How to go Raw?, by Matt Monarch

Healing is possible! Vibrant health is our God-given right, and our responsibility. I have learned there are 3 keys to health and I spend much of my time offering what I've learned in hopes that it will inspire people to a happier, pain-free life.

My name is Matt Monarch, Raw Food Educator and Author of the book Raw Spirit. For the last 6 years I have been on a 100% Raw Food diet. I have appeared as a key speaker at events including The Raw Spirit Festival and The Oneness Expo, and I was featured in a Raw Food TV Spot that aired over 5 times on Al Gores new TV Network, Current TV. Over the past year I spent much of my time touring the country, presenting well over 200 Raw Food Lectures. As 5-year owner of The Raw Food World and Living Nutritionals, I am well versed in people's needs and concerns about health.

Many people ask me, "How do I become Raw?" First off, you don't need to be 100% Raw to be healthy. You can be very healthy on an intermediate transition diet without taking it to such an extreme as I have with the 100% Raw Food Diet. I know how difficult it is. I am doing it!

So...How does one begin the journey to better health? There are a lot of diets out on the market today. I am sure you have heard about a few such as the Zone Diet, Macrobiotics Diet, South Beach Diet, Maker's Diet and others. Now I don't like to discount any of these programs because they all produce positive results. I have personally witnessed people lose weight and heal from degenerative diseases after adopting these diet plans. There is one common denominator that explains why these programs succeed: they all require people to leave out certain foods from their diets without cheating! Foods like refined sugar and processed starches are completely omitted. Because of this, a person's health improves considerably. The reason the 100% Raw Food Diet is the greatest diet in the world is because you leave out everything that could make you ill and only keep in the best of foods.

It is critically important to understand that what you leave out of your diet completely without cheating is the way to ultimate health. What you don't eat is actually more important than what you do eat. I don't care if you eat Raw Foods until you are blue in the face. You are not going to fully heal unless you eliminate the cause, which means omitting certain foods from your diet. I like to break foods down into the following five groups:

• Animal Protein
• Dairy
• Refined Sugar - Cake, Cookies, Candy, Bakery items
• Processed Starches - Bread, Pasta, Cereal
• Raw Vegan Foods - Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Seeds, and Sprouts

If what we leave out of our diet completely without cheating is the way to ultimate health, then it makes sense to first eliminate the food groups that are most damaging to the body. The two most damaging food groups are the refined sugars and processed starches. THAT IS THE SECRET! That is what all those other diets do. Their plans require that you leave out the refined sugars and processed starches without cheating! If you can do that alone, you are on your way to ultimate health. You can do that and live a very healthy life. I also recommend staying away from red meat and cow's dairy products. Those are not good at all.

I work with Dr. Fred Bisci who has been on a 100% Raw Food Diet for over 40 years. He has a full-time Nutritional Practice and has helped thousands heal from deadly degenerative diseases. He uses an Intermediate Healing Diet for those that don't want to go 100% Raw. Many of the foods people enjoy are on this diet plan, including some tasty substitutes that offer a healthier option. He suggests Tinkyada Pasta, which is wheat and gluten free pasta, now available at most health food stores. Other foods to enjoy are brown rice, beans, baked potato, soy milk, whole grains, and sprouted grain bread.

There are certain rules in this diet, such as not mixing animal protein with starches and only eating 4-6 ounces of animal protein every other day. As long as you only eat the foods that are on this diet and nothing else, you can live to a very old, healthy age. I knew a woman that tried this diet and healed herself from a degenerative disease. She said that her arthritis went away after only two weeks. Fred gave permission for his Intermediate Healing Diet to be printed in my book Raw Spirit, available at www.RawSpirit.org. If you want to take this Intermediate Healing Diet to the next level, you can eliminate starches, such as Tinkyada Pasta and Brown Rice. If you are already 100% Raw, you do not need to follow this transitional diet. It would be going backwards.

