Hello Scottie,

Congratulations, you've already begun the transition and I'm guessing you are feeling pretty darn or you would not have the desire to proceed.
I's much easier than people make it sound especially at the stage you are at. If you have anxieties about extreme withdrawls, it may be easier for you to continue slowly.
Might I suggest you begin with eliminating refined sugars. This includes the obvious plus flours such as wheat. That means no conventional bread. Choose fruit sweetened goodies or better yet, fruit. It takes a good month to get the sugars out of your body. After that, it's smooth sailing. No more cravings.
When you eliminate these foods, you'll find that so much dairy is eliminated from the diet.
BTW, that means pizza crust. No crust, no pizza, no cheese.
If you get a craving for a cheesy flavor, you can easily make seed cheese and spread this on veggies or flax crackers. This is also very filling. Dips can be made with avacado and additions of your choice. I found that my cheese cravings were not for cheese, but for fat.

Maybe a strict schedule works best for you, but if you should choose to allow yourself one cooked meal a day, don't hold yourself to that. If you want to graze on fruit when you get home, do that. You'll find yourself doing that more often.
Then if you visit friends or family and have a cooked, veg meal, it's not a big deal.

You're doing wonderfully and will continue just fine. Glad to have you as part of the community.
Bless

Welcome Scottie,

I guess we're all different. I was fully raw for about 4 months. I bought and read Gabriel Cousen's Rainbow foods book. I was using his phase I to get started. I experienced no problems at all going cold turkey on it. I did not wean myself from "forbidden" foods first. I've almost always been organic, and have never been into alcohol. I never had any cravings after the first three days.

Anyway, I lost 25 lbs in 4 months, felt terrific, looked ten years younger than usual. My skin looked GREAT! My main problem was being way too cold. It was summertime, too, but the Bay Area can be pretty cool in summer. I even shivered in bed every night and could not get warm. I had trouble sleeping because I was too cold. Then something happened in my life that made it impossible to stay on that diet. I won't go into it now, but I got off.

For the past year, I've been about 2/3 raw. I eat 3 fruits with ground flax seeds for breakfast and a large salad for lunch. Otherwise, I eat food that other Americans eat like pizza, peanutbutter sandwiches, pot stickers, cheese and crackers, chicken, etc. at night. I gained back all the weight and more.

Now I'm getting ready to go back on the raw diet. I'll continue my fruit and seeds for breakfast, the salad for lunch, and I'll do green smoothies, a la Victoria Botenko, for dinner. I don't anticipate any troubles this time either. I'd love to be able to stay on the raw diet for life. It's just difficult to eat with other people. I have to bring my own food along, which isn't always easy or filling. Luckily, I live alone and don't have to worry about that too much.

Wow! The only other woman I've encountered with your name. The other is my little sister.

Okay, I'm into my first month of raw / living foods now (second time going on it). I've lost 7.5 lbs. Yay! I've been having terrific headaches every week on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'm pretty sure it's caffeine withdrawal, as I had become re-addicted to my 1 cup of coffee every day. I'm withdrawing slowly by mixing 1 tbs of decaf in with my regular the first week, 2 tbs decaf the second week, 3 tbs decaf the third week, and this week, I'm on nuttin but decaf. Next week, I'll go off that and be caffeine free! I think the headaches are worse and longer this time than ever before because I'm older. I'm 58 now and one has to be so much more careful with the body than ever before as we age.

I notice my attitude is a WHOLE LOT BETTER than it was! I just feel a natural happiness rising up at random moments again! Yippee! My skin looks awesome again. I've got a real healthy glow. People at work have mentioned that I seem more energetic. All the aches in my body have gone away. This may be because I've also quit the Lovastatin I was on for high cholesterol. I'll just have to hope that this diet will prevent a stroke or heart attack due to my hereditary cholesterol--I have the kind that diet doesn't affect one way or the other, so far, anyway. I know this sounds contradictory. But I'm hoping anyway. I know I need more exercise!

I'm hoping to get rid of most of my allergies. As I've aged, and as the planet becomes more and more polluted from overpopulation (and I live in an urban area), my allergies have gotten worse and worse. Lately, my eyes are affected every day. It's a dilemma because if I use the prescription drops that the allergist prescribed, my eyes stop the horrible itching and running, but they dry out so bad that they are constantly red and burning. I can barely see after a day on the computer at work. I wake up with my eyes so dry I can barely get them open for the first 15 minutes. When I try using the artificial tears for lubrication, they fog up for a good 15 min. and I can't see. So I have a tendency to not use the lubricating kind. I only use the allergy drops sporadically because I know they aren't good. But my poor eyes are all puffed up (inflated to 30 lbs! LOL! ) all the time and burning and itching and running most of the time now. I hate this. So I'm hoping this diet will strengthen my immune system against allergies.

I'm also hoping that the weight loss will stop the pain in my knees. I do go up and down a LOT of stairs every day at work. We're located in the hills, so there is a lot of climbing out of the parking lot, to the mailbox, to other buildings for signatures, meetings, etc. I hope I'm not just wearing out my knees.

So that's my story for this week!