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General Weight Loss Tips

Mental Notes

I woke up yesterday and enjoyed a small slice of leftover quiche with a glass of orange juice. A total of 395 calories. For a mid-morning snack I had an orange juice frozen pop (Josh wanted me to mention that he made these all by himself- a tricky method of pouring orange juice in a popsicle mold) at 55 calories For lunch I had a whole wheat flat bread panini with three slices of center cut bacon, 1/2 oz. cheddar cheese, tomato and mixed greens stuffed inside. This was incredible! So satisfying and only 395 calories. Snack: 1 serving nut and rice crackers with one wedge of laughing cow cheese: 165 calories 1/2 serving cashews- 80 calories Bowl of Indian lentils (and chickpeas) with onion and a cup of rice- about 550-600 calories Another orange pop: 55 calories Glucosamine chews: 70 calories

Total calories for the day: 1,765

I’ve been making some mental notes this week for myself, for future reference.

I’m still eating what I enjoy and love to eat. I’m full and satisfied with my choices. I’m not stuffed, uncomfortable or bloated- I’m just full.

Do it anyway. I feel my mental crazies picking up and I hear myself thinking “what if I continue to eat like this and stop losing weight?” Obviously I have no clue as to how the body loses weight.  I’m reminding myself of this: I’m eating significantly less food which will result in weight loss, trust in the process and do it anyway. I guess deep down I’m afraid I will get to a point where I weigh a lot less and in order to maintain that weight I have to eat much less than I am now. That is a very long bridge from now and I will deal with it when I get there. I’m finding that this fear of hunger, future hunger is sabotaging. As crazy as it seems (after typing it out) I’ve noticed a pattern of thoughts where I think “I can never eat this little, forget it” and before I even give myself a chance I give up. I give up out of fear of what doesn’t exist. I’m acknowledging this and continuing.

Getting by on less. I think the biggest part of losing weight for those of us who have been overeating or binging for so long is letting it go. Letting go of too much, letting go of stuffing, letting go of mindless eating. I think that is why Atkins is so appealing, you can eat as much meat and vegetables as you want. There is a safety net. I’m finding slowly (very slowly) that the desire to overeat is less appealing than the desire to feel healthy and comfortable. One feels good for about 10 minutes, and leaves me feeling like crap. The other causes about 10 minutes of being uncomfortable (putting the fork down) and hours, if not a lifetime of feeling much better.

The scale is moving. Even after four days, I’m seeing results that I wasn’t seeing with exercise alone. This is very encouraging. I keep telling myself: you’re doing what you need to do to reach your goals. And I am, and I’m allowing myself to trust in that.

************ We’re headed off to DC tomorrow morning for a weekend extravaganza with the blog girls. Lots of food, sight seeing and other nutty things. I will still take photos of my food while I’m gone, eat what I enjoy, yet remain mindful of not over-stuffing myself.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Is A Raw Food Bar Really Raw?

Raw Food Bar

There are plenty of companies offering some type of raw food bar that you can buy. You can either order on the internet or find them at your local health food store.

However, you might wonder whether they are really raw. How could raw foods last so long and be a commercial proposition?

How Raw is Your Raw Food Bar?

In many cases, if you look at the fine print on a raw food bar or on the company websites, you will see that in fact very few, if any, of these vegan snack bars are truly raw. Most of them use some of the following ingredients:

Californian almonds which are pasteurized by law

Cocoa (chocolate powder) from roasted cacao beans, not raw

Pasteurized lemon juice or other pasteurized fruit juices

Cashew nuts which are heated to high temperatures to extract from the shell

It is possible to find cashew nuts that have been shelled in other ways, without using heat, but it is a more expensive process. Many manufacturers therefore choose regular cashews even when they are making what they consider to be a raw food bar.

Pasteurized is not Raw Food

Pasteurization is a process that heats food to high temperatures, close to boiling point, to kill bacteria and preserve the food. Food that has been pasteurized is not raw.

Some even contain roasted peanuts or regular peanut butter made from roasted ingredients. In fact, if you read the label, you will often find that a raw food bar only contains 50% to 60% raw ingredients. That is not what most people following a raw food diet would want to eat.

However, you can quite easily make a nut-based raw food bar yourself. Take 4 cups of raw nuts* and 8 fresh medjool dates, plus one teaspoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice. Chop or grind 1 cup of the nuts in a food processor, add half the pitted dates and process again, then another 1 cup nuts, then the rest of the dates. Keep processing after every time you add something. Add another 1 cup of nuts, then lemon juice, and finally the last cup of nuts.

When the mixture is done, you can add dehydrated fruits whole if you want. To have a chocolate flavor, mix in raw cacao powder plus a little agave nectar or other raw sweetener. Then form into bar shapes and refrigerate.

Raw nuts include: most filberts/hazelnuts, cashews from specialist raw food suppliers, most walnuts, brazil nuts in shells, most almonds from outside the USA

Raw is In The Eye Of The Consumer

In most countries, there is no law that says that a product marked ‘raw’ must be 100% raw, live food, never treated at temperatures above 118 degrees F. The word ‘raw’ is often used to mean something that still needs some cooking, like a bread mix, or nuts that have not been roasted for taste, etc. The ingredients of a bread mix would not really be raw.

Therefore, unfortunately virtually anything could be labeled a ‘raw food bar’. It probably has some raw ingredients and does not contain raw sugar, so it may be healthier than a sugary snack. There may also be some that are truly 100% raw – check labels. In most cases, if you want a truly raw food bar you will need to make your own.

Raw Food Diet
This is my recommendation for a cheap and easy book to learn the essentials of the Raw Food Diet. Whether you want to start today doing Raw completely or if you just want to test out the Raw Food waters this book is a must. This specific easy to use Raw Food diet will help you lose weight, look younger, and have great energy. Learn more about Raw Food here now.