beautifulonraw.com

The Straight Poop

Tonya Zavasta — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:50:26 +0000

After eating 100 % raw foods for more than 10 years now, I believe I have a perfectly working digestive system. Here I’m going to tell you about the ideal bowel movement. I am calling it an “ideal” movement since in my research, I found that there is simply no consensus about what is “normal.” There are levels of normal, and every person is going to have different level. (more…)

Eat Your Seaweed for Beautiful Hair

Tonya Zavasta — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:05:06 +0000

At the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego, I saw a lady with the loveliest hair I’d seen outside the world of fantasy. Her ivory hair flowed almost to the small of her back. I couldn’t pass her without turning for one more glimpse. I ached to learn her secret. She appeared to be about 45—an age most women’s hair grows fine and lifeless. But hers was full and lustrous. After hearing my expressions of admiration, she let me in on the secret to her lavish hair. She eats seaweed every day. (more…)

Raw Foods Lifestyle: Paradigm Shift

Tonya Zavasta — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:45:33 +0000

When it first became robustly apparent that there is a direct link between food and our health, innumerable books appeared bearing titles such as Healthy Cooking for Two, Healthy Homestyle Cooking, The Best-Kept Secrets of Healthy Cooking, Healthy Calendar Diabetic Cooking, Healthy Cooking For Healthy Heart, Ayurvedic Cooking for Self-Healing, The Beat High Blood Pressure Cookbook, The Cooking Light Way to Lose Weight.

When we use our imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways, aligning with existing concepts, categories and stereotypes. Do you see how typical instances of a food concept (cooking) springs to mind first, and we naturally tend to seize on them as starting points in developing new ideas. These authors couldn’t get beyond the concept of “cooking.” Certainly, some ways of preparing food are less harmful than others. So these books are helpful in that respect. This is a glaring example of structured imagination. (more…)

Two Twin Secrets for Health and Longevity: Raw Quality…Low Quantity

Tonya Zavasta — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:31:43 +0000

Have you heard about the diet popular now: You eat once per day—all day long? Which is precisely what I did during my first year on a 100% raw food lifestyle. My consolation: I was eating raw. I used to think we can eat as much as we want as long as it is raw. This was true for me during my transitioning period. But no more! Nowadays I believe you should gradually strive for two meals per day—and the sooner the better. Your stomach needs rest. (more…)

Luigi Cornaro Lived to Be 102 Years Old: What Can We Learn from Him?

Tonya Zavasta — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:53:27 +0000

I’ve discovered in my reading someone whose life I want to share. He comes to us from Renaissance Italy, over 400 years ago. His works are a commentary on the ideas, insights, and experiences of a man who lived a then truly remarkable 102 years, though most doctors thought he would die by the time he was forty. (more…)

Hatha Yoga and Raw Foods: Initial Discomfort and Detox

Tonya Zavasta — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:14:45 +0000

I lived for 45 years with the right leg shorter than the other. Then I had two artificial hips installed to correct my childhood infirmity. Three years ago I started to take Bikram yoga classes. I was fused like a badly sewn dress. Some muscles in my legs had atrophied from many years of inactivity. As yoga practice was bringing them to life, they were giving me all pangs of rebirth. The soreness persisted for many hours, even days, afterward, but it was a promising pain. At first I could only make one class per week. I knew that for real results my stubborn muscles needed more. My happiest moment was when my hips finally allowed me to do Bikram yoga every day. I attribute this remarkable healing to the raw food lifestyle I have been following for the last ten years. (more…)

How Do Raw Foods Affect Your Sleep?

Tonya Zavasta — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:09:40 +0000

Excited, one of my readers wrote me: You simply must read T. S. Wiley’s Lights Out. It seems that raw foodists pride themselves on less and less sleep. Fooling with the circadian rhythms of seasons and sun is only fooling ourselves…I’m an insatiable reader. I never turn my back on a book, especially one given such an enthusiastic recommendation. So I had to read this one. (more…)

Acrylamide: The Killer in Your Kitchen

Tonya Zavasta — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:23:27 +0000

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned home-cooked meal…That friendly, familiar saying is as venerable as home itself as warm and welcoming as June Cleaver hefting a big ol’ pot-roast for Wally and Ward and the Beaver. And infinitely more deadly.

People are dying daily at the hand of a silent killer. That killer is acrylamide, a cancer-causing chemical found in heat-processed food. Yes, all of us good parents, prepping and serving those good old home-cooked meals…we could be putting ourselves and our families at risk without knowing it. (more…)

Yoke Hatha Yoga with Raw Foods

Tonya Zavasta — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:12:09 +0000

Most people are entirely human. Not me. I’m special. I’m the Bionic Super-Raw Vegetarian. I’m 15 per cent weapons-grade titanium—the result of two artificial hips. And, come to think of it, I’m 15 per cent immortal. Walk through an airport scanner and I light up every machine for yards around. Bored security personnel rise from their semi-slumber. Homeland Security goes to DEFCON 4. While they’re busy frisking me, my husband Nick smuggles all our raw food through security. (more…)

To Sleep or to Eat?

Tonya Zavasta — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:04:22 +0000

We all get sleepy after a heavy meal. Sleeping and eating are intimately connected. After ten years on a 100 per cent raw foods regime and experimenting with different raw foods and quantities, I can say confidently that nothing influences your sleeping needs more than the amount and quality of food you eat. (more…)