This is a guest post by Ingela from Best Natural Skin Care.
The last few years a lot of people have proven it is possible to lose weight rapidly if you increase the amount of raw vegan foods in your diet or even better, go 100% raw vegan. But what is the best and easiest way to start losing weight with raw foods?
Raw vegan foods are great for weight loss and overall health because they are lower in calories and higher in nutrients. This is because lots of nutrients vanish when you cook your food.
When you first hear about the raw vegan diet it sounds a bit boring. What do these people eat anyway? This diet includes all kinds of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, algae, sprouts, juice and super foods, as long as they are uncooked and as fresh and natural as possible.
1. Start Small
It is best for most people to go slowly and not try to start eating 100% raw over night. A drastic shift might work as a short-term diet but mostly not if you want long-term, positive change in your diet.
Start incorporating a little bit more raw foods as you go, a little bit at every meal and have raw snacks in between meals. If you continuously increase the amount of raw foods you eat every day, you’ll soon have a predominantly raw diet.
2. Find What You Like
If you are a bit hesitant when it comes to eating raw foods and don’t really like most of them, you can start by finding the foods you do like. Most people like sweet fruits and berries, so start with those. Your taste buds will get accustomed to eating more natural foods and you’ll want to try all kinds of fruits, and maybe even vegetables 
.
Lots of people also like eating ready-made raw snacks like granola and fruit bars in the beginning, especially if they are used to eating lots of sugary snacks. It’s an easy way to choose healthier alternatives but still being able to reduce your cravings.
3. Introduce Vegetables
A big piece of the raw food diet is the minerals, without them you’ll quickly find yourself with deficiencies. So start eating more greens. Again, start small, because if you’re anything like me, you might not like them in the
beginning!
Dark leafy greens like spinach, kale and lettuce are actually easy to incorporate in a delicious smoothie with frozen berries and bananas, in a salad with creamy avocado dressing, or in a freshly-squeezed juice.
4. Try Juicing
Juicing your fruits and vegetables is a good way to get lots of nutrients while minimizing calories. Drinking freshly made juice once or twice a day will definitely help you get rid of extra weight and also increase your health and well being.
It is also a smart way to get those dark leafy green vegetables into your diet; you can easily blend green juice with for example the juice of orange, apple, carrot or any other sweet fruit and it will taste much better.
A lot of people experience that as time passes they desire less and less fruit juice in the mix and would rather drink more green juice. This happens because they get more in tune with what their body really needs.
5. Experiment
When you have learned more about raw foods and found some recipes you love, you can experiment and go completely raw for a day, two days or even a week and just check out how it feels. This can be a fun thing where you try new recipes and foods.
After experimenting for some time you might find yourself gravitating towards a high raw diet (i.e. eating 60-70% or more raw foods). The important thing is to be comfortable with it, take it one step at a time and have fun. If you don’t like the food you’re eating, you probably won’t want to keep eating them. If you want to lose weight naturally you have to enjoy what you are eating.
Going on a raw food diet or increasing the raw foods you eat does not mean you should starve yourself, eat less than what satiates you or even that you won’t be able to eat foods that you love.
There are loads of alternatives to all your cooked food cravings if you want to replace them, for example raw recipes of pizza, lasagna, pie, all kinds of desserts, chocolate, ice cream and lots more. The beauty of all of these raw foods is that they are healthier, lighter and still delicious.
Remember though, that it’s important to be well-informed when you take on a new way of eating to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs, so you don’t end up with deficiencies.
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