What I eat and don’t eat – diet update

Hey loves!

I’m in the mood to write a more light-hearted, fun post than the last couple of recent ones. It’s been a while since I really talked FOOD on the blog so I thought I’d jump into it today and let you know how I’m eating these days, what has evolved and changed (I’m still high carb/low fat raw vegan these days, just not totally raw).

There are also new people on the blog and I know whenever I first start reading about someone, I’m always curious to know  more personal details of their life like what their interests are, how do they eat, what does their life look like. Maybe that’s just me LOL!!

Anyway, here’s a window into what my diet looks like nowadays – since I got back from traveling Southeast Asia last year I’ve been able to stick to this way of eating 100%.

What do I eat?

Fruit!

Fruit makes up the bulk of my diet and this has been the case for the past 2.5 years. On any given day, I’ll typically eat half a dozen different varieties of fruit (or more!), either whole or in the form of smoothie bowls. It depends on what’s currently ripe in the house and what’s available to buy in my area but bananas, dates, mango, papaya, berries, melon and apples are my staples.

Because fruit is by far the largest part of my diet, there are always mass amounts of it stashed in the kitchen, pretty much anywhere it will fit! Ten bunches of bananas stacked and spilling off kitchen shelves, dozens of apples piled onto the table, giant melons and papayas overflowing on the fruit cart. If you were to look in my freezer, you’d find a sea of frozen fruit… and pretty much nothing else!😂 At one point in my life, this would have seemed crazy to me! Now it’s just normal…

I honestly am experiencing the best health of my life eating this way.

Leafy greens and other veggies

I make sure to eat at least a few big handfuls of greens everyday in the form of green smoothies or salads. Truthfully I would like this amount to increase and this is an area I need to work more on. When I first started eating raw vegan in 2016, I was going through more than a bundle of greens a DAY. I felt amazing! I used to make such humongous salads that it would take me a whole hour to finish eating them! I had to buy a 14×14 bowl (one of those giant salad tosser bowls) just to fit my portion of salad in there for dinner every night. It was that gigantic. Oh the memories😂

These days I don’t eat nearly as much salad as I used to.. I’ve gotten somewhat lazy with my eating habits around greens. LOL not proud of it but just keeping it real!! It would also be extremely expensive for me to eat the same amount of greens I used to. I was making a lot more money before I struck out on my own work-wise last year. No regrets – but it means I don’t spend quite as much as I used to on food and need to make a few concessions. Increasing the amount of greens I eat everyday is something I want to work on changing in the near future and I have a few ideas on how to do this. For now, I feel ok (not great but ok!) with getting in at least a few large handfuls of leafy greens and other veggies per day.

It’s about doing the best we can with what we have, while striving for more improvement in the future.

Potatoes

Fun fact: I eat potatoes literally everyday. I go through around 10 lbs of potatoes a week (good thing organic bulk potatoes are super cheap!!) I make mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, french fries, potato patties, hash browns, potato stews. I will never get tired of potatoes – as long as they are the fluffy white russet kinds which in my opinion are the BEST ever! Sweet potatoes are ok but just don’t compare in my opinion 😉

Potatoes are one of the healthiest foods out there, an amazing source of carbs and glucose for the brain, and packed with disease-fighting nutrients including lysine – the weapon against viruses, cold sores, even cancer! They are also incredibly filling, grounding and so so satisfying. Potatoes are the reason why I would never want to go 100% raw with my diet – this health food is just too important to me.

Beans and Lentils

I have a special weakness for chickpeas, the creamiest and carbiest of the beans. If I do eat legumes, there’s a 90% chance they will be chickpeas! Beans and lentils are something I decided to incorporate into my diet along the way after being vegan for a while and I’m really glad I chose to do this for a few reasons:

– keeping these foods in my diet means that I have more options when eating out at a restaurant. I rarely eat out because most restaurant food contains stuff I can’t have (plus I just like my cooking better :). But keeping beans and lentils in my diet means I CAN have a date night once in a while at an Indian restaurant for example (chana masala is my go-to dish!) Or I can eat at the vegan macrobiotics place in my neighborhood. When I’m traveling, being able to eat beans is often a saviour (like my veggie burger experience in Vietnam last year). Earlier this year when I was traveling in Belize, I relied heavily on a chickpea veggie soup that I was able to find at a restaurant.

– the addition of beans and lentils in my diet means that I can make some seriously awesome stuff – for example, I can make wraps out of chickpea flour. I can make hearty spicy chili using kidney beans. I can make vegan “taco meat” with the addition of lentils. When beans and lentils are in the mix, I can get way more creative in my cooking as there’s just so much you can do! This adds more versatility to my diet which I think is a good thing.

