Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?

Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:




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Yesterday, we covered the concept of "unsubscribing" from unhealthy practices. This was of course based on the common Internet practice of subscribing and unsubscribing to various things like newsletters and email lists. I receive quite a few of these each day, many raw foods ones and many non-raw ones. Among the non-raw, one that has been interesting to me lately is called the Art of Non-Conformity, penned by Chris Guillebeau. Basically, Chris' site chronicles his adventures in reaching his personal goal -- to travel to every country in the world! Along the way, he writes about all sorts of out-of-the-box things, as the blog name implies.

Today, he posted something that is remarkably insightful and applicable to our subject matter here, even though his context was completely different. The entry, entitled simply "Before and After," discusses the drinking water problems in much of Africa, focusing for the moment on Liberia. Atop the piece (the "before" picture) is a muddy water hole, the only source of drinking water for one village. The next picture (the "after" shot) shows a different, very happy village obtaining fresh, clean water from a newly installed well. Chris closes his article with the following quote:

The thing about before and after ? it s hard to go back to before when you ve experienced the after. This is true in life, clean drinking water, and transformation of all kinds.

So true!? One huge difference between the raw food lifestyle and other diets is that true transformational aspect. Sure, success stories abound about fad diets and other diets, but more often than not, they're within the context of yo-yo weight loss/gain stories. Personally, I never would have tried, say, Atkins. But, I do know a number of people who used that protocol to lose weight. ...And then they regained it!! Why? No core transformation took place, so it was easy to slip back to unhealth.

Raw isn't like that. It's a whole-being transformation. I've yet to meet anyone who was truly transformed by raw who later went back to eating junk. I mean, sure, maybe it happens and I just don't know about it. But, I think Chris is spot-on here; It's hard to go back to your "before" state once you've truly delighted in the existence of your "after" one. That's because, in order to truly revert back to your unhealthy self, you'd have to either consciously do it or actually buy back into it all again -- and I just don't believe many people would willingly do that (barring some traumatic event or something, that is).

Let's face it: ?Fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, salads, smoothies ... These things are WAY more exciting and life-giving. They affect your entire being -- mind, body, emotions,and spirit. And that's powerful, powerful stuff, my friends -- sometimes staggeringly so. I'm absolutely bursting with positive energy as I write about this!? I might waffle on other things in life, but raw is edefinitely here to stay! :-)

Original Comments

Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.

On January 21, 2010, bitt wrote:

i ate some junk food (vegan tings) a few months ago because I WANTED to feel bad. it was weird. but when you are used to raw food your body doesn't like the way it feels after junk and you'd be a fool to keep that up for too long. even my husband who eats a high raw unprocessed vegan diet goes a little nuts for junk sometimes. he feels awful after and that's enough of a reminder to stick to what WAS working. so i guess we are not doing back to junk, just testing it out from time to time, which reminds us we are on the right path.

On January 22, 2010, lunamama wrote:

bitt...just out of morbid curiosity..what do you consider junk food? people always get a kick out of what i consider junk food!