Question 1

Will I heal everything after trying raw diet? Do you give a 100% guarantee of success?

Accepted Answer

The answer is very blunt:

No 100% guarantee is possible, and you may or you may not heal everything.

There are several reasons for it:

1. Diet is just one of the components of health. Yes, it is a very important component, but it is not all that matters. If you eat "right", but you don't move enough, you barely go outside, you drink alcohol or smoke anything, you are stressed out a lot and/or are majorly dissatisfied with your life, your social life is bad, your sleep quality is bad, you are subjected to high doses of EMF and environmental toxins, harmful household chemistries, etc., then a well-balanced raw diet will be a great aid, but won't be sufficient to resolve certain health conditions and achieve desired quality of life. For example, you lead a sedentary lifestyle and developed sciatica. You can eat as much raw food as possible, which would be a great aid to combat the inflammation, but unless you start doing exercises and reduce the amount of time you spend sitting, you will not heal. Or you are hoping to cure your headaches with a raw diet while sleeping right by the working WiFi router every night...keep hoping! Of course, raw foods will help, but they aren't going to magically cancel the effects of something intense and of a drastically different origin and with a different mechanism of influence and interaction with the living cells.

2. By the time you've discovered raw diet, your condition may be too developed to rely solely on lifestyle changes for healing. Sometimes, people have to outpace the progression of the condition, which may require medical interventions. It doesn't negate the necessity of changing the diet and other lifestyle habits that actually led or contributed to developing that condition, but again, if a condition is too fast and too powerful it may be wise to opt for all available cure possible to, first, contain, and second, reverse the condition.

3. "Raw Diet" is an umbrella term that can represent totally different approaches. You will find a wide variety of raw foodists who approach this dietary system in their own unique ways. You can stick with the raw diet plan that will be detoxifying, yet very nutrient-limited, hence it will likely give you impressive results after 1-2 months, but will not be long-term sustainable because nutritional deficiencies will catch up and you will feel powerless and lost because you'd think that "But I was doing the right thing! What do I do now??", while in reality you dismissed something vital and simply adding it to your diet would resolve the issue. You can find diets that are rid of greens or fats eliminating certain important nutrients - there are many ways! But the key is to finding an intercept between a low-toxicity diet and high-nutrient-content diet.

4. Expecting to heal immediately or very fast may lead you to disappointment if you have certain deep-rooted or complex conditions. You can immediately heal only constipation overnight for what it's worth :) Imagine, it will take you anywhere from 1 month to half a year to regenerate your gut microbiome, depending on how destroyed it was by the time you switch to a raw diet. Your gut lining will start healing and will stabilize in a matter of several months of being consistently supplied with raw plant fiber, anti-inflammatory foods, antioxidants. As gut healing progresses, your body will start learning how to extract and absorb nutrients, some of your deficiencies will start getting resolved, which, along with the restoration of the gut microbiome, will reflect on your endocrine system, on your skin and hair, on your blood vessels and heart, on your brain... It takes time, and some aspects of health may become accessible to you only after a couple of months of sticking with a nutritionally complete raw diet.

5. It may be naive to try getting every necessary nutrient from foods or internal synthesis only. In a modern world, with empty soil, with abuse of pharmaceuticals and antibiotics, with all added environmental factors that are outside of our control, it takes a lot to meticulously follow a perfect, nutritionally complete diet, so regardless of the dietary system people opt for supplements or certain nutraceuticals, functional foods to fill in some specific voids in their nutrition. Most of the trace elements and minerals, along with the essential fatty acids and complete set of essential amino acids may be found in aquatic plants, micro and macro algae, so they are a reasonable class of foods (that often ends up being overlooked) to be added to the diet as a natural supplement of nutrients that are rarely available for and from the terrestrial farm plants nowadays. And should we even bring up B12 here?

6. You are on a raw diet, but, let's say, only when people can see. Sometimes people try to lead a very healthy lifestyle, but completely blank on the fact that their favorite post-workout drink contains 40 grams of sugar and flavorings, or they eat out a lot. Depending on what it is that you sneak into your diet that doesn't belong to the category of "health foods", you may actually cancel the effects of your healthful efforts. For example, if pancreas is your weak organ, then refined sugar consumed on the background of otherwise immaculate raw diet will stall your progress. If your weakness is adrenals and/or kidneys, then coffee or strong green or black tea will prevent you from healing (also causing loss of vitamin C). On this topic, if you have iron-deficient anemia, such drinks will be carrying iron out of your body, even if you eat a surplus of it in conjunction with the synergistic vitamins. If you drink alcohol beverages, then you can forget about healing altogether because it is the major disruptor of the gut microbiome, lining, alcohol is a toxin that penetrates both water and fat membranes, causes DNA damage, brain damage, liver damage, pancreas damage, stomach and esophagus damage, kidney damage, blood cell damage, blood vessel damage, and thrombosis.