– beans and lentils appeal to a lot of people regardless of whether they are vegan or not. This is important when I cook for others who don’t eat the way I do and I want to make something that everyone will like. I recognize many people aren’t into the kinds of simple mono meals that I often go for! But veggies, beans and potatoes are a complete meal that I can eat AND tends to satisfy even the carnivores in my life.

– beans and lentils (like potatoes) can be quite filling and this comes in handy on those days when I’m craving warm, hearty comfort food. They are a healthy source of fiber, more digestible than most grains (to me at least) and very low in fat – big pluses!

Nuts and Seeds

Once in a while I’ll eat nuts and seeds (this is usually the case if I eat out at a raw vegan restaurant) but I try not to make a habit out of it. This is mostly due to the fact that I want to keep my fat intake low. There’s quite a bit of fat in nuts and seeds and it adds up quickly when a few handfuls of nuts or scoops of nut butter are eaten as a snack. I love almond butter… but did you know there’s an average of 28 almonds in just one spoonful of it? (And who eats just ONE spoonful of this decadence by the way?!) I also have no self-control!🙈 I prefer to mostly keep nuts and seeds out of my diet rather than end up eating them everyday because I’ve come to rely on them. Exceptions are restaurant meals and the occasional homemade nut cheese or nut milk or tahini every once in a while.

Salt

There’s a lot of controversy over salt out there! Some say we need it; others say salt contributes to disease. For what it’s worth, I think it mostly comes down to 1) what kind of salt you’re using and 2) how much. There’s nothing healthy about table salt but sea salt like pink himalayan or celtic sea salt is full of trace minerals that are great for the body in small amounts. If it wasn’t for the cooked food in my diet, I would probably have no need for salt in any of my meals (I also eat something else for my sodium intake as you’ll read about below). However, sometimes I like to make things like homemade french fries or a veggie soup – I feel like these things need a bit of salt to taste good and I don’t feel bad about using sea salt at all – it plays a very minimal part in my overall diet.

Seaweed

I am one of those people who’s always had more of a salt craving over sweets. Give me crunchy salty potato chips any day over cookies or cake! When I began studying nutrition several years back, I learned that one of the major reasons behind a salt craving is a need for more minerals in the diet. Believe it or not, some of the most bioavailable minerals for our body are found in leafy greens, green veggies like celery, and in seaweed! I am a seaweed addict – I’m almost embarrassed to say that I buy 10 lbs of seaweed regularly in bulk! It’s more cost-effective this way and I do go through it ALL. Seaweed is the main reason why I don’t ever worry about there not being much sodium in my diet. I buy soft seaweed that can be eaten right out of the bag in strips (no oils, salt, or preservatives added – just seaweed!) It makes a great broth for stews but mostly I find myself just snacking on it straight out of the bag.

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Things that I don’t eat:

Meat, Dairy, Fish, Eggs

For health reasons and environmental reasons I don’t eat these foods.

Grains

I’ve been mindful about grains in my diet for a long time – gluten is something I’ve actively avoided for probably close to a decade. But even non-gluten grains like rice and oats I don’t feel great about eating. Many people, especially those with a lot of health issues, find that removing grains in their diet helps them clear up digestive and skin issues and just feel better in general – this is definitely the case with me.

I also like the fact that not being able to rely on grain to fill me up means I have to eat more fruit and potatoes – the healthy disease-fighting stuff! Grain is not a disease-fighting food. It’s great filler food and there are some grains that have more nutrients than others – the ancient grains like quinoa and millet top the list. But even still, I feel like there are healthier sources of carbs for me to rely on. Some people feel good eating grains. I notice a dip in energy and aggravation of health issues when I do, so I make a point in keeping them out of my diet.

Soy and Corn

I stay away from these foods mainly because they are GMO crops. At this point, almost all soy and corn grown in the world is GMO. And as many tests have shown, even the organic varieties out there are often contaminated due to cross-pollination. I believe soy and corn used to be health foods for us at one point in time but we can no longer say that due to GMOs unfortunately. For health reasons, I stay far away from both of these foods.

Oils

There are some oils that I avoid like the plague (soy, corn, canola, vegetable, peanut, cottonseed) but in general I try not to eat any oil at all as it’s pure fat. My goal is to eat as low in fat as possible so I can help my liver detox and get stronger. I used to rely so much on olive and coconut oils in my cooking a few years ago – now I just make all my food without oil which is a lot easier to do than you might think!

