It's becoming more popular every day as millions of people are changing their
eating habits, to include more healthy foods. Live food restaurants are springing up
Un-cooking shows are appearing on TV. And celebrities are speaking out about the
benefits of a raw vegan lifestyle. 100% raw food diet, it's just fruits, vegetables,
nuts, seeds, avocados and you can eat some sprouts. Raw foods are foods that have not been fired
over a 110 to a 120 degrees. So the enzymes and the oxygen are alive. I can't claim to be a raw-foodist,
however, I had times I've been just strictly raw.
And I try to be mostly raw, regardless Actually, the concept of a raw organic food diet,
as being the healthiest of choices has been around for a long time. it is the most natural way for animals,
and humans to consume food. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine,
believed in the body's innate ability to heal itself. He regarded the food we eat,
as powerful medicine.
I believe that raw food is a major transformative tool
for people who are dealing
with any kind of illness or wishing to make any kind
of major change in their lives.
In Los Angeles, Vera and John Richter, started America's first raw food
restaurant in 1917. It lasted for 25 years.
They called it “The Eutropheon”. Which is Greek for “good nourishment”.
It was a positive step for teaching Americans
about the benefits of the raw food vegetarian diet. Another famous innovator, Ann Wigmore
first began making raw food popular over 50 years ago. Ann used raw food to cure cancer. Today, her two original institutes,
still serve thousands of customers
Initially, even the raw food diet was nothing fancy
just fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds. When I started this many years ago,
I wasn't, I would say, fortunate enough
to be able to eat some of the recipes that are available today,
some of these delicious food
you can get in a raw food restaurants What I did it, was basically very
simple. You cut up a couple of grapefruits you eat a few nuts,
or you made yourself a nice big salad
or you put all your salad ingredients in blender, and you blend it up. Today, there are so many exciting choices Hi, my name is Kirt Tyson. And I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
I was chosen out of hundreds of applicants to be one of six people,
to participate unique opportunity.
For 30 days, we ate nothing but raw, live food. And took supplements
under the direction of Dr. Gabriel Cousens,
here at the tree of life. Since then I have returned to the real world
and I am excited to say I am diabetes free for over a year and a half now.
Currently I am attending a southwest college of naturopathic medicine
where I am studying to become a naturopathic doctor, because I wanna help
people live healthier lifestyles. I am so excited to be your guide for this video
And share with you information, that will assist you living raw for life.
In this video you will receive information from top experts and advocates
on a variety of topics to assure you success If you are new to raw food,
you should check out the chapter “starting out”. Start small,
take a step at a time, let the process grow, rather than going extreme
because once you break those cravings and you get away from actually wanting food
that's bad for you, then it's very easy. In the wisdom of eating raw,
you will see that there so many benefits of eating a raw vegetarian diet for your body
your community and the planet I think we've become so distanced
from our food that we've lost sight of what real food is.
We spend a lot of time
on our education to learn about our cars, to learn about our occupations but what about this the most magnificent
machine you've been given. Spend your time educating yourself about the body.
It's a win-win thing. If you win, everybody else wins
If you win, the organic farmer wins. If you win, the organic health food store wins.
If you win, you win. You get all the health benefits and your family wins.
By now, you are ready to check out our topics Clicking on this button takes you to a whole new menu.
There's “health and wellness”.
Where you learn from leading medical experts that there is more to being well,
than just fighting off disease. Disease cannot exist where there is balance.
Where there is balance, there
is sense of a person being at ease. The body is a miraculous self-healing
self-repairing machine, what gets a person well, is you
remove the causes of diseases and the natural tendency of the body
is to bring itself back to normal
if given a chance In “beating diabetes”,
you will hear how thousands of people
are getting off their insulin by letting their body heal itself.
In “weight reduction”,
you'll discover how the body can balance itself with a changeover to a healthy raw lifestyle.
You make your own juices, you know, eat your walnuts and eat your walnuts and
the raw fruits and the salads and
you're on a very great diet that will give you everything you need
and for your beauty for your health and longevity. In "optimal athletic performance",
see real athletes and trainers
who have effectively switched to a raw diet and learn their secrets
that give them the competitive edge. Whenever you change your life there's some kind
of detox is going to happen. Under “detox and cleansing”, you will know what to
expect when you first switch to eating raw. Once you really get on the natural food
you have a little bit of education around it, you realize that it's not the food
that's doing it to you. it's your body saying — time to get out the garbage. Hey, if I can do it, so can you.
And I am loving living raw for life. I'm a clinical nutritionist in New York City.
I've had a practice for 40 years. I probably seen 25 thousand people over
the last 40 years. I've been eating 100% raw.
I don't eat cooked food. What I encourage people to do is to eat
don't overdo anything. Eat a variety of different foods. Try not to overeat.
try not to eat between meals. I was eating SAD diet
— the standard American diet. I was eating as much steak
as I could, if I was lucky.
Anyway, I just noticed every time I've eaten a steak or a burger
or something, I just want to go lay down
on the couch after a while. Get a nap or something.
Which is one of the effects of food,
people do like. They like to get an arc from their food.
I know I do. That fuzzy feeling in your gut.
after Thanksgiving or whatever,
to sit back on the couch. But as an energetic pursuit,
I would say everything began for me where I just didn't want to have to go lay down,
so I stopped eating red meat. And then eventually I stopped consuming dairy,
because I had tons of acne and
red discoloration on my face and always mucousy.
And then I'm like twenty-three or four,
so this girl just having to sit down next to me on this bus
going from St.Louis to Oklahoma City. She looks at me and
she says “you're lactose intolerant” I said:”what?”. She says:”You need
to stop doing dairy and all these symptoms. you got, which I just detailed will go away”.
And I'm like:”You know I've been to all kinds of doctors “and specialists who had told me they really
didn't know what it was that I was
allergic to, it's definitely something.” “And you're telling me its dairy?
Milk does the body good.” Anyway, I stopped. Three days later
all those symptoms went away. Never to return. So that's how everything
was kind of began naturally. My name is Nwenna Kai.
And I am the owner and culinary
designer of the “Taste Of The Goddess”
cafe in Los Angeles. I moved to Los Angeles
about 4 years ago from Chicago. And it was when I was in Chicago that I decided to
adopt a raw food diet. And I had been vegan
for very, very, very long time. Probably since I was about 8 years old
eating mostly cooked vegan diet.
But I was sick a lot from eating lot of tofu lot of seitan, lot of meat substitute dishes.
And I decided to eat salads
and fresh green juices for about a week my digestion cleared up from eating just salads and fresh juices. And then I kept doing that and kept doing it. And literally like that next
month I went on yoga retreat, and
I was in the salad line, still eating all salads and happened to meet someone who was
a raw-foodist. And that person introduced me
to my first raw food restaurant
which was in Chicago called “Karen's Fresh Corner”. And from there I started
taking classes and I bought books. Bought all the equipment. And just turned
my kitchen into a laboratory for experimenting on food. And then I decided to go online
and to find recipes and then there were raw food chat rooms, and things like that.
And just the more that I was seeking knowledge and information about it,
the more things opened up for me. My name is Brendan Brazier.
I am from Vancouver BC. I did triathlons professionally,
for six years, Ironman triathlon
I started when I was around 15 to do triathlons. So i was eating lots of peanut
butter and bread and things
that were very high in calories. But I was tired
and I didn't know why. Because calories
measure of food energy. I figured, the more energy I took in through calories,
the more energy I would have. But that wasn't the case. But making that transition more to raw,
that problem totally cleared up. And
I could actually get away with eating twenty or thirty percent
fewer calories and
having more energy even though
I just didn't have the calories just because I was conserving it. So energy through conservation,
as opposed to consumption became a huge part of my program.
And replacing the heavier foods the peanut, the bread, with salads,
and fruit and things
that really will digest easily,
and that made a big difference. All growth is really about eliminating
that which doesn't work
because the body already
has everything that it needs to replicate cells perfectly,
to inhibit disease from forming.
So I would just say in the beginning
just eliminate all things white from your food, from your diet.
Eliminate the sugar, eliminate the white flour.
If you can't eliminate it totally,
cut back tremendously on the dead meat products. Begin to eliminate that kind of thing
and begin to add living food. Begin to add live juices, good water,
good water that's alive into your body temple. And I think the results
will begin to speak for themselves because they will become a mental clarity,
people will come out of this haze that that they think its normal,
and a clarity will begin to descend upon them. And once you taste that clarity you don't want to
get back to the fog again. Most people aren't gonna be complete raw fooders.
I am not a big promoter of that, because most people
are not “ALL OR NOTHING” in that mindset. My view is: Start to bring these things to bear.
Start small, take a step at a time. And let the process grow
rather than going extreme. Some people go extreme because they can,
or because they have to
because of a medical emergency. But most people I think
have to be introduced and
once they see these foods are
actually tasty, and delicious. If you think
you gonna have to eat cardboard.
Discipline only last so long. You'll only gonna do
something that's pain, for so long. What gets people addicted,
in a positive sense, is when they start to have their metabolism changed,
they start to taste this food
and the flavors, and they get excited about it. What I've noticed,
just in the community here,
at agape, as people begin to go through the transition diet
and then ultimately add more raw is tremendous energy.
