I know this sounds very difficult to many people at first glance. Even for a person like me whois vegan (not eating animal products at all), eating %100 Raw food means saying bye to gourmet Thai ginger veggie dishes, lentil soups, yummy Turkish vegetable side dishes at restaurants, wild rice, brown rice, whole breads dipped into olive oil, and start to eat “Live” foods that are not killed by high heat.
On the other hand, recently I wasn’t really enjoying the taste of cooked food and feeling I am ready for such a transition. But the last drop was the movie I watched called “Simply Raw / Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days”, a DVD comes from USA.
This movie was about 6 Diabetes patients that come from different states in USA, with different ages and different life styles, gather in a retreat to eat only Raw Live Foods for a month to cure their “incurable” diabetes and save themselves from the injections and pills they were sentenced to for a lifetime. Apart from Diabetes, what they share in common was also they were all following the SAD (Standart American Diet) which is eating refined, packaged, acidic, artificial, dead foods.
This 6 people had incredible %100 Raw food experiences! Even the first few days, their bodies started to react very positively to the foods they ate. At the first week, they experience healing, cleansing and transformation crisis as if they are doing a detox without even stop chewing! And they were having this detox while eating from a delicious open buffet which I was fancying about while I was watching.
Of course none of those people found that open buffet as attractive as I do but change requires some time. I can say it as a person experienced at first hand. When I think of our Detox expert Vince with a smile on my face, I remember him saying “Stop eating cheese for 6 months, you will be surprised when you eat it for the first time and will say “how did I eat this moldy thing before?” You will have a stuffy nose and feel bad afterwards”. But when he said this I replied as “Vince, we are Turkish! You say “live 6 months without cheese”. But Turks put 6 different kinds of cheese to table for a nice breakfast!” But now it has been 3 years since I stopped eating dairy products, I even taste it if somehow there is a trace left in my dish and dislike it. If Vince would see me now he would have remind me this sentence and laugh a lot. Of course this transition not happened in a day. For instance at first I only ate goat cheese (because it’s milk’s DNA is closest to mother’s milk) than I gradually decreased the amount of consumption and finally stopped eating at all.
But meanwhile the concept I am trying to teach for years to our guests comes to this center is not as strict as my experience.
For those who ask for a healthier and more vivid body, our answer is the rule of %25-75. This means dividing your life and your plate into 4 parts. Put the unhealthy but happy habits and foods to one part, the healthy habits and foods to the rest three parts. This is a perfect balance for a new body. Therefore you can enjoy life without dedicating yourself %100 to health and let yourself be naughty when you want to. We believe “if you don’t enjoy it, you don’t follow it”. So the rule of %25-75 is a rule that many can follow.
When I met people outside eating unhealthy food who did detox with us before, they say “this is my %25 for today!” Also the Arab guests who come from Egypt and did detox in our center, make jokes as “we prepared a %25-75 table for you, come on let’s eat!” when they call. One of the quotes I like is one of our guests once told me “if meat will be only %25 of all I eat, than I should live in front of a grocery store”. And that person is eating almost vegetarian now, his health, body; life style has changed a lot!
When I decided to do that, one of my friends asked “You are not diabetes or sick. You are a healthy living person. Why would you eat raw for 30 days?”
In one of the workshops I joined, our teacher once said “When did Noah build his ship? Before the storm. Do you think he can build the same ship in the middle of a storm?” After we get sick, curing it can be harder and sometimes even impossible. So what we should do is to keep our body as healthy as possible.
How many of us can be sure that there aren’t any seeds of a sickness flourishing right now in our body? If eating Raw for 30 days can stop insulin shots, it can also cure a sickness at the starting phase.
With these thoughts in my mind and my belief to “learn by experience” I decided to start my “30 days eating Raw” adventure after Ramadan fasting: 1st October.
I announced my new decision to everyone and try to motivate for joining me. I talk about it at TV shows. I invited our guests and crew at D-Life and my friends to raw eating as well. Attention was more than I thought! I felt very happy to see people starting even before me.
From our Bodrum D-Life crew Mirey Yuhay and Dr. Cengiz Türkkan completed their first week at eating Raw. When I saw them in Bodrum they looked different. Mirey lost 5 kg, her skin was shining and she looked fabulous! She already experienced it in a Raw Food Center in USA for 3 weeks before. And Dr. Türkkan had the best detox he ever did. He was enjoying the health and happiness caused by detoxing while avoiding uncomfortable healing crises. Most important of all, they both wanted to keep on eating raw for more!
Many people from our D-Life Crew and friends decided to experience it at least 1 week. And I decided to write about the benefits of Raw foods, my experiences, adventure and new things I’ve learnt to TLC Blog to share it with more people who wants to learn Raw eating.
You can follow my articles from my Blog. More than that, you can join this adventure. It will be very easy to be raw with the information you get from my Blog and www.gulkaynak.com web site. You will be surprised to see how easy is eating Raw food without any hunger and how many delicious foods nature gave us to eat without cooking as long as you make research and try it for yourself.
As closing, I would like to celebrate the Ramadan Feast and wish you more happy and healthy feasts to come with your loved ones.
May all beauty be with you…
Gül Kaynak