Clear for Life

Your friends see your new diet as an open seasons for nasty jokes? Perhaps you could have written this email.

Just as a side note, when you do decide to go out with friends, do you find it easier to cheat / enjoy your food (and not invoke cognitive dissonance) or do you have to explain your life philosophy of being a raw vegan? Personally, my friends do not want to hear such nonsense and I get so much crap everyday for how I eat but oh well!

I don’t have any rules regarding my diet, so the concept of cheating on my diet doesn’t make any sense in my case.

Instead of rules I have preferences. Those preferences change depending on the situation I’m in and what I want to achieve (my goals). Often they are related to health, but not always. When I go out with my friends I tend to focus more on just having a good time.

So I try to use diet to my benefit without letting it rule my life.

Perhaps as a consequence my friends never give me grief about my diet. They know that I eat in a week more fruits than they probably eat in a year, but they hardly ever mention it. Sometimes they are a bit curious and ask question (usually arising out of dietary ignorance), but they do so out of curiosity.

I also never bring up my diet. Sometimes they want to eat in a place I just don’t want to eat (such as McDonald’s). In those cases I tell them ‘I can’t eat that crap, let’s go somewhere else’. I just tell them it’s bad for my skin/health and makes me feel terrible afterwards without going into ‘I’m a raw vegan and can’t eat that’ nonsense.

I don’t think your friends intentionally want to see you fail in your diet. At least if you don’t make an issue out of it. They probably do give you grief about it if you let your diet come in between you and your friends. If they notice that it stops you from going out and having fun with them.

So don’t let your diet rule over your entire life. Remember that being happy is at least as important as eating healthy. In most cases you can still make reasonable food choices even when eating out with your buddies. As a guy, just don’t order a salad if your buddies have big burgers. That’s just asking for trouble

Finally talk to your friends. I’m sure they understand you don’t want to eat at McDonald’s because of your skin.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Lot of people email and ask what I eat normally.

I decided to come clean and unloaded everything from my fridge and cupboards on my bed. Here’s what it looks like:

So let’s see what we have:

• Tons of bananas
• Mangoes
• Oranges
• Pineapple
• Watermelon
• Peaches, Asian variety
• A dragon fruit
• Few bags of greens
• Tomatoes, cucumbers and few other vegetables

At any given day those make up for the majority of my diet; though the selection of fruits changes depending on availability, season and whatever I happen to fancy.

Most of that will be gone in the next two to three days.

What’s missing from the picture are the few kilos of frozen berries occupying my freezer.

Let’s move to the stuff I eat less frequently:

• Some dried fruits, occasionally snack with these
• Tuna, sometimes add it to salads
• Olives, again for salads
• Mix of sesame seeds and seaweed, excellent stuff to sprinkle on salads
• Salad dressing
• Bottle of lemon juice

Finally we have the rest

• Instant coffee, I know it tastes horrible and is very bad for your health, but what can I say I’m hooked on coffee and have no plans to quit it.
• Green tea and herbal teas
• Natural and unsweetened cocoa, sometimes drink this in the evenings
• Salt, baking soda and honey, bought them to try some homemade skin care recipes but don’t eat them
• Instant oats, unopened for the last few months and I doubt I’ll ever open it

That’s about. When I’m at home that’s what I eat.

I have to say that when I’m out I eat more ‘normal’ food, i.e. cooked food. I usually eat one cooked meal a day, usually Thai food since I’m in Thailand. Some days I’m 100% raw, aside from two cups of coffee.

If eating like this scares your socks off, don’t worry, you don’t have to go this far just to get clear. 50% raw and the rest from natural, whole foods should do the trick.

Just so you know, I just didn’t one day decide to eat like this. It has been a gradual transition to me. Now eating mostly raw is very natural for me. It makes me feel fantastic and I wouldn’t want to eat any other way.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin