The FIPS Fad Diet/Exercise Challenge: Week 1 – Raw Vegan Diet

It seems like every time I turn around, someone I know is on another fad diet or exercise routine. From the Master Cleanse to the Caveman Diet to P-90X to Cross-Fit, it’s hard to know what works and what’s total crap. So for the next four weeks, I’ve decided to try some of these for myself. I’ll tackle a different diet/exercise routine each week, and then report the results back to you the following week.

Note: I’m not a dietitian, nor am I a fitness guru. So I make no claims here that I’m doing anything properly. I’m guessing a lot of you out there might approach this sort of thing like I do: overhear someone talk about it, do some Internet research, give it a try for yourself. For those who follow that pattern, maybe you can learn from my mistakes. For those who don’t follow that pattern, maybe you can educate us in the comments section.

To start the FIPS Fad Diet/Exercise Challenge off right, I figured I’d start week one with my diet. This way, I could work myself up to working out (something I’m notoriously lazy about). Of all the fad diets I saw out there, I decided to start with the one that seemed the easiest: the Raw Vegan Diet. What can I say: I had just seen Wanderlust. It seemed appropriate.

For those of you unaware of what the fuck a Raw Vegan Diet entails, here’s the quick of it: You’re basically only eating unprocessed, raw plant foods that have not been heated above 46 °C (115 °F). Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes – those are all on the table. Dairy, meat, and any other sort of processed foods are out. Since nothing can be cooked, basically everything you’re eating is cold or room temperature. Dehydrated foods are totally okay though,

Advocates for raw food diets argue that cooking food destroys the natural enzymes inherent in raw and living foods, leaving behind toxins and preventing the body from effectively building natural proteins. Eating food in their raw and living state provides the body with more water, a greater density of nutrients, fewer calories, and more enzymes. It also provides the body with natural bacteria that helps the immune system and digestive track.

I’m not here to debate whether or not those people are wrong in their beliefs. I’m sure there are a million reasons why they have no idea what they’re talking about. So before you start telling me how dumb these people are and how wrong their science is, understand this: I don’t give a shit. I was just here to try it out for myself and see what happened.

It'd also be probably helpful if I gave you some background on my diet, pre-rawness. I’m Italian, meaning that bread, cheese, and sauce have always been mainstays in my diet. Six years ago, I started following a vegetarian diet, cutting out meat, poultry, and fish (and pissing off my Italian family more than I did when I came out of the closet). The decision wasn’t initially based on animal rights (though throughout the years I’ve educated myself on animal issues, and yeah – it’s totally fucked up). Rather, I was having some health issues, and wanted to see if I would feel better if I stopped eating animals. Low and behold, my body was having a hard time processing said animals, and I pretty much instantly felt better when I stopped eating them.

The good thing about the vegetarian diet was that it was easy for me. I never had a huge taste for steak or fish, hated cooking chicken, and I’m probably the only person in the planet who hates the taste of bacon. (I also couldn't care less about what other people eat, so it never caused trouble in my social life.) The bad thing about the vegetarian diet is that it still allowed for bread, cheese, and sauce. Meaning I didn’t necessarily lose weight. I gained. Three slices of pizza for dinner every night is apparently not the best diet out there. Who knew?

Which is why, going into this diet/exercise fad experiment, the first thing I was hoping to do was drop some weight.

In order to do that, of course, I had to figure out what I was going to eat.

Now, there are a bunch of raw food diets out there that are based on recipes that do everything to replicate the taste, textures, and look of processed foods. Raw vegan pizza! Raw vegan burritos! Raw vegan lasagna! Sure, they look good. And I’m sure half of them don’t even taste that bad. But they ultimately require a bunch of equipment I don’t have (juicers, mixers, dehydrators, etc), and don’t plan on buying anytime soon. Plus, they take forever to make. We’re talking “blend this stuff together, dehydrate for 24 hours, add more ingredients, dehydrate for another day” sort of shit. I’m not that dedicated.

Sure, I could go to a bunch of restaurants out there that serve that fancy raw vegan food. But they’re super expensive. And last I checked, I work in publishing and write for this blog. Spoiler alert: I’m not a millionaire. There’s no way I'm spending $18 on Raw Vegan Burgers. No thank you.

So I decided that if I was going to do this Raw Diet thing, I wasn’t going to eat any of that shit. I was going totally natural. Just fruits, vegetables, and some nuts. Here’s what my diet consisted of on a typical day:

Breakfast: 1 piece of fruit (banana, grapes, orange, etc)

Snack: Almonds soaked in water (which supposedly makes them “living”)

Lunch: A combination of carrots, broccoli, edamame, or kale chips

Snack: 1 piece of fruit (apple, mango, etc)

Dinner: Salad or a mix of vegetables (avocados, zucchini, tomatoes, etc)

Snack: Raisins or dehydrated cranberries

Doesn’t look like a lot of food, right? But I was still eating about every 2 hours. And with drinking water in-between, I felt full all the time. Moreover, I felt energized, in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I didn’t get that mid-afternoon exhaustion that I usually get after lunch. Better yet – I slept the best I had in years.

One of the biggest objections I got from friends/family/co-workers had to do with my daily caloric intake. Some worried I was starving my body. Others were concerned that I wasn’t getting enough vitamins or protein.

Well, as I said before, I am not a dietitian, so I could be completely off by this. But if I counted calories, I was still averaging about 1,600 calories a day. On the lower end, yes, but not considered unhealthy, especially since I wasn’t exercising at all (unless you consider walking from the couch to the fridge “exercising.”). Vitamin-wise, I was getting a balance of vitamins except B-12 (which is usually found in dairy products). I took a supplement. As far as proteins are concerned, this is one battle I’m used to fighting as a vegetarian, so I’ve done the research. You get a sufficient amount of protein from beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruits. I was well covered.

And now the determining factor: weight loss. I certainly dropped some pounds. After one week of being on the diet, I had lost about 3.5lbs. Not a drastic, Biggest Loser-style weight loss I had hoped for, but certainly nothing to be mad at (I do this thing when I diet where I feel like just because I’m eating right, I should immediately lose weight. I realize it doesn’t work that way, but my bratty self still wishes it did). All and all, a success!

Of course there are a ton of downsides to the diet. I know that some wine is considered raw, but I didn’t feel like investigating which was which, so I was sober all week. That kind of sucked. I also found myself struggling in Park Slope to get food on the fly. I would have liked to grab lunch or dinner somewhere that wasn’t the produce section at C-Town (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE OPEN A FUCKING SALAD PLACE ALREADY?). Still, for all the annoying downsides to the diet, I still felt great throughout. So much so that it’s been three weeks now and I’m still giving it a shot. Who would have thought? 

Anyway, that was my experience. How ‘bout you? Anyone out there try the Raw Vegan diet? Have any tips? Anything I’ve done wrong? Let’s talk it out while I eat this bag of carrots, okay?