Preface:
I started eating instinctively (all raw, one food at a time, etc.) in early April. Prior to that my diet only had a few cooked or denatured things in it for about half a year (some denatured nuts, boiled potatoes and for about a month I had to eat cooked meats).
A lot has changed since then. I had a fairly significant detox and and adjustment period, which seems to be still occurring periodically. What I found most difficult to adapt to was how much I had to eat during that period. It seemed senseless to me to devour 10 bananas in a row or the pounds and pounds of fruits and vegetables I craved early on. I felt like a bottomless pit that couldn't be filled no matter how much I ate. It has changed somewhat. I'm starting to see now that it was some kind of withdrawal or exposure I was experiencing. It was like I had never eaten before and I had to relearn how.
One thing I found really beneficial was laying out my meals in courses like some of the more experienced Instincto's have recommended. I found a lot of foods to be unsuitable for me as well, so my courses are a bit different than you might find in Schaeffer's book or described by GCB. As a rule I eat 2 meals a day, one about 2-7 hours after I wake up and another 4-7 hours after that. The timing changes depending on what's going on during the day for me and what I've eaten the day before, etc.
The first thing I eat for each meal is animal protein. Whatever tastes good on the animal gets eaten. It has a rhythm of its own and I eat almost everything except the bones (and sometimes the bones too, if they're small enough). I seem to be unable to handle a lot of land animals and so I stick mostly to stuff from the sea. I've found clams, oysters, scallops and fish to be the easiest to digest. The next course is vegetables. Then fruits. I've been avoiding nuts and dried foods lately. In between meals I drink spring water and I usually go through a gallon every 5-7 days—not that much in comparison to SAD liquid consumption.
Some interesting things:
- No food withdrawal in between meals. Eating periods blend into fasting periods in a way that's sort of like an amusement park ride. I adapt easier to periods without food and don't get "hungry" much anymore... or insane cravings for food. I know when it's time to eat based on signals in my body and they aren't painful (although I don't usually miss one of my two meals in a day so I don't have that much experience with prolonged fasting).
- Breakfast is easily forgotten. It's nice to just wake up and head out the door without having to think about what I will eat because I know I won't be hungry for sometimes up to 7 hours.
- Stable energy level—although my energy varies throughout the day based on when I'm eating and when I'm not, I find I have a great deal more energy than I ever remember. I seem to be more tolerant and less bothered by things like staying late at work and other life events. I find it rather enjoyable, actually. It's not a manic kind of energy either (like with a cup of coffee), just a steady supply of usable material.
- It's more interesting than eating the SAD. When I ate the SAD my life was filled with "staples" (bread, rice, etc.) which were basically drugs for me. If I didn't have them it felt like impending doom. I don't have much in the way of staples, other than a preference for salmons and smelt, and can just as easily go through the day having eaten bananas and carrots as with mangos and broccoli stems. As the needs change my foods change and it's nice to know I can trust my body to tell me what will be eaten next. I don't have to think about what I'm going to eat. It comes to me in the form of sensory stuff like taste, smell and salivation—little indicators that take the work out of my diet and make it enjoyable.
- I have little fear of eating bad stuff. But this was probably just me to begin with and had little to do with the diet. I've eaten some strange things these last few months and I'm still breathing. In fact I feel a lot better than I ever did eating cooked stuff. Life is more intriguing as well for whatever reason.
For anyone considering all raw, instinctive...
It wasn't as graceful a transition as it sounds, in fact it was total chaos for about a month. I had to figure out what my body could tolerate and what it couldn't entirely by trial and error. I had to relearn how to read the signals I was being given—or maybe learn them for the first time. I had no way to interpret what was happening in my body, having never really been in that full of contact with it before. As the crap from my previous diets left my system I had to adjust to life without the numbing effects of denatured foods. I had to learn to trust what my body wanted instead of my head and learn to listen to my senses telling me when to spit something out and when to eat it. All of this was at best blissful and at its worst utter despair. I cannot tolerate denatured foods and I would not go back to eating them if I had a choice.
I can't speak to any health benefits or anything of that sort as that wasn't my interest in starting to eat this way. I think that my hair might be fuller and I'm leaner but further than that I haven't investigated. I'm also willing to bet that if you went from eating the SAD to instincto abruptly you'd probably detox really, really hard. I can't even imagine the shit-storm that would erupt from that. If anyone has experience with that feel free to share it—I stepped down my consumption of denatured foods over the course of a year before I went 100% raw.
