Originally published June 17 2008
Juice Fasting and Raw Food Knowledge by Author Angela Stokes
by Kevin Gianni
(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Raw Food Summit which can be found at (http://rawsummitarchives.com) . In this excerpt, Angela Stokes shares on her specific daily food plan, juice fasting and the books she has written to help others.
Raw Food Summit Excerpt with Angela Stokes, author of several raw living books, including How to Go Raw for Weight.
Kevin: What's on your food plan now? What do you put on your food plan from day to day?
Angela:: Well, I'm 100% raw now and I have been so for about two and a half years. So that
was something that just kind of happened, like my whole raw food path began five and a half years ago now. And then it just kind of came to the point two and a half years ago where I just became 100% raw. So that's where I'm at these days. I have kind of three underlying tenants about the stuff that I put into my body. One of them is I try to drink juice twice a day. Another one is I try to mono meal fruit. And the last one is I try to eat simple combinations of things.
Kevin: Okay.
Angela:: So that's my kind of three touch things around what I take into my body. It tends
to be that I eat in a window between about 11:30 in the morning and about 8:00 at night. And so normally I'll have a juice around 11:30 and then I'll have some kind of fruit mono meal. So that will tend to be like berries or cherries or some kind of stone fruit or something. And then I have my biggest meal of the day in the middle of the day.
Because that way you know when the digestive fire is the biggest and the sun is highest in the sky and it makes sense. It's like then I've got the whole of the rest of the day to use that stuff. So I'll put in the heaviest thing around then which would tend to be something like a salad with avocado let's say or some Norrie rolls or my favorite latest discovery is Chia seeds.
Kevin: Okay.
Angela:: And so I've been like making up combinations of that with it. But something kind
of, something with fat in it and something heavy, like in the middle of the day. And then I have a kind of gap and then later on I'll kind of repeat the process but on a lesser scale. So I'll have another juice and I'll probably have some other fruit. And maybe a green smoothie or a very small salad or something like that. And then that's it, I'm done. So that tends to be the structure. And when I first started writing my food plans, I found that I needed to be very, very clear with myself about exactly what it was that I was having at each point. Because I was insane around food at that point in my life. These days, there's much more balance because I've been doing this for so many years. So when I'm writing out my plan these days, I can just say, fruit. And I know from my being now that means I'm going to eat like a little box of blackberries or something.
Kevin: Okay.
Angela:: You know, and I'm not going to sit there and eat like nine pounds of blackberries. [Laugh] So I can trust myself so much more these days because of the process I've come through. Whereas in the beginning, I literally needed to write down like two apples or something. Otherwise I would've eaten the whole bag, that's where I was at so.
Kevin: That's incredible. Where are you going now? You've said where you are not and you're in a fantastic place. Where do you go from here?
Angela:: Yeah. The big question. So earlier this year I did a three-month juice feast. I lived on just fruit and vegetable juices and coconut water for three months, which was an enormous experience in itself. And when I came out of that, that's really where those three underlying tenants that I have behind the way I eat now, that's really where they came from.
Kevin: Okay.
Angela:: Because you don't come out of the other side of living on just juice for three months without going through some pretty serious shifts.
Kevin: Yeah.
Angela:: And what you want to put into your body. I want things to be very simple and very clean. However, I don't want to take things so far to the point that it feels uncomfortable to me to go and eat in a raw food restaurant or eat some raw cake or something. It's like, I still want to have fun, you know?
Kevin: Yeah. [Laugh]
Angela:: So I feel my body, the human body, anybody's body, any animal, it's such an incredible healing mechanism that's in there. You start to give it the slightest chance to start healing itself and it just goes for it.
Kevin: Yeah.
Angela:: Like I lost 105 pounds in the first year of being raw. My body was just like, who-
hoo! [Laugh] Just going for it. And I feel how it still is going in that direction of, everything needs to be simpler and it just wants to clean and, and undo everything and it's like going back towards being a baby and it, and for most people it's like going even beyond that because most of us didn't come from mothers who were very clean physically. So it's like going raw is like going kind of pre-birth in terms of the detox work and the reversing that you can do. And so it's like, okay I do, I love that and I embrace that and I do want to go with that. But I want to have fun too. I don't want to just be like getting to the point where I eat like one head of romaine in a day and I'm done. I definitely still want to enjoy food.
