cravings

Comfort in Foods

The one thing that has cluttered my life more than anything else involves food. My lack of self-control and the resulting health frustrations have taken over my life on many occasions, costing time, money, and countless hours spent in places where only the sick should go.

Many of us turn to food when we’re angry, sad, lonely, bored, anxious, depressed, fearful, or a host of other emotions. We’ve never learned to control our feelings, especially in the midst of the more powerful ones we don’t understand.

If we call this kind of eating “emotional eating,” it will begin to make sense.

Eating gives us something to focus on besides the feelings. But then we choose foods that are bad for us — foods high in sugars and salt, low in quality proteins and fats. It is well known that the brain produces chemicals that make us high — the runner’s high for instance. Certain foods set off these chemicals too. They make you feel better even when your life is in a shambles.

Eating these types of foods, the ones that make us “high,” is addictive. This type of addiction is difficult to break, but it is possible. With alcohol or other drugs you can abstain completely. And you can stop everything related to them, including friends who do these things with you. But you can’t just stop eating.

Emotional eating usually includes an addiction to junk foods.

You can train yourself to make different choices about food. But these choices won’t happen when you’re trapped in a cycle of automatically reaching for addictive foods when you want to feel differently.

However, you can abstain from all junk foods. And many people have broken from this bondage by doing just that. If junk foods are not nearby, or if you’ve seriously chosen to deny yourself of all foods that are even slightly not perfect, you might just be successful. Many people have. Hermits, especially. But it’s hard to live a social life without being around junk foods, sweets, salty snacks, and other enticements.

Personally, I don’t believe the Creator of the universe, the One who made the bees that make honey and told us to eat it, means for us to live as hermits in a cave somewhere with no celebrations just because our particular culture has endorsed junk food. In fact, the Bible is full of celebrations we are commanded to observe.

So what is going on?

Instead of dealing with our feelings, we medicate with food to avoid them.

And instead of turning to God with our problems that cause these feelings, we turn to food.

That’s idolatry.

“Those who turn to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” Jonah 2:8 NIV

A lot of people get grace and mercy confused. Here’s a short version of my favorite explanation:

You were driving too fast and are pulled over by the highway patrol. You were speeding, so you deserve a ticket. If you are given a warning, you just received mercy — you were forgiven and not punished for the crime you committed. However, if instead of a ticket, you were given $1000.00, then you’ve received grace.

Mercy is not receiving the punishment you deserved. Grace is getting a benefit you don’t deserve. We need both. (loosely taken from page 19 of Grace…The Power to Reign by Harold R. Eberle. http://www.worldcastministries.com/)

We attempt to control our feelings by eating. But once we start eating to control ourselves, we lose control of our eating.

We live a nightmare of food controlling us because we’ve given it power through the sin of idolatry.

We need mercy (not receiving the punishment we deserve) through forgiveness.

And we need grace (an undeserved blessing) to get out of this mess.

How do you stop?

The following is an abbreviated example of Terraforming (www.Terra4ming.com) used to help find the root of the problem and bring healing and freedom.

1) Ask the Lord to reveal the beginning of your eating problem.

I had several problems — I was a typical stick-skinny kid with multiple food allergies (undiagnosed) who was force-fed well beyond the point of pain because a lot of common foods made me nauseous. That was traumatic, and my response was anger, fear, bitterness, and attempts to escape the constant nagging to eat more.

The overeating began when my older sibling left home, which transferred the brunt of the family abuse onto me. At the same time my stomach issues got worse and I could no longer feel my stomach. I ate three to four times a normal amount of food at every meal and still didn’t feel like I had eaten. I was diagnosed with ulcers, but they did nothing back then to heal ulcers. They drugged me with Valium. I was in the tenth grade, had ulcers, was on three different drugs that altered the way I behaved, but nothing addressed my symptoms.

Since then I’ve noticed that in the beginning of a virus I tend to overeat because I can’t feel my stomach. Curious.

2) Forgive those parts of you that were left behind by the traumas.

First I forgave the young me that reacted in anger and bitterness when force fed and criticized for food behaviors. Then I moved on to forgive the teen-aged me who turned to food for comfort and couldn’t tell when she was full. And as I worked deeper into my past on a daily basis, I forgave a lot of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and betrayal that happened too.

3) Repent of the behavior.

The people who should have protected me were the ones I needed protection from. I repented of anger, hatred, denial, bitterness, judgment, fear, and wishing the deaths of those who tormented me. I also repented for the idolatry — turning to food for comfort instead of to God. And I repented for eating myself into frequent states of illness and disease, not to mention obesity.

4) Forgive those who trespassed against you.

I forgave my parents and siblings, and anyone looking on who didn’t see the truth and try to stop the abuse. And the doctors and nurses who made some bad decisions. And my grandparents who raised my mother to believe that forcing a child to eat is okay. And anyone else who contributed to or encouraged this sin against me. And I forgave my dad for allowing my mother to run everything in our family.

Then I prayed a sample prayer (Sample Prayer: Person) from www.Terra4ming.com on the “media” page. You can download the sample prayers and print them. It especially helped with taking authority over the situation.

5) Reset behaviors, get someone to help if needed.

I asked the Lord for guidance about future eating. I knew how to eat right, but I didn’t do it very often. It is sometimes best to stay away from entire groups of foods such as grains, sweets, dairy products, fast foods, or packaged snack foods for a set period of time and then test the water carefully to see if you’re ready to eat responsibly and without compulsion. Or sometimes it’s best to stop eating foods that are harmful for a longer period of time. There is a lot of information out there about “trigger foods” that may be helpful — the idea is that eating a specific class of foods (white flour products with cheese for instance) will set you off course into an eating binge. Explore why that happens — what memories come up when you think about macaroni and cheese?

