I don’t wanna eat another salad!!!!! NOOOO way!
Are you struggling eating more raw food in the colder months? When you eat more cooked food do you feel worse in your body? Are you stuck between a rock and a hard place? If that is the case, then read on below.
Now if you live in California or any place where the weather is still warm, you may still feel the difference if you are coming off a super hot summer.
I have been through so many winters living in the North East, where eating raw was just not happening and I ended up eating more grain, put on weight, saw viral symptoms return and just felt like crap. I am not saying you have to eat 100% raw all winter and all year to be healthy.
I am wanting to provide support to those who definitely feel better eating more raw food, but struggle with staying raw in the winter, or for those who are in a place to do the Medical Medium 28 cleanse.
So the good news is, I have some awesome tips for you to stay as raw as possible. I have to use a lot of trial and error to work these out, so hopefully you can take these and avoid all the experimentation I have done!
Here are my favorite ways to help me eat more raw and stay healthier in the winter:
1. Add in warmth to your diet with spices like ginger, garic, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, cayenne, chipotle pepper. Whether you are making a salad, a soup or a tea, there are so many ways to incorporate these amazing warming herbs into your diet. Definitely chop some garlic, ginger and cracked black pepper onto a salad to add in more heat. If you can handle more heat, use a little cayenne or other hot pepper.
I also love making ginger or cinnamon tea, which again are super warming. Cinnamon is a great spice to throw into a sweet smoothie, or over a bowl of fruit. Use these spices liberally in the winter season, as they are warming to the body. I like to add cloves to tea or to a soup and it definitely ups the flavor and heat level for me.
2. If your hands and feet tend to run cold like many who have sluggish livers, then I recommend using a hot water bottle or a heating pad to warm your hands and feet. It is really important to stay warm in the winter, because if you start to feel cold, your body produces more adrenaline, putting you in a state of stress and feeding underlying viruses.
3. You can have warm soups that are still raw. The Vitamix or a Blendtec or other high-quality blender can blend soups together and warm them – they can even cook them! But if you stop blending before they reach cooking point, you can gently warm the veggies you are making into your soup. Warm foods feel a lot more comforting in the winter than foods straight out of the fridge!
4. Drink plenty of hot herbal teas. Whether you choose lemon balm, holy basil, licorice root, nettle leaf, red raspberry or any other herbal tea of your choice, make sure that you have a hot tea with a raw meal. This will definitely help warm your gut and help to digest your food better as well.
5. Eat only cooked foods after 4 pm, especially if you live in really cold parts of the country because the temperature takes a dramatic drop after the sun goes down. Also in the evenings, your nervous system becomes a little weaker, so its helpful to have a cooked warm meal for extra nourishment.
A warm meal of healing veggie broth or steamed veggies or other kind of soup is really nourishing in the winter. Again, a hot herbal tea before bed is also wonderful.
6. If you are eating foods that are coming out of your fridge, make sure that you take them out at the beginning of the day, so that by the time lunch comes, your veggies are at room temperature and not super cold. Same goes with your morning smoothie. If you have the Medical Medium Heavy Metal Detox smoothie, then you can make it the night before, put it in the fridge and take it out in the morning and let it sit out and warm up before you drink it.
7. Another really cool way to eat raw food is to mix it with cooked food and this also helps you not feel as cold. Actually this is a really good option for evening meals. For example, eating a hot soup with a green salad. Another example is from the Medical Medium list of 16 Adrenal Snacks – sweet potatoes with spinach and lime juice.
These are fantastic ways to combine cooked and raw foods and helps you still add a considerable amount of raw food into your diet without feeling like you just don’t want to eat it anymore.
8. Instead of your regular lemon water in the morning, an alternative is to start with warm water, honey and ginger. Some people even like to add a pinch of cayenne to drink like this, but not everyone’s digestion can tolerate that. Warm lemon water with honey and ginger is such a comforting drink I can have it all day long.
9. If you are choosing to do the 28 cleanse from the first Medical Medium book, then I recommend following all the suggestions here, except for those where you add in more cooked food. Of course, herbal teas don’t count, but you may need to add in more of them, until your body adjusts and keep your body super super warm.
Find an infrared sauna if you don’t own one and do treatments as often as you can. Many saunas are not expensive to use.
10. This tip is helpful if you own a dehydrator – and I am in no way suggesting this tip is essential for being successful on a raw diet in the winter.
All the tips outlined above can help you with that. However, a dehydrator is really great for eating warm food that is still raw (as long as you can keep the temperature below 110 F).
Hopefully, this list can help you relieve some of your food struggles in the winter.
Do you have any of your own ideas that you use to help you get through the winter? Do you already use ideas from this list? Please share in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!
