I have been told that Gabriel Cousens book “Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine” is supposed to be a fantastic book for diabetics. I was wondering if anyone else has found this to be true? I have the book but just can not get into it for some reason.
I am about a third of the way through reading Dr. Cousen’s book about diabetes. (“There is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program”) So far, I’m still in the part about medical research and risk factors (which is frighteningly motivating) and not to the diet section yet. I did flip ahead a little and am not sure whether I’m “ready” or not.
Since January, I’ve been on a whole foods vegan diet (Dr. Barnard) and keep wanting to go raw but keep holding back for several reasons, some of which I am aware and some of which are a little too “subterranean” for me to fully access just yet. One thing that I am aware of that is holding me back is the fat issue.
On Dr. Barnard’s program, I have cut fat to 10% of my daily calories. I can see where it has made a big difference, especially on days when I exceed the fat limits and I can see the results in my morning glucose levels for three days before it goes back down again. So I am leery of the raw lifestyle because it seems to have a lot of nuts and avocados and high levels of fat.
When I flipped ahead, I saw Dr. Cousens promoting low fat eating, but flipping further to the recipes revealed a great number of them to be 50% fat or higher. I’m reserving judgement until I finish the book, though. I figure there may be details I’m missing about what to eat and how often and how much of the high fat recipes to eat. But considering how my morning glucose responds so dramatically to high fat, I’m a little timid about going raw because I fear that the two choices for me are go high fat or not get enough calories to be able to stay raw.
Any input from those who are actually following a 75% or higher raw lifestyle would be greatly appreciated!
I am thinking if you take the principles of Dr Cousens and Dr. Grahams 8-10-10 you can make a woonderful life.
I do not have blood glucose supplies so I can not test this… but it sure makes sense to me… And so far all I have done with green smoothies has made be feel wonderful. Now to find the riight combination and not jump back and forth with raw and sad raw and sad. I am thinking this is my main problem…
I’ve only recently heard about Dr. Graham, so I have a lot to learn there. See my other post about Rawkathon – Dr. Graham (and Dr. Cousens) are among those interviewed by Kevin Gianni.
Right now I’m jumping back and forth between raw and cooked vegan whole foods. I take a couple of dips into SAD here and there - like last night I had a handful of tortilla chips - but I’ve gotten pretty solid in the vegan whole foods. But I’ve been doing the low-fat vegan whole foods since January and feel like it’s not doing enough for me. I’ve lost 60 pounds, dropped 30 points in cholesterol (though triglycerides are still high), dropped 30 points in systolic and 30 points in diastolic blood pressure, dropped A1c from around 8 (my doctor forgot to test A1c for the first three months so she had to guess what it was to start with) to 6.2 . . . but nine months of low-fat whole-food vegan hasn’t gotten my numbers where I want them so I’m hoping that transitioning to raw will provide that final “oomph.”
I seriously need a good blender. I have a cheap blender but I haven’t tried to make a green smoothie in it because I can already tell you what a disaster it would be to try to run kale in that dinky little thing. I know that the easiest way for me to start seriously transitioning would be green smoothies but I can’t really afford a good blender until January (if then!) so in the meantime, I’ve just been eating as many of my veggies raw as possible, trying to co-ordinate my life enough to sprout things (very little space, very scattered life due to grad school) and otherwise continuing with the low-fat whole foods vegan (it’s been doing good things, I just feel like I could be doing more.)
The biggest thing for me in success at staying with the vegan whole foods has been to “crowd out” the bad food by always keeping good food ready to eat so that I’m not tempted to eat some of my husband’s food because it’s convenient and already ready to eat. I try to always have something in the refrigerator that I can just pick up and put in my mouth. That has been the biggest help for me in staying true to the new lifestyle changes.
Sparrow
Thanks for your comment Sparrow. After just getting out of a relationship and trying to keep my apartment… Then signing up for school9 trade school type) at 52 I am a little scattered too and trying to keep myself organized. I need this for sanity…LOL.
Keep up YOUR work on yourself and Raw and you will make it. I have decided I am going to GO RAW as pure as possible but if for some reason I eat something non raw but it isn’t junk I will be happy. I am finding I love, love, love a dressing that probably is not totally raw. Mustard(notthe greens) and agave… mixed… It has been something I have been looking for for a long time for my sprouts and my salads.
I am with you on lack of space. I have three ball jars soaking seeds and nuts… for sprouting. I need to get one of those wine racks to use for the soaking bottles. I also want to start a small patio container garden with herbs and lettuce and even edible flowers. Financially this might have to wait til spril but that is ok. something I want to do and look forward to. ( I keep expecting to get this shot down with negativity but wait… that man is no longer in my life… There will be no more negativity here… Yippeeeee I am free!
I heard on a podcast just yesterday that there is a raw brand of mustard (the guy who was talking about it mail orders it. Sorry I didn’t catch the brand name but you could probably google it.) and raw agave nectar so even if your dressing is not totally raw, you have a chance to make it raw if you choose at some point.
I’ve been getting closer. I got brave enough to try a green smoothie in my dinky little blender and was amazed to find out it worked! It might not be as smoothly blended as in a high powered blender, but it was smooth enough to drink (I chew it some anyway to get digestive juices going) and I made my third one today - I have to go shopping tomorrow for more dark green leafies!
I had some non-raw today but I think I’m at about 70% raw right now and hoping to see if I can keep it up, especially as the growing season is almost at an end. I got an e-mail notice from the community garden to come in on Sunday and help pull everything up and ready the ground for winter (I am sad because the tomatoes are only just starting to come ripe! This is too early to rip it all apart!) The Farmer’s Market was still open on Wednesday but it won’t be for much longer. And I’m waiting to see how badly the prices will go up in my grocery store. Dried beans are always cheap so I can stay whole-food-vegan regardless but I’m hoping that economic pressures don’t push me to a lower percentage of raw.
I’m seeing differences already from increasing the amount of raw food. Really healthy bowel differences (don’t worry, I won’t go into detail there!) and when I come to a staircase, I run up it because I have such a strong urge to - even to my classes on the third floor! Hello! I ran up the stairs every day this week! Whoa! I feel like I have more energy and . … okay, this is going to sound dumb: like my body is smiling. I’ve also been surprised by how filling the food is. I expected to be starving all the time and I am actually getting un-hungry. (I can’t say “full” because it feels totally different. It’s more like “simply uninterested in eating”) I go for several hours un-hungry. Then I get hungry again, but it seems like a pretty big victory to go any time un-hungry when I expected to be a bottomless pit, unable to be adequately satisfied on raw food.
Great to hear about your freedom! I so very much remember the bouyant joy I felt when I got a particular man - a very abusive man - out of my life. Good for you for reclaiming your life! It is yours and you can do beautiful things with it now, without someone trying to drag you back down, afraid to let you change and grow.
Here’s to both of us and our continued and ever-increasing success!
I totally understand the part about your body “smiling at you”. It is like the more you go green the sunshine in the green comes through in your attitude etc. It makes you happy and most of the time unable to be anything but happy.It gets better the greener you go… this is why I do not understand why I eat SAD… because it really does bring me down… guess it is the addiction thing. If you can afford to join David Wolfe’s site for just a month… There are some wonderful recordings on that site… www.thebestdayever.com Great for newbies But do not get depressed if you can not get all the Super foods he talks about… listen for the overal general principles.
I think as far as why we are still coming back to SAD and cooked is not because we don’t believe the power of raw and not because we haven’t experienced the power of raw (or even just a taste of it) but because there is still something “psycho-spiritual” holding us back. At least this is what I sense in my own case.
