Eating Enough is Key

If you scroll down all the way to yesterday you’ll notice I ate less total calories than any other day since I’ve been blogging my food intake. Yesterday, and today I had the strongest cravings and desire not to remain raw. There is a very strong correlation between total calories and ability to continue the low fat raw vegan diet.

Getting enough total calories is probably the most important factor of sticking with this diet longterm. I’m finding out that under-eating, even by just a few hundred calories, has got me questioning my conviction and ability to stick to the plan.

This is likely the reason I failed on this diet in the past. When constantly under-eating, like I did previously when I experimented with low fat raw, your self-discipline can only hold you over for so long. If your body is starved for calories your mind will kick in and do what ever it can think of to meet those calorie needs.

Calorie Comparison Raw vs. Cooked

What’s funny is that if most people saw the amount of food I ate yesterday they would probably call me crazy. Adding up the numbers I ate about 7 total pounds of food, but that’s less than I ate at any point over the last 20 days. It takes 10+ bananas to get 1000 calories, even more for other fruit you can buy in the grocery store.

According to cronometer, it takes 1124 grams of banana to get 1000 calories. That’s equal to about 2.5lbs or 40oz of bananas (without the skin). Compare that to 40oz of pizza, which has about 3000 calories, and you can see that when you’re eating low fat raw vegan, you have to eat a lot more volume to get the same amount of calories.

Advice

If you’re a beginner reading this, you may not want to hear this but, this diet is hard. It’s tough to get used to the amount of food to eat, and it’s difficult to adapt in other ways too. Long term I know the benefits are rewarding.

You have to decide for yourself if the longterm benefits outweigh the short term inconveniences. It’s my experience that long-term benefit does almost always outweigh short term inconveniences. That said I still don’t know myself if I’ll be able to stick to it this time around.

You really only get the full benefits if you’re doing right. That’s not to say if you’re eating a SAD (standard american diet) and you switch to low fat raw vegan you won’t notice any benefits because you will. But, longterm if you’re under-eating you’re not doing it right, and you’ll run into problems.

Weighing out my food and inputting it into cronometer everyday has been very eye opening and very valuable for me. I recommend that anybody else experimenting with the low fat raw vegan diet do exactly the same. Buy a food scale, download cronometer, weigh your food and input it into cronometer every single day. Not to restrict your total calories and portions like on popular fad diets, but to make sure you’re eating enough.

Here’s the past six days:

April 19

Body Composition
Weight: 152.8
Body Fat %: 8.3%
Water Weight%: 64.2%
Muscle Mass%: 47.5%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 15 Bananas 5 Dates
Meal 2: Banana Berry Sminach Smoothie, 12 bananas, Frozen Strawberries, and spinach
Meal 3: 4 Atualfo Mangoes

Exercise: Pushups
Water: 1.5L

April 20

Body Composition
Weight: 152.2
Body Fat %: 8.2%
Water Weight%: 64.3%
Muscle Mass%: 47.5%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 13 Bananas and 4 Dates
Meal 2: Banana Date Smoothie, 5 Bananas and 1 Date
Meal 3: 6 Atualfo Mangoes
Meal 4: Banana Smoothie, 10 Bananas
Meal 5: Italian Veggie Wrap, w/ atualfo mangoes, celery, tomato, sweet pepper, cucumber and romaine lettuce

Exercise: Tire flips, plate pushes, pullups, pushups, lunges
Water: 3L

April 21

Body Composition
Weight: 152.8
Body Fat %: 8.3%
Water Weight%: 64.1%
Muscle Mass%: 47.4%
Bone Density%: 5.3%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 16 bananas and 4 dates
Meal 2: Banana Date Smoothie, 14 Bananas and 4 Dates
Meal 3: Italian Veggie Wraps with, sweet pepper, zucchini, cucumber, celery, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, and atualfo mangoes

Exercise: Pushups, Squats
Water: 2L

April 22

Body Composition
Weight: 152.2
Body Fat %: 8.2%
Water Weight%: 64.2%
Muscle Mass%: 47.5%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 10 Bananas and 10 Dates
Meal 2: Red Grapes
Meal 3: Half Watermelon
Meal 4: 8 Dates

Exercise: Dumbbell press, incline dumbell press, lat pulldowns, overhead press
Water: 1.5L

April 23

Body Composition
Weight: 151.4
Body Fat %: 8.0%
Water Weight%: 64.5%
Muscle Mass%: 47.7%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 11 Bananas and 5 Dates
Meal 2: 10 Oranges
Meal 3: Red Grapes
Meal 4: 6 Bananas
Meal 5: 4 Dates

Exercise: None
Water: 1.5L

April 24

Body Composition
Weight: 151.8
Body Fat %: 8.0%
Water Weight%: 64.4%
Muscle Mass%: 47.6%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie, 12 bananas
Meal 2: 9 Dates
Meal 3: Red Grapes
Meal 4: Salad w/ Lettuce, tomato and cucumber
Meal 5: 6 Oranges

Exercise: Pushups
Water: 1L

If you have any questions or comments, post them below or send me an email at Tom at TomHolowka dot com.
If you want to keep following along subscribe here

Here are the other posts in this series if you wanna check ‘em out.

Other Posts in this series

How To Do the Low Fat Raw Food Diet
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 1
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 2
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 3
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 4

More Weight Talk

According to my scale I’m now gaining fat. I think it’s funny actually. I’m gaining fat but looking much better in the mirror and consuming only about 11grams of fat per day.

The more I keep doing this, the more I feel like eating more is key. Every time I’m feeling a craving come on, I know that I have to eat. If I want something cooked I just eat fruit.

