The Raw Love program provides an uncomplicated and sustainable pathway to bring and keep you on your health journey.
It was created from two seeds planted in casual conversation as these things often tend to happen.
The first was a talk given by my nutrition mentor, David Wolfe, with whom, via the Body Mind Institute I completed my Plant Based Nutrition qualification.
He was talking about the magic of spring water. How the negative charge of the earth connects with the positive oxygen particles in the air as the water breaks out of its rocky earthy birth place, and brings forth the smallest trickle of water.
This trickle then seems to multiply as it finally, in a much more confident manner, gathers at the collection point, which could be anything from a puddle to a pond to a river or man built dam.
I started thinking of ways to provide a health journey in the same fashion.
A tiny trickle originating from the earth, which would ultimately cascade to a pool of healthy decisions and ultimately life.
Could planting the spinach yourself motivate you to start eating it? Adding it to smoothies and might I venture – juicing it?
The final trigger came when a foodie friend told me in a joking fashion that he would be much healthier and leaner if he just weren’t as hungry all the time.
Could it be that simple? Find a way to combat the hunger and rather than taking away the bad, simply start adding more good in tiny bite size portions.
Literally, tiny bite size portions.
This journey was going to be about abundance in all forms. There shall be no deprivation here.
With a small group of clients the process began with the simple instruction of growing their own spinach for smoothies, salads and juicing.
The three o’ clock anticipated energy slump was prepared for in way of a sliced apple dipped in a little nut butter and date paste. Having it prepared took away the decision process which could be compromised at that time of the day.
A ten minute yoga flow was introduced a week later since we can imagine having 10 minutes in our day much easier than having 30 minutes.
Boom – the trickle became a steady flowing stream. My clients had such pride in their beautiful spinach that they wanted to use it in their day to day food preparation. The sugar craving which in the past would have been “satisfied” by some short lived, insulin spiked, sugary chocolate treat had been replaced with a high fiber, high water content (84% water according to Paul, AA, Southgate, D.A.T: McCance And Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods, 4th Revised Edition), fruit sugar treat.
In his book: The Sunfood Diet Success System, David quotes a statement from Brian Tracy’s book: Maximum Achievement.
The Law of Substitution: This is one of the most important of all mental laws. It is an extension of The Law of Control. It states that your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time and that you can substitute one thought for another. This “crowding out” principle allows you to deliberately replace a negative thought with a positive thought.
We have simply taken this concept and moved it from the mind to the mouth.
More and more gut microbiome research studies done by some of the greatest scientific minds of our era such as Zach Bush and Shawn Stevenson, author of the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter and creator of The Model Health Show podcast, are teaching us that this mind to mouth action is going to do a full circle back to the mind.
For some time we have known that more than 70% of serotonin receptor sites are situated in your tummy, but more recent is the discovery that melatonin secretion, which in the past has been 100% accredited to the pineal gland is also a gut microbiome dependent product. This is an entire chapter on its own, which for today, in this bite size of sharing, we will not include. There are so many incredible books to read on this topic.
Celery and other greens soon started joining the home veggie patch or window sill of my clients, and the morning yoga flow was complimented with a garden work out.
The garden work out brought along time spent in the sun, which we now know naturally elevates vitamin D levels – our most natural happy drug and also an incredible immune boost.
The garden work in the sun brings with it the gift of thirst, which in return not only provides the hydration our cells and brain in particular need, but also dismisses the false hunger signal.
The brain’s primary fuels are oxygen, glucose, fat and water. With the simple tending to the spinach followed by a glass of water and our apple slice with its delicious nut butter and date paste, mixed in with our healthy dose of Vitamin D from the sun, husbands, wives and children are welcomed home from work and school in a place of energetic abundance.
Dinner can be prepared as an act of togetherness in keeping our family healthy rather than raiding the fridge for a quick hunger fix. Ending the day with a more relaxed mind set and not over full tummy again leads to a better night’s rest with better quality sleep, which greatly contributes to the elimination of unhealthy cravings the next day. A healthy habit multiplication cycle has been initiated.
And about that hunger ….
Fiber is our greatest ally in reaching satiety. Introducing more plant based products and some in their raw form will naturally increase your daily fiber intake. Combine that with the movement which is now happening naturally in the garden with the additional water which also in the most natural way found its way into our day, and you can be sure to tick the good bowel movement box. There is no need for me to explain the happiness a good working elimination system can bring to anyone’s day. Adding that to the happiness from your Vitamin D sun fix and once again we are in a healthy habit multiplication cycle.
The famous 12 year Schuphan Study concluded that organic grown spinach contains 64-78% more vitamin C than conventional spinach, and most organically grown crops had 2 to 10 times the mineral content of iron, potassium, magnesium and calcium.
Hunger is one of our primal survival instincts, triggering the action to hunt or gather. Once the cells of the body are saturated with nutrients, hunger naturally subsides. This is why people on juice fasts admit they never felt hungry even though they were not eating anything.
One can only assume that our ancestors did not walk around “hangry” between hunting seasons.
We know modern day polite custom was not in place and snacks would not have been readily on hand. They had enough nutrients from the real foods they consumed to put them into a place of non-hunger, till the next hunger signal would motivate finding the next meal, in the form of an animal, seed or fruit.
Organic grown also means there are no toxic chemicals your organs need to fight or filter out.
Even though we are not touching the topic of detoxification in this conversation, including supplements such as chlorella, spirulina and the volcanic mineral supplement Zeolite powder will help eliminate heavy metals such as mercury from our organs and optimize the absorption of all the good nutrients we are adding into our diets. For a stress-free eco-friendly shopping experience – get your supplements along with all the other goodies you can’t grow yourself from Faithful to Nature.
The Magic of Superfoods by Peter and Beryn Daniel is a great book to learn more on detoxification with sea vegetables.
Once again the approach is to add in more of the good stuff, which will naturally eliminate the not so good stuff.
One of my self care practices is to collect spring water from the Newlands Spring in Cape Town. It might come across as such a small gesture, but in my mind, taking the time to collect mineral rich, chemically free water to hydrate my body starts my healthy habit multiplication cycle. It motivates me to start a batch of gut healthy kombucha and sprout my chickpeas to make hummus. To each person the cycle will begin in a different way. The secret is to find your personal starting point.
I realized the success in this approach when a shocked client called me to let me know that she just actively craved an apple. Only later did she realize it was something sweet she was after and that her brain, or gut microbiome to be more accurate, had already made the substitution to ask for an apple and not a KitKat. Nestle, please accept my condolences.
You would have come to the end of this article and realized there is nothing here which in some part you did not already know, and that makes you entirely qualified to start your health journey in which ever capacity you are able to at this time, and to reach out for further guidance if the need should arise.
“Success is nothing more than a refined study of the obvious.”- Jim Rohn
Written by Carmen Potgieter, Founder of the Raw Love Programme