I feel like this transition isn’t just about healing my lifestyle and my body but very much about healing my mind and spirit as well. It is fear and illness in my psyche that hold me back and sometimes I think it’s protective – like I’m not ready for the full impact yet so that not-ready-ness holds me back in my transition so I have time to heal those parts of me, too, and ease into a new life.
I’ve decided to go with it for now and my current goal is to only buy the new foods I’m eating. I’ve had a tendency to stockpile and hoard food - surely coming from a mindset of fear of deprivation. There were times in my childhood when food was kept from me and I think I need to learn to move past the feelings that generated. So I have a full pantry of foods that are healthy, vegan whole foods but not raw foods. When I am ready to release them, I will. Or perhaps I will just eventually run out of them as I continue to only buy the new, raw foods. I’ve decided I’m okay with that and will transition at the pace that feels right. Those other foods can sit there and collect dust if that’s how it works out (I’m just not ready to throw them out, though. Besides the fear of deprivation, I have a low income and it took a lot of time and money to accumulate my “security hoard” of dried beans and such.)
I am on Frederic Patenaude’s mailing list and he sends out little tips and sometimes recipes. I am also on Kevin Gianni’s list and he is amazing in the amount of free videos and interviews he shares. Check out Kevin Gianni and the Renegade Health Show and you will have limited-time access to some amazing phone interviews plus Kevin and his wife Annemarie do short videos almost every day of the week that are free on his site. I had heard about raw when I found Kevin but I didn’t know he was raw at first – I was just looking for health and exercise information and it was a few weeks before I realized he is raw because he talks about all different kinds of things to do with health, not just raw. I think Kevin’s energy and enthusiasm have been one of the important catalysts in getting me to consider raw seriously as something for me.
I just found a site that has a lot of great information for free. The site is set up to promote a raw food coach in the UK, but she has a lot of great articles for free and a newsletter that I just signed up for. I’m still exploring the site myself, but I thought of you when I saw it and wanted to come over here and share it with you if you haven’t seen it already:
http://www.therawfoodcoach.com
Some pretty cool stuff there, including some talking about the inner transformations that can hold us back from going fully raw, full-time. Hope you enjoy!
I have read both his books. the interesting thing at bs of 83 he said your body stops producing insulin because you dont need it. i am a type 2 diabetic, and have been for manys years and have not been in control, taking 2000 mg of metformin/day. hearing that injectable insulin makes yor gain weight seems to be true, because it is giving you permission to eat junk because you have that crutch.
i did the atkins and learned i didn’t have to eat starches, its and addiction, my reading were not great but i did lose 10 pounds but stopped losing.weight. my bs numbers would be okay before i went to sleep but when i woke up it would be higher! gluconeogenisis.
so i started raw foods knowing i didn’t have to eat dead starches and fruits. i lost 16 more pounds and my bs was in range w/o metformin, my eyes felt clearer, w/o mucus, and nose was uncongested. at 182 pounds i had a freakout session and ate bags of chocolate, cereals and crap. in those three of four day i gain 8 pounds and my bs went close to 300. iam still trying to get back on track, temptations! i still have lose 20 pounds. not so common sense drink lots of water exercise and stays away from fruits depending how bad your diabetes is…
someday i would like to eat some fruits but for now maybe my compost button is on. i am 5" 10" was 208 pounds now i am 187 pounds and want to get to 167 but will take 179. i eat lots of avocados 2 to 3 a day and tomatos red bell peppers, salads, kale with ground gold flax and seseame seeds with good salt dipped into olive and coconut oil to hold the ground mixture on the kale as a snack. i do a green drink no fruits in the morning about a pound of kale collards arugula pak choi mustard greens beet green what ever is in my garden so that is free! i buy celery and cucumber and juice them in my green drink, which comes out to more than 2 cups. that is breakfast.
now i am leaning towards brian clements at hipporates institute with the wheat grass thing… i think all cousens, clement, and young are all on it, but check how foods effect you!!
aloha
I’ve read his book, and in fact his retreat, The Tree of Life isn’t far from me. I considered going, but really didn’t have 12K to spend lol.
