Personal Development and Raw Food Diets

There are a number of Personal Development gurus who have at some point followed a raw vegan diet. Is this just co-incidence? I believe there is a connetion between the two.

As a reader, I know that you already have an interest in improving yourself. The question is whether or not you believe that following a raw food diet can help your own personal development?

Earlier this year, Jonathan Mead wrote on Zen Habits about his experiences eating a 100% raw vegan diet for 30 days. His article is titled "10 Reasons Eating Raw is Healthier For You and the Planet." I found his article to be very similar to my own experiences eating a raw vegan diet.

As Johathan says, it's quite easy to eat a mostly raw vegan diet. However, making the transition to 100% raw, particularly in the winter can be quite tough. For me, it's a balancing act between eating great tasting healthy raw foods and eating what I want.

Just to be clear, I eat a vegan diet. But I also eat cooked foods. I love eating rice, potatoes, yams, soups, cooked greens and so on. There are certainly times when I do go 100% raw - and I feel the benefit for sure. The thing is, in the winter time, I like eating cooked foods so I'm not too dogmatic about always being 100% raw.

At the same time, I fully agree that, wherever possible, increasing the percentage of raw, whole food, plant products - in other words fruits and vegetables - is going to be beneficial to our overall health.

In this thought-provoking discussion, I put forward my top three reasons to eat a diet based primarily around fruits and vegetables. These are:

  1. More energy: Waking up in the morning and feasting on bananas or mangoes turns into a high calorie breakfast - which is great, provided the calories are coming from whole foods low in fat, low in protein, high in fiber and high in vitamins and minerals.
  2. Regular bowel movements: It might not seem proper to talk about going to the bathroom. However, I don't care. These days I have at least three bowel movements a day and the days of pushing and straining are well and truely over. It's now just a case of sit, go, wipe, flush. A number 2 often takes no longer than going for a pee. If you're still eating meat, can you say the same?
  3. It's the morally responsible thing to do: Eating animal products = a life of slavery for all kinds of animals which ends in death. If we treated human beings the way we treat the animals we eat, it would be called a genocide. Why then are we allowed to treat animals so cruelly?

As a meat eater, I never gave the matter too much thought. But now, it's as plain as day to see that, while it might taste good, it's simply wrong to eat animals.

Not only are we murdering animals, by raising animals for food, our "footprint" on the world is much greater. Rather than growing crops to feed to animals, we could feed the entire population of the world if we simply ate the crops we grew. Wouldn't that be more civilized?