into the raw foods lifestyle I allowed my body to gradually adjust to all the many changes that it would entail! And by changes I do mean good changes! Too many good changes all at once can be a bit jarring though …especially to the bowels for many people.. so I wanted to reduce that as much as possible…for social and convenience reasons as well as to be kind to my body.
It's an adventure...not a race!
I would say to someone aproaching the raw lifestyle that feels like they’re being pushed to go 100% off the bat that it isn’t a race…it’s an adventure! We are playing around with a whole “new” aproach to eating! Collectively as people we’ve been living off of mostly cooked or processed foods for who knows how long…and going over to eating foods in their more natural state is accessing nutrients, enzymes and properly structured food that is often lost in processing and the results can often be amazing! There is no need to rush it…especially if the rushing is causing stress and discomfort that can lead you to giving up the whole dream of the changes that you may experience!
So first of all if this aproach is doable for you….I encourage you to take your time! It worked very well for me and I had almost no detox side effects! A lil’ gas and an extra bathroom trip a day…and by trip I mean leisurely stroll…not knockin’ lil’ old ladies out of the way to get into the Women’s Room because the Men’s stall was taken! *LOL*
If you’ve gotten to know me by now…you’ll know I am waaaaaay to immature to pass up on all the potential bathroom humor! :0P
Much love everyone and more to come! I will be sharing more strategies in an upcoming post and many of these tips and more can also be found in my E-Book “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” :0)
Rockin’ Geeked Fu!
Hey everyone! If you’ve been diggin’ my youtube videos and have an interest in enjoying more tasty raw foods and their awesome benefits, then I suggest you check out what I’ve been up to at Raw Fu….don’t know about Raw Fu?? Well Raw Fu is an awesome online community led by the wonderful Bunny Berry! The site is a great place to connect with others who are getting (or haven been) into eating more raw and living foods! Bunny guides the members of the site through challenges that range from 30 on up to 100 days. These challenges are aimed at various aspects of raw living and are designed so that anyone can get involved and benefit wether they want to go high raw or just get some more salads or green smoothies into their weekly diet. The atmosphere of the group is very welcoming and supportive and I’ve had an awesome time being a member of the community and being a part of Raw Fu’s Vlog Posse….but, now Bunny has asked me to take it to another level and lead a challenge!
This is an awesome oppurtunity for me to share my aproach to raw living and some of the philosophy that guided me through my raw transformation and that is…to focus on the funness of it all! Many of the influences and inspiration that lead me to wanna eat raw were all about how neat it is to actually enjoy eating healthy, what sort of things could I accomplish with the changes that could come from this change in diet?…what changes could happen? How can I make awesome dishes without cooking them? These thoughts amongst many others (which I will share through upcoming videos on the Fu!), are my own personal inspirations and aspirations that made transitioning to eating raw such a comfortable and fun adventure!
Taking this into consideration…the theme of my challenge is gettin’ geeked up…geeked up about raw foods, their benefits, about changes that may be possible, about benefits that many are having, and other fun things you can play around with that may improve your life and health…and heck..just gettin’ geeked up about LIFE! So since I get to name my challenge I’m calling it Geeked Fu! And how long is this challenge going to be going on for? Well I could’vwe said hey I’ll just knock out a quick 30day challenge (what with us all going on the road and what not) , but I couldn’t pass up the chance to rock it out with Geeked Fu for anything less than 100 days….so if you’re there…you’re stuck with me! The whole experience with Gettin’ Raw for me has been fun and exciting and I wanna spread that vibe to all my friends and all the new members of Raw Fu! If you’re not a member yet then get there and get Geeked Up!!
Here are some of the first weeks vids to catch you up …….
The big 3-0!
Hey everyone! Long time no see! Things have been goin’ good and goin’ full steam since the big move here to CT! It’s been a transition for me and my family but, a very cool one. Lotsa fun stuff to catch you all up on, ain’t that the way it goes? When you have a whole buncha stuff to write about …you don’t seem to have the time to sit down (get in writing mode) and write about it! More of this jabbering to come but, first I wanna get it out there that this Friday April 24th I’m reaching the 3 decade mark! :0)
Check out more of my antics at www.RawFu.com !
Now if you asked me what I thought about turning 30 back when I was around 20 I’d probably have been like “blah” or worse, but after all the changes I’ve went through since gettin’ with the raw-foods and exercising I’m actually looking forward to it! Heck I feel waaaaay better now than I did back then! Besides the weight loss (which was a big change!) I have so much more energy, less aches, pains and stuffiness, and I rarely get sick! It’s been an interesting and sometimes challenging journey to where I’m at now, but it was always fun (as any raw-food journey should be. Keep it fun and you’ll keep with it!). If you want to check out why I went raw, here’s a link to an older post. I’m lookin’ forward to seeing where I’ll go from here and sharing some of my adventures, misadventures and things I learn along the way with everyone in hopes that it’ll inspire others to give this tao of munching a chance and seeing where it leads them!
This was me at 20 years old
This is me at 30!
Who says getting older has to be a bad thing?
I’ve got a lot of other stuff to report and catch everyone up on, but until then I’ll leave ya this fun lil’ video showing some of the cool synchronicities that have been popping up since I’ve landed in CT. What we’re the odds of running into Phil and Shazzie at the same time? I don’t know but, it was a lotta fun! They both have an awesome energy about them and it was kick-@$$ shootin’ the breeze and hangin’ at the cafe.
