Hi everyone!

I’m very excited and honoured to be guest blogging for Robyn aka Girl On Raw. Although we haven’t yet met in person, as a fellow blogger, Robyn and I developed a friendship online in her Girl On Tour days, which has continued to grow. There are few people I know to be as inspiring, enthusiastic and high integrity as this sexy lady (aint she just!). We both have a serious passion to educate and inspire the world to become healthier, vibrant and eco-conscious with the aid of fresh plant food. We also share our nation of birth in that big ol’ country down under.

I know that many of you are already including raw foods in your life, or would like to include more. So I wanted to help you out with a few suggestions that have continually rung true for both my clients and I when you want to make changes that will stick long-term.

The thing is, some people make giant changes in their diet and lives overnight and have no problems at all maintaining them, like moving to a completely raw diet for instance. With what seems like total effortlessness, they conquer the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual changes that always accompany a large change (whether you choose to be conscious of them and address them or not), and integrate the social and personal ramifications into their life with ease and grace. How do they do it, you might wonder?

Well, I can tell you from my experience in my practice that this is not the norm. This is most definitely the exception!

For the majority of people, the best and most realistic way to make long term dietary and lifestyle changes that they feel good about, is to make smaller changes that can be incorporated into daily life in a more gentle and supportive way. Then at a certain point down the road, you will be ready and willing to make more changes that will lead you even closer to your goal. I refer to this as transition and for many reasons it is usually the smartest approach to upgrading your diet to include more raw foods, or in fact to make your diet or your lifestyle healthier in any way. You can take a deep breath out now if you thought you would have to dive into an extreme new way of eating to get great results!

The good news is that it’s much safer, gentler and kinder to transition slowly away from what you are doing now to more supportive ways of eating and living. If you jump in too quickly to a highly alkaline diet such as the raw food diet, without consideration of your current health and all the toxicity you are carrying in your body from years of eating processed and unnatural foods, pollution, negative thoughts, smoking, drinking, etc, you run the risk of overwhelming your body’s intelligent detoxification systems. Instead of releasing all the toxicity your improved diet has awakened, it simply re-circulates in your blood stream and re-settles in your tissues achieving nothing! Plus you will likely feel unwell or experience unpleasant symptoms as all the toxic waste is stirred up but not able to be fully released from the body via the elimination organs.

Let’s also not forget the emotional aspect of change, particularly when it comes to food. As I’m sure you are well aware, emotions play a starring role in decisions around food for the vast majority of the population. If you make small changes to your diet consistently, allowing yourself time to integrate the changes into your routine and become comfortable with them, you will give your emotional and physical body the opportunity to shake each other’s hand and sign a peace treaty agreeing to move forward together in harmony. It’s a much nicer approach than all-out war, don’t you think? The emotional aspect of change is often the most challenging!

Here’s the other thing: often when someone jumps into a raw food diet very quickly, they tend to overeat on the densest raw foods such as big bags of nuts, dried fruits, oils, and gourmet raw foods, to try to replicate the heaviness of the foods they ate previously. While these foods have a place in a raw diet, over-consuming them is only going to burden the digestive system even more, and it certainly won’t support the reasons you probably got into eating raw in the first place, such as for energy, weight release, lightness, to heal symptoms, etc. You would be much better off including some high quality cooked foods such as steamed and baked veggies with your mostly raw meals than eating a bag of nuts after your dinner salad. It doesn’t take a scientist to know which will make you feel lighter and more energetic! My personal clients and Discover Detox participants can testify to this truth.

By slowly making changes and transitioning at a pace right for you, it is more likely you will avoid overeating, feeling deprived or restricted, or experiencing unpleasant symptoms. You will be giving yourself the best chance to let go of physiological and emotional attachments so that when you do make a change, it feels wonderful and sticks with you!

So, what are some examples of how you might transition yourself? Well if you currently eat steak and vegetables for dinner, try a huge raw salad with a side of organic wild fish and some steamed vegetables. If you eat spaghetti with pasta sauce from a jar, try zucchini pasta or even spelt or buckwheat pasta with a high quality tomato sauce made without poor quality oils, refined sugars, salt, colours or flavours (or make your own).  If you are a raw foodie, trade up your raw nut, seed and dried fruit meal combos for a big hearty avocado salad with a raw vegetable side that is mostly water containing fruits and vegetables such as a filling raw soup, a cauliflower tabouli, cabbage wraps with fresh tomato salsa and avocado slices or a delicious raw dip with crudités. For some raw foodies, it might even mean adding back in some high quality cooked vegetable dishes to provide satisfaction and comfort until you are ready to let them go (if you ever wish to at all – it’s certainly not necessary for wonderful health!).

The label “raw” is not the target. It’s feeling phenomenal and cleaning up your body so that you can experience wonderful health and avoid sickness as you get older.

Lastly, I’d like to share my current favourite salad recipe with you. I hope you give it a try and I would love to hear what you think!

Mango, Avocado and Herbed Greens Salad

The ingredients:

1 ripe mango (or replace with another seasonal juicy and sweet fruit)
1 ripe avocado
1 small handful mint leaves
1 small handful coriander (cilantro)
100g baby spinach leaves
Juice of 1 lime
1 T cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil (I omitted this and it was wonderful, but it would work with the oil too)
Celtic sea salt or Himalayan crystal salt
Freshly ground black pepper

The directions:

1.    Roughly chop the mint and coriander leaves and place in a large salad bowl with the baby spinach leaves.
2.    In a separate bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad leaves and herbs and toss well.
3.    Cut the avocado in half length-ways and remove the stone and skin. Slice the avocado into long strips and add to the salad.
4.    To slice the mango, first cut off the stem. Hold the mango upright, cupping it in the palm of your hand. With the other hand, use a vegetable peeler or a paring knife to cut away the peel, following the curves of the mango. Lay the mango on its flat end and slice lengthwise, working around the flat seed in the middle. Repeat until all the mango flesh is removed. Cut each section into thin long slices as desired. Place the mango strips into the salad bowl.
5.    Gently toss the salad and add more salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with a few cherry tomato halves and a sprig of mint.

Now, devour! This salad is such a wonderful mix of sweet, fresh, creamy, crisp and the herbs add a wonderful twist and really add the final touch to the salad. This salad is satiating but also very light so enjoy as much or as little as you like.

You can visit Casey’s informative and inspiring blog here at The Lifestyle Raw, read more about her on We Like it Raw My Way here, and if you are interested in beginning a detox but have no idea where to start, Casey also offers a guided worldwide detox programs here, called Discover Detox.