Frederic Patanaude Part II: Cleansing and Fasting

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 by: Kevin Gianni
Tags: fasting, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon, which can be found at http://www.Rawkathon.com. In this excerpt, Frederic Patanaude shares on cleansing and fasting.

Rawkathon with Frederic Patanaude. Frederic Patanaude has been on a raw food journey for thirteen years. He is the author of The Raw Secrets.

Kevin: So you do cleansing programs and why don't you tell me how important is cleansing? What's that?

Frederic: When I talk about cleansing my definition is very different than what most people use in the natural health movement. When people talk about a cleanse in the natural health movement it means you're going to buy a bunch of products: a bunch of herbs that you're going to eat and consume and somehow it's going to cleanse your body. I simply use the word because your body does the cleansing anyway, so you don't need to take anything. A cleanse for me is a raw food diet that people to follow but it can be a specific type of raw food diet like not eating any fat. But in a sense that's not a cleanse in a sense that a lot of people use the word in the natural health movement. I like to use the word because it has this imagery of you're going to cleanse the toxins out of your body and that's what happens when you eat raw foods. So I think it's important.

First of all, it can be a good thing for people to just get around the idea of eating raw foods if they can try it for just a week. They can try it in a very specific and clean way, like just having fruits and green smoothies for an entire week. So that really you're going to see a major difference if you do that for a week or ten days or someone who's just getting started on raw foods or maybe who's done another type of raw food program, they'll see a difference; they'll suddenly have more energy and a lot of things. So that's really useful. Even if you go back to your regular diet after, you're going to want to make some changes from that experience.. Or maybe once a week you'll want to do that. Maybe someone wants to lose a little bit of weight faster; they can have a few days a week where they only consume fruit, for example. It's going to make it easier than if they keep on eating more nuts and seeds and so and so.

A cleanse for me is that. It's not like you don't eat a specific product, you don't eat, or any
gimmick. It's a diet that you can define in advance that is very clean, that you are going to follow for a very specific period of time. That's very useful for people getting started on a diet or people who maybe want to clean up their diet once in a while. But once you, let's say, eat how you should be eating you don't need to go on a cleanse.. Your diet is a cleanse. But it's just not a cleanse because it's providing you with everything you need. You just don't need, you just don't feel the need to do that.

What I do is several days a week I don't eat any fat. Maybe two or three days a week, I don't eat anything that has fat in it in terms of things like nuts, avocados and so on. But all foods have a little bit of fat in them so you can't go 100% no fat; that's impossible on a raw food diet. It's not a cleanse; it's just normal. A cleanse is maybe more for people who want to get started on raw foods or want to improve their raw food program; then, they're going to try something that's new, something that's going to give them different results.

Kevin: Do you do any fasting though?

Frederic: I don't do any fasting, no. But I fasted before and I did a 23-day water fast in Costa Rica in 2005..

Kevin: Wow, what was that about? What was that like?

Frederic: I will say it was quite an experience to do that. I didn't find it easy personally; some people found it a lot easier than me. It was not easy for me to go for that long without food. But when I look at it now, in hindsight, I can see that I got really great results from that fast. All different levels. It helped me move my life in a different direction. So it was a great experience, but I don't fast. I don't have time to fast. I just can barely find the time to eat.

Kevin: Particularly if you're eating fruits and vegetables, I mean sometimes you have to eat a lot of calories; you need time to fit it in.

Frederic: But you don't need to fast if you're, like Dr. Graham says, if you're eating properly; you wouldn't necessarily need to fast. Although it would be beneficial, but if you do it, you might as well take the time to do the longer fast. And also a key part in fasting is resting, so that's a key part in fasting. So there are times when I don't necessarily fast but I'll say I need some extra rest so I'll spend a double weekend in bed. Not the whole time but I'll spend about 16 hours a day in bed for about two or three days in a row. You eat a little bit less when you do that but it really allows for a better recovery so that's kind of a better fast anyway.