They all report back to me the same thing,
they have all this energy now, where
they used to have that afternoon lag,
or needing to nap for long periods of time. That seems to dissolve, there's a lot of energy. And at last enough time where we know
that it's not just a mental hypnotism. Where it's like they've heard about it
for so long that
“Oh I'm going to have this energy “. And then suddenly they have it
and only lasts for few days. We've noticed people to have tremendous
amount of energy. And also the mood swing,
that we a lot of people have. And it's almost predictable.
This seems to
break the cycle of that downward spiral of their moods. And they're able to stay
even for longer periods of time. One of the habits that took me longer time
to overcome was eating late at night. I come to realize that
wasn't very good for us at all,
cause it could cause a serious problems. So when you are eating a bad diet,
you're eating late at night. You get up in the middle of the night
and having a pastrami sandwich. Then you're gonna wonder
why you have to sleep 13 hours a night. You gonna have to have two or three
cups of coffee to be able
to run on stimulated energy. When you eat small amounts of food,
you are eating nutrient-dense food that's raw, you can probably get by on
two or three hours sleep at night without no problem
and wake up fully refreshed. They've got, somehow people
in their family or circle who are supportive, because otherwise
it's really hard, I think really hard. Just for me, to be more raw than cooked
it's generally about people around me. If I don't have someone,
at least one person to help me.
If you don't have that and you are like going home and
eating what the other person is eating.
That's tough.
But you gonna have to learn to love the salad. And learn to make a good salad,
with some good salad dressing. One thing I have to say about raw food nutrition,
and living food nutrition is when it comes to food preparation,
I'm completely retarded. I mean I can't even make a salad.
It's totally ridiculous.
So I've just orientated myself
to doing it with blenders and blending everything and just drinking that.
That's how I live. You've got to at least open yourself up
to the possibility
that you can do it. And then the universe will just say:
“Hey, check this out,
look at this, you can have this, you could have this”. Anybody can go down to the local health
food store and have them make a juice up for you. The innovative ability,
to create a reality, by the way we speak and by our will, is,
ultimately capable of doing anything. Just start, start doing something. Start
taking those steps and it doesn't matter how small they are in the beginning.
Someone on standard American diet it may take a year to transition, it
may take two years in some cases. But that's okay, because once you break those
cravings, and you get away from actually
wanting food that's bad for you then it's all very easy. Another thing I
always tell people is don't be so extreme with it at first. When I
first started eating raw I was
eating completely raw and sometimes I was eating cooked food. It's just
really important to kind of go with the
flow, and do what your body wants to do. It even now there're some times
that I may have some steamed brown rice or a steamed vegetables. Especially like
in the winter times, we can have more
soups or something like that. In the summer times because it's hot I eat
mostly fruits. I don't really even eat salads. And I drink a lot of
coconut water, and a lot of water. A lot of people, they're always
wondering “if you're eating” “just fruits, you're not getting your
vegetables, and that sort of thing”. And what I always have to say to that is
I've been eating like this for eight
years and I haven't been sick. I haven't had a headache, I haven't had a cold
I've never had the flu. So it's like I must be doing something right. Well I think first you've got to see
what's gonna make you actually do this. And I think when people experience a change
or transformation there's a chemistry to that.
There're elements that have to happen. The first thing is
satiation. If favorite meal is primer rib and lobster and
you eat it at breakfast, lunch and dinner there's a point what you get satiated.
It's not enough anymore. It doesn't please you.
A satiation makes people start looking
for an alternative. Now, usually isn't enough to push them over
the edge.
Usually it takes for them to start to get a point where they really
get frustrated. Where it's not just
satiated but now, I'm not getting reward. I keep eating this way, and living this way
and I'm not happy about the outcome. Then people get to a threshold
where it's like: “Okay! I'm done”.
“This is enough already, got a shift.” And when that happens that search becomes a hunger.
They really look for a new answer in their life. And then when that happens
usually they get an insight. They start to say: "Oh my gosh, it's my diet".
"Oh my gosh you know I'm addicted to this food" "Oh my gosh, my relationship is
reflection and how I do this". "I go for comfort, I never go through
to what really matters, I never faced up to it". And that insight creates an opening when
they have a chance to make a change. But what you have to do is, at that moment
you got to take some action. If you don't it's like you opening closes,
and you start all over. And you have to go through satiation and dissatisfaction
and threshold all over again. So, I say to people: “Grab the opening, grab
the insight.” Being dissatisfied is a great thing. It is what is driving you.
And when you're gonna do it find something that you know you can do in
lasting format. If you're at extremist and you really live extreme, then maybe
it's go pure raw food and you'll love it because you're a new person.
But if you're not that, if comfort is really important to you, then you start to explore.
“What are some of those raw foods that I really like ,
I'm not forcing myself to do it,
I'm really enjoying it” And I'd introduce 20% 25% of those raw foods
then the energy starts to take over. You start feeling better and you'll say:
"Okay ,what else could I have?" And gradually hopefully you get yourself
to 50, 60, 70 %. And when you get to that point you may not be perfect, but damn, you have
a lot of energy and you feel a vitality that you've never felt before in your
life. And that is the positive addiction. Raw food is the best way to have the cleanest energy.
We take so much care about what kind of fuel we put in our car,
what kind of oil is in our car... We care about it sometimes more
than the fuel that we're putting in our bodies. A live food cuisine and lifestyle
it's a powerful way to heal
both yourself, the ecology of the planet
and the consciousness of the brain. The government has a lot to do with our
beliefs. I mean, they are pretty well controlling what we're told.
The American Dairy Association, the American meat packers Association.
They pretty well tell you that you have to have animal products to survive and
this just is not the truth. How can you think, logically, that eating
a dead animal can make you healthy or to
prolong your life? Or to make it beautiful.
Or to give you energy?
How can you think? I don't understand
people's logic with this. “Oh I gotta have meat, protein,
it's so high in protein” Yeah, but the body is paying such a high price
by you eating this flesh, uric acid cholesterol, worms, fish, chicken and turkey.
Same stuff right?
And also when the animal is slaughtered that adrenaline,
the fear that goes through the animal? You don't think that the
animal knows when it's gonna get killed
in the butcher house? It knows for sure.
I am positive. And then you eat it. So you don't get
just the cholesterol that clog your arteries. The uric acid, the fat,
the dead blood and sometimes meat
is sold and they color it. And they put nitrates in it,
to look like fresh pink meat.
It should be gray if they didn't do the preservatives and everything else.
They're doing a little poisoning. All that crap you're taking in?
Just to get some protein? When, you can go to the plant world ? Walnuts, avocados
grain, sprouted grains. I truly believe
that it's not a natural human instinct
to eat dead flesh. It is a learned experience If you were on a desert
island and you hadn't eaten in weeks and weeks and weeks.
And there was a dead cow
floated up on the island. And you had a bushel of apples. Where do you think your
instincts would take you? if we see a dying sick animal,
it isn't our response to pounce on it and eat. It is maybe take it to a vet.
Or step over it. And carnivorous dog?
It is his natural instinct to eat dead flesh. So I think this myth that we live
with that we need protein for strong bones and to build teeth and hair it's
exactly what it is. And we've bought into. Teachers in school get information
from the big companies to teach you what you should eat. That you need food
pyramid. Fortunately to agree, they are expanding this, they are adding more and
more fruits and vegetables because people are realizing that they feel
better. Even the American Cancer Society says that you shouldn't be eating so
much red meat. Why kill an animal, so I can enjoy my meal?
I think that is
like a murderous thing. If I didn't pay the butcher to buy a
piece of steak,
or a piece of chicken or turkey if I didn't pay that
money to get that food in the first place there wouldn't be the demand on
the butcher to kill that animal. So we have to take personal responsibility. We've kind of turned our back on
local produce and we've turned
our back on local farmers and local people who use the community.
And rely on the community to make a living. Because of the convenience of a chain
store. We go to those places just because I can take care of all my
shopping needs in one place. My brother, who is the biggest cheapest
human being in the face of the earth
and I love him more than anybody he'll go to seven
stores when he shops. Just because he'll go wherever he can get the best deal. And
he'll go to one place it's like : “Well why would I buy tangerines there, because
over here you know what they're a nickel” cheaper a pound” . And he'll go to all
these places and especially during the summer he'll go to the farmers market
and just buy those things that he could buy at a grocery store from the local
farmers, because he knows that he's supporting his local economy. He's
supporting people whose money is gonna go right back into his own economy.
And for me I think that's the biggest thing that we should start to look at.
Things that are grown naturally. Things that are grown in your backyard.
I think we've become so distanced from our food that we've lost sight of what
real food is. I'll never forget an
incident, I was at a party that I had
catered. And they asked me to speak a little bit about my food, which was a raw
food diet that I had catered. There were a bunch of doctors there, and
they had brought two nutritionists to speak about health. And one of the
biggest travesties was someone asked one of the nutritionists : “Is there a
difference between organic and
non-organic?”. And the nutritionist says: “Government studies have shown that there
is absolutely no difference between
organic and non-organic.” I mean, how can
you say this? Everybody knows now there is. You can go to a farmers market and
pick up a strawberry and even taste a difference. You can see a difference. But
government controlled licensing says that there is no difference.