I’ve been going for 15 days now and I’m feeling fantastic.

Sodium

The hardest mineral for me to get seems to be sodium. It’s difficult to say how much sodium a person actually needs because the USDA RDA’s are overinflated (similar to calcium requirements) because of how much salt we eat in our society. When you eat a low fat raw vegan diet and don’t eat any salt you’ll realize this. The RDA is about 2000mg, and I’m lucky to come close to 400mg on my diet. So how much sodium do you really need? Any ideas?

Reader Questions

Just in case you haven’t read the previous posts in this series (linked to at the end of this post) some of my readers had some questions that I’d like to share.

One asked me about my protein and lipid consumption beling low according to cronometer. The reason is because in cronometer you have to set your caloronutrient targets. I set mine at 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein, and 10% lipids.

The reason I set it this way is because I want to make sure I’m getting at least 80% of my calories from carbohydrates, and no more than 10% of my calories from proteins and lipids. The 80% is a lower limit, whereas the 10% are upper limits. So despite the screenshots showing that I’m low in those areas, I’m actually right where I wanna be.

Another reader wanted to clarify that I am not weighing the inedible portions of the fruits on my food scale, and I’m not. You only weigh the parts you eat, because only the parts you eat count towards your total calorie consumption. Even though you pay for the banana skins, you don’t count ‘em cause you don’t eat ‘em.

Here’s my daily’s:

April 16

Body Composition
Weight: 152.2
Body Fat %: 8.2%
Water Weight%: 64.2%
Muscle Mass%: 47.5%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: 8 Atualfo Mangoes
Meal 2: Salad with Romaine Lettuce and 2 Tomatoes
Meal 3: Banana Date Smoothie, 7 Bananas and 7 Dates
Meal 4: Cucumber Pasta, Two Cucumbers peeled, 2 tomatoes, 1 date, 1 sundried tomato, lemon juice of 1/4 lemon
Meal 5: 4 Mangoes

Water: 1.5L
Exercise: Squats, Pushups

April 17

Body Composition
Weight: 152.0
Body Fat %: 8.1%
Water Weight%: 64.4%
Muscle Mass%: 47.6%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: 4 Atualfo Mangoes
Meal 2: Date Smoothie aka Dateorade (first time I’ve ever had this, reminds me of root beer) 12 Dates and water
Meal 3: Green Grapes
Meal 4: Banana Date Smoothie, 8 Bananas and 8 Dates
Meal 5: Spinach Tomato and Celery

Water: 1.5L
Exercise: Pushups, Squats

April 18

Body Composition
Weight: 152.4
Body Fat %: 8.2%
Water Weight%: 64.2%
Muscle Mass%: 47.5%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Green Smoothie, 12 Bananas and Spinach
Meal 2: 5 Dates and Celery,
Meal 3: Banana Date Smoothie, 16 Bananas 4 Dates
Meal 4: 5 Bananas
Meal 5: Salad with Romaine Lettuce and 2 Tomatoes

Water: 2L
Exercise: Dumbbell Press, Incline Dumbbell Press, Lat Pull Downs, Smith Machine Squats, Dumbbell Curls

If you have any questions or comments, post them below or send me an email at Tom at TomHolowka dot com.
If you want to keep following along subscribe here

Here are the other posts in this series if you wanna check ‘em out.

Other Posts in this series

How To Do the Low Fat Raw Food Diet
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 1
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 2
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 3

Mangoes

I decided to try not eating mangoes for a day to see if my weight would go back down. You can see below in the screen shots my weight went down after not eating them for a day and then back up again after a day of eating plenty of mango. I’m not concerned about my weight number either way, but it’s something interesting to note.

Here’s the last two days:

April 14

Body Composition
Weight: 151.6
Body Fat %: 8.0%
Water Weight%: 64.5%
Muscle Mass%: 47.7%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Date Smoothie 14 Bananas, 4 Dates
Meal 2: Banana Spinach Smoothie 16 Bananas, 1/3lb of Spinach
Meal 3: Green Grapes
Meal 4: 1 Cucumber Peeled w/ 6 Dates

Water: 1.5L
Exercise: Dumbbell Bench Press, Lat Pull-downs, Push-ups

April 15

Body Composition
Weight: 151.0
Body Fat %: 7.8%
Water Weight%: 64.7%
Muscle Mass%: 47.8%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: 5 Mangoes w/ celery after
Meal 2: Banana Date Smoothie 11 bananas and 10dates w/ celery after
Meal 3: 7 Mangoes
Meal 4: 5 Oranges

Water: 2L
Exercise: Lat Pulldowns, Dips, Shoulder Press, and some ab work. Stationary bike too.

Eating Enough

My ripe banana stock is low so I’m forced to eat less bananas until the ones I have ripen up. I have 80lbs of bananas in my house right now but not a single one is edible.

I find it’s much more difficult to get an adequate amount of calories without having ripe bananas available. Bananas are the cheapest and easiest calorie source (outside the tropics) on the low fat raw food diet. I can get one 40lb box of organic bananas for about $28. One banana, depending on the size is between 50 and 110 calories. Peeling 15 bananas and putting them into a smoothie takes about 3 minutes. Then you can blend it up with a tiny bit of water and enjoy it in front of the computer. Simple, fast, easy, convenient, and nutritious. Banana smoothies are like a dream meal, I almost feel a little lost without them.

I’ll continue to do my best over the next couple days without my precious bananas.

That’s it for This update.Subscribe to keep following along.

