i'm gonna jump on this one first to say CONGRATULATIONS to you for making the decision to change your lifestyle, even if you aren't in it to become part of the "cult" (he heh....). What may seem like a sacrifice at times will eventually prove to be the best thing you ever did for yourself and the people close to you.

There is no one right way to go about this, and hopefully others will recommend some other options. But here are my ideas:
First thing, do a colon cleanse. I just bought kits for my parents from drnatura.com as i have had good results from the Colonix cleanse and it's easy to do. The cleanse will take one month to complete and you don't have to change your diet to do it, but it's a good time to remove some of the worst offenders from your diet and clear your gut out. if you have eaten a lot of steak and other meats, especially charred flesh, you really need to cleanse your colon and free up the villi in your intestines to be able to absorb all the good stuff you will start putting in your body after that.

I think it's a good start if you make a point of eating one large salad every day, even if you feel like you need to put meat in it (broiled salmon would probably be the least damaging). If you fill up on salad, you will eat less of the other stuff. To address any blood sugar issues, or prevent them, quitting all refined flour and sugar products is a must. Ultimately i believe that grains and starches and sugars are the reason people have diabetes as we were not meant to eat as much of that crap as most of us do. I stopped all of them cold turkey and within a week i felt much clearer and healthier. But to do so requires a dramatic lifestyle change that most people are not ready to take on...so you will have to assess what you are capable of reasonably doing. Maybe you will choose to remove foods one at a time, to get used to it. If you've ever done an Atkins type diet, you know how hard it is to live without bread and pasta, but after a while you just forget that those are foods fit for human consumption. I see them as glue-producing, useless weights we stuff in our bodies to feel full and satisfied. I weighed 185 last June before i went raw cold turkey, and i had a hard time giving up bread and cookies. I'm 155 now and don't miss bread at all. Cookies i can make my own raw version which i like just as much.

Oh, there is so much more to tell but i don't want to hog the podium. Let someone else speak up and i will add more later. One thing i do want to say is that the first few weeks will be very hard because you are detoxing, and that will continue for months if not years. Try not to let that discourage you. I watched a video of some newscaster lady who decided to try a raw diet for a week and report on it. She hated it, and must have had some detox symptoms that she didn't understand as such, so she reported that the raw diet made her feel worse than she felt before. That is terrible misinformation from a clueless mainstream wimp. The raw diet is in itself a cleanse, and any cleanse is going to cause detox symptoms. Be sure you inform yourself of what those might be, so you can recognize them and not quit at the first sign of B.O., gas, headaches, lethargy, irritability, bad breath or strange things in the toilet. If you remind yourself why you're doing this, it will be easier to stick with it.

good luck to you, and welcome to the tribe.
and by the way, you can still eat steak...just learn how to prepare it Tartare.

m7

Great advice from Madame7. Read her post twice.

I would simply add that you don't necessarily have to set 100% raw as your ultimate goal (though you certainly can do that, too). Simply increasing your raw intake (and weeding out some unhealthy choices) will have dramatic benefits. Going "high raw" is even better, yet still allows you the wiggle room for the occasional cheeseburger (hahaha!).

Many stand by the notion that the benefits are derived from all manner of esoterica (much of which I actually agree with), but I maintain that the biggest benefits of raw, in terms of health, are due to what you DON'T eat. I heard it said once that even if you like to cook your food, don't ever eat anything that HAS to be cooked. Ever try eating raw wheat? Exactly. This also weeds out loads of chemicals & additives (preservatives, coloring, etc.).

So read Madame7's post again, then eat a big salad and drop the breads. You can replace certain items (try sprouted grain breads to ween off the grains, for example, or rice pastas) before eliminating them, and this, too, will yield countless benefits.

Good luck & welcome aboard!

The first thing you should do is clean all the mucoid plaque out of you. This way when you do eat raw you will get all the good from it. The mucoid plaque is in your small intestins.

tribes.tribe.net/thelightoflifewithin

tribes.tribe.net/seawatercleans

If you want to lose weight and tone your body, focus on physical training first. It will engage your body into actually -using- the calories you put in.

Secondarily, the raw diet is not -necessary- in order to achieve the goals you listed. It can be effective, though, so I will address it in the terms you stated above. It sounds like you're looking for a cure that will give you results in a minimum of time. Here's the key:

If you go raw veggie, eat a -variety- of foods. You will need everything you can get, and particularly if you incorporate exercise into your transition (which you should).

Next, and especially in this transition phase, try going cooked/uncooked (mixed) vegetarian first before you jump straight into a raw diet. The human body cannot digest cellulose (plant cell walls) unless they are destroyed by heat (the minimum is by lightly steaming vegetables). This means that you will be losing on an abundance of nutrients that you may well need in your transitional stages (if you cook it much more than the light steaming level, you will lose nutrients there as well).'

Thirdly, do not be scared to eat flesh in these stages. You are experimenting right now, and unless you've been -entirely- convinced that meat is the cause of your weight and health problems, do not completely rule it out until you've done enough research to keep you from turning the other way. I say this as 10+ year veggie/vegan veteran who knows people who eat meat regularly and have lost the amount of weight and more that you've mentioned.

Send me a message if you have any more questions, or just post here.

Good luck. :)

~ Kole

About this whole back and forth about cellulose....doesn't making a green smoothie basically cover that? I wouldn't call it cooking, as that would suggest more heat than a blender generates.

I was reading a book by Victoria Boutenko who went into some depth about the need to break down the cell walls in greens in order to sufficiently release the nutrients, and how blending released the nutrients without destroying them.

I've been raw 9 days straight and it's been the last 3 that I've started in on the green smoothies, and I have to say they've been very effective at giving me lots of energy, making me feel great, and seriously curbing cravings.