Sugar

When it comes to white sugar and corn syrup, I stay away from that stuff. For one thing, most of it is GMO. These sugars are not good for the body either. My healthy sweetener of choice is maple syrup – full of vitamins and minerals, this is a sweetener that is useful and beneficial (and absolutely delicious!)

Alcohol

I haven’t had alcohol in at least 2.5 years, though it’s probably been much longer than that. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. My alcohol tolerance has always been embarrassingly low (I’m talking getting sick after just one drink!) One time in my early 20s, I drank a couple beers at a show and full on passed out – literally went unconscious and hit the floor! This is sadly just one of dozens of other destructive alcohol experiences for me.

Once I finally made the connection that everytime I drank alcohol I was working against my health and literally putting poison into my body, that drink during the holidays or out at a party with friends just didn’t seem worth it anymore. Other people might feel differently for themselves but this is just my personal experience with drinking. It’s never really agreed with me and I don’t miss it.

Caffeine

I’m not a coffee or even tea person – because of this, I rarely get exposed to caffeine. When I do, I feel its effects big time! Caffeine creates a definite feeling of anxiousness – I notice this every time I treat myself to some dark chocolate. A little bit once in a while I’m ok with. I’m not against having some caffeine in my diet.. I just don’t like the way it makes me feel and so rarely end up eating anything that contains it.

Fun fact: I used to be a total chocoholic and would eat half a bar or more of dark chocolate everyday at work a few years back! ALL my sweet cravings went out the window once I went raw vegan. The abundance of fruit in my diet means that I’m getting a steady supple of glucose throughout the day and my body no longer cries out for the unhealthy sugar fixes. When you give your body the nutrients it needs, it doesn’t look to junk food to satisfy cravings.

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Some of the general guidelines I like to stick to with my diet:

During the day, I eat fruit – this is the most important “food rule” I stick to. I do this because fruit = energy and calories! I want the bulk of my day to be filled with energy which is why I’d rather have a big fruit smoothie for lunch instead of a salad.

I eat 100% raw in the mornings and afternoons and usually opt for a partially cooked/partially raw meal for dinner.

Dinner always inevitably includes potatoes in some form – whether that’s baked potatoes with chili, mashed potatoes with avocado or homemade mushroom gravy, crispy potato wedges with ketchup and herbs, etc. Dinner usually includes a salad too.

If I can eat it raw, I will usually eat it raw. There are just a few foods that I personally think taste way better cooked (broccoli, beans, brussels sprouts) so I opt to cook those. Otherwise, it’s raw all the way! I believe raw foods offer us the most nutrients and energy.

I always aim to get certain healing foods in my diet everyday including raw onion and garlic, spirulina, dandelion, celery, cilantro, and at least one fresh herb like oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc. All of these foods are amazing at ridding the body of various toxins and fighting disease!

I eat fat (avocado, nuts, seeds, coconut, olives) in the evenings only – I do this so I fill up on carbs instead of fats during the day. Carbs = energy!

I never calorie restrict but sometimes track what I’m eating throughout the day to get a sense of how many calories I’m taking in – it’s very easy to not eat enough calories on a low fat, mostly raw diet! I have a general idea of how much fruit and potatoes I need to eat in a day in order to meet my calorie needs. Greens and most other veggies have a negligible amount of calories so I don’t worry about factoring those in.

I eat large meals and graze often throughout the day. It’s a side effect of being a raw foodist – you have to eat way more in volume in order to get full. Raw fruits and veggies also digest much more quickly than cooked food – rarely do I end up going more than 2 hours or so without eating something! Which is not really a bad thing.. it’s great for stabilizing blood sugar and keeping the adrenals happy.

I buy most things organic but don’t worry about the stuff that has a non-edible peel (melons, oranges, papaya, mango, pomegranate, avocado, etc). Things that make up the largest portion of my diet I will always buy organic: bananas, potatoes, berries, dates.

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So that’s what I eat! Do keep in mind that we all have different goals for ourselves and different things that we’re working on; therefore, there’s no one right way of eating for everyone. This high carb, low fat, fruit-filled diet flushes out a lot of toxins in the body and has done so much healing for me over the years. I’d recommend it to anyone who is wanting to clear up health conditions, boost their immunity, have smoother skin and hair and just feel really awesome and alive! But I would never say this way of eating is the only healthy way to eat.

I also feel like diets are one of those things that are constantly evolving in our lives. I doubt the way I’m eating now will be exactly the same ten years from now. Things are bound to shift and change as everything else in life does.

I’d love to know what your diet looks like and what some of your favourite foods are. Anyone else a total potato addict here? 🙂

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