Kevin: Tell me, I want to hear more about the 23-day water fast because I've never done a water fast of that length. What are some of the things that you experience over those 23 days?

Frederic: Well, at first, you have to understand how fasting works and how, let's say, people go for three days without food or water. They call it a fast but in reality they're still consuming. Their body's still running on stored energy in the form of easily accessible sugar and the food that's being digested or the glycogen in the muscles and so on. So it takes three or four or five days before you're actually only running on your own body fat so you're just burning your body fat. And when you get to that point, there's a shift because the first few days of fasting you're kind of still walking around and then after a week you're more like a zombie. And it's different; it's a different process.. Your body is running on body fat and converting it to sugar for energy so you don't have the same energy.

The one thing I found in my fast is that I needed a lot of sleep. I was reading stories from people who fasted and did sleep and that's what a lot of people find when they fast. And I'm not an expert on fasting but just from talking to other people who'd done it; they say that they catch up on their rest in a really astonishing way. So I was sleeping at least 16 hours a day in the first week or 10 days and then I was spending 22 hours a day laying down, in a horizontal position, and more as the time went by. That's one of the most important aspects of the fast. It's the rest. So the biggest thing for me is that I finally got to rest, to take all the time in the world to rest.

And when you do that, I had the most amazing dreams, realistic, 3D dreams and all kinds of things that went through my mind and the mental clarity after ten or twelve days was just amazing. I would write down everything that I wanted to do after the fast. When the fast was over, the recovery was a little bit difficult, getting adjusted, but I had a lot of energy. I'm not saying it was an easy experience overall but after I came from my fast, my eyes were glowing; people were noticing.

Kevin: When you knew it was about day 23 and you were coming back and starting to eat solid foods, what were you thinking? How did that play out for you?

Frederic: Well, at first, I was not very hungry because you kind of lose your appetite after a while so I was wondering how it was going to be. My first meal was watermelon. It was really delicious.

Kevin: It never tasted better, I know. Let's move a little bit into dental issues... A lot of people say, "If you eat a lot of fruit you're going to get dental decay." Why don't we talk a little bit about that?

Frederic: Yeah. Well first, I found that a lot of people get dental issues on a raw food diet not specifically because of the fruit but because of a lot of factors. But that's only going to happen if you have something going on, like underlying issues in your mouth, if there's a lot of bacterial activity that you might not know about. So then you add a bunch of sugar on top of it; then, you're going to get problems. Now if someone did not, had a really clean environment, then you can eat all the fruit in the world and it's not going to be a problem.

So what I recommend in order to keep a good oral environment and healthy teeth is just to learn about some basic techniques for taking care of your teeth. One is you need to clean your teeth once a day, very thoroughly. It might take 4 minutes instead of the usual 38 seconds that the average American takes to brush their teeth. You can also get an irrigator that will spray a very concentrated jet of water in between your teeth and you can add maybe some baking soda once in a while, not too much, to neutralize the bacteria. The idea is to keep the bacteria in a free-flowing state because they're always going to be there but you don't want them to concentrate in one area and create an entire civilization and multiply. If you keep that going then when you eat fruits or sugars, it's not going to be a problem but if they're already there and concentrated in one area then they can create some damage.

So there's a few things to do. What I recommend is a sort of routine that you can do every evening which takes about six or seven minutes. For example, I brush my teeth with usually, except when I'm traveling, I brush my teeth with a toothbrush, an electric toothbrush... Then I spend one minute on each area and there's four areas in the mouth and that's four minutes. And then I spend maybe one or two minutes with a jet and a irrigator, and then maybe less than a minute flossing and then everything's clean. And then that's the most important time to do it, before going to bed. But you shouldn't get any issues if you do that and you avoid in general things that are very sticky, like dried fruits and nuts and seeds that are not properly chewed. So those are the basic recommendations.

For more from this excerpt of the Rawkathon, plus 14 other amazing raw food interviews, please visit http://www.Rawkathon.com.

About the author

Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.