Step 1 – Start Simple
Set yourself up for success – small goals are more easily achieved
Add fruit smoothies to your diet (see below for Karen Knowler’s guide to setting up your own smoothie bar in your kitchen)
Replace hot drinks, caffeine, alcohol with filtered tap water, unflavoured bottled water and smoothies
Eat fruit first – fruit digests faster than other foods so eat it first to prevent indigestion. The old idea was to eat a savoury meal then a fruit dessert but fruit sits on top of the slow digesting food and starts to ferment, causing gas / indigestion. So eat fruit first and it will start digesting straight away
Replace sugary snacks with fruit, carrot sticks, tomatoes, coconut, nuts. Bananas are an excellent snack, have their own packaging, easy to peel, full of nutrients and are calorie dense so give you a real burst of energy and the potassium in them calms the mind and helps to fight off cravings (see Nutrition page)
Substitute more and more cooked meals with huge salads or fruit salads
Add spinach to your smoothies or try green smoothies to gain more iron and much needed nutrients (see Nutrition page)
Grow some fruit or vegetables in your garden, greenhouse, windowsill or in pots on your decking or fire escape. Foods start losing their nutrients from the moment they are picked so eat it while it is still living. Try lettuces, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, spinach, herbs.
Look at easy recipes that use simple equipment. For example use a simple vegetable peeler to make courgette pasta, carrot and beetroot strips for salads. Marinaded mushrooms are easy to make, sliced portobello mushrooms marinaded in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, drain and serve with salad. Check out Jennifer Cornbleet’s marinara sauce for topping courgette pasta (see Links page)
Replace non healthy oil with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, preferably cold pressed so it is not heated in the extraction process
Step 2 – Decide to go raw!
Set a date and time scale – I started with January 1st, trying raw for one month
Clear out old foods. The best way to avoid temptation is to give away your sugary snacks and frozen ready meals
Clear a cupboard for your new fruit stash
Prioritise kitchen utensils, pots and pans to the back, plastic boxes and salad spinner to the front.
Acquire essential equipment:-
smoothie maker
food processors(s)
recipes
Optional extras:-
saladacco/sprial slicer (see Links page)
mandoline slicer
dehydrator (see Links page)
fancy recipe books
Join forums online. Get support such as a raw buddy, join The Raw Health Club. It is easier with the support of other, like-minded people who know what you are going through
Gain knowledge of food and nutrition. Read books, magazine articles, blogs and search the internet for information
Keep a journal. It can be a hand written diary or an online blog, private or published on the internet. You will be amazed when you come back to it later and remind yourself how far you have come on the raw food journey to health and fitness.
Join our free Forum for support, hints and tips and much more HERE
Be amazed! notice the changes, weight loss, pain-free days, energy levels, sleep patterns, cravings
Cravings – the brain/mind likes things that are familiar. It fears change. Same=safe, New=danger. So it will try to trick you back into your old habits and patterns of eating and addiction. Notice the cravings, explore them, laugh at them, notice what your body is lacking, replace it with healthy alternatives. If you crave fatty food, eat nuts or coconut that have a high fat content. If you crave sugar, eat bananas or dates or berries with a high fruit sugar content. If you crave savoury, eat salad or try a savoury smoothie with celery, tomato, spinach and carrot like a raw soup. Learn what your body needs.
Try out new recipes, there are literally hundreds on the internet for free
Be kind to yourself, you are only human, you will have cravings or even lapses. If you fall off the wagon note how it makes you feel. Write it in your journal. What did you eat? why? how did it make you feel? guilty? ill? did you gain weight? did any health problems return? what emotions were you feeling? what physical or mental changes? any pain? did it prove something to you?
Step 3 – Add exercise to your routine
Start small, try short walks. If you have a dog so much the better, go walking with your dog.
As you start to lose weight you will want to tone up your muscles so try cycling on an exercise bike, try some yoga exercises and when you feel up to something more strenuous you can join a class at a fitness centre or take up a sport you have been longing to try.
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How to Set Up Your Own Super-Smoothie Bar At Home by Karen Knowler
As many of you know, I LOVE smoothies and I’m also pretty good at creating and making them, so this issue I thought I’d share with you my guide to creating a smoothie bar in your own home that’s good to go at any time of day and is quick and easy to use.
Why smoothies? Because they’re fast, quick, fun, delicious and they are great at any time of day and can often deliver a hefty dose of nutrition in a tasty and beautiful package!
My kitchen sees a lot of smoothie action, whether it be green smoothies for lunch or nut milk-based smoothies for supper… and I hope that with the help of this issue, yours will soon too!
