My body is rejecting greens!

[agumble]

For about the past week now, every time I've had a salad or green smoothie I've felt completely exhausted and had really painful indigestion. For some reason, by body doesn't just seem to want greens right now. The sad part is that it took me a whole week for it to click to just listen to my body. I've had this preconceived notion in my head that I should eat a salad every day to have optimum health, but if that's not what my body wants (which it obviously didn't), then I'm just doing more harm than good. It's amazing how strong are beliefs can be and hard it can be to overcome them. I thought that after being raw for almost a year now that I would know exactly what, when, and how much to eat, but boy was I wrong. This is a continuous learning process that never ends. I finally got smart today and decided to actually listen to my body and I just ate fruit and some of Alissa's recipes. I've finally gotten through a day without indigestion and I don't feel tired now! I'm sure I'll eventually start craving greens again, but for now, it's on to other delicious raw foods!

[Crazy Healer Lady]

Hello!!
Sometimes your body needs a break from certain things. Always listen to your body

However, please look at how well the greens are being chewed/blended. You don't want any bits of green floating. Because greens have so much cellulose, they need to be broken down very well, or else they will cause indigestion. There is a good part of this: They force us to use our jaw muscles far past until we think it is redundant!! which is good for our overall oral health.

Try this. Make sure you are using a high-speed blender to blend your smoothies, and take a look every once in a while when chewing your salad to see how well you're doing at chewing. Remember, you want them AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE.

Also, look into what you're making your smoothies with. Are you mixing veggies with greens? Sometimes this can slow down digestion, which allows the greens and/or fruit to ferment, and this will cause idigestion and gas. Are you mixing in anything with a high amount of protein? Try changing your ingredients, including the greens for a while, if necessary.

[TaupeRawMan]

Hi Agumble -

I recently read in Conscious Living by Gabriel Cousens that vatas (Ayurvedic type) can have difficulty with greens.

[MrGreenJeans]

I think it was Anne Wigmore who stated that one should *gradually* go from a meat based diet to a greens diet because if you do it suddenly the body might reject the greens.

[Vaclare79]

You should try just 1 green at a time in a smoothie..

[Veganforlife]

I agree. Try 1 green in a smoothie. Work your way up...but you should incorporate greens. Maybe some of Alissa's Green Food Powder?

[agumble]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I just want to clarify though that I'm not planning on cutting greens out forever. This is the first time in eight months of raw that my body hasn't wanted them. Most of the time I go crazy if I can't have at least one big salad for the day. I'm just not even craving them right now though. The great part is that with raw, I know that even if I'm not eating greens, everything that I do eat is still good for me. Raw gives us that freedom to have banana cream pie three times a day or to have ice cream for breakfast if that's what our body wants. And once my body starts craving greens again, I'll be in my kitchen tossing up a salad!

[rawstrength]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I just want to clarify though that I'm not planning on cutting greens out forever. This is the first time in eight months of raw that my body hasn't wanted them. Most of the time I go crazy if I can't have at least one big salad for the day. I'm just not even craving them right now though. The great part is that with raw, I know that even if I'm not eating greens, everything that I do eat is still good for me. Raw gives us that freedom to have banana cream pie three times a day or to have ice cream for breakfast if that's what our body wants. And once my body starts craving greens again, I'll be in my kitchen tossing up a salad!

Good for you :) ! Be your own raw food guru.