Other Posts in this series

How To Do the Low Fat Raw Food Diet
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 1
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 2

I decided to do the food intake report a little bit differently for this update, by just showing the cronometer screenshots instead of writing out each thing I ate. It saves me some time. I would like to actually write what I’m at eating for each meal so you guys can see what I’m having each time I eat instead of just seeing all of my food listed.

Things are still rolling right along with the low fat raw food diet, so let me waste no time and get right to the daily recaps.

April 11

Forgot to record all my scale stats in my handy dandy notebook today but I did manage to get a few because of a chart I’m keeping.

Body Composition
Weight: 151.0
Body Fat %: 7.8%
Water Weight%: ?
Muscle Mass%: 47.8%
Bone Density%: ?

Food Intake

April 12

This was mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

Body Composition
Weight: 150.6
Body Fat %: 7.8%
Water Weight%: 64.8%
Muscle Mass%: 47.9%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Food Intake
Meal 1: Banana Smoothie w/ 15 Banans
Meal 2: Banana Smoothie w/ 13 Banans
Meal 3: Salad w/ Romaine and Tomatoes
Meal 4: 5 Atualfo (also known as Champagne) Mangoes. First time I’ve had mango since September, I missed em

Exercise: 75 pushups, 40 crunch, 75 Squats
Water: 1.5 L (est.)

April 13

Body Composition
Weight: 152.4
Body Fat %: 8.3%
Water Weight%: 64.1%
Muscle Mass%: 47.4%
Bone Density%: 5.4%

Interesting that my weight was up today. I wonder if the Mangoes had anything to do with it. Imported mangoes aren’t truly raw because their heat dipped to kill off pests. My other theory is that two of the mangoes I ate weren’t ripe. I could tell because they were sour tasting but I was so excited to have them that I ate them anyway. I might have to try going a day without them and seeing how it effects me.

I also felt poor the first half of the day. Just sluggish. Detox, or a certain food with a negative effect? We shall see.

Food Intake
Meal 1: 2 Dates and a Banana Smoothie w/ 14 bananas
Meal 2: 4 Atualfo Mangoes
Meal 3: Banana Smoothie w/ 12 bananas and about 1/3lb of spinach
Snacks: Celery and Oranges

Water: 1L
Exercise: Pushups (lost count, maybe 50)

Minerals

I wanted to show you a screenshot of my minerals from today because I haven’t been hitting 100%. The areas I’m generally a little low on are the calcium, zinc, and sodium. This tells me I could be enjoying more leafy greens and celery. I hope to enjoy lots of spinach this week because I got a 4lb bag today.

You can see I got a little under my zinc and sodium requirements for today

Total Calories

If you looked at the pics above you’ll notice I’m eating about 3000cals per day. That’s a lot for most people. If you’re not familiar with the low fat raw food paradigm you might think that I’m going to get fat. Like, really fat. Honestly, I feel like 3000cals might not be enough.

Why might 3000cals not be enough? I’m still having cooked food cravings during the day. The biggest reason for cravings is under-eating. Not only that, but my exercise load has been really low since I started blogging my foods. If I start to go heavy on the exercise again I think I’m going to find myself wanting way more food.

If my leg gets better and I feel comfortable running again I could see my daily calorie totals go way up. Stay tuned to see how much fruit I eat tomorrow!

Subscribe to follow along

Other Posts in this series

How To Do the Low Fat Raw Food Diet
Low Fat Raw Food Diet – Update 1

April 9

I didn’t get exact numbers today because I went over to my friend Wynter’s house for dinner. Wynter is the only other vegan and raw-foodist friend I know living somewhat close to me. If you live in Connecticut and looking for low fat raw vegan friend send me an E-mail!

We made this amazing raw cucumber pasta, with tomatoes, cucumbers, dates, lemon juice, and sundried tomatoes. It was excellent and low fat w/ no added stimulants, salt or oil.

Here’s my stats for the last two days;

Body Composition
Weight: 152.8
Body Fat %: 8.3
Water Weight: 64.1
Muscle Mass: 47.4
Bone Density: 5.3

Food Intake
Bananas: 2461 Grams
Frozen Strawberries: 206 Grams
Cucumber peeled (est.): 900 Grams
Tomatoes (est.): 182 Grams
Dates (est.): 216 Grams

Cronometer Screenshot

April 10

Body Composition
Weight: 151.2
Body Fat %: 7.8
Water Weight: 64.7
Muscle Mass: 47.8
Bone Density: 5.4

Food Intake
Bananas: 2975 grams
Grapes: 575 grams
Dates: 65 grams
Frozen Strawberries: 158 grams

Cronometer Screenshot

Weight Loss

So far I’ve lost 5.2lbs in about a week. This is mostly water weight loss. Certain foods like salt, and oil cause the body to retain water. Without consuming those foods the body has a chance to eliminate them and the extra water they hold in.

If you’re eating salt, oil, garlic, onion, spices, nuts, or dehydrated foods you’re probably carrying around several extra pounds of water weight. You can get rid of that extra weight by adding more fresh fruits and vegetables and eliminating the water retaining foods.

Vitamins & Minerals

As you can see I’m getting almost all of my required vitamins and minerals on this diet. The only reason that I haven’t had 100% the past two days is because I haven’t eaten any greens or celery. When I begin to eat more of those you’ll see in my daily screenshots that I’m getting 100% of what my body needs.

Clearly you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need on a low fat raw food diet, as long as your eating a variety of foods and including celery and greens.

Feeling Good

I’m feeling really good since I began a week ago. I have no bloating and no gas and I feel pretty sharp mentally. That’s not really quantifiable but I just feel like it’s easier for me to sit down and focus on something when I need to. I’ve been getting a good amount of sleep and my workouts have been going well.

