Hello everyone! I have been working on making the transition to Vegan for about a month now. I am having difficulties staying on track. I usually have my banana smoothie for breakfast and a mono meal for lunch but dinner is always a big "?". I have read so much the past few weeks about transitioning and other topics. A lot of the information out there is contradicting. Is cooked food bad for you? Am I going to cause my body harm by eating cooked food rather than raw food? They say that cooked food looses nutrients in the cooking process. I do realize that eating a low fat vegan diet is way better than eating meat and other processed food. I also know that Freelee was on a raw vegan diet for a while but am not able to find a video about why she switched to RT4.
I also live in a house with 3 other adults and 1 child. No one besides me is fully vegan. My cupboards are chuck full of high sodium food containing meat and my fridge is full of meat and dairy. I am doing really good staying away from it all (yay for me!) but I honestly can't stand looking at it.
I also find it hard to cook for my family now because they do not eat the same diet as I do. Cooking 2 meals (let alone 1) after a long day at work is not something I want to do. Any suggestions or simple meal ideas?
Replies
I might share my favorite recipies.
tomato sauce is usually hclf, so maybe see if your family likes it and use it instead of cheese?
- rice and potato and bean curry: boil rice and potato. cook potato and beans in a sauce of curry powder, almond milk, tomato paste, and sugar.
- sushi! add anything. avocado and carrot and cucumber is my favorite. be careful of white vinegar for the seasoning, it's not vegan. use rice vinegar or coconut water.
- tacos: buy a corn taco kit, fill with beans, mushrooms, corn, carrot, lettuce etc. they usually come with vegan sauce.
- rice bakes
- lasanga
- baked beans on toast
- vege pizza, piled high with veges and low sodium sauce.
- maple syrup roasted chickpeas with sweet potato wedges
- homemade low fat hummus, rice, baked falafel, salad
- 2 minute noodles, look for low fat ones and make your own seasoning
I mean, if you want to be extra healthy you could always make kale and sprouted brown rice salads, but really it's all the same healthwise in the end. it all breaks down into protein carbs and fat. wholegrains are slowest. fruit breaks down quicker than cooked food, giving you immediate energy, which is why you eat it during the day. cooked food takes almost all night which is why you eat it at night. raw dinners wouldn't fuel you through the night, when you need energy for muscle growth and repair.
Thank you! I love these ideas. I will have to give them a try :)
Freelee, Durianrider and 30BaD fully support those who want to eat 100% raw and acknowledge that raw foods are best and that when doing rawtil4 one should have at least 2000 calories from fruit everyday and at least one full day of 100% raw per week. You can read more here:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/forum/topics/30bads-policy-on-procooked
Aloha to 30BaD's Welcome Wagon!
RT4 Instructions By Freelee TheBananaGirl
The reason Freelee and Durianrider started rawtil4 is because they saw so many people who tried 100% raw and then went back to eating animal products. They have always said that if you could not get enough calories from fruit then to eat cooked carbs but people were not doing that in practice. So they saw a massive need for a real live example of people living the lifestyle. They wanted to show people that it works, that one can thrive on eating cooked vegan. Low fat, (10% or less of fat), and high carb is the key.
As for causing harm eating cooked... Thousands of people have healed lots of serious conditions on low fat cooked vegan. Ruth Heidrich's story in her book 'Senior Fitness' is very inspiring and the book is full of great information. She followed Dr. John Mcdougal''s advise and healed breast, bone and lung cancer eating low fat cooked vegan and she reversed her osteoporosis- at the age of eighty she has the bone density of a 30 year old! 25 years later she now eats a 99% raw, low-fat vegan diet because she feels best that way. Dr. Joel Fuhrman has many stories of people healing following his program of eating unlimited calories of low fat cooked vegan. He calls his diet the nutritarian diet, the focus being getting as many nutrients as possible in each bite. Dr. Neal Barnard has great documentation in his books on people healing diabetes among other things while eating a low fat cooked vegan diet. The excellent film Forks Over Knives features and documents the healing of people while eating a low fat cooked vegan diet. Definitely get this film at your library and show it to your family!
Changing your diet while preparing food for your family takes even greater effort, (as well as time!). It sounds like you are doing great! The secret to success is continuous effort. Keep trying. If you continue to make an effort, over time you will notice the food supply in your home will look quite different in just a few months. Keep trying new vegan dishes out for the whole family and you will find ones they love. Make extra banana smoothie and offer them to other family members. I remember one study found that it took an average of 12 times, (or something like that), of being offered a food before a child would try it. It may be easier to make cooked vegan dishes for your family if you can eat them too. But if you feel better on all raw and/or have a condition you are trying to heal quickly, by all means go for it. You could try 2 weeks of all raw then introduce one food at a time and see how you feel with each one.
a few dishes my family likes:
low fat crustless pumpkin pie
brown rice pasta on a bed of iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, covered with lentils and low fat pasta sauce
fettuccine pasta with cauliflower sauce, (steamed and pureed), and garlic and nutmeg and pepper
rice cooked in half water half veg. broth, mix w/sauteed onion, peanuts, peas and Indian spice
bean burgers- cooked beans, oatmeal, 2 tbsp. ketchup, onion, chili powder and 4 tbsp. ground pumpkin or sunflower seeds, bake on greased dish for 15 minutes then turn and bake another 15 minutes. Feel free to add more veggies to the burgers, peas, or chopped spinach and grated carrot work great.
banana ice cream is amazing, freeze peeled bananas and put them through a juicer or a yonanas machine.
On some days cook your vegan meal for everyone and if they do not want it they can have cereal and fruit or whatever you have. You need to work something out with the whole family so that you can do this. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! ;)
Thank you so much for your reply :) "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! " -Isn't that the truth! lol
Luckily, my husband is supportive and tries all of my vegan dishes and eats his banana smoothie every morning and bananas for lunch if we have ripe bananas available (sometimes we run out and have to wait a few days for the ones we have to ripen) but, he still likes his meat and cheese. It is really hard to change your taste buds to stop craving salt and dairy products. He is slowly making the transition though.
I will start getting more creative with what I cook for dinner. We have a little rascal that is 5 and would be happy living off of mac&cheese (not ok!) lol. He's the one I have the most trouble with. As you said though, it takes a long time :)
I'm really happy I've gotten replies. It's nice to know you aren't alone in all of this. It's a hard transition to make. I have had a hard time with family, co-workers, and friends because I decided to cut animal products and most fats out of my diet. Thanks again! :)
try the grated daiya cheese on pasta (do not get the blocks they taste awful), get him off the dairy addiction, then it will be a hop skip and a jump to low fat dishes. melt it in the pot with a little milk or melt it on top in the oven. also put pasta sauce on the side of the vegan mac n cheese so he gets used to it, plus there is some good lycopene in there. always serve lettuce with the meals.
A great article on social aspects of changing your diet:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/forum/topics/social-situations-nvc-im
Take three cups of rice, add a tbsp of turmeric, and cook until done
Get a can of tomato sauce, a bag of pasta or two, and cook
No cooked food isn't poisonous nor bad for you. It's quite the opposite!
She switched because raw is unsustainable and rt4 yields the same, if not better, results
Thanks for the reply. These are great ideas! My only problems with RT4 is I always seem to eat more calories for dinner than any other meal and logging your food intake in chronometer gets hard when you include cooked food. I can definitely see how its a lot more sustainable. Finding inexpensive fruit is hard where I live. The farmers market is wayyy more expensive than the grocery and the grocery isn't a whole lot less.