And most of the people because of all of the toxicity in their bodies, they're asleep.
They don't stop and think that this doesn't compute, that this doesn't make
sense. So, what I say is the best thing to do is
arm yourself with as much education as you can on every chance that you can.
Because we spend a lot of
time on our education to learn about our cars, to learn about our occupations.
But what about this the most magnificent machine you have been given.
Spend your time educating yourself about the body.
How many people knew the stomach was just a tiny little sac in there. We think
of it as this whole area to fill up three-four times a day.
If we educate ourselves
and then we detox and cleanse because that detoxing and cleansing I'll
come back to that. It's these layers of toxicity that are
closing our minds, that are putting us to sleep. So that we don't look at the
reality of what's being said. So, we just
kind of take all this information. We kind of sleepwalk through life
and then as we get sick, we sleepwalk even further. I'm saying: "Wake up!".
There was a cook, I think it was Jamie Oliver. I can't remember who it was.
But I'm thinking it was Jamie Oliver in the UK. He went into a classroom with kids
and blindfolded them and he says: “I'm gonna have you guys
smell some things tell me what they are” So he blindfolds the kids and one kid goes: “It's hand soap because it's
what you wash your hands with”. And the other kid goes:
“No, no, it's dish washing liquid, it's what you're putting in the
dishwasher, to wash your dishes.“ And they take the blindfold off
and the kids are sitting there staring at a lemon. So that this
is what we associate these things now. These odors, these things that are
food products are now byproducts. And it starts in the home. It starts with
parents. It starts with what you pass down to your kids.
I grew up in a house
where my parents and my mother cooked dinner every single day.
It wasn't like she was a stay-at-home mom. She worked all day.
And she came home and she cooked dinner. Because it was important
to build this ritual of the
family sitting down and having a meal together. And I think it's one of those
things that is so important for families to understand especially kids
to see that food matters. To understand where food comes from. We had a garden in
our backyard every summer. For as long as I can remember
as a little kid, I'd be
out there playing in the dirt pulling carrots out of the ground.
And washing them off and eating them fresh out of the ground. Celery
cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, cabbage,
lettuce. We grew everything. We grew so much food and then we would can
it and have it in the winter. I had such a great relationship with
food growing up and I think that that's completely distanced from everyone.
And people say: “Well we don't have time”. Or “We don't have money”.
Or “It's just not that important”. And I think that there's a backlash. I think there is a
turn of the time where people are realizing “It is important
and we are missing this element of our lives”. And hopefully it will come back. The food industry,
and the drug industry, and the medical
industry, they're very successful. They're spending their money wisely and it's
their businesses to sell the products. And they're winning over
the minds of Americans to think that we're actually
doing better by spending all this money on health care and drugs. While in reality,
even the science, the doctors, the learning, even medical journals are not
accurate. Even that's biased in
favor of drugs. Because the science is produced
and written and drawn up by the people who are selling the drugs. So I think it's a difficult something
we're going through. And I think that we're coming to a certain
crisis in America because if the healthcare costs have skyrocketing degree,
their business can't function anymore. And drugs are getting more expensive. And we are not seeing the benefits.
We are spending more and more
money on health care But we're not seeing a healthy population for it. So people started to smarten up.
They start to say : “Maybe this just crack us up,
to be just taking more
and more drugs” “Maybe the drugs are not the answer.”.
I think the way it's coming around now is because I think they push the economic envelope
almost too far, and now people are going to start looking for other means of
reducing health care costs. And that's where good nutrition and proper
lifestyle, perhaps even cleaning up the environment might be beneficial for
health cause. There might be a another economic factor of fighting
against this idea that drugs in America is the answer or health source for our problems. And it might be coming to a conflict And we might see more effort, more
winning, of people with nutrition and and environmental concerns. And
people actually looking to remove the cause of disease, instead of just
treating people after they fall off the cliff and land at the bottom and smash
up their bodies. We live in a culture
which tells us that the earth belongs to
us, and when ownership is in pride. And then the idea that we could do whatever we
want, and not have to even consider how
would our actions impact the others whether they'd be other animals, other
plants, the water, the soil, the air. At
first it seems like this is a great privilege “Oh, the earth belongs to
me, it is mine”, but ultimately it leads, of course, to degradation of human beings
and the earth as we're seeing more and more at this time of global crises.
I think we could all agree that we're at a global crisis. I think there are
perhaps three things that could be helpful in considering this global
crisis. Number one, there's a global crisis. Number two,
we're causing it, we means human beings. And number three could be, most of us
don't have a clue, about number one or number two. And the situation that we are
finding ourselves in and the rise of obesity and
diabetes and cancer and depression and pharmaceutical drug use and recreational
debilitating drug use and TV which is another form of debilitating drug use.
You could look at it as we're a culture
of low self-esteem. The average person in our culture has low self-esteem. That is
really the disease we're talking about.
The disease of low self-esteem. Where this all begins is in our own heart.
When in sports we used to say: “Does that team have heart?”
“Are we playing against a team that has heart?”
Why don't we say: “Are we playing against
team that has mind?”
387
00:33:00,070 --> 00:32:04,810 When we used to
play tennis? “Does that person have the
heart to win?”.” The heart is where
your soul is. “ That's where you have that
ability to say: “I am going for it I am
going to win no matter what”. "I'm going to
make it happen no matter what"
And in fact it's not a win-loss thing . It's not like if you win someone else loses.
It's a win-win thing. If you win everybody else wins.
If you win the organic farmer wins.
If you win the organic health food store wins. If you win, you win. You get
all the health benefits and your family wins. If you win all the people around
you. They win, all your friends. This is ultimately the greatest win-win-win
strategy ever. Is deciding inside
ourselves that we're worth it and we can do it. Nobody wants to give up choices.
Nobody wants to give up convenience. So making things can be, knowing where you
can get food that you enjoy like this. Knowing how to have things that are on
the run available to you. So you don't get to that that threshold:
“Oh, I got to have something right now!” That's how you get yourself to
have more balance. An the moment and it
all comes down to what do you value most.
I always say to people:
“Nothing tastes as good as fit feels,
as energetic feels.” And if you get associated to that,
then you start making new choices. How do we make that change? It's actually
totally easy. It starts right in your backyard. It starts on your porch. It starts with
your houseplants. It gets back to loving plants, loving the soil, loving the earth. Giving back something, instead of just
taking away, ultimately it starts at home. When you begin to eat in a way which
connects you more to the earth and to
your own self, which a raw food vegan diet does, you actually feel the effects
of it right away in a positive way. You feel more alive.You feel more
grateful. You begin to wake up to your own confidence. Your own “at-ease”ness. What could we eat, that would cause the least
harm to the earth and all earthly beings
That's our main criteria. Not what would
make me most healthy. Not even what
tastes best. All those are
secondary considerations. Our main
consideration is not harming others. And so part of that is not over
consuming. No matter what. Whether you're consuming lettuce beings or chicken
beings, less is best.
When you begin to be
more connected, then you begin to feel that what you do actually matters. Not
only to your own health and well-being but to the greater world around you. In the end it's not just about raw food or
about biology. It's about a sustainable
lifestyle. It's about waking up and saying :”Hey, does
this work or does it not work?”. It's not about good or bad. It's what works and
what doesn't work. And the more that we do that, the more everyone does
that, it's gonna be a better world. It's gonna be a happier world and we're gonna
be leaving a much better world for our kids. There's a train going a million
miles an hour towards death, pain, fire, destruction,
famine, greed, hate. And there's also another train
that you can get on that's
going another direction. Towards love laughter, happiness, joy, growth, beauty
longevity. It's a choice and that choice is always available. You choose. We have an unbelievable epidemic of
diabetes in this country. The rates of
diabetes are skyrocketing. And we have a parallel epidemic of obesity.
We have the most overweight population ever in the history of the
human race, that's still growing. More people today are taking drugs like
never before. Type-2 diabetes has tripled in the last ten years. That's a lifestyle
disease. What most people don't know is
that diabetes can be cured. How do I know?
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. However under the care of dr. Gabriel Cousens,
my life was totally transformed. Dr.Cousens had me eat only raw foods
and take live supplements for 30 days. My glucose levels are normal and I still do
not need to take insulin So what is diabetes?
What are the causes, symptoms,
and most importantly, the cure. This chapter addresses those
issues and much more. Diabetes is a form of dis-insulism.
Meaning that a person is either secreting adequate amounts of insulin, but the body
is not able to utilize it, or the body is not secreting from the pancreas adequate
amounts of insulin. In either case, the person's blood sugar becomes elevated
and stays elevated. And therefore require some form of intervention to lower it.
