Saturday, December 24, 2011

Intro to Raw Food and Blending


Alicia and I (Colby) have been “blending” and eating a large amount of raw foods since April 2011, around 9 months, and we love it!  We finally are taking the time to document and share our journey to great health.  We hope to encourage others to experience and implement a more healthy life while we continue to improve ours.

Throughout our marriage up until the beginning of this year, we considered ourselves to be  fairly healthy, didn’t eat a lot of meat (mostly chicken and fish), didn’t eat out much, BUT we were not getting  enough raw fruits and veggies.  

Alicia’s sister in law encouraged us to buy a high performance blender and make “green smoothies”.  She showed us the benefits and details and we were sold and soon after went and got an OmniBlender © - http://3blenders.com/.  This blender is comparable to the Omni Blender's competitors, in case you don’t know.

Our blender became our incentive to be healthier.  It truely motivated us to eat raw foods.  There have only been a few days since we started that we haven’t ate a fruit/veggie smoothie.  We've been very diligent and it's become our daily routine.  
Eating raw food-smoothies has an endless list of benefits, here is a short list for starters:
  • More energy - Even on days I don’t get as much sleep as I should, I don’t get as tired.  For so many that rely on diet coke or energy drinks ;)  or anything close to, green smoothies will help you!!  Then you wouldn't have to rely on sugar and caffeine. You don't feel like crap, EVER after eating raw.  There's never an after shock.  You know your eating right when what you eat makes your FEEL GOOD.
  • Consuming many Vitamins, Minerals,  Micro-nutrients, Enzymes and more - So many rely on multi-vitamins and other supplements these days.  From what I hear and have researched, there is still not solid evidence that your generic vitamin pills will give you the proper nutrients one needs.  When your eating fresh raw food that hold the vitamins you need, you can be assured your getting what your body needs.
  • Nutrient Dense -  http://eatrightamerica.com/andi-superfoods  Scroll down a little and review the chart titled, "FULL List of Nutrient Scores".  Notice Kale (the SUPERFOOD), our favorite green, get's a score of 1000 and a Cola gets a 1.  Very interesting!
  • Don’t eat as much - Eating a large enough portion of smoothie  through out the day, allows your stomach to stay stable so you are not tempted as much to eat sweet or processed snacks or eat a large lunch &/or dinner.  Your appetite is constantly controlled through out the day as you drink your smoothie. I will get into this more later, but raw food is also very low in carlories, so you can eat a lot more of them, gettting full and not wanting/needing anything else.
  • Digestive System - Since we have been blending we deficate reguarly and it's a good consistentcy.  We'll leave at that with out getting to graphic. ha ha.  Overall It keeps your digestive track healthy.  It takes hours for raw food too digest, versus meat and processesed foods it can take multiple days!   
Here's to the first HealthyHazies blog post and of course there is more to come!