Tom Holowka . com

This post covers six days since the last update.

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.
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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