A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life of My 100% Raw Food Diet

This is how to maintain this lifestyle. It can be as easy as you want. Remember, you are the author of your reality, and since the pen is in your hand, you get to choose the story. You can make this hard for yourself, like giving excuses and reasons why you cannot achieve something. Or you can think again, and realize that anything is as easy or as complicated as you make it out to be. Let me help.

When I wake up, I like to drink a good amount of water. In my mind, this flushes out everything the body has stored while I was sleeping, and rehydrates my body. Usually 16 to 32 oz with lemon juice (fresh not bottled!) and some cayenne pepper. If you are inclined, add some agave nectar (raw-vegan), honey (can be raw but not technically vegan) or maple syrup (not raw, but vegan). So in effect, I have a nice spicy lemonade to start the day. If any of you are familiar with the master cleanse drink, this is the same one. Drink it all the time, why not? It tastes good and is SOOO good for you.

I will then go to the gym and do an hour on the treadmill while I watch some National Geographic or Discovery Channel. After the hour is done, I will go home and have my breakfast, or just eat it right at the gym. This is easy to do because for breakfast I just have fresh fruit. Lately it has been grapefruits (usually 2 large or 3 small). Tomorrow I plan on having 1/2 of a large papaya that I purchased from Trader Joe's. So lets say its about 9am right now.

Around 1pm, I will have my super smoothie. This includes the water base, or sometimes fresh orange juice or a coconut water base. To this I will add some pumpkin seeds, some hemp seeds, coconut oil, raw cacao (raw chocolate beans), a banana or two dates for sweetness, goji berries, maca root powder, and some kind of green superfood powder like blue-green algae or spirulina. This gives me a thick creamy smoothie that supplies my fat intake for the day, but keeps me energized well into the early evening. Sometimes I will pour the smoothie into a bowl and then throw in more nuts and berries for texture and eat it with a spoon.

In the evening, I will usually have a salad of mixed greens or arugula. If I want a savory salad, I will add onions, celery, sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, kalamata olives, and for a dressing olive oil and lemon juice. If I want a sweet salad, I will do spinach or mixed greens with walnuts, or pecans, apples or pears, and raisins or cranberries. You can also add in shaved carrots or beets for extra color and texture, and sprouts go well with either style of salad. Always be sure to throw in neutral low sugar fruits like cucumbers too. I make it big, so it takes me about 20 min to eat it.

If I am still hungry later on, I will have some fruit, usually an apple or a grapefruit. Sometimes dried figs are nice too. Around 9pm I will go to the gym, and do weight training for an hour. This gives me enough time to focus on three body parts per night. After that, I will do another hour on the treadmill while I watch the Daily Show on Comedy Central and then something on the Home and Garden Network. Ive made myself a promise that I will keep all of my TV watching confined to the gym only. This way I am still active while I am either learning something (Discovery Channel and National Geographic) or being entertained as well (The Daily Show). I will always drink another 32-64 oz of water at the gym during this period, and usually only have to wake up once in the night to use the restroom. And when the body and mind become so clean because of the diet and exercise, you are usually able to fall back to sleep literally within seconds.

I always try to get some wheatgrass juice in along with cucumber juice sometime during the day. It depends on when I have the time to make it. Lately its been right in the morning, but sometimes its later at night. Fresh wheatgrass juice taken consistently can bring you to a whole new level. Ive done the raw vegan diet with green juice and without, and I can assure you that the mental clarity and energy are far superior if the green juice is included.

I like to round out the evening with some language lessons on the ipod while I stretch in my bedroom, and then I am in bed by 1 or 2 hopefully.

See? Not really difficult. And the more you focus on how difficult and impossible it will be for you, so it shall be. You create your reality. For me, this diet has become second nature, and now that I have it wired down, I give it very little thought. When guests come over, I like to make more complex dishes like the raw lasagna pictured above, but usually its just a salad or even a green smoothie in the evening. Lets not make life more complicated than it has to be. I would love to invite people over and just sit around and drink smoothies, but for some reason it lets people down. Like...where's the rest? That's what they are used to.

Above all, consistency is the name of the game. Do this for two weeks and you will experience some serious changes. But one or two days of low activity and poor eating will bring you back down rather quickly. There is a fine line between true health and vibrancy, and just mezzo-health. This mezzo-health is both an absence of discomfort, but the body and mind are not anywhere as fit as they could be. This is your body....love it as you would a brand new car. It is yours, and the only one you have, so love it and give it nothing but the best. We have that option now...at the click of a mouse we can have the BEST FOOD EVER from around the world delivered to us. Take advantage of this technology.

