Originally published May 12 2008
Author Matt Monarch on Transitioning to Raw Foods Cold Turkey
by Kevin Gianni
(NaturalNews) Hi everyone, this is Kevin Gianni, and I'd like to welcome you to a very special Raw Summit Teleseminar, which can be found online at (http://www.rawsummitarchives.com) . The purpose of the Raw Summit is to pass along cutting edge information about raw and living food technologies for you to reach optimal health, wellness, and success. Today, I have a special guest who has been 100% raw for over 7 years and is the author of Raw Spirit, a book on transitioning and thriving with the raw food lifestyle. So Matt Monarch, I want to welcome you to the Raw Summit.
Raw Summit Excerpt with Matt Monarch, a raw food specialist and author of Raw Spirit.
Kevin: This is going to be an awesome interview; I know it already and let's start just by telling everyone how you got to where you are right now.
Matt: Alright. Seven years ago I was actually living in New York City. I had an ideal job at MTV Networks working in Times Square. So here I am, on the Standard American Diet. One day, I was in my office and this man handed me a book and it is called "Become Younger" by Dr. Norman Walker, who supposedly lived well over 100 years old. I opened that book and I couldn't believe what I was reading, like what certain foods were actually doing to my system and how they were damaging me. I didn't even know raw food diets existed at that time. I thought I had the healthiest diet anyone could eat. So I finished that book overnight, and the next day I went 100% raw, 7 years ago and I've never looked back since.
Kevin: Wow! When you were reading that book what sort of things came upon you as you were looking through this at night?
Matt: Well, I'm sitting there reading what certain foods that I was continually eating were doing to me, such as refined sugar and processed starches, and I just couldn't believe it. I thought I'd discovered something huge. I thought I'd discovered gold.
Kevin: Okay, and when you made the transition, did you just start 100% raw?
Matt: Yes. I went 100% raw overnight.
Kevin: Okay. Let's talk about how you felt when you went 100% raw?
Matt: Well, I wasn't really sure what was going to be happening. When I made the decision, it was a done deal, there was no turning back. So I went 100% raw. I went through detoxification and I was a little confused. You know you're not used to that full feeling anymore. When you eat cooked food you get that full feeling and when you only eat raw food you don't get that full satiating warm feeling in your stomach anymore. So, I was confused and when I would eat raw food, I would eat too much and I wouldn't have energy and certain things like that. But I assisted my detoxification with something called colon hydrotherapy, Colonic Irrigation.
Kevin: Yes.
Matt: And that was tremendously beneficial for me.
Kevin: Let's talk about eating the things you were eating and then going 100% raw and then getting into colon hydrotherapy, all these probably in a very short period of time. How did you get into it and what were the benefits that you received from it?
Matt: Okay. Actually when I was sitting there at work, I would get all sorts of crazy gas on my system. I would go in the bathroom nonstop and actually the person that told me about the raw food diet, his older brother was a colon therapist.
Kevin: Okay.
Matt: So I actually did one session before I went 100% raw and so what I did was every time I started going through detox and it was just too much to handle I would do a Colonic Irrigation and that transported me right back to feeling in complete bliss. I get so spiritually high when I do one of those. Pretty crazy, being clean is a very important aspect to this type of lifestyle.
Kevin: Sure. One of the first chapters of your book is, I Belong on Another Planet, can we talk about that?
Matt: Yes. So when you become 100% raw, you go through a complete transformation, not only physical, I literally lost 20 pounds in probably 2 or 3 weeks, but you go through a spiritual transformation, emotional and much more. So here I am 20 pounds lighter. I was living in New York
City, and you know when people see that you lose 20 pounds, they think you look emaciated. Society puts these ideals on us. Continually, over and over again the most beautiful people at my lectures are coming up to me and saying, "Oh my family thinks I'm emaciated." And I'm just looking at them, at their beauty thinking that they're absolutely not. Society puts these ideals on us, when in actuality people are really much more beautiful than they were before.
