Posts Tagged ‘vitamins’

5 Ways to Boost Your Energy

June 21st, 2010

Energy is a precious thing, something to conserve, save, and try not to waste; we are forever searching for new ways to boost our ever-dwindling supplies. But I’m not talking about turning off the lights when you leave a room, or switching to solar power. I am talking about your own personal energy, something much harder to boost and even harder to conserve. Here are five ways that you can boost your energy reserves, while staying within the boundaries of a healthy lifestyle.

The first thing you can do to boost your energy is to start eating more raw foods. Of course, a raw food diet will help with more than just energy, but it is certainly an important reason to switch from a cooked and processed foods way of eating.

Many foods lose vital minerals during the cooking process – minerals that can help to give you the energy you need during the day. Raw foods also contain living enzymes that allow your body to work cleaner and easier, conserving the energy in your food for the work you choose to do, rather than the digestive work you need to simply keep going.

Another way to gain more personal energy is to plan to get more sleep. We all know that a good night’s sleep should be around eight hours, but few of us actually manage to get that much rest. Continued lack of sleep can result in a buildup of “sleep debt”, which can increasingly effect your concentration and ability to perform at your peak. A well rested body is an energized and recharged body, able to use the energy in your raw food diet more efficiently and effectively.

Another important factor in preserving your personal energy levels is the amount of water that you drink. You may think you are properly hydrating yourself, but if your liquids come flavored or altered, you may not be getting enough pure water. Hydration is key to staying in the zone – if your body becomes dehydrated, you run the risk of wearing yourself out prematurely. Make sure to drink a few glasses of water every day, and try to never wait until you are thirsty to have a drink. Thirst is your body’s way of telling you that you are already low in liquids.

Another way to get more energy is to quit the coffee. If you are a caffeine user, the idea of having less to get more energy might sound wrong, but many studies have shown that long-term caffeine users actually gain no energy or alertness from their morning coffee; they are simply fighting the effects of overnight withdrawal symptoms. Go cold turkey, and soon enough, you won’t need the coffee anymore.

Last but not least, get your daily required amounts of vitamins to maintain and gain energy throughout the day. With a properly calibrated raw food diet, you should not have to resort to pills and capsules to supplement your food; everything you need for great energy can be found within a raw food eating plan.

How Raw Food Diet Increases Your Energy

May 15th, 2010

Energy is one of those buzz words that can have everyone talking. It seems that no one ever has enough energy, and people are always looking for new and innovative ways to gain more energy. People do strange things to get more energy, things that they occasionally strongly dislike doing in order to get a few steps ahead of the competition. People eat foods that they do not like, drinks fluids that they can barely choke down, and pop pills like there is no tomorrow.

But if you are reading this blog post, of course you know that you can eat for energy, without all the mystery and the misery. Eating a raw food diet is an excellent way to increase your energy levels without having to suffer for the strength.

But you might wonder, how does a high energy diet give you the power that a diet of cooked foods simply cannot provide? There are a lot of important factors in raw foods that contribute to giving you more than simply a belly full of food.

For one thing, eating for energy with raw foods gives you a massive supply of natural vitamins and nutrients that are incredibly helpful for an active body. Certainly, you can get a decent amount of vitamins in a more traditional, cooked diet, but so many of the vitamins in fruits and vegetables are often leached out of them in the cooking process, lost to pots of boiling water and sizzling pans of fat.

So raw foods offer a higher level of vitamins – so what? Well, a massive amount of vitamins means that your body is fully stocked with the tools it needs in order to keep you in peak physical condition. A strong body needs to be a healthy body, so a good source of vitamins is one of the basic building blocks of being more active, and having more energy.

Raw foods also contain energy in the form of those much-talked about living food enzymes. These little wonders often get killed off in the cooking process, as a result of the high temperatures. Without them, your body has to rely on its own sources of enzymes for digestion, absorption and elimination. These might be incredibly normal processes that your body goes through every single day, but that is not to say that they are easy on your body. Precious energy can be wasted when your body has to work harder to grab those nutrients from your foods.

And of course, within the area of raw foods, there are a number of food items that contain huge amounts of energy giving ingredients. From the natural sugars in your favorite fruits to healthy fats, natural fibers and other wonderful additions, the raw foods that you eat can have a huge impact on your energy levels – and the best part is, they deliver that energy without resorting to terrible food choices, unnatural supplement pills and other unpleasant options. Energy is important, but you have to enjoy how you gather it.

Eating Raw Foods for Health

May 14th, 2010

People will try almost anything to stay healthy, and it’s not a new phenomenon. Throughout the ages, people have eaten a wide and varied array of foods that they believed helped to keep them younger, healthier and more vigorous. From the highly localized and recently re-popularized diet of the Palaeolithic times that focused on low amounts of carbohydrates and eating what was readily available; to the more modern but still outdated ideas presented to schoolchildren in the health food “pyramid”, people have always been looking for proven guidelines to eat healthier.

For many people starting a raw food diet, maintaining or improving their overall health is a primary reason for the switch from cooked foods. Recent studies have shown that a diet high or completely comprised of raw, uncooked and under-processed foods can have a dramatic impact on the way that your body operates. That includes providing increased energy and mental alertness, and improving the ability to stay healthy and ward off illness. But what about a raw food diet is so beneficial to your health?

When you first learn how to eat a raw diet, you are going to notice that your intake of fruits and vegetables will probably skyrocket, as compared to your old eating habits. Fruits and vegetables are staples of the raw diet, due in no small part to their versatility, their great taste, and of course, their benefits for your body. Raw fruits and vegetables contain tons of vitamins and minerals that, for many non-raw eaters, are in desperately short supply in their regular daily meals. Vitamin A, found in abundance in tomatoes, has been shown to help build a healthy immune system. Vitamin B1 (avocados), B3 (bananas) and B9 (strawberries) can help support a healthy cardiovascular system, grow new muscle, and create antibodies in the blood. Vitamin C, found all over the raw spectrum, provides your body with antioxidants that help to preserve your good health and strong body. These vitamins can be found in cooked foods, but never as abundantly as in their raw hosts.

How else can raw food help you to stay healthy? Raw foods give you energy that you can use to keep your body in tip-top shape. A healthy and fit body is one that is more prepared to fight off illness. Good fitness helps to push back some of the issues and health problems that we might face as we age, especially heart and circulatory concerns. A raw food diet can help to propel you through more frequent workouts, which will in turn lead to an overall healthier body, and fewer required trips to see the local physician.

Raw foods can also keep your digestive tract healthier. The living food enzymes that you consume as part of a raw diet are used to aid the body in digestion of foods, absorption of vitamins, minerals and energy, and the elimination of waste products. The less of your body’s natural stores of energy that need to be used for these processes, the more raw power is available to your body for other purposes – like keeping you in the peak of healthiness.