Raw Green & Whole Seafood Smoothies / Compulsive Eating / Candida Cure

[Alive]

I have had a lifelong problem with secret compulsive overeating of sugar & starch. I never got fat but instead got brain fog, headaches, insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, muscle pains... really bad stuff. Doctors have never been any help and dismissed my issues as having a psychological cause and offered anti-depressants. As a teenager I read the book Raw Energy and found that eating raw fruit and veges made me feel much better, but I often overate fruit and quickly returned to junk food over eating.

Recently I have realized that I have had a candida type intestinal infestation and that this was releasing chemicals encouraging me to overeat starches and sugars, and poisoning me with its byproducts.

I have been a follower of the raw vegan movement for a long time but always felt uncomfortable with their rejection of raw animal products, especially after seeing videos of chimps and orangutans eating insects, monkeys, and fish. Then there are the science reports that our paleo ancestors ate large quantities of raw meat for hundreds of thousands of years before fire was controlled.

So I feel really at home on this site - thank you to the creators, contributors & readers : )

The local herb center recently gave me a supplement to repair my microbe caused intestinal damage, and I was intrigued to investigate the active ingredients - one was present in raw meat but destroyed by cooking, and the other was derived from crustacean shells. So I figure why buy expensive extracts when I can go straight to the source and get thousands of other nutrients that haven't been discovered yet. Also research on the net points out how important it is to eat organs, brains, bones, skin, etc as each component has its own nutritional benefits.

Hence my mostly raw green whole crustacean smoothie that is now my main food:
1 x Can of coconut cream (OK this is cooked, but I hear that it is a powerful anti-candida agent)
2 x Large handfuls of fresh dark green leaves / celery / edible weeds (stinging nettle, thistle, cleavers...)
1 x Handful of whole raw prawns or shrimps (defrosted for convenience as freezing does little damage)
1/3 Cup fresh garlic / ginger / horseradish for candida / parasite control
1 x Tablespoon mixed dried herbs oregano / pau d'arco bark / basil... for candida control
1 x Tablespoon diatomaceous earth for parasite control (not important if the animal has been frozen)

Using the blender makes the prawns and greens very digestible, any small lumps are fun to chew up.
I also have frozen raw whole sardines, and fresh free range eggs for other paleo smoothies.
Due to my microbe condition I am mostly avoiding even fresh fruit, and definitely avoiding any starches (anything that can make an alcoholic beverage is suspect for me (all grains, potatoes & other starchy vegetables, sugar etc).

So far my weight has dropped ~10kg, my energy levels are up and my food compulsion for sugar and starch have vanished. My wife is suffering from my crankiness, but I understand that this is to be expected as the candida die-off temporarily creates more toxins.

 : )

[TylerDurden]

Interesting. I too ultimately arrived at RVAF diets as a direct result of reading Leslie Kenton's book "Raw Energy". She was the only raw-diet author I could find at the time who was willing to suggest eating a little raw dairy and raw eggs. No mention of raw meat as I recall(?), but it was a start.

Re your above daily foods:-

1) Coconut cream. For best results, you should never mix raw foods with cooked foods. They require quite different digestive processes(cooked requires more stomach-acid to be produced etc.). If you must eat cooked foods then do so at separate meal-times with several hours before or after eating any raw foods. It is also especially helpful to eat 100% raw when one is in ill-health as it's better to allow the body time to heal itself rather than burdening it with the extra effort to digest cooked foods and diverting away resources to help with detoxing the negative effects of cooked foods.

2) Dark green leaves. Most rawpalaeos avoid such as they are high in levels of antinutrients.

3) Prawns/shrimps:-  I find that most prawns and shrimps seem to be farmed if I go to a fishmonger's. I would only ever buy such from a small-time fisherman who I know only gets hold of raw wildcaught seafood. Farmed seafood is mostly dud food. Also, my own experience with prefrozen seafood is that the taste thereof is greatly reduced. Freezing raw meat seems to have a slightly lesser effect on taste. Whatever the case, once you have thawed  prefrozen meat/seafood, eat it immediately and do not put part of it back into the fridge as freezing causes the cell-membranes to disrupt and so that nutrient-loss is rapid once the food starts thawing.

4)  Hmm,  I personally didn't find herbs too useful and I think I had some candida-related issues way back when I started this diet.Worth trying though, as those don't do any harm. Just don't go for smoked garlic, and go for raw, organic garlic if possible.