I’m thinking of posting my workout and sleep totals in future updates for more transparency.

I’ll have a new update soon.

Subscribe Free to get updates on the low fat raw food diet

I’ve begun keeping track of my food intake and I’ve deciced to share it here on my website because I want to show people how to do a low fat raw vegan diet (or 80/10/10). I’ve seen other trials of raw food diets online, but I’ve seen none of people doing low fat raw, and sharing detailed accounts of exactly what they’re eating.

My Diet

I’ve been steadily improving my diet since December 2006 when I gave up soda. Then in October 2007 I gave raw veganism a shot, that lasted just over 5 months until I returned to my old ways.

In June 2008 I went to Hawaii for the summer, and gravitated back to raw veganism because it was so much fun to eat all the fresh local fruit on the Big Island. A couple months after, I came home to New Jersey and I was back to cooked.

All through 2009 I bounced between cooked vegan and raw vegan, generally eating raw all day and cooked for dinner at night.

The problem was never that I wasn’t feeling great on a 100% raw vegan diet because I felt better physically and mentally than I ever had before. Looking back on those times, I realize I made a lot of mistakes that led to me being unable to stay raw. I’ll be addressing my mistakes like poor food combining, under-eating on calories, and eating unripe fruit this time around.

What I Want to Show You

Volume

I think most people will be surprised by the sheer volume of food that I eat everyday. After the first few days I’m eating about 3000 cals/day.

This volume of food is required. You cannot meet all of bodies nutritional needs by under-eating. This is why I was unable to stay eating low fat raw in the past. If you’re eating 1000 calories per day from fruit you’re starving yourself (unless you’re like 4′8 and weigh 73lbs). If you want to experience the optimal health and superior nutrition that this diet brings, eat up!

Nutrition

I also want to show you that it is possible to hit your daily nutritional targets on a low-fat raw food diet. When most people learn about a raw diet they have doubts about nutrition, saying things like: “oh well where does your protein come from?” I hope to quell your concerns about nutrient X or mineral Y by showing you my daily food intake and meeting my body’s nutritional requirements.

I started on April 4th and I’ve been going since then. I don’t really have a definite idea of the amount of time I’ll be doing this for, so I’ll just say I’ll go until I feel like stopping.

Cronometer

I downloaded cronometer, an open source program for tracking my food to show my daily calorie intakes, vitamins and minerals.The great thing about this program is that it breaks down everything and shows how much protein, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrate and anything you could want to know about the food you’re eating.

I made some edits to the program, like removing B12 and Vitamin D from the chart. Vitamin D is not found in non-fortified foods and you get it from sunlight. Since I’m not eating any fortified foods, it would be 0% every day, so I just took it off.

I also removed B12 because it also is generally not found in commercial produce, so the program would also show 0% each day. Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria in the intestine, so the only way to know if I have adequate B12 would be to get a blood test which I plan to do later this year.

I made some other edits too, which I’ll update later because I don’t have access to them right now.

April 13: Here are the other edits I made to the program. In every case I changed the minimum amount.

Omega 6 to 2.2g
Calcium to 500mg
Zinc to 7mg
Selenium to 26mcg
Vitamin E to 10mg
Vitamin K to 60mcg
Sodium to 400mg

Here’s a screenshot of my day yesterday from cronometer:

I purchased a food scale so I can accurately measure the food I’m eating before I eat it. That’s how I know exactly how many grams of food I ate from the photo.

Measurements

I also bought a scale for weighing humans so I can keep track of body weight fluctuations. This scale also keeps track of body fat percentage, water weight percentage, muscle mass percentage and bone density. I don’t know how accurate those measurements are, but I’ll be keeping track of that also.

On Sunday (April 4th) I took some before photos so you can see any differences in how I look then and how I look in a month or so. After I got some photos, I took measurements of my chest, hips, waist, thigh and bicep to see if there’s any changes.

Here’s my initial measurements
Chest: 35in
Waist: 31in
Hip: 35.5in
Thigh: 21.5in
Arm: 12.5in

Weight: 156.4
Body Fat %: 9.7
Water Weight: 62.5
Muscle Mass: 46.3
Bone Density: 5.2

I honestly don’t expect too much fluctuation in weight or these measurements because I’m already thin and not planning on doing super heavy exercise this month. We’ll see what happens.

Here are some results from the last three days.

April 6th

Body Composition
Above

Food Intake
Bananas: 2543 Grams
Spinach: 260 Grams
Oranges: 1154 Grams
Tomatoes: 287 Grams

Cronometer Summary:

April 7th

Body Compisition
Weight: 153.4
Body Fat %: 8.5
Water Weight: 65.9
Muscle Mass: 47.3
Bone Density: 5.3 %

Food Intake
Bananas: 2988 Grams
Spinach: 100 Grams
Oranges: 743 Grams

Cronometer Summary

April 8th

Body Composition
Weight: 151.8
Body Fat %: 7.9
Water Weight: 64.5
Muscle Mass: 47.7
Bone Density: 5.4 %

Food Intake
Bananas: 2940 Grams
Frozen Strawberries: 224 Grams
Celery (de-strung): 320 Grams
Frozen Peaches: 194 Grams
Romaine Lettuce: 375 Grams
Cucumber (peeled): 235 Grams
Tomatoes: 816 Grams

See the first photo in this post for the Cronometer Summary

In the coming days I’ll continue to share my experiences so anyone reading can get a clear idea of how to do low fat raw food diet.

Part of the reason I’m doing this is to have a source on record that I can show people who have doubts about effectiveness of the low fat raw food diet on health. It works, and I know it works because I’ve done it before.

