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There is a weekly potluck thing that's just vegans, not raw vegans (although some raw vegans usually attend) on Sundays in North Buffalo.
I do picnics on many Saturdays (such as this Saturday), at 1:00pm at Bidwell and Delevan on the grass. This one should have a pretty high attendance, which I'm excited about.
The third Saturday of each month is a rawvegan potluck at an awesome dude's house on Livingston on the upper west side (not very far from Bidwell and Delevan honestly.) That one starts at 5:00pm and is run by Aaron Fried. Aaron tries to create a good party setting and invites people to come early, prepare their food in his kitchen (which has a juicer, etc), and invites people to stay late jamming on instruments and stuff. I really like his place and style.
Every other Wednesday is the Gathering Wellness Forum which is a general study of wellness group for gathering information to share with each other and the world, and that is also sort of a rawvegan potluck. That is at an elderly couple's house (they are both thin, fit, active and healthy with grey hair!) not far from me on 16th street. That's not far from Richmond. That starts at 7:00pm and the couple's names are Toni (the woman) and Paul. I adore them both.
When the weather changes and I can't do the picnics anymore, assuming the renovations are done on the kitchen, those potlucks will transfer to our house which is in the middle of the west side, kind of between upper and lower west side.
There is also a monthly raw vegan potluck at the Holistic Center on main street the last Sunday of each month at 4:00pm.
All of this information is here on the Buffalo Live-Food Meetup group.
I'm an organizer for the group. It happened pretty fast since I'm as active as the actual group owner in the community.
Everyone is really friendly, even to non-vegans.
My nephew was afraid of not feeling comfortable, but he really likes the potlucks I keep taking him to, and my mom too. Both my nephew and mom eat fairly typical diets, but they are both experiencing benefits from small changes I'm assisting them with.
My nephew has serious migraines, which is an issue Toni used to have but rid herself of through the rawvegan diet and a few additional restrictions because of her extreme sensitivity to glutamate -- even from entirely natural sources.
"I was so shocked to find that "mono sodium glutamate" is listed in plain English as one of the first three ingredients on many of my mother's "spices." Things labelled "Chicken Seasoning" or "Beef Marinade" or even "Italian Seasoning" contained a shocking amount of pure chemical garbage."
"Mono" meaning one, "Sodium" meaning salt. It is actually a sodium salt of gludamic acid. Which means it is a naturally occuring, non-essential proteinogenic amino acid. Those are amino acids that can be found in proteins and require cellular machinery coded for in the genetic code. So our bodied are already hardwired to process this. There are 22 amino acids. Of those 22, 20 are directly encoded by the universal genetic code. Of these 20, humans can naturally synthesis 11 of them from each other or from other molecules of intermediary metabolism. The 9 that we can't are called essential amino acids and must be consumed in diet. These 9 are: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. The other two, selenocysteine and pyrrolysine, are incorporated into proteins by unique synthetic mechanisms.
The word "proteinogenic" means protein building. It's not "pure chemical garbage." It's what our bodies are made to process naturally and all it is, is basic chemistry. It's what goes on in our bodies all the time. In fact, so much of what we need in our bodies, when spoken in it's chemical terms, sounds processed when it's not. How many of you actually know what ascorbic acid is?
When we refer to "chemicals" we mean something refined. Something that is concentrated and refined in such a way that you'd never find it like that in nature. Huge vats of msg don't occur in nature, nor does high fructose corn syrup. They come from natural sources, but they are not natural to consume. We can get plenty of natural glutamate from seaweed, tomatoes, etc. We don't need to add it to food. We can get plenty of salt from celery. We can get plenty of sugar from fruits, carrots, etc. We can get plenty, plenty, plenty of everything we need from soil, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and sprouts. There is no need to refine things to an obscene degree. It's just corporate manipulative bull designed to make them money at the expense of our wallet and our bodies.
PS: I acknowledge that your reply was educated and reasonably backed up. Most people are not as reasonable or educated when they try to talk about nutrition. I appreciate it. My response is purely explaining why your response isn't quite relevant to the core point I was trying to put across.
He asked: In your opinion then, Raederle, what kind of effect do you think that kind of diet would have on guy who is six feet tall and five hundred pounds? And what would you say is a healthy weight for that guy?