These are the 6 main reasons for why it is in principle impossible to give anyone a 100% guarantee of a complete and unavoidable healing and long-term health on a raw diet. The principle of a "magic pill" will not work here, as with any major project, where any big and profound process requires time, focus, work, discipline, analysis, attention to detail, refinement, and learning.

Question 2

How will I benefit from a Raw Deep-Dive Session?

Accepted Answer

I will equip you with all the essential tools for you to be able to safely and comfortably transition to a sustainable raw vegan diet. We will be able to discuss your specific expectations from the raw diet and build a custom dietary plan for a short-term or a long-term raw lifestyle. I will provide you relevant background knowledge and reasoning behind certain food choices such that you feel comfortable and confident on your own. I will explain how to think and how to search for information online, how to read scientific articles, and how to communicate with your primary physician. You will also receive some useful freebies after your first Raw Deep-Dive Session and you will be able to email me any follow-up questions within a week after the session.

At the same time, your effort and involvement matter as well because, as with any education, no one will be able to force any knowledge or skills into your head. You need to absorb the knowledge and put it to work. This is why I would encourage you to come prepared, take notes, and execute on what you learn as soon as possible.

Question 3

Can I cancel my Raw Deep-Dive Session?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can cancel or move your Raw Deep-Dive Session, but no later than 24 hours prior to the session.

Example:

You booked a session for Jan. 10, at 14:00. You can cancel or move it no later than on Jan. 9 at 13:59 and receive the full amount you paid.

Question 4

How can I prepare for the Raw Deep-Dive Session?

Accepted Answer

First, you will be provided with a form and example questions to answer in the Session reservation form. This will be helpful.

Second, formulate your questions to me. It can be anything, from organizational to fundamental.

Be prepared to talk about your previous experience with diets, episodes of eating disorder if you had any, describe your current eating habits and approximate schedule, your level of physical activity. Be prepared to describe what health is for you, how you imagine health and how you feel about it. Think why you would need health, what changes you are seeking through the diet.

Question 5

How will I benefit from the Free 30 min Consultation?

Accepted Answer

For those who consider a more thorough work with me, the Free 30 min Consultation is an alignment session. In that case, we can determine a working communication strategy, find out the areas in which you, the client, possibly don't know what you don't know, find out what instruction style works best for you, and do all preparations for the Raw Deep-Dive Session such that you can get maximum gains from the paid session.

At the same time, Free 30 min Consultation can be a good way for persons with focused questions to quickly get answers.

It is also a way for you to additionally learn about some self-study materials available on my website and YouTube channel that could answer your questions.

Example outline of the session:

5 min: You introduce yourself and explain the reason for coming. We go through some organizational moments. 
20 min: Live Q&A.
5 min: Finishing the session, addressing some last minute questions and comments.

Question 6

What results should I expect in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year after the consulting?

Accepted Answer

1 day: You may feel slightly overwhelmed with information, but you will have a good understanding of how to approach raw diet. You will understand what your first step should be. You will shortly receive the recipes, the grocery list, and nutrition spread sheet to have some documented instructions and tips on hand to make your new lifestyle more structured and streamlined. After the Raw Deep-Dive Session, make sure to revisit the notes or replay the consultation in your mind. It is recommended that you do a health checkup with extensive blood work done at this point to have some reference values specific for you.

1 week: By this moment, you will already experiment with the recipes and approaches, you also will have all your follow-up questions answered via email. You may find that raw lifestyle takes up too much time or requires some uncomfortable adjustments to your schedule. First cravings may start bothering you. Ask people you live with to be cooperative and help you to get distracted from the parasitic cravings.