I thought the book had a lot of excellent information. It was more a question of whether I was willing to go to that extreme. I’m not sure yet. For instance no mushrooms, no cashews, no sprouted beans…stuff like that I don’t know if I can follow it 100%. As it is, I’m happy if I’m “mostly” raw.
The main thing I have an issue with…is that it is still not a “cure” for diabetes. And I’ve seen the trailer for the documentary on his program and he tells the patients they have been cured. They are cured, but they still cannot eat fruit…hmm, haha.
At this point, I’m trying to follow the raw food basics, drink green juice daily. I don’t have 100% raw spices and flavorings, condiments. I cook for my family so sometimes I do dip into some SAD stuff. I try to listen to my body. If I’m bad I try to be hypersensitive to how my body is reacting.
I don’t have the hang of these groups yet. I didn’t see the text below your heading. I thought you were talking about his cure for diabetes book. I do not have the Rainbow one. I thumbed through it a couple times at bookstores.
I don’t buy a whole lot of his stuff. I’m not sure about him yet. The price of his workshops and how they set things up to be monetized - the juicing program, etc.
From my perspective, I have a website for diabetic moms (DiabeticMommy.com), and from the beginning I had visitors desperate for information. I could have put the info into an Ebook and sold it…but I couldn’t do that. I shared everything I knew to help them. They really needed the info. It seems when some people in the raw community have a great idea or info, their first priority is to profit from it. Of all the people I’ve tried to contact or talk to, Philip McCluskey of LovingRaw.com has been the most helpful and seemed the most sincere about really wanting to help.
I think each person’s body is different. I read Dr. Cousen’s book and found it too strict and the recipes not appealing. But I was still interested in raw so I began following a high raw (I eat a little bit of cooked beans, but everything else raw) and just followed my body - what made me feel good, I ate more of; what made me feel lousy, I cut out. I eat a BUNCH of fruit. The staple of my diet is the green smoothie - a blender full of green stuff (parsley, cilantro, spinach, romaine, etc.) with a couple of bananas and about a cup of fruit – blueberries, blackberries, mangoes, peaches, strawberries, etc. Two cups of filtered water (because I don’t have a high-powered blender, just a regular $30 jobbie) and that’s my typical breakfast and often another one is my dinner.
Other than that, I eat sprouted lentil salad, kale and carrot salad, lots of alfalfa sprouts, broccoli sprouts, radish sprouts, etc. A little bit of dehydrated raw granola. Lots and lots of dulse (that stuff’s addictive!)
And despite Dr. Cousens saying that I can’t have any fruit for something like three years and then only low glycemic ones like cherries . . . well, my A1c on December 23rd was 5.8. That’s with no insulin injections, no metformin, no pills or shots of any kind, just mostly raw food and a couple of miles of walking every day (easy to do because I’m a student and have to get around on campus.
So it is currently working for me and I can eat fruit. I eat lots of it. And although changing my diet and lifestyle was hard at first, it has gotten easier and I definitely don’t want to go back to other kinds of food. The food I eat now tastes so good to me and I feel awesome.
So while I have a lot of respect for Dr. Cousens, he is not the last word in diabetes+raw. In my opinion, your own body is the last word! At least for you. And mine for me.
Be well!
Philip is fantastic! So helpful and such a sweet, loving person. I wrote to him to thank him for some stuff he said about not being judgemental toward people who eat less healthy foods. I have had people tell me all kinds of stuff about what I “should do” about my husband who eats about the least healthy food there is. I love him and want him to be healthy, but I cook what he asks me to cook – he’s a grown-up and knows about nutrition and those are his choices. (And he’s disabled so I don’t say “cook it yourself” to him.)
