Health - Adding Raw Foods to Your Diet

As we all know uncooked (raw) foods are good for our bodies, this is because they have not lost all their nutritional value in the process of cooking. By accepting the thought of eating most of your meal in a raw state, you are well on the way to a more healthy life-style.

Now don't expect to change your eating habits overnight as it is not as easy as you think to start eating foods in their natural state. We have been consuming most of our foods cooked, so we need to change from cooked to raw one step at a time.

Do not think you have to eat all your food raw straight off. This will lead to failure, rather mix cooked and raw (by adding one raw food weekly) and take the change slowly. Make your raw choices wisely and don't abandon the foods you love, keep the balance (of raw and cooked) to suit your taste as some foods are better digested by the body when cooked, while others are just fine in their raw state.

What is good raw you ask?

* Most vegetables are very tasty raw (but you probably would not eat pumpkin or squash raw)
* Nuts and seeds - some do need to be cooked but most can be eaten in their raw state.
* Sprouts - still cannot get my head around these, though there are a lot of people out there who love them.
* Fruits - other than the odd baked apple I tend to eat all my fruit raw.
* Fish - some fish are very tasty in their raw state, and if you are lucky enough to have freshly caught fish on hand you will never cook it again. Sushi is probably the healthiest way to eat fish, why not give it a try.

A good starting point for changing to raw is to rather add the raw to your normal meal rather than take away your familiar and favorite foods. You may think that adding will increase your weight - nope - because of the raw state of the extra food, more energy is used to digest it thus causing more use of the extra calories you have consumed. An important point to remember here is that you do need to balance the raw foods with the cooked foods, this is to maintain the correct nutrition your body needs.

Remember, once you have started eating most of your food raw, your energy level will be a lot higher, you will feel a lot healthier and cooked food will have less appeal. So start reaching for the raw foods when you feel a snack attack, there is nothing healthier than a handful of mixed nuts or a juicy apple.

This change of eating habits will assist in maintaining your weight and some weight loss will occur if you are overweight (and not over eating the cooked foods).

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