1 month: By this point, you've probably had some craving battles, and if you didn't slip, you have combated them with some delectable recipes from the recipe list. Your new symbiotic gut bacteria should already reformat your taste preferences and slowly deflect you from the parasitic cravings. You also may still struggle with bloating - for that make sure that you eat most fibrous foods early in the day and that you isolate fruit meals from heavier foods. If you made it to this point, this is when the first results start being quite noticeable. Focus on them and celebrate them. At the same time, if you aren't supplying or absorbing nutrition properly, this may be the point when you may start noticing excessive hair loss. Return to your notes ans nutrition spreadsheet and see what may be missing.

6 months: Raw diet must become streamline for you by this moment. You may still need to do some adjustments from time to time, but it should be well integrated into your lifestyle. It must feel ordinary, but with a greater quality of life and level of well-being. Your gut flora is still developing, but for the most part, your dietary preferences and cravings are healthy, your nutrition becomes intuitive in a good way, when you start hearing what your body REALLY needs based on the nutrient content of certain foods. Excessive hair fall is unnatural here, you should be growing yeti hair.

1 year: If you make it to the 1 year mark, this means that you are smoothly sailing through the raw lifestyle. At this point, make sure to observe your teeth, hair, menstrual cycle, libido, skin quality, nails, energy levels. If there is no radiance or something is off, make sure to revisit your diet. It may be a good idea to do a checkup again to see how your parameters changed. Make sure to test all anemia factors and protein factors.

It is recommended that you schedule a follow-up session within the first month or two of transitioning to a raw diet, or whenever you find yourself struggling too much. Transitioning to a healthy diet should require work, but not suffering!!!

Question 7

What is your method?

Accepted Answer

My method is based on the knowledge of the modern nutrition science applied to the raw plant foods.

I take a class of unambiguously essential nutrients and determine which foods provide most of each nutrient. Based on that, I build a 2000 - 2500 kcal raw vegan diet that provides all essential nutrients and macros. I focus on getting essential amino acids, getting a surplus of vitamin C, minerals, and a large surplus of ALA omega 3.

There are some caveats though. You may have noticed that pop science always has a huge debate going around nearly any nutrient. One day, carbohydrates will be demonized, the next day - fats. Then there will be a wave of hype around something like coenzyme Q10, everyone will be selling supplements stating that it is the only thing everyone will need to heal. Then there will be a debate around how much protein per pound of body mass people need and the range is usually enormous. Then there will be appeals to different forms of traditional medicines. Then there will be saturated fats and cholesterol - whether we absolutely need to get them through food or not or if they are the main killers of the modern days. Then fish will be named as the best food for everyone, but the next day it will be presented as a mercury- and parasite-infested mass of nonsense that no one should be consuming. Then there will be a debate about whether oxalates are bad or benign. And in the end of the day, official science just recently proved that there is no safe or beneficial dose of alcohol...it took scientists a few centuries to write it on paper in a conclusive form.

This is why I find it important to start with a foundation, then gather all possible plant resources to build the nutritional foundation, and then see what other supplementary things may be necessary. For the basics, I use open data sources, and for more intricate factors, nutrient interactions, to analyze some grey areas and why and under which experimental conditions certain widely-accepted conclusions were drawn, I read papers on Scholar.Google.com.

The reason for such approach is that plants carry not only the essential nutrition, but they also carry what is considered medicinal properties (it is funny to call something quite natural, that is a part of your daily nutrition "medicinal" because it delineates nutrition and health-bearing properties in our minds). People often opt for eating average diets and then supplementing with plant derivatives and concentrates if they are health-conscious. When we talk about animal products, the discourse about their properties and health effects often comes about as "yes, but", and when we talk about edible raw plants, it often comes as "yes, and", favoring consumption of as many raw plant foods as possible. And when we conduct all calculations, it turns out that right at the point of 2000 - 2500 kcal of raw plant foods is where we hit all essentials with a surplus that can account for possible malabsorption of certain nutrients if a person is not fully healthy. As a result, I built a very well-rounded, filling and satisfying, nutritious raw plant diet that barely requires any supplementation and that promotes a diverse microbiome.

In practice, the diet that I myself follow and that I teach is a balance between eating lots of seasonal fruits and eating lots of bitter greens, nutrient-dense seeds, seaweed, diverse fermented foods. I take the peak nutrition raw plants and turn them into the daily diet. To learn more, watch my YouTube channel and sign up for a Free 30 min Consultation if you are completely new to this lifestyle, or schedule a Raw Deep-Dive Session with me.

Question 8

Do you carry out consultations or events in any language other than English?

Accepted Answer

I speak English and Russian fluently, so these are the only two options for now.

Raw Form of Life

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