Diabetes is caused by a combination of
factors, but it's mostly caused by fat on the body. Especially fat on the
midsection, because abdominal fat represents fat that's stored internally
in your tissues and around the organs. So fat blocks the absorption of insulin and
then your pancreas is asked to produce more insulin in response on the
blockage effect of all the extra fat in the body. And
eventually the pancreas poops out, can't produce so much insulin. And now
it's not producing enough insulin for
the body's needs. People gotta realize
that there are two forms of diabetes. The
type that needs the insulin. And the type that you are just diabetic
because they're heavy. Now the type that has diabetes
because they're heavy,
actually is producing more insulin, than
the normal individual. In most cases of
type 2 diabetes the body is still
producing sufficient amount of insulin for a thin person, but just not enough
insulin for a fat person and as a person. If the person loses weight, they can become non
diabetic.Defined by the fact that they don't need any medication to keep
their blood sugar in the normal range. What are the big causes of diabetes: High
sugar. 20 years after sugar has been brought into any culture, has now
diabetes. Two : meat, the dairy in the diet, high animal fat, is right up
there, right behind sugar. Three : caffeine. One cup of coffee will increase your insulin
resistance by 33%. Cigarettes do the same
thing, they greatly increase your insulin resistance which is a precursor to
diabetes. Pesticides and herbicides and heavy metals tend to block the
function of the insulin system and increased your insulin resistance.
The symptoms of diabetes type 2
when they first come
on is excessive urination or sweet urine And that symptom is a clue as to what
the cause of diabetes is. Excessive urination is an inability to hold onto
minerals or an inability to utilize
minerals. It's an illness that affects the pancreas and one thing that we are
not taught about the pancreas but is true is that the pancreas has the
largest draw or pull for trace minerals of any organ in our body. Both type 1 and type 2, if they are
throwing in a lot of carbohydrate and a
lot of starch and a lot of high glycemic food into the bloodstream.
You're eating cakes and breads and pastas and things like that. Either the
body's gonna have to produce a lot of insulin or you're gonna have to inject a
lot of insulin. You reduce that kind of
carbohydrate or sugar low. Your insulin
requirements going to go way down. That's the first thing. The second thing is the
kind of food you eat is going to
determine the sensitivity of the insulin. Whether it is made by your body or
whether you inject it. The problem with
insulin of course is that insulin is of
atherosclerosis agent. That means that insulin promotes the progression of
atherosclerosis. And insulin increases the appetite it makes you eat more
makes you become more overweight. Then the more diabetic you need more drugs and more
insulin. And the problem is not insulin deficiency, its insulin
resistance. The whole approach of using
insulin to alleviate diabetic symptoms
is a band-aid approach and it's actually
a dangerous approach because insulin is
a synthetic chemical that is mimicking the body's natural insulin. There's a lot
of assumptions that go into this understanding that:“Hey we're just using
the same compound as your body produces”. It's not the same compound because we're
only talking about one
aspect of the fabric of reality. And part of that fabric that floats in one direction
is chemistry, part of the fabric that flows the other direction is, the love.
The overall symbiotic relationship of
all the different chemicals in the body
to each other. And all the difficult
factors. So to put just one part of it in
there, just that insulin it's a band-aid approach and eventually all the problems
still show up anyway. And then there's insulin resistance develops, where the
body starts to resist this unnatural form of insulin. And it's kind of just
prolonging the inevitable. There's also the
fact that nutritional imbalances
and deficiencies makes the pancreas not responsive. So there's a
certain loss of function that pancreas to the lack of vital nutrients and a
variety of the symphony of nutrients we need for normal tissue function. In other
words the cells don't function at full efficiency when you just supply them
with some macro nutrients. They need a full symphony of the full
complement of the artistry of thousands of different discovered and
undiscovered chemicals to maximize
cellular function. Attempting to
alleviate the symptoms of diabetes type 2 using pharmaceutical medications,
mineral deficient food, non-absorbable supplements, is moot. It's not going to
work. We have to get right down to the cause of the problem. And the cause of
the problem is the poor quality of food. Not just the way that it's raised, but
the soil quality, the mineral density of the food when it reaches the market. The
whole entire way that food is actually eaten. The processing of it, the heating,
the roasting, and all those things are decreasing the mineral availability of
what's there and there's not much there
to even begin with. We see so much money being spent on
diabetes research and we see so much
money just being wasted in a lot of ways. Whether it's through
research grants or it's through different drug plans. And
especially when you look at groups like the American Diabetes
Association which continues to get money from people like Cadbury Schweppes or
Pepsi or candy companies. These are the people who are financing
studies. You have to ask yourself who's best interests
are being served When you're dealing
with something like diabetes which is a
mineral deficiency syndrome and coupled
with that a sugar addiction syndrome and carbohydrate addiction problem, and then
you're taking those people and you're
putting them onto natural food, you're getting two effects. One is they're
getting real nourishing food for the first time so you're gonna have an
inhibition of appetite almost immediately. Where they're suddenly
not gonna be hungry because they're getting what they need. And then
you're gonna have a detoxification effect which is the effect of pulling
the plug out of the bathtub. A draining away of all the stuff. The good stuff is
pushing out the bad. Because once you really get on the natural food and you have
a little bit of education around it, you
realize that it's not the food that's doing it to you. It's your body saying:
“Time to get out the garbage”. To a person that's a diabetic,
exercise is critically
important, because the amount of sugar
you gonna spill, it's based on the calories you're taking in. And the
calories you're burning up in
your daily activity. So, if you're diabetic, if you're eating blended
salads and a lot of greens you're not eating a lot of fruit, you're eating some
nuts, you're gonna be burning up everything taken in.
There isn't anything will be left over to spill sugar. That's the key.
Years ago before they had insulin, people that were diabetic, they starved them.
They blood you going down but some of
them died from starvation. So now we have
the information available especially
with the greens, understanding that greens are secondary sunlight they are
for efficient person. They provide a lot of energy. You definitely can get into it
with a healthy diet, be on a low-calorie diet,
slow down your aging process, enable your body to restore itself. To restore its
ability, so you will not be functioning like a type 2. Or like any kind
of a diabetic. You just don't give
individuals food that are gonna make the
blood sugar go up. You concentrate on protein foods. You eliminate a lot of the
dietary fats. You increase a lot of the dietary fiber. You increase a lot of the
vegetables, fruits in a little bit more
moderation and you're gonna get dramatic
results. Type 2 diabetes is very much
related genetically. 85% of the people
with type 2 have someone in their family who have has genetic tendency. And now we
need to be very clear. Genetics load the gun and the culture of deaf lifestyle pulls
the trigger. So, we can't say “oh it's my
genetics”, that's a cop-out. What we are saying is if you lead a healthy
lifestyle, you will upgrade your genetic expression, so you will not get diabetes. Autoimmune diseases such as diabetes
represent, an autoimmune, is
essentially a Latin way of saying self-destruction.
And this is what autoimmune diseases are. So that the relevant about these,
is that they're really brought on by the individual. And it's their own system
acting in a sense of overly act over acting perhaps or least targeting self. I know one woman in particular, she's
been a type 1 diabetic for over
30 years. She follows the best diet I've ever seen she's a raw fooder.
She doesn't need much of food. She got her insulin all the way down but she
never been successful in coming off her insulin. So everybody's unique individual.
Now, diabetes is a killer, but diabetes almost never comes alone. And the problem
is if you have a therapy for diabetes
and you focus just on diabetes, you miss the larger picture. There is disharmony
in the person. It may be a combination of spiritual, emotional, intellectual
creative or cellular harmony. It is out of balance. So in a case of patients with
diabetes, it's a self-destruction process of life not being sweet enough, now
they're not being good enough,that they will never make it, or their parents
or make them average. It's a kind of thing like, when a student comes
home with a report card with four A's and a B. And the parents spend all the
time talking about well how the heck did you get a stupid B, without ever
mentioning the fact that they did the for A's? The parents intention of course
is well you know :”You could do better!”. But by saying that what they really
emphasize to this child is not good enough. Almost inevitably, go back into
their history, and you will find that
they came from developmental situations that compromised them and disempowered
them with limiting beliefs that were
programmed into their subconscious mind as they got older. Not even knowing the
subconscious mind was there. Not even knowing that it's working 95% of the day
from their little narrow conscious view looking at the world,
they're a victim. “Not me I have all the
great intentions I don't know why I'm
Sick”, and the issues: “can I change it?”.
Not by the conscious mind alone. You need
something to push it into the subconscious mind. Because that's the
source of the problem. So until you examine the interconnectedness of all
these different things and realize we're not dealing with nouns. As you
approach your topic
this is diabetes? Okay. 50 people tell me how you treat diabetes. It's not gonna do
it any good to anybody. Look at it as a verb. Not a noun. As a verb, you don't have
diabetes, your diabetes-ing. All right? You're processing. Processes can be
changed. We've had thousands of patients
come in taking the diabetic drug and
systematically get off of it very
quickly. Never to have it used again. Diabetes is reversible.
I personally helped countless numbers of
people improve the quality their life to where they no longer required insulin. Or
had substantial reductioning. And as long as
they maintained healthy choices and surrendered unhealthy choices, they could
reasonably expect to maintain a normal
blood sugar level. But it's not just me that
can do this is anybody can do it. And I know people look inside their life and
see the stuff that they want. And they've gotta get it. And if you see that you
want to be healed, you'll go out and get it. For me when I see something like this.