Im still on Las Vegas time, so despite it being 2am, I am wide awake. I read recently that humans are genetically disposed to take 1-2 hour naps during the mid-day, so I am going to try to fit that into my schedule whenever possible. I have been sleeping about 4-5 hours a night lately, so maybe I can trim it down to an even 4hrs and then do the 1hr nap. If you can, experiment with this and let me know how it goes for you.

Best of luck, and with love all-ways

The....Rawmodel

Back in NY

Back in NY...but first the recipe for this new smoothie....

So...this is basically a cashew-pumpkinseed milk with add-ons like bee pollen, blueberries, agave nectar for extra sweetness, and a perfectly creamy-ripe avocado for that extra smoothie goodness. This is more of a pudding than a smoothie, although more water would surely bring it back into the smoothie realm. I just prefer to eat it with a spoon, that way it takes me about a minute to finish it, instead of 15 seconds. Haha...

So, lets begin...

We start out with a 1/4 cup of cashews, and the same amount of pumpkinseeds. You can let the pumpkinseeds pre-soak in water for an hour to 5 hours if you'd like. It awakens them, and makes them easier to blend. The cashews are ready to blend because of their high fat content. A when you soak them, they just get a little weird, so we don't have to worry about them at all. Just through them in along with the pumpkinseeds in about 1 cup of water. Let them blend for at least one minute. Then add in the 1/4 cup of blueberries, and the 1/8 cup of bee pollen. This is ALOT of bee-pollen, so you might want to cut this quantity in half at first, and then add the rest on top if you do indeed prefer the taste. Ive eaten over a half-cup a day before, and the taste really does grow on you.

Still blending....? GOOD! Let it work! It wont burn out, believe me. Ive blended more in the past year than in my entire life before that, and Ive never burned out a blender motor. They are made to go longer than what we give them credit for. If we don't let it blend long enough, we get little chunks and pieces that make our smoothies not so smooth and tempting for next time. So let it blend at least 3-4 min each time you make a smoothie.

Add in one tsp. of the agave, and then the avocado! Take the seed and the skin off of course, but all that creamy green-yellow goodness goes right in your blender, and soon your smoothie will thicken up even more. If you have to, turn OFF the blender, give the contents a good stir with a knife, then resume blending. Do this only if you can tell pieces are getting stuck in the blender and not becoming one with the whole. Get them to conform and stir them in!

The end product is a great evening dessert full of amino acids and proteins from the nuts and bee pollen, and lots of good fat from the avocado and the cashews. And you've got your natural sugars from the agave and blueberries too...so we have it all here. Guilt-free, and only takes about 5 minutes to make from beginning to end. Through in more of the unblended ingredients if you want some chunks and texture. I added extra bee pollen and blueberries on top.

And, a quote from a new inspiration of mine -


''The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.''
Malcolm Forbes

We simply can't compromise ourselves and our dreams and desires, because in reality, it is all we have. We have to live lives that little children will sit together and hear stories about one day.
And we have to team up with others that are positive and clear-headed. People that want to see others around them grow and change and improve. If you know someone who is constantly negative and sucking energy away from you, pull that weed from the garden of your life, or do what you can to help them bring out more positive aspects in themselves.

The more you travel and the more you read, the more you will evolve. There is no doubt in this. And once it starts to happen, the growth curve becomes exponential because you see how great it is to learn new things so it becomes a natural way of life for you.

Should we do ourselves a favor and rid ourselves of the meaningless 'friendships' we simply maintain for our own egos or for some possible networking benefit in the future? Should we cast these relationships aside and focus intently on the true friendships and issues and projects that really deserve our attention? Are these the words of a loner justifying his solitude??? Nah...

More alienating posts to come soon...

Love the other because the other is you.

Thanks everyone -

the....Rawmodel

Time Management or the Love of Making Food?

Time Management or the Love of Making Food?

One thing that I've noticed about this way of life - It can be amazingly simple or painfully complex. I spent the better part of yesterday evening in the kitchen making chocolate brownies like the one pictured above. Indeed, it was fun and I was happy with what was made, but for all the time involved, I would simply prefer to eat a grapefruit and be on my way.
These foods like the brownie and other dishes that take time tend to give us those comforting feelings that we believe we need sometimes. There might be something else lacking in our lives, or we need something exciting to eat to make our lives more exciting. Sounds insane but food is a big escape and therapy tool used to make life more bearable.
I just want to make quick work out of whatever I need to eat, and get on to enjoying life in other ways. Smoothies are a great option for this because they are quicker to make and the cleanup is MUCH shorter compared to juicing or making dishes with a food processor...yet they still can taste AMAZING and are quickly absorbed into the body.
Why is it though that we seek so much enjoyment from these dishes? Can we find the same enjoyment in a freshly picked apple? Can we train ourselves to appreciate a papaya as much as a cheese pizza?
Simplicity is the key. True, I have a fridge full of chocolate mint brownies right now which is exciting I suppose. Id much rather live in a world where something like that would take a back seat to reading a good book or having an inspirational thought while laying in the sun. We need to seek pleasure away from the palate, because if not we will surely become slaves to it.