Many people I meet at my lectures tell me they are 70%, 80%, 90% Raw; this doesn't mean much to me. They can eat 70% Raw, while the other 30% of the time they are eating pizza, soda, candy and cake. Now don't get me wrong. If you eat more Raw Foods, chances are your health will improve. But you are not going to do as nearly good as you could if you left certain foods out of your diet completely without cheating. When you leave these certain foods out completely without cheating, this is when your body transforms, this is when your chemistry evolves, this is when your body becomes a more RECEPTIVE, IN-TUNE MACHINE TO SPIRITUAL ENERGY! This is not religion. This is physical! Spiritual energy is something you can actually feel. My book Raw Spirit details the spiritual experiences I had when I became 100% Raw. Ever since then my journey has just become richer.

Now let's talk about that second half of the phrase, WITHOUT CHEATING. If you cheat, even if it is only every once in awhile, you don't give your body the freedom to take its healing to the next level. Let's use an example of someone addicted to crack, who uses it every day. Let's say they quit completely, except once every two weeks. They will never detox the drugs at a cellular level. Why?

The following explanation applies to detoxing anything from drugs, caffeine and nicotine, to processed sugars, wheat and dairy. Our cells are filled with waste from all the years of poor eating and they have expanded and grown to accommodate this waste. A certain amount of detoxification always takes place immediately as soon as the quantity of drug or food is reduced. However, the body holds onto the toxins stored at a deep cellular level until the source of that particular toxin is stopped completely. To experience the next level of health, these buried poisons must be released. When you actually eliminate the drugs or foods completely, the toxins will leave your cells and now your body will have the freedom and the strength to take its healing to the next level.

Once given this permission, the body will move toward even more perfection, and start to eliminate other toxins stored in various places throughout the body, making you cleaner and more sensitive. If you try to go backward, your now healthier, more refined system will not tolerate what it used to with the same silence. As you become cleaner your body will say, okay, you can't eat that food now without getting a runny nose, fatigue, headache, belly ache, and so on. If you stay consistent, the body will continue to detoxify and you will continue to feel better and better. Once the cells take their healing to the next level, you may find foods that never gave you a problem in the past are now unworthy to enter your cleaner system.

Perhaps you are one of those rare individuals who will go to the next level of health by leaving certain foods out of your diet completely without cheating. More than likely you will experience the Famous Detox. Our bodies are comprised of millions of cells. These cells have been forced to inflate and expand in size to accommodate all the waste stored in our bodies from years of poor eating. The waste is stored as gaseous carbonic acid. Once the harmful foods have been eliminated completely from your diet, the body doesn't have to work on those processed ingredients anymore and immediately starts improving your cellular chemistry. Your oversized cells contract, shrink, and they begin to pour out that gaseous waste. This "outpour" detox can be very uncomfortable. People get sick, feel ill or moody, and go through intense cravings for foods they used to eat. Usually we blame the diet, become convinced it's not working and start suspecting it could even be dangerous, and then we either quit or cheat.

I have found the best way to keep up with all this waste being eliminated is something called Colon Hydrotherapy or Colonics. The colon is the central waste station of the human organism. All the waste comes here, including residue from the foods we eat, environmental toxins, chemicals and drugs. Even if you have bowel movements three times a day, on a cellular level most of us are clogged up like a stopped sink. A filthy colon is where all disease begins. I recommend everyone do a series of colonics when they start to detox after an improved diet.

There have been many cases of big-bellied people eating a Standard American Diet for many decades. Some tried the 100% Raw Food diet. At first, the results are fantastic. They lose 50 pounds and have incredible energy. As time goes by and the detox goes deeper, these same individuals lose energy, don't feel well, get a runny nose, and their face starts to look older. They are bathing in their waste, even if the bowels are emptying three times a day. They need colon hydrotherapy to keep up with all that is being excreted by the cells. If they are not able to do colon hydrotherapy, I would highly suggest they get off the CLEANSING 100% Raw Food diet.

