Former omnivores?

[Queenie]

Hi - it seems like most of the people posting here have been vegan or veg for a long time. I've been veg on and off for a good number of years but I just don't have the best impulse control (call it a touch of ADD) and have frequently slid back into meat eating. Before I went raw I was eating everything except dairy. Therefore I am wondering if anyone else has been in this situation of going from omnivore to raw vegan. It seems like we might face additional challenges? For example, I've been very gassy, and until today, somewhat constipated. Thank Goddess for today, and for soaked flax seeds!

I've always hated killing and can't even kill ants or flies without a sting of conscience, and I've avoided any cosmetics with animal testing for like, forever, but over the years I've been undisciplined about eating flesh. So vegan raw is a bit of a change for me! I've been raw about 2 months and my rescued kitten is raw also (though carnivore, of course).

Strangely, my current biggest challenge is bread. I love bagels and french bread. And coffee.

I also love this website and the people on it!

Love, Queenie
snarfetta@hotmail.com

[michaeljames]

in my experience it has been more of a process. standard american diet, to mostly vegan, to strictly vegan, to raw vegan. and it took about 4 years for me to go from mostly vegan to strictly vegan.

i would believe that you should listen to your body to let you know when to make the transition. we are all different. some people can snap their fingers and say i'm not eating cooked food anymore and have the will power to make that radical change. for others it takes years of refining what works for our bodies.

good luck. you can do it. take it slow.

[deedub]

I went directly form eating any and everything; meat, processed food, fast food,etc. to a raw vegan diet. Two months before that happened I nearly bite someones head off for suggesting I be vegetarian. I have been blessed because the premise for raw food just rang so true to my heart that I could not deny it. I must add that I did have awareness about organic food and shopped at whole foods alot in my past. This did not keep me out of the drive-thru. I still struggle with the drive-thru habit. (I have been 100% raw for 6 months.) Not that I do it, but there are many times I have not allowed myself to leave the house for fear of going to a drive-thru.

All that to say that it is possible to go from SAD to RAW and I believe that is what the 30 day challange is all about. Because once I ate this way 100% for 30 days no one had to tell me this lifestyle is good for me, I KNEW. Alissa's book, DVD and this site are a great resource.

[Queenie]

Hi again - I was a moderate omnivore - I chose organic meat and dairy when I ate it and then didn't eat it often, and I never ate fast food and rarely ate junk. I've been eating organic everything for years. But things like fried foods - I loved fried anything! Organic potatoes fried in Organic butter and oil are still FRIED POTATOES!!! LOL~ And as it turns out, fried (heated) oil is about the worst thing for you. So I pretty much made a sudden change, too, though not quite so extreme as DeeDub's. Your "conversion" sounds amazing! I started reading about the raw life and it also made so much sense to me on every level. I went about 50% for a long time and then started getting stomach pains - an ulcer starting - so I switched to cabbage salad and greens and voila! Mostly raw! I still struggle a little but soon I want to do the Master Cleanse and the 30-Day challenge.

It's weird how guilty I feel when I indulge in a bagel or something but it's so silly, considering where I came from before.

Thanks for the answers and the understanding. Cheli (Queenie, Mother of the Fuzzy Monsters... yes... carnivores...)

[ReneeSC]

I agree with Michael - it takes years for many people.

But, when it came to getting -raw-, I did about what Deedub did... BAM!

It wasn't easy. I came off of refined sugar, cooked breads, all meat, all processed food - at one time. Totally freaked me out, but I was prepared for it, so I knew it was coming. When I finally came out of that fire, I hit new levels of cravings which I determined were all in my mind and heart; and pretty much had no root inside of me chemically ( unless they were coming from "retracing".. which is a belief that when you're craving things, your body is ridding itself of it..and you FEEL like you need it again ). Whatever the cause, they hit alright!

You just have to work through them one at a time if you have to. I grew up on bagels and coffee/lox and cream cheese since I was a small child. This was not an easy thing for me to give up emotionally. I finally broke down and had one - just to shut myself up. Nothing sparkly happened. My body hated it, though. After I decided to cleanse again, I hit another level of detox that I'd only heard of. Many call them "healing events".

I had one last week: Severe flu-like symptoms, but I didn't have the flu. LOL Wow.. that was a sensation unlike any other. I find it interesting that these "healing events" come as I've DEFINITELY decided in my being that I'm NOT going to do __________ ( insert whatever ) anymore. I think it has a great deal to do with emotionally releasing things.