Philip was so kind in his response to me and so loving in his advice about focusing on the blessing my husband is to me and not listening to people who say I ought to try to force him to be different. It was so helpful and supportive to hear from Philip. I’m glad there are people out there trying to help like that. Another good one is Kevin Gianni. He sells some stuff, but he gives away SO much information for free and does the Renegade Health show every day and lets people view it for free and regularly - like once a week or so - has an interview or lecture that you can listen to for free for 24 or 48 hours. I’ve learned so much from Kevin Gianni for free. I’m sure the things he charges money for are really great, but he gives away an amazing amount of stuff as well.
There are some people out there who are giving away good content in addition to selling things. I like Ritamarie Loscalzo, Roger Haeske, Frederic Patenaude, Karen Knowler. All these people regularly give away great information and recipes. When I think about buying information, these are the people I most want to turn to because I’ve seen enough of their free information to trust buying things fromt hem and because I want to support them in thanks for all they’ve given away.
I know what you mean. 
I really like the Renegade Health show too!
I can totally understand they want or need to make money, and I can understand selling “extra” stuff or ads. I do that on my own website. But I always give the info for free.
It does make me mad to go to certain websites, and they won’t even put up a juice recipe or juicing instructions, you have to buy an ebook to do that. That, in my opinion, is ridiculous. Especially when they say something like…we need to get the raw food movement going and the word out there!!! And then they withhold info and want to sell it to you. 
Philip has sent me charts and given me info when I emailed him. One time I called the Tree of Life with some questions, and they said they would send me info. I got a brochure and a price list in the mail. On the other hand, I can understand he’s a doctor and it’s also a spa and I couldn’t expect to call a mainstream doctor and ask for info…well, actually I take that back. I have emailed Dr. Anne Peters and Dr. Lois Jovanovich, both biggies on the diabetes landscape and they gave me lots of free advice. Dr. Peters even offered to see me if I made the trip to California and then follow me via email and she gave me advice regarding my diet and things to bring up to my doctor about my diabetes regimen. So, um…ya, haha.
I have the same problem here with my hubby. He’s vegetarian - but doesn’t really like vegetables. My son, I’m not going to force raw on him or vegetarianism. So he eat’s meat, bean, rice, noodles, grains.
So that’s 3 different diets. Okay, here’s the kicker…my picky hubby. He doesn’t like cucumber or cilantro…major stuff cause I eat a lot of Mexican-themed dishes. Alright so I could live with making us two different types of salads. And I would give them both fish and eggs, and I would have some once in a while. Well now he’s decided he doesn’t like fish either and really doesn’t like eggs. He wants Tofu. I won’t serve my son tons of tofu and I don’t want to eat it either. So yet another thing.
I just talked to an old high school friend. Turns out she’s raw vegan now! She’s lost 65 pounds. She was probably over 300 and she has diabetes too. I will have to pick her brain because she has at least 5 kids and often has foster kids around. She and the two older girls are now vegetarian, the rest aren’t, and they don’t juice cause they think it’s too much of a hassle. I want to hear how she’s swinging that.
I plan on interviewing her for my blog, hopefully she’ll let me do it, haha.
We had a lot of bumps adjusting to different diets for the two of us. With kids involved, too, I imagine it can get pretty crazy-making!
I’m not doing the juicing. I wouldn’t mind the hassle, but there are two reasons why I’m not doing it:
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We live on a fixed income and juicing takes a LOT of produce. I can barely afford high raw as it is.
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Juicing removes the fiber and it’s the fiber that slows down the digestion process and makes the carbohydrates more acceptable to a body that’s healing from diabetes. That’s why, for example, orange juice will make most people’s sugar go up more than eating oranges. I figure the fiber’s in there for a reason so I do smoothies instead of juices.
When my body has had more time to heal from the diabetes, and when I’ve graduated and have a much higher income, I am considering trying a juice feast. But for now, juicing is not part of my own program.