Colonics remove the solid waste from our colon, but that is not the main objective. Many colon machines have a viewing window where you can look at what is coming out of your colon during the session. In addition to solid waste, you can also see many tiny bubbles leaving the body. The bubbles are that carbonic acid gaseous waste! That is what we are most interested in getting rid of. There have been many examples of people's rings falling off their fingers during a colonic. Why does this happen? Our fingers are comprised of thousands of cells. That solid matter, our finger, is a puzzle piece of cells. Remember, our cells have expanded and become bigger to accommodate that carbonic acid gaseous waste. When these clogged people did a colonic, they "unclogged the sink" and that gaseous waste was free to leave their cells. This release of carbonic acid allowed the cells to shrink and become smaller, which shrunk their fingers, causing the rings to fall off. They deflated! You can sometimes see when people are kind of inflated and need to get this done. If a series of Colonics is not possible at this time, a good alternative is a Colema Board , a less expensive at-home colon hydrotherapy system, which you can read about on our website, www.rawveganbooks.com.

Dr. Fred Bisci, Dr. Norman Walker, The Ann Wigmore Institute, Hippocrates Health Institute, Creative Health Institute, and many other reputable individuals and organizations for health all strive to help people heal. They use these principles that I have just shared with you. Each makes sure to offer three things: diet plans that eliminate certain foods completely without cheating, they administer colonics to everyone, and they also give everyone Green Vegetable juices.

Juicing is not the same thing as blending. Juicing is when you use a juicer to extract the juice from the fiber and pulp of green veggies such as romaine spinach, lettuce, kale, parsley, and dandelion. All the fiber is discarded and you are left with Vitamin & Mineral Rich liquid. This is the best way to get vitamins and minerals in their most absorbable form. Your body just loves it, especially the Green Juices. Green Juices are actually a beauty secret. I can tell when someone juices greens. Their skin is shiny, glowing and beautiful. Doing colonics and drinking Green Juices is the ultimate beauty secret!

In addition to getting vitamins and minerals in their most absorbable form, the juices also act as very powerful alkalizers. Green juices lower your pH from a more Acidic to a more Alkaline state. For those eating animal protein, I recommend drinking a veggie juice before the meal. Foods are synergistic, meaning they can balance each other out. Veggie juice will counteract the acidic animal protein and put the body back in balance.

All veggie juice alkalizes your system and gives you nutrients. However, some juicers produce a liquid with higher nutrient quality than others. The best juicer for the most nutritious veggie greens, that promotes health, beauty and longevity is the twin gear juicers (Green Star Juicer). They are a bit more expensive than some of the other juicers out there. To see all the different types of juicers we offer and the benefits of each, you can go to: www.rawveganbooks.com

If you do three things - eliminate certain foods from your diet completely, colon hydrotherapy/colonics, and juicing - your body will respond immediately and you will notice. It is not an easy process emotionally or socially. I recommend taking it one food group at a time. The goal is to get rid of those refined sugars, processed starches, red meat, and cow's milk products, and don't overdo the animal protein or other processed foods. On a good intermediate diet, you can be very healthy. You can also take it to the next level. There is no rush. You can eliminate one food group at a time, taking months or years for each group. Make it as slow of a process as you need. Just don't cheat. I recommend getting Raw Spirit so you can view Dr.Bisci's detailed Intermediate Diet. Raw Spirit is available at www.RawSpirit.org.

As a Raw Foodist, I eat very well. The few supplemental products I take have proven themselves to be tremendously beneficial. I recommend them to everyone:

• Freddie's Blend Probiotics - The best probiotics I have ever seen. They need to be refrigerated.
• Dr. Fred Bisci's Enzymes
• Dr. Fred Bisci's Green food
• B12 by Hallelujah Acres

These products are all available at this link: http://www.rawveganbooks.com/index.php?cPath=100127

Your situation is not hopeless and you are not helpless. No one food supplement or medication can solve anyone's medical problem, ever. The body has God given remedial capabilities to heal itself, once you leave out the cause of disease. Diet is the key. What you leave out of your diet completely is what heals you. Supplements are a great addition to a better diet.

May your journey be rich with life!
Sincerely, Matt Monarch
http://www.rawspirit.org