Step 1: Tool Yourself Up. The only piece of equipment you need to make a great smoothie is, of course, a blender. Now, as may or may not know, all blenders are not equal! Certainly you can get away with a High Street blender costing around £20-£30 for a fair amount of time if you treat it kindly, but if you’ve got the money and the passion then the best place you could invest your money for the long haul is without doubt in the very “hardcore” blender that is the Vita-Mix TNC (pictured). Yes, they are pricey (especially here in Europe), but they are soo worth it. I am fortunate enough to own one myself and like many others who are also proud owners of these beautiful machines I really do think it’s one of the best investments in my health I have ever made. I use it every day and it’s my favourite piece of equipment in my entire kitchen. All that said, if budget does not permit you to spend nigh on £400 on this particular piece of kit, then all is not lost, just spend the most you can on something that’s got good reviews on Amazon or similar and when you’ve got that part sorted, you’re ready to go!
Step 2: Gather Your Ingredients. Before you start let’s take a look at what you could have on hand to make your smoothies with.
* Fresh fruit (in a bowl and/or fridge)
* Fresh greens (in your fridge. e.g. spinach, watercress, lettuce, kale, chard etc.)
* Frozen fruit (in your freezer)
* Ice-cubes (in your freezer)
* Sweeteners (e.g. dates, agave nectar, maple syrup [not raw], honey, stevia etc.)
* Flavourings (e.g. mesquite meal, carob powder, cacao nibs/powder, vanilla pods/essence etc.)
* Superfoods (e.g. maca, bee pollen, green powders, hemp protein powder, etc.)
* Nuts and seeds and/or their butters (for nut milks)
* Cartons of coconut water/ milk
* Oils (not necessary, but some people like to use hemp, flax or coconut oil in their smoothies for EFAs)
Obviously fresh fruit, greens, nuts and seeds are easy to buy in the shops these days, as are some of the other more specialised foods. But for those ingredients that are new to you or that you can’t get hold of locally, the good news is that all of these ingredients are now easy to buy mail order wherever you are in the world.
If most of these are new to you, then the ones I recommend you start off with are: dates for sweetening and agave nectar (light) if you want something new to try; vanilla pods or essence and/or mesquite powder for flavourings; bee pollen (for non-vegans) as an incredible superfood and coconut oil for fat if you’d like some.
Whatever you choose, make sure that you gather all your non-refrigerated ingredients into one place so that they are all together, which leads me nicely on to…
Step 3: Pick Your Spot. Whether you choose to make your smoothies at home or at the office, picking the right spot is key. Why? Because if it’s somewhere awkward to get to, or not near to the sink or a million miles from your fridge, ingredients or glasses, then you’ll feel much less inclined to actually use your smoothie bar! I’m still deciding on the best place for my blender in my new abode, but in my previous home, my blender was located with my sink to the left, my smoothie ingredients to the right on a shelf above (you could have yours in a box or tray if you don’t have shelving in your kitchen) and my glasses were located up to the right in a cupboard next to the ingredients. And the fridge was just 2 steps away. Even though this all sounds like perfect common sense, it’s amazing how many of us make life difficult for ourselves and dot everything all over the place! By keeping these 5 things all close to hand, you will now officially have your “bar” in place and will be all set to get creative.
Step 4: Choose Your Recipes. Now that you have your blender, your ingredients and your actual “bar” all set up, what are you going to make? Well, this is where previous eZines come in. So far I’ve published MANY different smoothies recipes, so they should get you started! If you’d like to be super-organised then why not find some smoothie recipes you love (or would love to try) from recipe books and photocopy them (or print the eZine recipes off) and file them in those clear files you bought and you’ll be all set to go.
Step 5: Get Smoothie-ing! I generally recommend that if you are very new to smoothie making that you start very simply, as I did, with pure water, a couple of small bananas (or one big one) and one handful of fresh fruit of your choice. Strawberries work well, as do any berries, or peach, nectarine, pineapple or mango. All of these are good and very straightforward to buy and use. From there, when you have your confidence up and are ready to try new things, you can start to get a bit more experimental and add in other more unusual ingredients such as the powders and potions and even a little bit of oil if you’d like to (ideally no more than 2 teaspoons per pint). Personally I keep oils out, but then getting enough calories is not my concern as my needs are pretty low in that department! One step beyond that is to experiment with using nut or seed milks for a base instead of bananas, which is where your nut milk bag will come in. This is really easy to do, but I’ll keep the “How To” for another article which will follow next issue. Until then, I’ll be expecting you to set your smoothie bar up to perfection ready and eager to go for next week!
© 2010 Karen Knowler WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR ON YOUR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach publishes “Successfully Raw” – a free weekly eZine for raw food lovers everywhere. If you’re ready to look good, feel great and create a raw life you love get your FREE tips, tools and recipes now at www.TheRawFoodCoach.com