By sharing this I hope I can help others reach a new level of personal health, so follow along with me!

Introduction

James “Rhio” O’Connor was diagnosed with Mesothelioma a rare malignant cancer found in the mesothelium which is a protective sac covering most of the bodies internal organs. For more information on Mesothelioma consult www.survivingmesothelioma.com.

O’Connnor was given less than a year to live but because of his extensive research and determination to stay alive, he was able to live for several more years.

In this essay I outline my approach to a healthy lifestyle, because when it comes to cancer or any other disease the best thing you can do is prevent yourself from being diagnosed. For many people, by the time they’re diagnosed it’s very late in the disease process and chances of survival are slim.

There are direct causes of disease, and although we may not know exactly what they are there are things we can do to drastically reduce risk of disease.

Many of our modern diseases such as cancer and heart disease can be avoided by very simple lifestyle changes.

So how do you prevent a disease like cancer? The simple answer is that you must lead a healthy lifestyle. Through this post, I’ll break this down to explain what a healthy lifestyle is.

Physical

As part of a healthy lifestyle it’s very important to move your body everyday. This is a pretty obvious assumption because the benefits of exercise are well documented, but many of us in America still don’t do it.

People can have an all or nothing approach to exercise. You don’t have to go to the gym everyday for several hours to start getting healthier. All you have to do start is get down on the floor and do some push ups right now. Building up to an hour of exercise is a way more sustainable approach than to go straight off the couch to exercising for an hour.

Another false assumption is that moving your body everyday has to be something unenjoyable like running seven miles everyday. For some that’s fine but moving your body can be as simple as enjoying a hobby like gardening. Pulling weeds, getting down and getting up repeatedly, tending to the plants, you’ll burn way more calories per year as a gardener compared to the person who doesn’t garden.

Not just exercise is important, but creating a lifestyle that allows for movement everyday. If it means going to the gym and lifting weights everyday, great. But it could also be going for a walk, doing yard work, being a roofer, or taking dance classes.

If you create a lifestyle with movement you’ll have an excellent shot at remaining healthy and avoiding diagnosis of a debilitating disease.

Diet

Diet is the big one I’m going to harp on because people are more out of alignment with it than any other area. Changing the foods you eat and engaging proper nutrition is the biggest factor in disease prevention.

The food you eat is very important. Think of the body as an evolving building. You want your building built with the best materials. The body uses food to build itself. If you give your body shoddy materials to build your new cells, the body’s not going to last as long. The walls will crumble in the form of disease and the building will be in serious danger.

What foods are healthy and which ones aren’t? You could probably ask 100 different people in and get 100 different answers. Just go into the nutrition section of the bookstore and see all the different health programs out there.

Below are my dietary recommendations based on lots of reading and a few years of personal experimentation.

Eat Raw Organic Fruits and Vegetables

Eat as much raw organic plants as you can. Bananas, grapes, oranges, apples, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, are the real health foods. Almost all fruits are very low fat and extremely nutritious. Vegetables like lettuces have an excellent mineral profile and are also important to building health.

These foods are the ones you want your body building your new cells out of. For anyone diseased or healthy.

Why raw and not cooked? When you cook your food you are destroying most of the nutrients. Forget about some nutrients becoming more available from heating. When you cook food you’re destroying countless other nutrients and phytonutrients. When it comes to food the whole is always better than the sum of parts.
When you cook you’re altering the whole into new substances.

Why Organic? Organic food is more nutritious than non-organic. Nutrient content of the food is determined by the nutrient content of soil. Organic soil has a more nutrients than non-organic because commercially farmed soil has been sterilized by chemicals, herbicides, and fungicides.

Chemical industrial farming is a relatively new endeavor, with a track record of less than 80 years. Prior to that all plants were grown organically throughout the history of the planet. I trust the million year track record of organic food way more than the eighty year history of chemical industrial food.

Limit Animal Products or Cut Them Out Entirely

Animal foods like cheese, milk, chicken, fish, beef should be severely limited or cut out entirely. Rhio O’Connor began to figure this out too. He ate grass fed beef once per week to the exclusion of all other red or white meats when he had Mesothelioma. He did also eat a lot of fresh fish too but had I been his nutritionist I would have advised him to stay away from that too. Animal protein is dangerous in any form. (Campbell 59)

According to the China Study, animal protiens are linked to causing disease. Many diseases of modern society could be avoided by removing animal products from the diet.

A general concern that many people have is that without animal products in the diet they will suffer from a lack of protien. This is simply false. In fact overconsumption of animal protien is one of the main causes of cancer (Campbell 59).

If you have trouble believing that, note that there is actually no term in medical literature for protien deficiency. Lack of protein produces negative health effects (Graham 109).

Animal products are not good to eat. They don’t digest well, and have high amounts of fat and protein (Graham 15). Non-Organically farmed animals are fed an unnatural diet, injected with growth hormones, and given loads of antibiotics to stave off diseases due to the unnatural conditions they’re raised in. If you eat this meat you’re consuming all the antibiotics and hormones too. Same thing with dairy products. All these things are a barrier to your health and are better off avoided.

Limit Fat Intake

In numerous studies it’s been found that diets high in fat produces negative results. So how much is too much? As a general rule your fat intake should remain below 15% of your total calories. There is much support for a low fat diet of under 15% of total calories consumed from fat sources.

The Pritikin Longevity Center which has a track record of reversing heart disease reccomends fat consumption of 10%. (Graham 111)

Dr. Dean Ornish a cardiologist and widely read author also reverses disease with a nutrition program that includes less than 10% of total calories from fat sources. (Graham 111)

Pritikin and Ornish both know how to reverse disease, and they’ve proven that you’re much healthier eating low-fat than high fat.

