SMART EATING
If you want to be healthy, you need to eat healthy, to exercise and to get outdoors. And to be happy.

OR: BEYOND SUGAR.

Let's just start with eating healthy.

The first step to eating healthy is to substitute things that are good for you for things that are not. We'll start with this: get rid of all artificial sweeteners and sugar.

Gasp.

Yeah, yeah, and this is about becoming a new person, transformation, and that means: see if you can find a way to get excited about coming undone from stuckness in habits.

So, the sugar thing. Well, hell: people like the sweet taste. Fine, give yourself the sweet taste: apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, dates, mangos, pears, apricots and so on. If that isn't enough, use some raw honey, or raw agave syrup, or maple syrup.

Go sweet that is raw and natural.

But what about ice cream and cakes and all that food that people eat on their ways to cancer and heart attacks and obesity?

Skip it all.

But it taste good.

Sure. Think, look, figure it out: why does it taste good?

FAT PLUS SWEET = THE DESERTS AND TREATS WE LOVE.

Okay. So let's make two lists, all of raw ingredients. You mix and match and make yourself something, either in a blender, or a bowl, or right together ( the tahini spread over the date, the almond and the raisin put into your mouth at the same time) to give yourself fat plus sweet = health.

Here goes:

Apple ........ Pecans
Banana ........ Walnuts
Figs ........ Tahini
Apricot ........ Sunflower seeds (soaked overnight)
Cherry ........ Pumpkin seeds (soaked overnight)
Tomato ........ Avocado
Date/ Raisin ........ Cashews (soaked overnight)
Grapes ........ Filberts (soaked overnight)
Persimmon ........ Flax seeds (soaked overnight)
Peaches ........ Coconut "Oil"
Berries ........ Almonds (soaked overnight)
Any fruit ........ Any nut or seed (soaked overnight)
Maple syrup ........ Raw nut butters (expensive )
Raw honey ........ Brazil nuts
Raw agave syrup ........ Macadamia nuts

It's straightforward. Mix and match from the left and right columns. Think of classic candy bars with almonds and chocolate (which you can add to any of the above mixes, using raw organic cacao nibs). Keep it raw. Since we are not only getting off of all the damage sugar creates, but moving toward all the health that raw promotes, go raw in the new habit.

Think of another classic, the Waldorf salad: celery, apples and walnuts, and think about doing that with your blends: adding some green to the fat and sweet to make it a salad, so some lettuce or spinach and some soaked seeds or almonds and some raspberries, say.

Your taste buds will love this and your body will too.


Why all the soaking? Seeds have natural enzyme inhibitors to keep the seeds from starting to grow until the seed is nice and wet. So a batch of sunflower seeds on a counter won't sprout. But they won't digest that well either. Soak them and the enzyme inhibitor will dissolve and you'll get one of the things you eat raw for: the enzymes.

The other reasons are flavor, simplicity and connectedness to nature and yourself. And immense benefits for health.

So, throw out everything with sugar in it. And start to mix and match and delight in your own raw and organic and wonderful fat and sweet combos.