And it's something so easy and so affordable in a lot of ways
that you could turn around somebody's life, where they're not gonna live a lifetime relying on medication.
It's like, why haven't we done this before? Why hasn't this study been
done before? Why haven't people heard about things like this? There was a
friend of mine who was diabetic. I sent
him to the website and he said: “How's this possible?”.
He's been type 1 diabetic
for years. I think it hit him when
he was 12 or 13 you know somewhere in that range and he's about my age now
like 35,36. And I showed him the trailer and he's like: “That's impossible I can't
believe it”, he says. “You know what I'm gonna go, because I'm gonna go wrong, I'm
gonna try it out”, so he went raw. I don't know how many weeks
it was that he went
by. But his basically, everything became so balanced and even. It's
like the drug numbers dropped. And he
became completely regulated. he talked to his doctor.
He basically talked to his doctor on the phone and said: “Here's
what I'm doing”. And his doctor said : “Oh, that doesn't work and you shouldn't do that”.
But he saw his numbers change and he saw himself feeling better and got to the
point where he didn't have to that over the course of day. Which is amazing. So basically it
brings back responsibility to the individual for their health, rather than
the perception that they've been provided over years and years and years
that they're more or less victims. And they're frail, biochemical
devices where everything out there could destroy them and it's like this is so
incorrect. For some people, if their mind isn't right,
they can't have this macrobiotic diet.
They couldn't eat the raw food. If their mind isn't right, that's
that's the weak point. So, it's not
that the food alone will do it But the food with the mind
together will do it. We've lived for so long where we kind of
enjoy abusing our bodies, why do we want suddenly to start taking the time to
take care of it. We drink, we smoke, we eat poorly,
we don't exercise. I think that to suddenly make that
complete 180 degree turn and say “I'm gonna start eating well and and take
care of myself”, it's a whole other life. The AMA the whole medical
institutions, I grew up in that world. Both my parents, both my mom and dad, are
medical doctors, nobody knows that world
better than me I've been right in the
middle of it. My whole life. That's an
outdated antiquated model of reality it's led us into the situation we have
now we have more cancer, more diabetes more problems, now than ever before we
have more pharmaceuticals, more doctors more medical institutions, hospitals etc,
now than ever before. I believe that the
definition of insanity is doing the same
things over and over and over and
expecting a different result. My career
in science and medicine really started
at Amherst College, where I published my first paper in biochemistry and
biophysics. And then went on to Columbia
Medical School where I was also doing biochemistry research and began to
really approach this whole thing as a
scientist. What I learned in from the
medical school,
which is great medical school. Was symptom focus.
To relief a symptom with
the pharmacological approach. And even though I was really
expert in pharmacology for my
biochemistry background. I said: "Wait,
there's something not right here". How do we go to a deeper level of healing. And
that took me into more holistic healing
(this is in the 60s), before many people even heard the term
including myself. But I just said as a scientist I have to see what works, what's
going to heal people permanently. And that took me into training people and
educating people and ultimately creating the “Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center”,
where we can create an all-encompassing
environment that people could really get taste of what is like to really be
healthy. Most people come to see me have
health issues. And how I handle that? I
make people aware of lifestyle changes. I focus on lifestyle changes. I encourage
people to understand that the human body has god-given remedial capabilities. It
has the ability to heal. If you create the right internal environment by
leaving certain things out of your lifestyle, your body will rise the
occasions and can respond in a way that some people think would be
exaggeration or even quackery. I've seen
some miraculous things happen in a very by the very simple, the simplest of
changes in a person's lifestyle. The body is a miraculous self-healing, self
repairing machine. Now what gets a person
well, is you remove the causes of disease. And the natural tendency the body is to
bring itself back to normal, if given the chance. And one of the leading killers in
United States is cardiovascular disease. And we now know that 90% or more of
cardiovascular disease can be avoided by changing lifestyle. And cancer which they
always said was genetic, they never found really any cancer genes. And the fact
that it takes a 10 to 15 genes a coordination of 10 to 15 specific genes
to kick a cancer off. The concept that
this is a random probability is not very
likely either, so that even the American Cancer Society the last year made
this announcement. The first time they
made it, I think it's still conservative
estimate. But they say 60% or more of
cancer is totally avoidable by changing
lifestyle. I can give you a pill to lower
your blood pressure or a raise your
blood pressure. I can give you a pill to
make your heart beat slow or a heart
beat faster, to make you urinate more,
urinate less. We can go to the health
food store. We can get a herbal product that
can make your heart beat faster, make your heart beat slower. To make you tired,
to wake you up or to put you to sleep. But the efficacy of the
pharmacologic substance, whether natural or not is proportional to its toxicity.
They don't work because they fix anything,
they're actually blocking you and interfere
with a natural body process. Very often
the symptoms of disease could be the
body trying to repair, rejuvenate and detoxify from the cause of disease, from
the stresses on the body. One of the
leading causes of our early death is
eating food, any kind of food. And the
reason is that in the byproducts of digesting food there are free radicals. And
the free radicals are like the carbon monoxide that comes out the exhaust pipe
of a car as a byproduct of the of the car running. As much as the carbon
dioxide can kill us, the free radicals kill us. I had the opportunity to work as
a staff physician for Nathan Pritikin. Nathan Pritikin as you may know houses
patients and puts him on a very low fat diet and strict exercise regimen. And I
was working with him in 1976. And what was so dramatic, as far as I was
concerned, was at my very early, and my learning and practicing medicine, while I
was working for Pritikin, I saw people get well. Traditionally trained physicians don't
often see people get well. They often see them get better in some areas for
instance in orthopedics. You set the bone it heals, and the patient as well. But when
you're dealing with diseases you don't see people get well. In fact you go from
one drug, to another drug, to a plethora of drugs, to multiple drugs. And so people
really don't get well if they're going up this scale of pharmaceutical
intervention for symptoms of disease. Both at Pritikin and also here at Whitaker
wellness, we see people come off a drug,
come off of a drug, come off of a drug. Not because they have this philosophical
rage against drugs but simply because the reason for the drug has been
eliminated. That would be wellness. So, all the sudden
we're starting to see that these diseases that seem to be manifesting
through the population, where we attributed them to the genetics and
biochemistry, really turn out to be all
connected to lifestyle and how we respond to the stimuli of life. And by
reprogramming that, we are empowered to
change the biology as well. Early on, in
my life I had a standard American diet A very typical diet.
I was very sickly, I was cloudy in my
focus, I had terrible skin, I had PMS, I had the worst constipation on the planet, and
I was miserable. Over the years I
gradually evolved because I do believe that you don't necessarily go from A to
Z overnight. And as I evolved and changed,
my health improved, my vitality improved and my lifestyle
absolutely improved 100%. It wasn't only that I didn't gain weight or gain
wrinkles that other women at my age are going through today. It's the clarity it's the
focus. I sleep three and a half or four hours a night. I run five to six
businesses. I'm never tired and never sick. I'd like to think I'm always
pleasant and loving towards people. It's just a totally different way and I can
certainly say this was not what I enjoyed my entire life.
Coming to this whole change of how I think, how I feel, how I eat, my lifestyle
changing has changed everything about me and the people around me to
which goes to prove, if you make yourself number one. If you make the positive
changes for yourself, which is the only thing we'll ever be given control over,
it spreads out to everything around you. Suffering is the most powerful agent of
change there is. That's why we have
suffering on the planet. Because, until someone is suffering they won't change
anything. They won't move, they won't do
anything. But when pain is present,
they're gonna move, they're gonna open up
to different ideas. They're going to say: “Hey! Maybe this whole thing I've been
doing is all wrong” "Maybe I need to do that" I look at
suffering is a good thing. It's part of the dynamic of ballets in our
universe, the balance of opposites. Disease cannot exist where there is
balance. Where there is balance, there is a sense of a person being at ease. When a
person releases their sense of ease by the choices they make, they have the soft
drink or coffee or refined carbohydrates, they refuse
to exercise, they act in an
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01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:57,210
appropriate manner. They either don't
express or over express or exaggerated expression, what's causing their
angst. They build a rage or they repress everything and go into a sense of
despondency and depression. All of that,
every second, 24 hours a day, is causing
hormonal fluctuations. And the hormone fluctuations directly leads to a person
having then physiological changes in their blood chemistry and in their body.
Every time you get stressed, cortisol goes up, cortisol goes up, then insulin
goes up. And so you have insulin, cortisol and all these different biological
markers cascading up or down, depending upon whether you're in a good mood or a bad mood. Food creates stress, if it creates a
lot of work for itself to digest
And therefore, cortisol the stress hormone goes up. And when cortisol is high your
body actually can't get into a deep
phase of sleep. That's called Delta. And when that happens you're not
regenerating your body during night and
you wake up you feel tired. Because you haven't slept efficiently. So the first
thing that happens is people crave coffee and sugar, because that stimulates
adrenal glands it gets you going. But it's just false energy. What you
really want to try and do is reduce
stress. And a large part of that can be done through better nutrition through
raw foods. Conventional medicine is based
on Newtonian physics. Everything
that's matter, is relevant and everything not
material is not relevant. And this is
totally incorrect because we live in a
quantum mechanical universe which everything is energy, including matter.