Mentality

The way you feel about yourself may be as eqally as important as the physical things you do to your body. This seems a little hard to quantify but the placebo effect is well documented. Rhio O’Connor himself knew the importance of the mind in healing, he dedicated a whole chapter to it in his book.

The way you feel about your life may be even more important than the actual content of your life in determining your happiness. You can be broke and homeless and choose to feel grateful for your life. Alternatively you could have money, power, and a great family and choose to feel that you deserve better and be unhappy. It sounds very simple but it’s also very true.

The importance of structuring your life around a strong sense of self with purposeful work, lots of gratitiude and lots of love is hard to quantify but hard to ignore.

Conclusion

Overall the recommendation for when you have a disease are the same for when you don’t. If Rhio knew all the information he discovered during his post mesothelioma diagnosis research, prior to being diagnosed, he may have lived a very different life. He may never have gotten mesothelioma and might still be with us today.

His book will live on to spread his message of health and the best we can do to honor him and his work is to lead full healthy lives ourselves.

Sources
Graham, Doug. The 80/10/10 Diet. Key Largo: FoodNSport Press, 2006.

Campbell PHD, T. Colin, and Thomas M. Campbell II. The China Study. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2006.

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Your eating habits and your relationship with food is something that develops over your entire life. Every time you’ve ever put something in your mouth you’re reinforcing your eating habits. It takes time to change it. A long time.

How many years have you been alive? However long it is, that’s how long you’ve been developing your eating habits and your relationship to food.

Is it reasonable to expect yourself to break that pattern overnight? No Way! So Take Your Time!

A big problem is that people want to be 100% raw right away, never eat cooked food again or never even want to ever think about eat cooked food again. Our culture is all about instantaneousness. I’m not saying it can’t be done “cold turkey” but for a lot of people it has to be a process.

And when I say take your time I don’t mean give it a week. Years. Many Years. Really.

Here are examples of some of my favorite raw fooders and how long it took them to get to the longterm 100% Mark.

Dr. Doug Graham

Dr. Graham is the author of my favorite book on raw foods the 80/10/10 Diet. Doug was constantly trying to find a diet that worked for him even as a teen. Even when he began raw he failed on it for EIGHT YEARS before successfully becoming 100% Raw 80/10/10. Note: I wanted to source this with a link but can’t remember where I heard/read this.

Doug was developing his dietary habits for most of his life until he started doing what he’s since coined as 80/10/10.

Harley Johnstone

Harley Johnstone aka DurianRider - Was a vegan eating high raw for FOUR YEARS before going 100% Raw. Source He says it at about 0:50 into the video.

Notice that Harley’s diet evolved over a period of many years. If you watch the full video you’ll even see where he says that he hasn’t drank coffee in 10 or 11 years either. Again proving that it’s a process that takes a lot of time. So if you count from the time he gave up coffee to the time he started being 100% raw you’ll get a period of about six or seven years.

Steve Pavlina

Steve gave Raw a shot in 1997 and only lasted 3 Days! He gave it another shot five years later in 2002 and lasted 30 days. In 2008 he blogged publicly about his raw food trial and was eating 100% raw for most of the year. Steve Still doesn’t eat all raw and occasionally will still eat cooked food. Source.

Notice again that his diet evolved over a period of many years. Steve became vegetarian in 1994. Over 15 years of dietary evolution, and even now he still not at 100% raw.

I’m a Wannabe Raw Fooder

I’ve posted before about my diet, but for a quick recap I eat mostly raw and I have eaten all raw in the past for one 5 month period and one 4 month period, both in 2008.

I wrote this post because I too am a wannabe raw fooder. Sometimes I get upset or frustrated I’m not 100% raw not because I’m a freak or insecure or anything like that but because I know when I am 100% raw I feel amazing pysically. Better than my body ever feels.

But I too have to realize that this is a long process that takes a lot of time. I’ve been upgrading my diet since December 2006, and there’s still improvements I’d like to make.

I’m so happy for all the improvements I’ve made so far even though I know I’m not where I’d ultimately like to end up. That’s one of the great things about life, there’s always room for improvement if you want it.

That’s the real takeaway here. All growth, personal or social is a process, and it might take longer than you want but you have to be willing to accept that as part of the ride.

Are you a raw fooder? Or someone who’s been trying to improve an area of your life for a long time? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

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Read Time: 11 Minutes
Bold Parts Only: 2 Minutes

On Tuesday night I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I got into bed, and I laid awake for about 2.5 hours or so trying to get comfortable and clear my thoughts so I could get some rest, but I wasn’t really tired. I took my phone off my night stand and started reading some articles on the internet while in bed. After reading a few and still not feeling tired I got up and went on my computer. I stayed up until 5am or so reading articles, and watching youtube videos. I ended up sleeping from about 5am to 10am. I woke up and went about my day deciding I would try to stay awake so I could normalize my schedule and not be up all night again. What followed was the most massive failure to be normal in the history of humanity.

Tuesday Night / Wednesday Morning

I stayed up all night again not being able to fall asleep. This time I was up until about 6:30am. I slept until about 11am still not very much sleep for me, but the peculiar thing is that I wasn’t feeling exhausted and needing to get more sleep. I was feeling a little tired but I didn’t have this overwhelming compulsion to dart into bed like I typically do when I’m tired. This is the moment I considered giving polyphasic a serious go. What happened to being normal? I took a 30 minute nap later that day around 3pm and still felt pretty good. I took another one at around 11:00pm and still felt alright.