5) "Free-range" or "organic" status isn't important. I've seen farmers feed their fowl on very unhealthy 100% grain-filled diets and then proudly proclaim that their fowls' diet is 100% vegetarian and organic - completely meaningless. Far better to get hold of "pastured" chickens who will be allowed to feed on earthworms etc. and who will have grains as a much smaller part of their diet. Plus, some people here have acute sensitivity to any foods from animals raised on grains, such as grainfed meat etc.

[joej627]

Maybe do coconut oil instead of cream? This way its all raw together.  There are a variety of anti-bacterial things in God's medicine cabinet.

-raw garlic
-onions
-oregano
-pau d'arco is good for candida
-coconut oil

Personally, i think candida is not necessarily something to "kill off" as it exists in everybodies bodies in certain amounts.  You have to ask why it is there in the first place?  Maybe add in some fermented foods to replace friendly bacteria you may have lost along the way.  Generally becoming healthier and more oxygenated/raising your body PH levels will help get rid of any and all microbes.  I think the candida thing is overrated.  There are hundreds if not thousands of species of bacteria and parasites living in human bodies.  Why are we all blaming it on one thing that is already in our bodies to begin with?  And yes, it could be that the extra sugar is a cause as well.  Maybe candida is speaking to you? telling you you don't need that much sugar to function during the day.     I find there is always a lesson that your body is trying to teach you so that you will find and maintain your balance.

[Alive]

Thanks for your feedback Joe & Tyler,
I will try coconut oil instead of the canned coconut cream. Also on the web I can see frozen coconut meat but not sure if it is available in NZ - it would be nice to live on a tropical island for a few years : )

I am surprised that paleos don't eat dark green leaves. I have been interested that chimps eat fruit during the day and then leaves before bedtime so that seemed like a good approach. As long as I didn't overeat then this type of diet has given me stunning amounts of energy and stamina in the past.

I will investigate the source of the prawns. The sardines must be ocean caught though so I'll try more of them.
The eggs are from our own chickens that eat our scraps and wander around eating grass and bugs, digging up the garden and having a great life - so they are happy eggs : )

Re candida this is just a convenient label - I have no idea what the cause is, just that this is what naturopaths have suggested and the symptoms are identical to mine. This could be could an intestinal micro-flora  imbalance instead, that needs to be re-balanced.

Yesterday I had a lot of cooked prawns and meat, and had poor sleep and awoke feeling quite fatigued. Not as bad as after eating carbs, but still enough to get more raw!
 

[joej627]

I think a lot of people recommend dark greens man.  Gotta be careful with the raw greens as some can contain goitrogens (brocolli, brussels, kale, spinach, etc) but I use a nutribullet to blend a lot of this stuff up.  I just eat to how i feel balanced out.  For me its good amounts of raw and some cooked veggies, some raw fruit, raw eggs, raw fats (olive, coconut, fish oil), rare beef and salmon, and some lightly cooked chicken and turkey.  I am evolving one step at a time

[TylerDurden]

Not sure re coconut oil - there were some threads about this which claimed that raw coconut oil was virtually never truly raw. I know, from Iguana, that raw cold-pressed olive oil isn't genuinely raw as a lot of pressure is used in the manufacturing process and pressure involves heat.

[joej627]

Thats true sometimes.  There are brands that involve low-heat.  Most store bought are not raw no.  Look into bariani. stone crushed, no heat.

[Alive]

I think for me the main thing is to only eat when hungry, and then in moderation, as my metabolism is unable to cope with normal amounts of food. Large amounts of raw or lightly cooked non-starchy veges are fine, as these are mostly water. Feeling hungry between eating and then only eating enough to feel satiated rather than full is my main aim. Then there are not enough calories left over to send the microbes out of control, and my metabolism has time to fully finish assimilation before getting loaded up with more work, plus the extra work of detoxing the microbe wastes produced from the leftovers.

So for example eating a large plate of steamed veges would be a million times better than a lump of cheese. Fiber and alkaline inducing foods - non-starchy veges with moderate amounts of fresh raw fruit and quality, preferably raw, animal protein. Just need to get past my stupid "eat for the moment & forget how I'll feel later" energy sapping habits!

FYI regarding Leslie Kenton she was living in my neighbourhood in a few years ago - yes in the south island of New Zealand - and when I went to hear her give a presentation at the local school fair I was surprised how large she was. So she doesn't seem to have been following her Raw Energy principles recently. Her talk was really boring, about botox or some other Hollywood cosmetic practice that was unlikely to be common locally.