Raw

[awake_too_late]

 Hey y'all. I've been a vegetarian for five years and I've been an on-and-off vegan for two. This month, I'm going raw. I'm wondering if you guys have any good tips or recipes? Unfortunately, I'm a student so I eat caffeteria food and don't have much time to cook; but I REALLY want to make this work

Comments

[withinmywill]

I was a raw vegan for a few months, in college. I started a half-hearted blog about it, because I was pretty frustrated that there wasn't a lot on the internet about being a raw vegan in college. This is probably because - I won't lie - it's really hard to be a raw vegan in college. You can see the remains of the blog at: http://rawcollege.blogspot.com . I know this is a community about weight loss, but when I went from being a raw vegan at home to being a raw vegan at school, relying heavily in the dining hall, I lost a lot of weight, much too quickly. There are certain things, like raw nuts, seeds, fresh avocados , etc, that you just can't get easily, that really are necessary on that kind of diet. Yes, it's easy to fall into the trap of eating too many nuts, but it's also very necessary to eat some fats, regularly.

Also, I was trying to juice as well as keep up the raw diet, so that was a huge time commitment that I couldn't uphold without having my grades suffer. Granted, I was trying to do a very stringent raw vegan diet, so I know there are easier ways to go, but again, being raw vegan basically eliminates lots of conveniences. You can't just grab something really quick from the burrito place across the street. In this way, if you want it to work, it takes a lot of planning - have foods prepared that you can carry around with you during the day and making meal plans is probably not a bad idea so you can make sure you're getting the proper nutrition, and you don't spend as much time worrying.

Finally, I don't really have any tips on being subtle. When I did it, I didn't exactly broadcast it, but people knew. However, people also knew that my diet was the reason that I wasn't on serious medication, so they were supportive. With me, I already had a success story under my belt so to speak, so I didn't have to really prove anything to them. Therefore, my advice would be not to go out of your way to hide it but to explain it to people and learn to have a thick skin.

I know that I've been pretty negative here, only because I had a hard time maintaining the diet. That's not to say that I don't support it - if I had the resources, I would be a raw vegan again in a heartbeat. However, if you're enthusiastic about it, and you're only looking to do it short term, I think it's potentially doable. Good luck!