With all the parties during the holidays, there are many temptations and opportunities to get cooked.

I like to look at it a little differently.

Since this time of year is for celebration, giving and appreciation, I see it as an opportunity to grow stronger in your convictions and celebrate them… celebrate your path to awesome health through a vegan raw lifestyle.

By growing in your healthy relationship with yourself, you not only grow into better health, your relationships with others blossom as well.

And in addition to sharing gifts with friends and loved ones, what better time to give yourself a gift… the gift of awesome health (only you can do it).

Here are some ideas to thrive during the holidays:

• instead of attending a party, throw your own. Include raw and healthy alternatives to the normal heavy and fattening dishes.
• when attending dinner parties, bring your own dish. You can always eat your own dish if there are no healthy alternatives.
• if the topic of why you may not be eating something comes up, mention that this is what you feel like eating (the raw and healthy alternative).
• eat more fruit!
• focus on the social part of the events rather than the eating.
• take some time out for yourself and celebrate your life and raw journey.
• have plenty of fruit and salads handy to eat and share during the holidays.
• find raw potlucks or meetups in your area and visit with link-minded friends.
• eat a raw meal or snack before attending an event so you won’t be hungry. Gives you more time to visit.

Celebrate and enjoy the holidays, vegan and raw!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and yours!

Mark

Welcome! Curious about becoming vegan? Or raw? Interested in losing weight and more importantly, keeping it off for life? Want boundless energy? Better health? Would you like to feel great all the time?

Through the content here I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for. You’ll find posts on the vegan and raw lifestyle, reasons why I believe a vegan, raw diet is the best way to regain health, stay healthy, lose weight and maintain a healthy weight for the rest of your life, my opinions, experiences and ramblings as well as resources for raw foodists and vegans and those that would like to become raw vegan.

Enjoy!

Have you heard of the about documentary film Simply Raw or its companion, Raw For Life?

Simply Raw shows the dramatic effect that eating raw and living foods can have on our health. It highlights how by making simple healthy choices when it comes to our food that we can allow our bodies to heal.

Read more…

I’ve just returned from a 9 day vacation with my daughter… a road trip from Arizona to the mid west and back. It was her first driving trip and we both had a ball enjoying the scenery, time together and visiting family.

I noticed much about our society along the way as well as how easy it is to eat a healthy diet on the road while traveling.

First I noticed how unhealthy most people we ran across looked. It’s no wonder with the type of food available at highway stops… fast foods like hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, tacos, ice cream and the like. In fact we joked (kindly) that many people looked just like the fast food they were eating (think big and super-sized). We made good use of McDonalds and Taco Bell’s along the way… they had clean and mostly empty restrooms! While visiting a McDonalds for a restroom break we decided to walk into the restaurant to see the highway below (a great view) and noticed most folks eating there overweight and weren’t very happy. Interesting.

We decided to stop at Whole Foods before leaving and packing a large cooler with freezer packs and food for 2-3 days of meals. My daughter does eat some cooked food and we brought some pre-made soups for quick meals for her along with plenty of organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. I brought my Vita-Mix blender (won’t leave home without it!) and we started each day with a fresh blended fruit smoothie, more fruit throughout the day, a soup for my daughter and a larger salad for me and a smoothie for dessert.

There were 2 Whole Foods Markets along the way not far from the highways we were traveling on, and we stopped at both on the way there and back to stock up and sit down for a fresh and healthy meal. We noticed each store had different locally grown fruits and vegetables and made sure to try them all.

We both felt great throughout our trip, had nice picnics in scenic areas off the highway and thoroughly enjoyed our fresh and organic meals. Fun!

I believe one of the important parts of getting back to a natural diet and lifestyle is to spend time with our children, families and loved ones. Away from televisions and many of the modern technologies we have grown accustomed to in our society today. Time in nature, noticing the flowers, mountains, creeks, fresh breeze and beautiful sunsets. We experienced all that and more on this trip, and it was priceless.

If modern civilized man had to kill the animals he eats, the number of vegetarians would rise astronomically.
– C. Morgenstern

If we – that is, society – switched to a vegetarian diet, atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, which accounts for most heart disease, would vanish.
– William Roberts, M.D. editor in chief of the American Journal of Cardiology

From both a moral and health aspect… the benefits of avoiding meat in your diet.

To your best health!

Mark

(quotes from the book ‘Your Right to Be Beautiful’ by Tonya Zavasta)

The reasons for avoiding meat in your diet are quite straightforward… most have to do with better health, easy weight maintenance, lower occurance of disease, better nutrition, more energy and feeling better. Some of the lesser know reasons are even more surprising… and interesting, especially the amount of resources necessary to feed and care for animals. More reasons to consider a vegan diet.

Source: Urban75 and Viva

• Antioxidants protect against more than 60 diseases. Found mostly in fruit and vegetables. They destroy ‘free radicals’.
• A vegetarian diet can reduce cholesterol levels. (Cholesterol is linked to heart disease – fruit and vegetables contain none.) BMA
• Vegetarians and vegans have higher intakes of folic acid than omnivores. BMA
• A vegetarian diet meets all the nutritional needs of infants and adolescents. ADA/BMA
• Vegetarians are no more likely to suffer anaemia than meat eaters. ADA/BMA
• On irrigated land, 1lb of vegetables uses 25 gallons. 1lb of beef uses 5,214 gallons. University of California
• More than 90 per cent of all agricultural land in Britain is used to feed animals
• If Britain went vegetarian, less than half the farm land would be needed – vegan, less than a quarter! Reading University
• Vegetarians often live longer and suffer less from several chronic diseases. ADA
• Vegetarians have a much lower incidence of caesarean section. PCRM
• Vegetarians are less likely to suffer strokes caused by coronary artery disease. BMA
• Vegetarian diets have been successful in arresting and reversing severe coronary artery disease. ADA
• Vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, large bowel disorders, cancers and gallstones. BMA
• Vegetarian diets offer disease protection because of lower saturated fat, cholesterol and animal protein and higher folates, antioxidant vitamins and plant nutrients. ADA
• 95 per cent of all food poisoning comes from meat and animal products.
• Cancer rates among vegetarians are 25-50 per cent less than non-vegetarians. PCRM
• Vegetarians have half to three-quarters the risk of dying of heart disease compared to non-vegetarians. PCRM
• Nearly all 650 million UK chickens are fed antibiotics daily. 72 million die from disease.
• The world’s 17 major fisheries are on the point of environmental collapse because of over-fishing.
• It takes about 10kg of good quality plant protein – such as wheat and soya – to produce 1kg of meat protein.
• 35 per cent of the world’s people can be fed on a meat-based diet. A plant diet could feed everyone – then plus some. Sir Crispin Tickell

The medical sources quoted are from some of the most prestigious in the world: BMA (British Medical Association); ADA (American Dietetic Association); WHO (World Health Organisation); PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine).

Raw foodist Angela was featured on CNN today, a great outlet to help others learn about the true power of the raw food diet in not only losing weight, but regaining optimal health.

Read more…