And invisible forces actually give shape to matter. Quantum mechanics comes in and
reveals that the mind is more powerful in shaping matter than anything else.
It's not just a body like a vehicle but there's a driver and the driver is
separate from the vehicle. But the how the driver drives the vehicle determines
how well the vehicle maintains itself, and whether it stays healthy.
Conventional medicine treats the body as a vehicle without a driver.
It's like a programmed machine, like genetic programming. So if there's
something wrong then we say : "Oh the programming is off, and the chemistry is
often". “We have to fix it” . But they ignore the role of the mind, of the driver,
because the mind can change the genetic activity and rewrite the genes and
that's been left out of the equation You put that back in and we mix the
energy in the matter back together again and and make a whole out of it.
So we're either going to choose to stay uninformed and a victim, in which case:
“Help me? Is today Tuesday? Let me put on my merit badge, I'm in pain today. I
suffer, hand me a Twinkie” or you'll say :
“Enough of this ,enough. I'm ready, I'm ready
for my own life, turn it on, I'm ready to be responsible for my own life, I'm ready
to examine the consequence of each choice I make.
I'm going to look ahead and ask myself. Everything like this in exchange. Every
single thing we do is an exchange of energy. So if today when I wake up if I
exchange that big fat Laden cheeseburger, or the bacon and sausages and
sugar-coated syrup. And if I exchange that instead for a nice healthy protein
drink with some berries in it and a good walk, a nice positive thought and
affirmation for the day then there's gonna be an outcome that I'm gonna be
happy with.” I've seen amazing results in
people who turn to a raw foods diet or a
partial raw foods diet. I've seen people
overcome cancer, diabetes, heart disease depression. I've seen people throw out
their antidepressant drugs after doing raw foods for just three or four weeks.
It's really that powerful, I mean this is the medicine that your body craves, this
is what balances your body. In your DNA you have a blueprint for healing. All you
have to do really is activate it. And to activate it, you need to wake it up, with
those signals from natural medicines, all those phytochemicals from plants. Those
go into your body they circulate to your cells and tissues and organs and they
activate that healing potential from the inside out. And then you're not just
masking symptoms anymore, you're not just controlling blood sugar or managing
disease. Instead, you're doing something far more powerful. You're actually
healing from the inside out. You're actually curing disease and preventing
disease from ever spreading in your body again. That's the power of raw foods. You
don't get that from cooked foods. You don't get that from pharmaceuticals. You
only get that from nature living nature. Live, raw foods gives you that kind of
potential. We have the most overweight
population ever in the history of the
human race and still growing. Food addictions, refined sugar, saturated
fats, fast foods, childhood obesity. Our society is in a midst of a serious
health crisis that is out of control. People are dieting in record numbers, but
the problem is growing worse. If raw foods can reverse diabetes, can they also
work for weight loss? What we call
addiction is someone who has certain
needs, and they haven't found a better way to fulfill them. So, I believe there
are six human needs: A need for certainty. Which is Comfort. And food is an easy way
to do that, so as cigarettes, so as alcohol so as drugs for some people, and it meets
that need. Now you get certainty by kind of control everybody or you can do it by
eating a certain food or taking a certain drug. Or you can get certainty by
your faith or you can get certainty accomplishing things.
There's lots of ways to do it. Some are destructive, some are more
proactive or empowering. We need uncertainty. We need variety and a lot of
times people think about eating raw foods, they go:"There's only so much I can
eat?". Well, when you look at what most people eat it's pretty habitual.
But we want that change in flavors in our mouths, that change of
state that comes that food can provide. We have a need to feel
significant, unique, important. So some people are like cheese connoisseurs or
a certain form of alcohol.
They know everything about every wine. So we are in need for
emotional need, not just a physical one. We have a need for connection and love
and if we feel alone and separate going out and smoking that cigarette. Or going
out eat that food is like a way to connect and give yourself a little
reward. And then we all need to grow we all need to contribute, but those needs
are usually the last looked at by people. So being able to find a better way to
meet those needs is the way to do it you. You never get rid of something, you always
replace it. If you try to just stop doing something it won't last. As I say,
discipline never lasts. Fulfillment does. So if you can find another way to be
feeling like that, you have more energy from this. Or now you feel free of something.
Or now you have a pride that you took control of your life and you took
yourself to another level. Those things can now move you in a direction that has
a lasting impact. Americans eat a diet where 51% of
calories come from processed foods with with no micro nutrients in them,
no phytochemicals, no antioxidants.
Another 40 percent of the American diet is animal products, which don't contain
vitamin E and C and K and folate and bio flavonoids and lignin and they don't
contain those antioxidants and phytochemicals that we know are
necessary for human nutrition. So, I'm
saying here is that, a bagel is just like a piece of chicken. It's the same thing.
It doesn't contain the phytochemicals and the antioxidants humans are starving
for. So food supplies with macro nutrients. Macro nutrients are those
calories containing nutrients, fat, carbohydrate and protein. And Americans
eat too many macro nutrients. They make us fat. And an increase or an excess of any
macro nutrient is dangerous to our health. Too much fat, Americans eat
too much fat. Carbohydrates, too much carbohydrates.
Protein. Americans eat too much protein. But it has to be more of micro nutrients
in the process. When your diet is deficient in micro nutrients, it makes you want to eat
more macro nutrients. In other words, when you're not meeting the micro nutrient
needs, you have to overeat and it creates food addictions and you actually
feel ill, if you're not constantly putting food in your mouth. So if you
don't meet your micro nutrient needs, you have to over eat and get overweight.
Whatever someone's gonna eat I always say to him if you're gonna have
a concentrated food, whether it's a protein or whether it's a
carbohydrate, have a big salad. Have some vegetables have something
that's alive ideally as the start of that process because it starts to fill
you up and you get satiated on good
things instead of satiated on bad things. Food is a very addictive substance. But keep
in mind that the addictiveness has to do
with the build of toxicity of tissues. That if cells don't meet their nutrient
needs they build up toxins That if taking calories without
nutrients, without sufficient micro nutrients, toxins build up in the
cells. We utilize nutrients and nutrients to process calories. We stop eating for a
few hours, it's when you're not digesting food is the time
when your body can be most effectively repair and detox right. And we move the extra
things, the excesses that it doesn't need. So that's when we feel ill and indigestion
stops because feeling ill is mobilizing a lot of these toxic waste products
removal. People don't like feeling ill. The word addiction means that, if you try
to stop doing something that's harmful you get discomfort, so humans don't want
to feel uncomfortable. So they have a tendency to want to keep doing the same
habits that cause the problem to begin with. We all know that those comfort
foods we go for under stress. And most people are distressed because their idea
of how life's supposed to be doesn't match the current life. And when that
stress happens we got three choices. Blame something, I'll blame our
environment, blame some person, blame ourselves. Blame doesn't change anything.
Or you got to make a change in that environment, you have changed your life
conditions and changed your mindset. That's not an easy thing to do. It's much
easier to do when you've got people
around you that support you. But people
every day go out and their friends or
family make fun of them: “That's a so-and-so's food”. And at the same
time people still see the difference in
them and then start to get hooked. One very impressive weight reduction story is that of Angela Stokes
who was the living testimony of the power of a raw vegan diet and she is so
happy that she made a change to eating raw food. Remember, if you really want to
make a positive change in your lifestyle
for the better, you can do it. Basically
my story with raw foods is that I lost about 160 pounds from eating this way. I
used to weigh nearly 300 pounds. I was morbidly obese. I was in the category
of people who were more or less killing themselves from the way they're eating.
This was taken maybe five or six years ago. Something like that. This was at the
point when I was kind of nearly 300 pounds and this is an after photo.
I can remember walking down the street and going from
McDonald's into Burger King into McDonald's. Just constant,
thousands upon thousands of calories a day and primarily processed starches and
refined sugars. So this was May 2002 when
my whole life completely changed. I was living in Iceland and my best friend was
my homeopath. And she could see how closed I was that I was not interested
in discussing anything about health with anybody else. But she could also see that
I was very ill and I needed help. So she saw that it needed an indirect approach
and she said to me one day
“Would you like to borrow a book?”
And I said : “Yeah, sure, O.K.”. And she gave me a stack of books and one of them
hidden in there was “The raw family” by
The Boutenko's. So the Boutenko's are
a Russian family who live here in the States and they are amazing family.
The whole family that went raw and cured themselves with all kinds of conditions.
So we're talking about juvenile, diabetes arrhythmia, obesity, asthma, all kinds of
things. And they completely transform their lives and this book is their
testimony of what happened for them. So I decided to read this book and I
couldn't stop. I just for some reason on that night, in that moment, this book just
spoke to me and it was like my message.
And I knew that from that point there was no going back.
I read the whole book in one go and I just felt like this is my answer. I had
never had any interest in diets or slimming pills or anything like that.
And then I read this book and it was like there's nothing to question.