That being said...here is the recipe for the mint-chocolate brownies.

This will make 2 large brownies...the one pictured above would likely feed two people. These are VERY dense, both nutritionally and weight-wise. They should weigh about 5-6 ounces each. A Larabar for example, weighs 1.7oz. These are no joke. You could even split this recipe into 6 smaller shapes...your choice. I like the larger effect and then to cut it with a fork and knife, possibly saving much of it for later.


1/4 Cup of Hempseed
1/8 Cup of Coconut Oil (2 tbls)
1/2 Cup of Raw Cacao Nibs (Raw Chocolate Beans)
1/4 Cup of Raw Cacao Powder
2 oz of Coconut Date Rolls (About 1/4 Cup)
1/4 Cup of Cashews (Or Pumpkin Seeds that have been Soaked for 1-2 hours)
As Many Mint Leaves as You Can Stand
Agave Nectar to sweeten if needed

I used pumpkin seeds and cacao nibs for extra decoration on the sides. Hempseed or Sesame Seed would also work well here.

Throw all these ingredients into the food processor and stop to occasionally stir until the mixture forms itself into a thick ball. Then go on to shape the dark green-black dough that is produced into the shape of your choice, and decorate accordingly. Remember, this is Anarchy in the kitchen - You decide how you want these to look. Feel free to mix in more nuts or cacao nibs for chunkiness, and add more agave if you think its needed. Better to have more agave and blow everyone away than skimp on it and disappoint everyone with your "Healthy Dessert" that just doesn't compare to the "Real Thing"....Show them that taste and nutrition can be excellent bedfellows.


More Updates to Follow Very Soon,

The Raw Model

Add in the good stuff now, worry about cutting the bad stuff out later...

A big thing that I learned on my path to health with living foods was that the idea of sacrifice for health will not produce a healthy person, and certainly not a happy one.

Because I was working in New York at the time, I was really trying my best to immediately lose weight and develop more lean muscle. So I cut out everything bad. Or at least I attempted to. For a few weeks, I dropped ice cream, pizza, indian food, and falafels. I was doing two green smoothies a day, plus apples. I was losing weight fast, but in my mind I was suffering. I was still addicted to those foods, and by cutting myself off right away, the weak part of me was angry and resentful towards the disciplined part of me. I was going crazy, and I would reach an occasional breaking point.

Wandering the streets of the East Village like a drug fiend, I would walk into a pizza place and order two slices. After eating them too quickly, I would realize that I was yet to be satisfied. So next, I would get a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Soon after adding that whole pint to the pizza, I was starting to feel the food-coma setting in. I would return to my apartment and lay in bed, feeling guilty and bloated. I would swear that I would learn my lesson, but these episodes would continue off and on for months.

I wasn't in the proper mindstate yet. I was too worried about what I was cutting out, and not focusing on what I should have been adding in. This is the key. Don't focus on what you want to cut out right away. Of course cooked starches and cooked oils and refined sugar are horrible and should be completely eliminated from your body, but that will happen with time. As long as you continue to feel as if you are depriving yourself of these items, you won't be ready yet. What I am saying, is that the best path early on is to just add good things in, and the rest will work itself out with time. The body will know what is good, and the idea of canceling out your healing foods with garbage again will quickly lose its appeal.

So get your green juice in everyday. Get a green smoothie in your body everyday for breakfast. Make sure you eat a grapefruit, and one avocado a day is magic. Make a superfood smoothie with coconuts and raw chocolate and goji berries and bee pollen. Eat highly mineralized raw foods. If you still desire something else, go for it. But sooner, rather than later, you will shift towards 95-100% raw without having that feeling of regret and guilt and sacrifice.

I knew the truth...I had experienced the "raw high" after those first two weeks. Nevertheless...the old habits were ingrained in my mind, and I still desired the garbage. Now, I can honestly say that I eat everything that I want. The only difference is this: What I want now isn't what I used to want. I don't miss the pizza, the burgers, the eggs and pancakes. Thats not even food in my mind anymore. I don't want it like I used to. And this will happen to you as well. Just add in the goodies, and the rest will take care of itself.

Peace and love ALL WAYS...

Anthony