A big mystery for me is wondering why I became an insomniac all of a sudden. I have no idea why I had so much trouble falling asleep on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Thursday

I had penciled in another nap for 3am to 3:30am. I set my wristwatch countdown timer for 30 minutes and an internet alarm for 31 minutes to wake me up. I woke up at 7:22am, almost 4.5 hours later. I was a little miffed when I woke up because I didn’t really get why I had slept that long, but still I wasn’t feeling that exhausted feeling. I was feeling relatively ok. I realized later that windows on my PC had installed an automatic update and restarted itself during the time period that I set the internet timer. The wristwatch probably just wasn’t loud enough to wake me up. So anyway I overslept, but wasn’t discouraged. I finished out the rest of the day according to schedule.

Friday

Despite the previous day’s failure I decided just to keep plugging along. Friday morning I overslept again on my planned nap for 11:00a – 11:30a. I woke up and it was 12:16p. This one was a little funny because I remembered waking up at 11:30a when my cell phone alarm went off. I can remember standing next to the desk looking at my cell phone. I have no idea how I got in bed and started sleeping after that, but it was only another 45 minutes.

The rest of Friday went according to schedule and I slept a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes on Friday.

Here are my sleep totals for the week so far. Wednesday afternoon was when I decided that I was going to give polyphasic a try.

Tuesday: 5.5 Hours
Wednesday: 5.5 hours
Thursday: 6.5 Hours
Friday: 3.75 hours

Over four days I would normally get between 32 and 36 hours of sleep. Over the past four days I’ve gotten 21:45. I’m still functioning at a pretty high level despite the missing sleep hours. I exercised yesterday, got 2.5 hours of writing and editing in. I had a couple periods where I felt like I was just spacing too though. When I woke from my morning nap and my 2nd nap I felt like a total zombie just trying to keep my eyes open. My energy was pretty consistent for the rest of the day after those two struggling incidents.

Outlook

From what I’ve read from other people’s accounts of polyphasic sleep there’s an adaptation period where your body has to get used to the new pattern. This period is said to be the toughest part and if you can make it through the 1st week your success rate improves dramatically. Once I get passed that initial period I’m expecting the spacing out zombie like feelings to go away.

The structure I’m using is the 6×30 nap strategy where I take six 30 minute naps spaced evenly throughout the day. I’m allowing leeway and not being super strict, but I’m also not trying to go too long without skipping a nap. Right now I’m aiming for my naps at 3am, 7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm. Isn’t that cool how it works out like that? I’ll just sleep on the 3’s 7s and 11’s.

Saturday will be interesting because Friday was really the first day that I had this working. Under 4 hours of sleep is new territory for me. I feel okay though. I’m feeling like I want to try to get the nap schedule down pat and not have any slip ups like I did yesterday, when for whatever reason I went back to sleep once. I have no problem with adding an extra nap in there somewhere if I’m feeling tired in between a nap. I don’t have a general feeling of tiredness or lethargy or anything like that. Tiredness seems to come and go. I was by far most tired yesterday after I woke up from the extra unscheduled 45 min nap I took. Good thing I had to take the garbage out and do the dishes and not do anything where I had to think too hard because I was in zombie mode. Zombie Tom subsided after I was finished with the dishes.

Previous Sleep Experimentation

Polyphasic sleep is something I’ve always wanted to try ever since learning about it in 2006. It always seemed to me like it was odd that humans needed to sleep as long as we do. I thought you could game the system and sleep less. Resting for 9 hours seems like too big a percentage of total time spent alive. If you average 8 hours of sleep per day that’s 33% of your life sleeping. It just seems like a lot. Since your time in the physical world is limited it makes sense to me that you would want to spend as much time interacting with the physical world as possible.

I ended up giving polyphasic a try once and that’s all it was a TRY. I failed pretty miserably and just wrote off polyphasic sleep as prolonged long term sleep deprivation. After this I did try biphasic sleeping with moderate success in the summer of 2006. I stopped that because my schedule never seemed consistent enough to allow a 90 minute nap somewhere in the middle of the day with any regularity like biphasic required. That was really the end of my sleep experimentation.

Most recently I’ve just been letting myself sleep as long as I need to. Going to bed and then just letting myself wake up naturally whenever woke. Sometimes I’d sleep 7.5 hours. Sometimes 8 or sometimes 9 or 10. Usually not more or less than that.

Interesting Naps so Far

One of the odd things that happens to me when I go to take a nap is lying down and not feeling like sleeping at all, even if I’m feeling really tired before nap time. I can recall being conscious almost the whole time lying down. My alarm goes off and I’m surprised that I wasn’t able to fall asleep and then I get up. Only that I’m refreshed. I get up feeling rested and ready to tackle another few hours before my next nap even though I feel like I haven’t slept at all. This has happened about three times over the past couple days. I’m lying down, aware, not really sure if I’m sleeping because I’m able to direct my thoughts and even consciously move my body, yet I don’t think I’m awake. Sounds weird right? My eyes do this rapid fluttering almost like a twitching during this. Is that what REM sleep refers to? I know REM stands for rapid eye movement, and I could feel my closed eyes moving rapidly. I guess maybe I should study a little more about sleep and see what I can find on that.

From what I understand you can do polyphasic sleep because the middle stages of the sleep cycle aren’t as important as the first and last cycles. When you sleep deprive yourself you condition, or possibly recondition yourself to enter the last and most important stage (REM Stage) quickly. I say possibly recondition because I’ve seen evidence that newborns are not monophasic sleepers (Edit: although babies also sleep 18 hours a day so maybe that’s a moot point). I don’t know if you would consider them polyphasic or biphasic though.