Our lives aren't _less_ because of what we don't eat anymore. We've so engrained ourselves, along with society's help, that if we don't have a great time with ourselves and other eating all myriads of cooked items that we are less of a person than they.. and therefore are curmudeons and party-poopers who blithely turn their nose up and mainstream because we're so convinced we're better.

It isn't that we feel we're better - it's because we FEEL BETTER!

One day at a time.. just one day at a time....

[Ariannah]

I was vegan/vegetarian for many years and then 3 years ago, oddly went into some low-carbish type diet (with mostly salads, chicken, fin/scale fish, but kept slipping into chocolate addiction and desperately missed my fruit). I longed to get back into veg, because the low carb diet felt so weird and totally against how I feel about meat (ugh), although eating so many salads made me feel better, so started just eating boiled eggs with veggies, mostly greens, salads. I then started doing a search on enzymes for my daughter's sake, and realized that I was mostly raw anyway, and I was seeing benefits. At last, I could eat my fruits too! Ditching the egg was easy.

I plunged into it 100% in the middle of June, and stayed 100% ever since with a few isolated cooked incidents. The August date below is the day ~after~ my last cooked bite - being 100%, and have not had anything cooked since.

I found it easy to "plunge in", and found that hanging on to "one or two cooked things" was defeating the benefits. So now I'm in it for life.

[rawberri]

I agree with what michaeljames said about everyone being different and finding the best way to get into raw. For me, I'm an all-or-nothing person--it would have driven me up a wall to go through several months of eliminating undesirable food groups till I finally ended up raw vegan. So, I made up my mind that this diet is what I REALLY wanted for myself, and I quit my SAD junk food, drive-thru, candy bar diet overnight. I'm only in my third week of 100% raw food, but I also found that doing a 2 week juice fast prior to the food really helped me kick start this lifestyle. I got the willpower thing under control from the fast, so now I really feel JOY eating raw vegan, and have no regrets about the cooked food I'm not eating.

[Queenie]

Hi everyone - thanks again. Renee, just read your detox story on another thread and it sounds horrific! And above, the thing about bagels. I have to say, I still drink an occasional cup of coffee (2-3 a week) and I can't seem to resist good bread / bagels (averaging one a week) when they are in front of me. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have too much of a problem. Even Indian food. I crave it, but I'd have to go out of my way to get near it! Whereas bread and coffee are everywhere!

I feel I've made a lot of progress but like RawBerri I am a bit of an all-or-nothing and I feel horribly betrayed when I give in to the bread thing.

Has anyone found that after being about 95% raw and going 100% that the detox got Real Serious??? I am not afraid of it, but I'm wondering...

Also - is it really that bad to eat an occasional cooked item?? Won't your body, once it is clean, pretty much eliminate it? Just playing the devil's advocate... what if I start dating a non-raw and he wants to go to a French restaurant for dinner???? !!!! Oy vay!!!!

[NoGMO!]

[QUOTE=michaeljames]we are all different. some people can snap their fingers and say i'm not eating cooked food anymore and have the will power to make that radical change. for others it takes years of refining what works for our bodies. QUOTE]

exactly! :)

[ReneeSC]

Don't be afraid of the unknown. Just prepare yourself for it. We really don't know what will happen when you do reach 100%, so don't put more stress on yourself wondering about it.

Yes, mine was difficult for more reasons than one. That's _my_ story. I HAD to go through this to get where I am now, and where I am now is so much better than where I was, that the difficulties of these past 7 weeks aren't at all at the forefront of my conscious mind ( except when I get a flare up ).


I knew it was coming; I'd been duely warned by several sources. I just didn't _care_. I knew what was on the other side was MUCHO-BETTERO.. and I was just going to get through it. I was already sick - what's a bit of all of those symptoms going to do to me? Kill me? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
Staying the way I was sure was looking that way.

Don't sweat the small stuff. They'll all eventually all go away! 0R.. you could be one of the many fortunate ones and not have many "Hertz" effects at all! Wouldn't that be nice? LOL OH YEAH!

I just know that when things like what I've described revisit me or new ones show up that I'm HEALING. Not one of those symptoms have stayed long! Not one! ( very gratefull ).

About the bread: Yeah, I can totally sympathize with you. I had a very large true carbohydrate addiction due to blood sugar problems on August 31. September 1, I cut the cord. ( except that one that I allowed in to test the theory... everyone else was right! ).
Because I was already sick with a blood sugar problem/addiction, my symtoms of detox were tough for the first few days. After that, it was chemical detox and the righting of my endocrine responses by using different combinations of food.
If you're finding the only problem you're having with the cooked bread sources is emotional memories, then you should find it pretty easy to bring dehydrated breads along with you - or some small amounts of fats to take your mind off of the cooked.