And I see very clearly that for me as a human, food isn't just about physical fuel. There is an emotional attachment there, undeniably. And that's how I ended up in so much of a state as I did. But now that whole emotional attachment to food is in a very different space. But it's still there. So I want to keep things the way that they are right now for at least let's say the next year or something and just see how it goes. And I would love to do another huge juice feast like that again in the future, another three-month thing. Because that was just a phenomenal experience.
Kevin: Do you feel that it's okay to be emotionally attached to food?
Angela:: I feel like whatever is happening for a person is what's happening. So, if there was to be some kind of ideal state of one's relationship with food, I think it would be phenomenal to experience having no attachment emotionally. Right now I'm reading a book that absolutely
fascinates me called Anastasia by Vladimir McGreen.
Kevin: Okay.
Angela:: And she is a woman who is apparently living out in the forest of Russia and she is completely wild. She lives out in the forest. She has no dwelling, nothing. She just lives in the forest and eats from the forest. She's truly raw.
Kevin: Yeah.
Angela:: She's not eating like blueberry cheesecake raw. Okay? She's eating nuts from
the trees. She's picking berries. And the thing that fascinates me about it is that she has seemingly no emotional attachment to food whatsoever. She eats like an animal. She'll be walking along and she'll grab some berries and she eats them and then that's it. That is her meal and she's done and she's on to the next thing. She doesn't think about it. She never sits down and eats a meal. She just grabs food as physical fuel for this physical body that she's in. And that to me is really interesting. I can't imagine being in that kind of state in this lifetime I'm in right now.
Kevin: Well, it's interesting because what we're told is to sit down and eat your meals.
Angela:: Right.
Kevin: It's a whole different paradigm. Man, that's incredible.
Angela:: Yeah.
Kevin: So what do you do on a daily basis besides the food log?
Angela:: When I wake up in the morning, the most important thing for me to do right then
is to give my day over to the universe. So I always just want to give that away like, may thy will not mine be done. Like if it's for the good of all, oneness everywhere, just please work through me to make myself a channel for whatever it is that wants to manifest through me that day. And so I will give over the day to the goodness of all oneness and then I do yoga. I do the five Tibetan rights.
Kevin: Oh cool.
Angela:: Yeah and I've done that for about two and a half years now. And I just feel like
that helps me to connect to the earth and to the heavens as well. And I'll do meditation for normally something like about 15 minutes. Sometimes I'll go into visualizing the things that I love and the
things that I enjoy. And so during the course of the day, I'll just make sure to kind of reconnect with that stuff. Especially if something comes up that feels challenging. To just reconnect and
breathe. Breathing is just so key, just breathe deep through whatever seems to be coming off and to be accepting of whatever it is that's coming up. That's really the basic of it for me, is just
breathing and staying connected.
Kevin: That's great. Now you have a book, Raw Reform and you do consulting as well.
Why don't you tell us just a little bit about your book?
Angela:: Sure, yeah. I actually have four different e-books available for people now.
Kevin: Oh wow, cool.
Angela:: The first one was called How to Go Raw For Weight Loss. That was for people who were coming from a background of overweight, like I came from, how to do it. The next one was Revealing the Physical Changes and that's all about what starts to happen to us when we release all of this weight and we go through all the details and how to actually deal with what it is that we're experiencing. I also have a recipe book which is there on the website. And then the most recent one was The Juice Feaster's Handbook. So after doing that three-month enormous juice feast, I put together a handbook for other people to do it. Because there was so much that I wanted to know and
understand when I was at the beginning. So there are my four different things. They're available as e-books or as a printed booklet version.
Kevin: Got you.
Angela:: So people can get hold of those.
Kevin: Great. And tell me a little bit about your consultations.
Angela:: Yes, well I do consulting work with people, one on one, in phone or in person.
Recently I've been doing juice feasting retreats with people taking like a whole group of women through a juice feast together.
Kevin: Oh wow. That is awesome. I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom, your experience. I think it's so important to learn through stories and to learn through success.
To read the rest of this transcript as well as access more information from Raw Food experts just like Angela Stokes, please visit (http://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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