Why Am I Doing This?

Don’t take the above in any way as scientific because I’m really not sure what I’m talking about here. I’ve read others accounts on polyphasic sleep and I’m just going by them. Since I’ve had some extra time lately I spent about 2 hours the other night reading all of Steve Pavlina’s Polyphasic sleep logs. They’re the most extensive posts I’ve seen from someone who seems to have gotten this to work long term. Steve did polyphasic sleep for about 5.5 months in 2005 and 2006. I Also too a look at Puredoxyk who has lots of info too. She’s been polyphasic for longer than Steve, although she practices a different type of polyphasic that’s different from what I’m doing right now. I’m not seeking to make this more scientific. I’m not really interested in the scientific knowledge behind it.

The personal experiential questions are what I’m interested in answering. The science doesn’t really matter to me. I just want to see if and how this works from the inside out. Others appeared to have gotten it to work, but there’s not many of those claims out there, and it’s tough to know what to believe on the internet sometimes. I imagine that if I get this working and am regular with the polyphasic schedule I might become more interested in the why and how it works. Right now though I’m just interested in the: Does it work?

I’m interested in getting it to work and seeing how I feel when I’m doing it. I can read accounts of what others say about polyphasic sleep, but there’s almost something phony about that, like I’m not really learning enough about it by just reading about it. I have too many questions that could only be answered from an experiential standpoint. Like can I really survive and not feel tired on 3 hours of sleep per day? How does this tie in with athletics? Will my recovery be slower? On a hard training day will more naps be required to keep awake and alert? How will this affect my productivity? I’ll have more time to do work but will the quality of my output be the same? Is polyphasic sleep just a quantity/quality tradeoff? Like am I just trading a few hours of sleep to have some lower quality hours in the day? Even if it is working and feels like I’m doing no harm, what is the long term affect on health?

Don’t Believe it’s Possible?

If you’re skeptical of this I can understand. I’m a little skeptical too, and I’m doing it. It’s like wow if this works why doesn’t everybody do this? And why does nobody really know about this?

I felt a similar way when I started eating all raw food for the first time in November 2007. When I started my stomach did not feel good at all. I was extremely bloated for the first seven to ten days. On the first day though I experienced a very high degree of focus. There was no other external event that would have explained that and I heard other accounts of people saying the same thing. It just felt like a fog had been lifted. Like it had been a perpetually cloudy day in my brain and all of a sudden the clouds opened up and the sun shined through for the first time. This caused me to stick with it initially even though physically I wasn’t feeling so great with the stomach bloating. Eventually that subsided and I felt better than ever. This is comparable to the adaptation phase of polyphasic sleep.

The fog lifting is analogous to the extra time I’m gaining. Even though I’m having my zombie episodes, I’m enjoying the benefits of having more awake time. Just like how I enjoyed the increased mental clarity eating raw food. I have to deal with feeling like a zombie at times, but in a week or so hopefully I’ll adjust and won’t be feeling that way anymore.

It would have been easy to write off these accounts without ever trying it and just call somebody crazy because they do something that isn’t normal. When you try it yourself though it’s much more difficult to deny your own experience.

It’s 2:40am Saturday morning right now as I’m working on this post and I’ve spent a total of about two hours writing today already and the day is only about 3 hours old. That makes me feel really good! It’s like wow I can focus all this extra time into my goals and that prospect is really exciting. If I slept only 3-3.5 hours per day over the course of year that would lead to me to 1825-1642.5 extra hours of awake time per year versus someone averaging eight hours of sleep per day. That’s like living an 76 more days per year than the average monophaser!!

I’ll continue to update on how this is going over the next few days so check back when you can.

I’d really like to know your opinions on this. I want to encourage you to ask any questions you have on what I’m doing. You can do this by leaving a comment or sending an email to Tom at TomHolowka dot Com.
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The best part of this trick? You don’t have to do anything but wait.

Wait till it’s Spotted

I see so many people chomping down on these perfect looking golden yellow bananas. Those bananas might look perfect but they could taste waaay better. Why? Because that banana’s not ripe.Ripe bananas taste better.

The reason ripe bananas taste better is because during the ripening process the starch to sugar ratio changes. When the banana ripens the amount of sugars increase while the amount of starch decreases. Sugar tastes good. Starches are bland and boring.
(Photo: Unripe Bananas)

Seriously. Just wait.

How You Know They’re Ripe

The bananas aren’t ripe until they’re spotted. I know, it’s hard to wait until they get spotted, but it’s worth it for superior taste.

It almost seems a little counter intuitive, but that’s the way nature made em. Those spots on the peel signal that they are ready to eat.

Many people won’t even eat a spotted banana because they think it’s bad, spoiled, gross, or yucky. I was one of those people when I was a kid too. Time to grow up people!

(Photo: Ripe Bananas)

Taste Test

Don’t believe me? Do the banana taste test.

I’ve done this test with a few people and they all preferred my ripened banana over their unripened banana.

Get a ripe banana (yellow w/ spots) and an unripe banana (yellow w/ no spots). Take a bite out of the unripe banana. Chew. Swallow. Notice the taste. Next, take your ripened spotted banana and do the same. Viola! Behold the superior sweetness and flavor of the ripe banana!

Excuses

People eating unripe bananas give me the excuse that bananas are too sweet when they’re spotted. Lame.

Too Sweet? Really? I’ll see this person gorging themselves on ice cream or cookies sometime later. Maybe they’re just comfortable deluding themselves. A ripe banana is definitely not sweeter than a big bowl of chocolate ice cream. Lots healthier too.

Wait till they’re ripe for a tasty delight!

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