You don't actually eat thirty bananas in a day. Between my husband and I, we eat about seven bananas a day.
The point is, you want 80% of your calories to come from raw fruits on an "ideal diet" according to the theory of 80-10-10.
10% of calories from vegetables -- which actually is a lot of raw vegetables since 4 cups of spinach is only 40 calories
10% of calories from fat -- which is actually very little fatty foods since 1 spoonful of olive oil averages 100 calories).
If you're getting 80% of your calories from fruit, you might eat the following in one day:
3 bananas
2 apples
2 oranges
1 kiwi
1 mango
a bite of pineapple
quarter of watermelon
1 fig
That's an estimate off the top of my head of course.
Today, in terms of fruit, I ate:
An apple
A banana
Two dates
Fresh coconut "meat" & coconut juice from a young thai coconut
Some orange
Half a watermelon
A little cucumber
A lychee (a small 'exotic fruit' with a pit in the center)
And a little honeyduw melon.
I didn't eat all of this plain though -- that might get boring for me.
The honeydew melon and orange was in my juice with fresh greens from the garden.
The apple was chopped up with carrot and the couple dates.
The Thai coconut juice and meat was blended into a smoothie with raw cocoa powder (pure raw chocolate) and sprouted raw pumpkin seeds.
The half of watermelon was my breakfast by itself.
But you get the idea -- I don't eat thirty bananas a day, and very few people do. It's just a way to express the volume of fruit we are designed to consume.
Well, healthy "weight" is difficult, because you can be healthy with a little fat, a fair amount of muscle. You can be healthy with a lot of muscle and practically no fat at all. You can be healthy with a little muscle and practically no fat. Each of those would create a different weight.
It's more about how you feel. How much energy you have, how great you feel about yourself, how motivated you are, and how healthy your body is functioning overall. Weight is deceptive.
I've been the same weight now since I was 18. When I was seventeen I took a bunch of things out of my diet that caused the weight loss. I took out bread, wheat, pasta, meat, dairy, all refined sugars except honey, and all lab-food (such as hydrolyzed soy protein, hydrogenated oil and monosodium glutamate). Taking out those things caused me to go from 153 pounds to 123 pounds in thirty days without adding exercise to my lifestyle.
However, I've been between 120 and 128 pounds since I was 18, but I look very different since I went raw. I now have much less fat and much more muscle, but right now I'm 123 pounds still. So I'm healthier, and look different, but I'm the same weight. So weight is deceptive. So I'm not going to try and tell you the right weight.
What I can tell you is that the diet would be excellent for your health, and it would cause you to lose weight. Eventually you'd naturally reach your ideal body weight.
However, you don't want to change everything right away. I have a detailed entry on my blog about why transitioning too fast can be harmful and how to transition slowly here.
Let me know if you still have more questions.
By the way, to answer you question directly: I think if you changed to that diet immediately and fully that you would detox really fast and lose weight insanely fast and that it would shock your system and leave you with a lot of extra skin. It's definitely something to learn about over time and transition to over time.
How much time? Probably about a year to make the full transition. Just aim to make one significant change a week. There are 52 weeks in a year, so after 52 significant changes, you'll be there, and will have been slowly changing size and shape the entire time.
~ Raederle
I disagree. I think that's just a concept that people are getting from growing up around overweight people.
I used to have thirty pounds of fat on me and I thought it was normal. I was 153 pounds at the age of 16 and 5'6. Everyone said I was a normal weight. I was very unhealthy and changed my diet for health reasons, not for weight loss.
But I lost 30 pounds by eating healthier and I like my body better. I don't think being large and "meaty" is normal. It's an American standard based on a society of lab-rat food. That may seem harsh, but that's what I feel is the truth.
My first love finds women most attractive about 40lbs overweight. He was a bit extreme on that aspect. My only thing is, that photo depicts a very, very healthy woman, and I've come to find that being really healthy is really hot.
No cellulite, no pimples, lots of muscle definition... Of course, personal preference is personal preference. I can't tell you what to find attractive. All I can say is that I think that woman is hot and that it's extra hot that she's a very healthy, active woman.