The majority of the list of alkaline foods, such as leafy greens and vegetables can sometimes look a little ‘light’ in terms of calories and limiting in terms of satisfying our sweet toothes.
In this article I am going to give you some concrete ways to thrive on this lifestyle, in order to avoid sinking energy levels, making rookie ‘fat mistakes’, falling off the wagon and going back to the standard American type diet of processed foods, dairy and meat etc.
By following these simple principles, you’ll feel satisfied and energised on this clean, super-healthy diet and you’ll likely begin to experience improvements in your health challenges, big or small.
If we examine the list of alkaline foods, we can see that the vast majority of them are vegetables, nuts/seeds, low sugar fruits, grasses and sprouts.
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This list poses two interesting challenges:
1. Getting Enough Calories
Vegetables, especially leafy greens, are low in calories and you need to eat a LOT to receive adequate energy. Let’s look at an example: A medium sized plate of chicken curry and rice, tuna pasta bake, or beef casserole averages around 800 calories.
In order to get 800 calories from vegetables, you’d have to eat around 12 plates of lettuce with tomato, cucumber and peppers, or 3 plates of steamed root vegetables! So getting in the calories from low fat veg is a challenge, especially if you’re an active person.
You could add some flax oil to your salad or roast the veg in coconut oil but you still have to eat a much larger volume of food than the standard ‘dense’ type diet foods.
In fact that’s the key point to take into account here – DENSITY & the need to eat a much greater VOLUME of food…
The alkaline based diet consists of foods that are much lower in density & volume and a much higher water content than other diets. Making the enlightened move towards the clean end of the diet spectrum (i.e. raw vegan) requires simply a lot more eating! This can only be a good thing in my view, who doesn’t like eating?!
BUT it does require diligence. We need to be eating every couple hours or so and be mindful not to slip into an energy slump by being under-carbed. If we allow ourselves to be under-energised by consuming too few calories then we are much more prone pigging out on junk food or simply making poor food choices and abondoning our list of alkaline foods altogether.
2. Consuming Too Much Fat
At the other end of the healthy eating scale is aiming to go totally raw and ditching things like potatoes, rice and bread etc. for raw flax breads or nut patés, because they’re cooked or not on the list of alkaline foods. The problem with this is that, whilst it’s not totally ideal to eat cooked starchy foods, it is much preferable to eat a potato or two than eating very rich and very high fat and dense raw food concoctions, simply in the name of eating raw.
Such raw vegan recipes often have as much as 60-80% of their calories from fat! Wayyyyy too high. If you eat these things on a regular basis, your whole dietary fat intake will be too high – above 50% most likely and you’ll start to feel sluggish and get cold-like symptoms as a result.
I made this mistake when I began going 100% raw for the first time. I just did not feel great. I had a blood analysis and was told that my blood cells were all sticking together – a classic symptom of eating too much fat in your diet. This inhibits oxygenation of the blood – hence a lack of energy, feeling sluggish and getting ill!
Continue to the next page to find out how adding fruits to your list of alkaline foods can help you to thrive on this diet.
Next Page…Alkaline Fruits: Which Fruits Are Alkaline and How to Overcome Sugar Cravings
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