Ya that’s the reason why I quit my juice feast at 30 days, because it was so expensive. Now I try to do a quart a day and that’s equal to 1 cucumber, 1 small bunch celery, and 1/4-1/2 pounds dark leafy greens - for the basic stuff. If I can find sales, it’s like $3 for the quart but if no sales it’s 5-6 bucks. But I buy the organic too which runs higher. I’m going to look into going to farmers markets and trying to buy in bulk, see if I can save some money on that. I tend to do it in reverse, I spend money for the juice stuff but skimp on the raw food.
Have you ever read Tonya Zavasta’s books, she has the website Beautiful on Raw. She’s also commercial and, to put it mildly, kind of vain and an ugly-phobe. BUT, she claims that daily she drinks juice 1-2 times, has an apple for breakfast, soaked pistachios for a snack and a medium salad for lunch…and that’s pretty much it. I wouldn’t mind getting to that point. Seems a lot cheaper, haha.
As far as the fiber, I tend to make all my jars 1/4 of the mix with fiber and the rest is strained. So that way I get some fiber. But I’ve read that toxins tend to stay inside the fiber and are repelled by juice, so if you eat stuff that isn’t organic, be careful of the fiber.
Raw is going to be harder in the economy. I also get fruits and veggies from some friends who won’t admit it…but I think they are freegans, meaning they are vegans who dumpster dive lol. They end up with tons of boxes, enough to feed like 10 small villages. And most of it is perfectly good, sometimes even wrapped like bagged lettuces before the expiry date. The funny thing is that I was considering doing the dumpster thing - bad I know, haha. And I had asked people if they had heard of that or knew anybody who did that, including the parents of the kids I carpool home. And ever since then, three times a week I get boxes of food from them…coincidentally which is when the market near us gets their new deliveries, haha.
Freegan doesn’t have to be vegan. I know one woman who pulls meat from dumpsters and when I was homeless, an old Rainbow road dog taught me to get McDonald’s out of the dumpster. Freegan just means trying to live as much as possible without money and dumpster diving is a big part of that lifestyle (and the part that tends to get the most outside attention because it’s kind of “dramatic” to many people.)
I don’t do the dumpster thing these days because I’m in gradate school and the time/money eocnomics don’t work out to make dumpster diving economuically viable for me (yes, I have an undergraduate degree in applied economics. Why do you ask? g) The time it takes to get to the good dumpsters, get the stuff out, and carry it home isn’t sustainable with my classload, especially since the small amount of money I get is enough to feed me.
I also don’t really want to go back to eating out of dumpsters again for personal psychological reasons. It would feel too much like a step backward into a life of chronic desperation when I’m busy moving forward into a life of self-sustainability and plugging in to society rather than trying to live off the fringe of its hem.
But I totally don’t knock those who dumpster dive. It kept me alive for many years and I just cringe when I see the good things people throw away. I do pull good stuff (like furniture and working electronics) out of the dumpster at my apartment and set it on the ground beside the dumpster for others to get (no room for more furniture in my place) I notice the stuff always vanishes within half a day. And I bag my husband’s aluminum cans separately and put them next to the dumpster as well so can collectors don’t have to pick through the dumpster to get them. (We don’t have curbside recycling and, again, the time it takes to bicycle the cans (I don’t own a car) to the recycling center doesn’t fit with my classload and resarch time.)
We have recycling service now, but didn’t a while back. So simple…but why didn’t I think of putting the cans by the bin? Funny how simple things like that elude us lol.
I’m glad to hear things are better for you. I was living out of my car for a little bit not long after high school.
I think my friends have a friend who goes and gets it in a big truck and then he goes around distributing it to friends. I’m amazed how much stuff he gets. One time I got like 3 full boxes of avocados. They were a little dark but when you cut them open, perfect, no browning at all and perfect firmness. It must have been at least $100 worth of avocados they threw away. I wish they would start putting that stuff into a discount bin or something - hec sell it for like a quarter, even if it’s brown I’d buy it.
So, I’m curious . … you did a 30 day juice feast and it didn’t heal your diabetes? Or did it?