I am a health nut and am obsessed with eating real, healthy food although I cheat once in awhile. I always take my vitamins and try to exercise every now and then. I am going through menopause and have discovered that I have to eat healthy or I won't feel good. I will have horrible headaches, sleepless nights and a host of other symptoms. In my quest to be healthier, I picked up Carol Alt's book Easy Sexy Raw. I tend to feel the best when eating raw.
My biggest challenge to eating raw is that I tend to avoid green foods. It's like a little phobia I have that holds me back. What I have going for me is that I have a shake every day of fresh fruits. So Carol Alt's book helped me make my diet a lot greener and healthier. Every day I add a cup or two of spinach or leafy greens to my shake as well as a scoop of Spirulina or Green Vibrance. This makes it super green. At first I started with only one spinach leaf and when I couldn't tell the difference I added more. So my shake gradually turned greener and now I am not grossed out by the color anymore (other people are, by the way).
Alt sets up her book to teach people all about food and what Raw really means. She starts the book with a great introduction which explains how she decided to go on a raw food diet. Guess what, you can eat a lot more than just salad and carrots. Plus you don't need to go 100 percent raw, even 70 percent raw is good. I decided to go raw for two meals a day and eat a regular cooked dinner with my family everyday.
The first chapter was the most valuable for me. It's called Uncooked 101: What you need to know to go raw. This taught me so much about raw food. Raw doesn't necessarily mean cold, it means not cooked over 115 degrees. So get yourself a good kitchen thermometer to test your food. Alt also introduced me to different gadgets, like Yonanas
(this makes ice cream out of frozen bananas and other fruit, I love it!), a Dehydrator, a sprouter, a high speed blender ( I have the nutri-bullet and it's awesome) and more. She even provides a A to Z shopping list which I found invaluable.
I also liked the recipes provided, there are about 130, but most of all I liked the little suggestions and the changes they brought to my life. Did you know there are raw milk cheeses? I didn't but I found some raw milk cheese at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and my whole family loves them. Never going back to regular cheese.