I will speak to myself ( in my mind) about these sorts of cravings; reminding myself that.. a) bagels are extremely high in simple carbohydrates, and therefore are a poison to me as a diabetic. b) you just don't know what they've put in that flour, what chemicals are in there, and who handled them before you found them. c) Cream cheese comes from cows, and industry cows are contaminated - it doesn't matter it's been pastuerized. d) Everyone here would kill me!

J/K on D LOL They'd only thumbs down me ( in a loving, yet supportive sort of accountability way.... ) .. I would be the one kicking me!

As for caffeine - I can't tolerate it anymore! Praise God! ( yah!!!!)

Do you think you could wean yourself down to decaf - nothing in it - then off totally? Maybe an herbal tea replacement ( non-caffienated ) for a while if you're still stressed?

You have that option or cold cucumber. I chose no. 1. :)

[Queenie]

Renee, you rock. Well, I actually don't need the caffiene and I can get what little I might "need" from green tea anyway. Coffee just tastes so good to me sometimes. It's like that last little bit that just doesn't want to go. The worst part is that I can't drink it without a little half-and-half, so though I'm off dairy otherwise there is that little bit. It's hard when you're trying to be balanced! I mean, the all-raw diet is so extreme. I vacillate between feeling like 100% is too much to ask in our society, and thinking that if I don't go 100% I'll be at some kind of risk of never really getting detoxed! HA ha!!

Oh, I'm just being wishy washy! Thanks everyone for your input. I want to do that 100% challenge soon. When I have been off coffee for a few weeks I'll do it, since coffee is my biggest stumbling block. I know I need to be 100% raw, my Sources have made that very clear. I really don't have any excuse except my polluted taste buds!!

Unfortunately I work in a place where there is often free food, and it takes a lot more discipline than I have naturally to avoid it. I have been almost literally sitting on my hands. I wish I could get to the point where it doesn't appeal to me at all. Pizza totally makes my mouth water. Sigh...

[livenraw]

Well, I was never fully vegetarian or vegan until this year. But I never ate a lot of meat, either (until I started doing low carb) But meat never really appealed to me all that much. When I used to go to Subway, I'd get their veggie delite sandwiches (and I wasn't vegetarian) just because I wasn't a big meat eater. Never have been.

But after doing some research, I decided to try to become vegetarian at the top of the year. Needless to say, I struggled on and off with it for awhile and then I started researching dairy. My dh is an all or nothing guy and once he read about dairy being unhealthy, he jumped on the bandwagon and gave it all up for good. Me, on the other hand, I'm a researcher and an experiementer. Does it really work? I have to prove it to myself, so I gave it up,too, for awhile and then spent a few days eating stuff with dairy in it. I almost don't need to say what happened as every one should know - I got sick. So I stopped eating dairy but meat was still difficult to do away with.

So I went a few months without it (while doing high raw) and then I ate it again...and one night, I just all out made the final decision that I would NEVER touch meat again for as long as I lived. And I haven't since. (nor dairy) The last time I ate meat, it tasted 'dead' to me. And there's a reason for that.

Now I know a lot of people are raw vegan/vegan because of the cruelty to animals, etc. I've never really thought about that one way or the other (I like animals but don't have 25 cats and dogs running around the house or anything) but I do it more for health reasons above anything else.

So you're looking at someone who spent the majority of her life eating meat - but not as much as other people - becoming vegan only this year.

[Queenie]

Hi LivinRaw...

You know, I am a researcher/experimenter also. I want to be totally sold out but I'm like this with religion too.... well, this part works but that part doesn't... I like Tibetan Buddhism but I don't agree that the only non -incarnated state is the bardo... that's ridiculous... Or with Christianity, how they always tell you that you only have one life. Puhleeze.

It's sort of the same thing with the raw lifestyle. It's like, as long as I'm mostly raw, it's not going to toxify me beyond repair if I eat an occasional cooked something or other. I want to be 100% raw and I always tried to eat organic free range everything even when I wasn't, but sometimes I think being 100% anything is too complicated and extreme, then I feel guilty if I slip, and I don't need guilt! talk abut TOXIC! Maybe it's like MichaelJames says. Only he said it so much more succinctly than I!! LOL!

I vacillate too much. I'm not sure that's bad, but it's a tendency I have. On one hand, on the other hand...