Why would I not do this right? There's nothing for me to lose in doing
this except all this weight. I had huge wrangles in my head that night I can
tell you like trying to convince the part in me that was completely addicted
to junk food that this was a good idea. That wasn't an easy parcel to win but
the next day I did it I went 100% raw vegan overnight after reading that book.
From being the person who literally could not walk past a McDonald's. That's
who I used to be and then I went 100% raw vegan and that's a pretty crazy
thing to do when you're in that kind of position. And it's not something that I
recommend for other people to do if you're coming from that kind of
background that I was. Because the detox is phenomenal and everyone's
like “I'm crazy”. My jaw was just in chronic pain
from chewing so much. I've been eating all of these like sloppy foods
that required no chewing and suddenly there are grains or nuts. But it
worked. That was the important thing. I started to see the changes and so did
everybody else around me. It was almost as if you could see the weight burning
off me in the beginning. It was phenomenal. When it comes to weight loss, I just want
to say that because a lot of people are so involved with keeping skinny and
keeping the weight down and going on a million diets.
Forget about diets. If you do this, the raw vegan diet, organic vegan diet, you
will never have to worry about weight. Because before when I was into cooked
food and meats and everything else, I was always on a diet, always. Now I go to eat
food. I go to make sure every day I get enough
avocados and bananas and walnuts so that I can keep the weight on. I don't
want to get too skinny because then people think I'm not
healthy. So it's so easy to get thin you
eat the raw foods and usually watch your salt intake. A lot of
people go into raw vegan, they go to a lot of restaurants and there's a lot of
high-salt foods. But control that just basically make your own juices.
It's your raw nuts and the raw fruits and the salads and you're on a very
great diet that will give you everything you need. And for your beauty for your
health and longevity. By its very nature,
living foods diet, raw food diet at least 80% will naturally bring you to your
optimal weight. I'm the same weight when I graduated high school. It's pretty
optimal weight and it has not varied. I've been on live food since 1983. If
you are way overweight, you will lose weight down to your natural weight and
the average we see is about a hundred pounds a year. Now remember we're not
talking about deprivation. We're talking about a pleasurable diet a good
tasting diet so it is not about deprivation. It is just the natural way for you to live that naturally brings you why you
lose weight because you can eat half as much and get all the nutrition you need.
We see obese people become thin and thin people become strong. And why this is? It's
when you nourish the human body, it has an inherent sense to regulate and
balance itself. When people are thin to begin with because they highly
metabolize food, they may be athletes they may be under a lot of pressure or
stress. We certainly greatly encourage weight
lifting exercises to them. Additionally when people are losing weight, it's not
aerobics that burn fat the most, it is weightlifting that burns fat most. Not to
say that both groups shouldn't weight lifts, and both groups shouldn't do
aerobic exercise, just to be healthy. That is a big part of being healthy, it's not
all food. You know, when people say: “We are what we eat”, I would say “we are what we
metabolize”. gonna break this down and gonna
be able to use it or we have to
eliminate it. And if you're not using and your eliminating, that's wasted energy.
Everybody has some things they're gonna
consume, but obviously have to go through that process. But more alive
foods give you a greater concentration of what your body can use with a lot
less energy, to be able to break down. And that difference gets physical and you can
feel it. If toxic substances come into the body
if they're allowed into the body, they interfere with the propagation of
signals because signals are carried by many times chemical and electro chemical
pathways. And if I have toxins in the system, the toxins distort the signal and
the distorted signal derives a distorted result. So
therefore, toxins interfere with the ability of the system to stay in balance
in homeostasis. Detox is very difficult for people. When you begin to shift your
way of life, all of those old patterns and all of the chemicals that are in the
cells themselves, they begin to be released, they begin to be transmuted.
Person has to be very strong very
courageous and have strong intention to move through that process. Getting the
gunk out, it's like you know stirring up the mud. And it's gonna cause people to
have high energy than low energy. It's gonna cause stuff to come out of their
pores, it's gonna cause stuff to come out of their mouths, it's gonna cause all
kinds of what we call detoxification
episodes. And that's a little rough sometimes. But it's a good thing I think,
once you really get on the natural food and you have a little bit of education
around it, you realize that it's not the food that's doing it to you. It's your
body saying:”Time to get out the garbage.” Now we have enough energy, now we have
the right kind of nutrients. now we have enough fiber, minerals.
Time to get out the stuff that's
excess. Cleansing and detoxifying our
bodies, I believe, is the number one tool
for staying healthy vibrant. I don't think it has anything to
do necessarily with a title of being a
vegan or raw foodist or vegetarian. I think all of those things are wonderful
and they're great things to attain and
to make our lives simpler and easier But the reality is to make everything work
we must cleanse and detoxify our bodies.
I've met many, many raw foodist over the years that don't look much healthier
than some of our meat eaters. I've met
many vegetarians. I've met many raw foodists.
I believe that the health that I enjoy continually for over 35 years is because
I have been cleansing and detoxifying our body. We could pretend that we just
have a little cell and we know we have billions and billions of cells. And what
we do is we build up layer and layer of toxicity over the years, because our
bodies weren't meant to assimilate 99%
of what most people are putting in their bodies. But this marvelous machine goes
“Okay, I'm going to do the best I can”. It takes it in, but it has to take away from
the other processes, as the body
regenerating itself. So when you cleanse and detoxify you start to break down the
layers of toxicity that you're building up. And you don't have to be eating
improper foods to do that. Just driving
around in a car, you're driving behind buses. I get my clothes dry-cleaned, I eat
what some people would call perfectly and I cleanse into detoxify my body a
minimum of four times a year right. After we finished “Supersize me”, we were still
shooting, but it was right after I finished doing the diet myself for 30
days. My wife Alex put me on a detox diet a vegan detox. Where basically she cut
out all caffeine, all sugar, all processed foods.It was basically all
whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, there was nothing with
additives, there was nothing that wasn't sin somehow
based on a natural product. And I did this for eight weeks and over the first
few days I mean I felt myself going
through massive withdrawal like a drug addict.
I had massive headaches like my head was pounding like crazy. I started sweating
after a couple days. I started getting the shakes and it was
really like going through withdrawal and it lasted almost
exactly three days, until I kind of had a breakthrough. And then suddenly started
to kind of feel a little bit better, but that was it. I went cold
turkey on everything. It wasn't just a few things. And I
think that my body was reeling from it. When you go on a fruitarian died,
it's almost like. I call it a camouflage fast. And because fruit is
like it's so cleansing and detoxifying and you're just like getting
rid of poison and junk and everything that's accumulate for my 27 years I was
like getting rid of so much so quickly. And though Stanley had told
me about the possible elimination crisis I was not really prepared when those
things happen.What happened was that I would get a lot of dizzy spells. and I
remember one time I was on the freeway and driving and all of a sudden
dizzy spells. And panicking and my
heart was beating really fast. and I knew what was happening.
I knew I was getting
into an elimination moment . When you start to detox,
it's a really nice idea
to be gentle with yourself. Get a lot of sleep, get a lot of rest.
I didn't do any of that stuff. I was so out of connection with this body and I was
so used to pushing this body all the time, so that's the situation that
I created for myself. In my first week of going 100% raw vegan I was on an
adventure trip in the north of Iceland.
I was whitewater rafting .I was abseiling. I was horse riding. I was like nearly 300
pounds and detoxing at like in a phenomenal rate. So that was an interesting one.
That was everyone thought I've done crazy for a start, all the other people
that I was with, because like I explained, I was the
person who's eating like three plates of
pasta for lunch. There was never one of anything.
And then suddenly there was of this trip with a bag with just
fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and oils and seaweeds. This was
after abusing myself non-stop for 30 days on McDonald's, so at the
end of the detox diet my cholesterol had gone back to normal.
My blood pressure had gone back to normal. My liver function had returned to normal.
And so the question was how much of that was just going
on this diet and how much I was like getting rid of all that other crap that
I was shoveling into my pie hole.
I don't know. Energy is life. I talk to
people all the time and one thing that people will talk about is all things
they want to do in their life. But they feel too tired, or too exhausted, or too burned,
out or too stressed. Now the first thing I say to them is: “Start with your body.
It's physiology first. You make a change in your physical body, you'll see that
change in your mental, and emotional and spiritual aspect of your life”. So I went
initially on just an absolute cleanse. I went on a 10-day cleanse. I was gonna do
just watermelon. I didn't quite do that but I did for about six or seven days.