Additionally, when I became raw, I wasn't used to this empty feeling in my stomach anymore. You do not cook food to medicate yourself; there are psychological, emotional issues that rise to the surface. Gas was coming out of my system, I would overeat, I just didn't know what was going on. I never had a food issue my entire life. You know, that's one of the reasons why I wrote my book. Raw Spirit, it talks about my story in this aspect. But I also talk about the most positive; you know part of it all which is the spiritual dimension, the number one reason why I stay raw today.
Kevin: So that is the number one reason?
Matt: Yes.
Kevin: And tell me about that.
Matt: So I was 100% raw for six months now and I decided to do something called Psyllium Bentonite cleanse. Psyllium is a strong fiber husk, Bentonite is a volcanic clay, and you know for anybody who's ever tried one of these drinks, you know it's pretty tough on the system. Well, I did the most extreme Psyllium Bentonite cleanses that you can possibly do. For seven days, you eat no food whatsoever, and every single day you are supposed to do a Psyllium Bentonite drink five times a day for seven days. Additionally, to keep this moving through your system, you're supposed to do a colonic irrigation or Colema board which is in that home system in the morning and in the evening of every day of this cleanse. You can get away without doing the colon hydrotherapy as long as you're eliminating, but you're not going to evolve as far as if you would do something like that.
Kevin: Okay.
Matt: So here I am, a young guy, six months being raw. I was doing colon hydrotherapy more than once a month and do you think a young guy like me would be completely cleaned out from all this waste?
Kevin: Sure.
Matt: Well, my colon therapist couldn't believe what was coming out of my system, just gobs of mucoid plaque and all sorts of crazy things. And something happened to me for the first time in my life after I got that last colonic with the Psyllium and Bentonite out of me. I started to get a vibration and it was right in my forehead and I had no idea what it was. The 100% raw food diet threw me into spirituality, I was never into this thing. I was president of my fraternity in college, and I'm talking like the number one partying fraternity. So here I am experiencing this, my mainstream of friends and my brother just think I'm absolutely nuts when I talk about this thing, the steps. So I went to the bookstore, I'm buying all these books on spirituality, I'm reading what different religions were saying, I started learning about meridians and energy fields, and I started learning about the chakra system, and so this really came to me.
I felt like this might have been the third eye chakra, and I thought I had something but (my friends and my family) just think that's all hocus pocus. Then later, I came across another book by Norman Walker, "The Natural Way to Vibrant Health," and he actually gave a scientific explanation of what the third eye actually is doing and what it is. He says that the pineal gland which is located right in that area is the organ that receives that cosmic energy and he said that if the thalamus didn't buffer it, it would completely disintegrate because of how powerful that energy is. But then the thalamus buffers all that energy. It goes to the hypothalamus and is distributed throughout our body to do whatever we want.
Kevin: Wow!
Matt: Yes, it's pretty amazing and you know this guy was doing everything that I was doing. He was 100% raw. He did the cleansing and you know I didn't think that was crazy anymore.
Kevin: I imagine that is some of the stuff that a lot of people go through; dealing with family, dealing with the strange feeling that your body is feeling. What is some of the advice that you can give someone who's going through some this?
Matt: Well said. It's not easy to become 100% raw. Okay let me put forth an example real quick to help explain all these. There are a lot of diets out there today and I'm sure you've heard many of them like the zone diet, the macrobiotics diet, the south beach diet, and I don't like to knock any of these diets because I've actually seen people healed from the degenerative diseases, adhering to diets like this and there's one common denominator on why they all succeed. They all eat certain food, out of their diet completely without any exception whatsoever and the reason why their raw food diet is the best diet in the world is because you're leaving everything out and only keeping in the good.
To read the rest of this transcript as well as access 14 different raw food experts just like Matt Monarch, please visit (http://www.RawSummitArchives.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.
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