Peace everyone and keep it rawkin’! :0)
Health for the sake of health?
A lot of people get caught up in the idea of healthy living and the how’s but, sometimes lose sight of the why’s! Why you choose to maintain and improve your health is just as important as how you do it. Your reasons for taking a healthier path are what’s gonna keep you goin’ when you get frustrated by some of the challenges along the way. There are numerous logical, personal, emotional and spiritual reasons for changing eating and excercise habits, the ones that matter are the ones that matter to you.
I want to take a moment to share some of the reasons that I got so geeked up about gettin’ into raw-foods and improving my health.
More energy!! ~ The coolest thing I’ve heard and read (before experiencing for myself) about raw-foods is the increased energy that comes from eating an easy to digest enzyme loaded diet! I wanted to be eating “rocket fuel” so I would have the energy to do fun stuff!! I used to try and do it with caffeine and sugar but, realized this wasn’t the way to go for long lasting and healthy energy.
Weight-loss! ~ I wanted to get in good shape and drop some excess weight to look good and feel good! I also was daydreaming of gettin’ into some activities that I’d either gotten out of shape to do such as martial arts, skateboarding, hacky-sacking, hiking, yoga, and maybe some of this stuff someday in the future….
Haha! That would be freakin’ awesome!
Avoid getting sick! ~ Being sick is just plain sucky! No fun in that. I wanted to reduce the number of times and the duration of time I’d get sick so I could avoid missing work, being forced to spend my time in bed or being groggy and not feeling up to having a good time. Plus I had suspected (and later found to be true) was that much of my “sickness” was actually either a direct or inderect symptom of wheat and dairy allergies! I realized doin’ the raw-vegan thing was one way to cut those factors out!
And last but, not least~
Avoiding major illnesses later in life~ I know that a lot of the chronic diseases that are plaguing people can be traced back to what they eat. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporisis and many others can be caused by our diet and/or the lack of nutrition in it. I hear stories all the time of people who are being bankrupted by their medical expenses, bailed on by their insurance companies (check out the movie “Sicko“ for many people’s real life acounts of this), or are just miserable and disabled for a good bit of their later years. I didn’t want to live like that or be a burden on my family financially so I decided to take my health in my own hands by eating healthy!
Other motivation came for me in the positive effects goin’ raw-vegan would have on the world! A vegan diet alone can reduce one’s carbon footprint immensely, conserve water and land as well as spare a lot of the animal cruelty going on in our modern factory farming practices (check out the video and book ’Diet for a new America’ by John Robbins for more info). Goin’ raw-vegan adds the benefits of waaaay less food packaging waste, less energy in preparation, and more self-sufficiency in the form of easily being able to grow a lot of your own food in your own backyard!! (which I cannot wait to begin doing when we settle on our own patch of land ….oh yeah!!)
So those were my personal reasons ..the “whys” of working to improve my health, and they keep me goin’. When the “hows” would get annoying I would daydream of my reasons and I kept on trekking! I’ve come to realize so many of the benefits of my raw-foods diet which I’m so grateful for and I may not have gotten here without those daydreams!
What are your personal reasons for taking on a healthier road in lifes highway? Think of them, write them down, keep a lil’ note-card with them on you as a reminder if you like (a trick I learned from listening to a speech from Victoria Boutenko), and most importantly of all daydream! If you’d like please feel free to share your reasons in the comments section of this post!
Rock on everyone and happy dreams!! :0D
What started all of this?
Why I went raw and why I share it with you
Hi my name is Rory and I’m a smoothie junkie…well that’s only part of who I am but it feels good to get that off my chest! I’ve had a passion for nature and our relationship to it ever since I was lil’. The world around us: bugs, organic gardening, sustainable living and organic farming, these passions still stick with me (hence the mantis on my elbow). Through it all one thing always seemed to stick out …FOOOOOD! I loved learning about, growing, and preparing delicious food – the healthier the better, without sacrificing taste! Don’t get me wrong I ate my share of junk food, heck I ate your share too. But I was constantly leaning toward creating healthier alternatives to that yummy junk!
This lead me to eventually reduce and give up red meat, then give up all meat! I went on that way for about 4 years until I started to learn of raw-food … food that wasn’t cooked at all? I liked to bake, and stir fry and simmer and sauté! Wasn’t that necessary to make great food? That’s what I thought until I had my first taste of raw cuisine at the Loving Life Café. We went there on my wife’s B-day and I ordered the raw-walnut and mushroom tacos. WOW!!! You can do this without heat? I realized that yeah you can! You can have all the nutrient content of the whole foods, the unchanged molecular structure of the food (that’s often corrupted by cooking) and all the vital active enzymes in a meal that was satisfying and amazing! Well I had wanted to get into some sort of culinary practice all throughout my life but, it was foreshadowed by my interests in organic farming because I felt that would have far more of a positive impact on the world. Now with the knowledge of raw-food’s impact on personal health as well as it’s environmentally friendly perks I realized this is where I wanna be! Not to mention that eating this way and inspiring other people to give this tao of munching a try will also lead more people to support their local organic farmers! Because that’s where the freshest most delicious produce comes from – there and your own home garden, which for optimum health and taste should be done organically…wow it seems to have all come full circle ..all my passions linked to something as simple and profound as ..food! I hope to share my passion with you and my ideas so that you can try out some yummy recipes, make a positive impact on yourself and the world and have a lot of fun experimenting and playing with your food! Peace!