And anybody who's had been on a fast knows that the first, two, three days are
hell. And then you have more energy than when you're eating. It's bizarre and then
you begin to realize : "Wait, food is a source of fuel, but if probably the only
source of fuel.“ Why do you wake up in the morning filled with
energy ? But if you can give yourself something that is alive, you tend to feel
more alive. I remember I had learned to always drive my car and always at home
have a lot of bananas. Like bananas at different stages, because they are known
to slow down the elimination process when that happens really extreme. And if
you take bananas when you're eliminating and you're getting this lightheaded
spells. It's also if you can combine that with lying down, and lift up your
leg higher than your head, and of course breathing slowly, and relaxing and thinking
spiritual thoughts and praying. That's what I was doing. I would lie down
in my car and it would take my 15 20 30 minutes that sit down on the side
of the freeway and people are looking because I was
sitting down lying down on the backseat. With my feet planted up on the seat in
front of me. And always like clockwork that would work for me. And the deep
breathing and relaxing, and praying. And my elimination
would always slow down with that. But for me I think that I
felt better after doing her detox diet. And to this day, like for a
few weeks a year, or usually for like 2 or 3 weeks sometimes. I've
never done the full eight weeks since I did the movie. But I'll go for
like two to three weeks sometimes four weeks and just detox out, get rid of
sugar, not drink caffeine or cut meat out of my diet or something for
an extended period of time. Anytime you take a person off a very
unhealthy regimen, they're going to feel better for four or five days through the
detoxing and rebalancing process. They will go through mood swings and energy
swings, blood sugar swings. Biochemistry is shifting. But a real
detox takes about two years,not two days or two weeks. A real detox you're not
going to do with some bentonite clay and some lemon and apple cider vinegar juice.
The cells have chromosomes and telomers. The aging clock. When those cells have
been damaged everything speeds up. You're speeding up your agent clock.
It's repairing the damage to the DNA that is necessary to reverse the disease
process. Because our bodies are in a self-regenerating mode, we have a guide
for us flowing through all of us of healing. If you cut your finger and you
do nothing? doesn't heal up ? The entire body was designed to do that
and all of your challenges from diabetes to cancer, to Crohn's disease. These are
just the body's screaming I have too
much toxicity, I need to wait to show you to make a change. Unfortunately in our
world were taught to compartmentalize the body, and work on specific areas with
a lot of chemicals. Well I certainly would never tell anybody to not go to a
doctor or not to do something that's
comfortable for them. What I do stress is educate yourself and tried to toxify.
I've been interviewed many times over the years and they always say to me: “How
do you know this is true Karen?” . Well I
don't have any type of scientific background. And my general answer is
“Try it, try it for one week.” Cause and effect. There's no way it can't work.
There's no way you can give me a million scientific reasons of why it may not
work but if you do it, the body is
designed to work, it's designed to regenerate itself. This is what we're
meant to do. Whenever you change your
life, there's some kind of detox is going
to happen. We have strong coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms, compulsive
behaviors that we've developed to make it through life. And when you change your
life all of those are challenged. You think
those are your friends, but in fact maybe years ago they were your friends to help
you make it through a particular time in your life. But now they hinder the
process. And to figure out that a watermelon and a steak are
with a little different impact on your body. And I'm not saying go eat
watermelon only, but if the more you can put yourself in a position where you're
taking in 70% water content foods, alive foods. You're gonna feel that
effect in two levels. Your body will start to cleanse because it has energy
it's not being used up. Because we use so much energy up just in digestion.
Foods supposed to digest in three or four hours and for many people
it's digesting seven or eight hours. Because we so overload the system. And
we don't just overload with the amount of food, but overload it with coffee
and soda pops and all these drinks that the body's gotta figure how
to deal with. So common sense says, if you want to be alive eat live foods.
I'm a big proponent of cleansing
the body and detoxifying And I don't believe that only one method.
I believe there are many
roads to the top of the mountain. It's finding what resonates for you
So people say to me:
“So which one is the best one?
Is yours the best?” The best one is the one that you'll do
The one that resonates with you. The one that you'll do. And the one where the
person teaching, is resonating, with what you need to learn for yourself. You know a raw food diet is perfect for
the best health possible. Even top-notch athletes are choosing it. So, if you want
to be at your very best, listen up. I first got into nutrition when I realized
that, that was gonna be what made me successful as an athlete or didn't.
I first got into triathlon when I was around 15 and I realized that to be
successful of course I'd have to train a huge amount. So what I did is I looked at
some of the top athletes training programs and I looked at just average
athletes training programs. What really surprised me is that there's very little
difference between the top in the world and just the average. So, of course my
question to myself was what separates
number one from those who are just kind of mid-path, if the training program is
the same. What I realized was that it has
to do with what happens in between training. It has to do with recovery and
a huge part of recovery has to do with nutrition. And I tried a whole bunch of
different types of eating plans. I tried high carb, low carb, high protein, low
protein. All these different things and
some were better than others. But usually they weren't good there is
nothing I found that was really good.
Then I tried a completely plant-based diet. So no animal products at all. No
dairy, no eggs, no honey. And at
first it didn't work well. I was tired I was hungry. I didn't recover well. I was
lethargic and recovery was really
bad and that was a big problem. I couldn't train much, so I found that if I
wanted to eat a plant-based diet, I would have to learn more about it. And I found
the things I was lacking was vitamin b12, iron, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids,
complete protein. I found plant-based sources for all these different foods
blended them together and had a blender drink every day. And eventually that is
what evolved into what is now Vega.
But that's how it started back when I first made it for myself. And it worked
really well. My recovery was so much better. I was able to actually train more
than other people, therefore I improved quicker and was able to start my
professional career much earlier than I would have had, if I not paid close
attention to detail and recovery. And that was really the only thing that
separated me from other athletes. I improved faster than them. It's not
more talents, it's not buying anything other than different nutrition program.
The reason my recovery was faster than other people, faster than my
competition, was because I was eating lots of raw food and the thing with raw
food is that it digests so much more
easily. It's got digestive enzymes and therefore I didn't have to expend the
energy to digest it. When you eat food doesn't matter what kind your body has
to break it down. If it doesn't have enzymes, your body has to build enzymes.
Which is fine, a healthy body can do that. But it takes work and if you're spending
energy building enzymes and digesting assimilating food, the net gain of that
food is so much smaller. So the total amount you get from it is just not there.
Even though you taken a lot of calories what you're left with is pretty minimal. With nutrition you gain energy, so you
find out how you can dive better or perform better. I'm interested in raw
foods and I've been taking them for some
time. I've started with vitamins and minerals
and raw foods is where it comes from, so I got into raw foods as much as I could.
My wife and I when we got married we got started with carrot juice.
We started eating carrot and drinking carrot juice. From there we found out
that we could take raw vegetables and mix them all together, as well as carrot
juice. And we drank that. It was regular for us and we gave
it to our kids. And our kids have all grown up healthy. I found that many of
these divers as they grew older they racked up all kinds of problems and
many the divers have had knee replacements, hip replacements, back
surgery, heart surgery. I've had none of those . And with good nutrition you not
only live longer but you perform better. My name is Victor Candal
and I being raw for four years. I do mixed martial art.
It's been an incredible changes for me in my health, physically, mentally and
spiritually. What I am getting from the raw food in my
stomach, the level of stamina was absolutely excellent. I would say that is
70 % of my diet is raw. The raw it's been absolutely awesome in many
different areas.I get injury less. I do a lot Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a lot of mixed
martial art. And I trained four-
five-six times a week. Running on the beach, bicycle, a lot of
sparring, tournaments. And I can see that with people who are half my age.
I'm 44. People who are training are 20, 21 years. And have more injury. More often than me.
Actually I almost had no injure.
Training more than they are training. I am 53 years old and then when I was obviously
a teenager in my early twenties I was in the United States World Team in Figure
Skating. I was second in the United States in pair skating with my sister
Gail. And I was third in the world professional pairs Championships in 1976.
And tried to get back in skating again in time for the Olympics. I was a very
avid ice skater most of my youth and I was in even after that time. I trained
athletes. I do a lot of work with athletes in my practice. And what's
interesting is that a lot of these world-class athletes I work with, we
realize that it's not going to affect
their performance greatly by being on a worse diet, or a
better diet. But it really does affect is whether they get sick or not. Unless they can train consecutively, for like
six months straight, they're not going to reach their maximum performance level.
And then if they're a world-class skier let's say, they're
gonna miss their event if they
get sick with a flu or a cold a couple of weeks before their two big events.
They're not gonna be the top five in the world or a top ten in the world. They
are, but they're gonna lose their opportunity. When you're a top athlete or
top tennis player or a top basketball player or top baseball player, when you're a
top athlete, top soccer player, whatever you are, you can't be in bed sick and
expect to be at top of your form. And these athletes who shake people's hands
and travel all over the place
they say "can I help them". Because they've had known from their
past. Go through the season and not get sick.
Not catch a cold and not get a flu. And I said yeah, we got to get your nutrients.
And it works and these athletes have said to me: “Well you might have saved me
$500,000 this year. Because I was able to
go because my success on the tour was because I didn't I got to every
single event in great shape. I didn't
lose any time in bed, I didn't lose any time off the schedule, or miss an event.” And I
found that when I was a world-class figure skater the advantage we had I
think, was that we were able to continue a high level of training and not be
interrupted by some illnesses that
other people have. As a former college level
athlete, I have found 40 years later, or 45 years later at this point at the age of
65 that there is more strength. When I mean more strength,
I can do 70 push-ups as captain of an undefeated college football team and
National Football Hall of Fame football
player. And now at age 60 I could do 601 and the endurance has increased way
beyond what I had in my 20s. And the flexibilities, I could barely get my
hands to my knees when I was 20 and now I could put my hands on the floor.