Eating for health is quite a departure from living to eat.

It can take a few weeks to get used to it. I’d suggest making out a sample menu of healthy foods, with some back-ups in case you’re really hungry. But when you’re really hungry you’re probably burning fat.

It is also important to sit down to eat regular meals. If you graze all day, or eat while preparing foods, you’re not as aware and can frequently eat more than you want to. Put the food on the plate, determine if it’s the right balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrates and if the food quality is high. If it’s not, fix it before you begin eating. If you still feel hungry when you’re finished, stop and think a bit to see which food group you need more of or if you just underestimated your need for food at this meal.

Some people prefer their largest meal of the day for breakfast, others at mid-day. Most people who succeed at losing weight do NOT eat a large meal at the end of the day.

6) Don’t give in to fear, anger, cravings, or pity parties.

First I was afraid that I wouldn’t have enough food to eat. I had plenty of food in the house! Then I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the kind of foods I craved.

Cravings come in two forms — the good cravings that guide us into eating better, and the bad cravings that lead us to eat worse. More on Cravings.

I checked out the kitchen and decided that, too, was a lie. I had the right kind of foods ready to eat: apples on the table, carrots in the fridge, and plenty of other food. I was afraid of not being able to eat the foods I really liked. But I realized that when I was eating those foods they weren’t really that tasty. Then I was afraid that I would lose control and eat too much.

Be ready for the lies. Analyze them, find the truth, and stop believing the lies. Yes, you probably will go through a bit of detoxification. Yes, you’ll have more gas as your body cleans out. Yes, you’ll feel better. Yes, you’ll want to exercise more. Yes, the lies will continue for a while. Yes, you can argue with them. And sometimes those lies will give you insight into another part of you that needs to be dealt with. Start at #1 again to find the root and forgive, forgive, forgive.

7) Go and sin no more.

I had a dream many years ago. It was so graphic, so violent, and so demented that I remember it as if it had happened this morning. The message was clear: if we continue to turn to satan for comfort we’re giving him more power over us. He is our greatest enemy, the guy who wants to kill us! Why would we continue to do what he wants?

My prayer is that the God of all the universe would open your eyes so you would see what is really going on to keep you in bondage to food, or anything else.

Receive the Father’s love so you can break free and live the life He created you to live.

It’s About Choice

I was watching a YouTube video the other day and almost everyone in it was of normal weight. There was one person who was maybe 40# overweight, and another about 20# over. These weren’t actors — but people fleeing a flood. I believe this was filmed in France, and yes, I am familiar with the French Paradox and how they are healthier than Americans yet consume more alcohol and fat. They also consume more fresh vegetables and by “fresh” they mean it came out of the ground this morning.

Then I was reading a book that said the French wouldn’t even consider having food at a meeting. And snacks were for children only. They eat meals, they enjoy meals, and they have less health problems than Americans who tend to focus on fast food, flavored drinks, and snack foods.

Here in America we bribe people to come to meetings with the promise of food. Contemporary worship services mean they provide the coffee and doughnuts. No need to eat breakfast before worshiping — choose your poison as you walk in the door.

Add to that the information that high fructose corn syrup is so bad for us but it’s pretty much in everything processed. And how sodas will make you gain weight even without any calories because of the way they change the pH of your body. Or the chemicals food scientists pump into man-made foods to make them bypass your natural inclination to either not eat them at all or to limit their consumption.

If you think about it, sugar and fat do not occur together in nature. The highest fat fruit is an avocado and they’re not all that sweet. Yet most of the enticing foods marketed are high in bad fats and sugar. Or bad fats and salt.

Did you know that fried foods in restaurants are frequently fried twice? The first time is in a factory so as to absorb a lot of fat, and then they are frozen and fried again at the restaurant to absorb even more fat. And of course they’re double or triple breaded with salt and sugars. Don’t forget the sauce — more bad fats, chemicals, sugars and salt.

Why do they do that? Because they pour tons of money into research to find out what makes the ordinary Joe lose control and eat more than he should. And the quicker they can get Joe addicted to their products the less likely he’ll switch to another. You could call it mind control — make Joe act out a behavior without a true choice. Like sinning on auto-pilot.

And they are very brand-specific. See McDonald’s, eat McDonald’s. See Starbucks, get Starbucks.

The point?

It’s about choice.

You can choose to eat for health, or you can choose to eat against health.

Weight Loss

Francine and Delores asked for help in losing weight. Sensibly. Both had tried every diet they’d come across for several decades and nothing had changed them permanently. Francine was in her 60′s and didn’t do any kind of exercise. Delores was in her 40′s and worked out a lot at the gym.

1) analyze the situation

Francine figured she was about 60 pounds overweight. That’s a rough estimate based on how much she weighed 40 years ago when she was fit and liked her shape. She wanted the excess weight to leave so that she would look good in clothing and feel better about herself.

Delores was about 30 pounds overweight and wanted to surprise her husband for their 20th anniversary — he was out of the country for two months so it would really be a surprise!

Both women were pear shaped with large thighs and fat pads on the hips and lower abdomen — LL. And they both craved dairy products all the time, eating them at least daily.

2) assemble the equipment

I suggested they invest in four items:

good walking shoes
a digital scale for weighing food
a digital scale for weighing themselves that included bone density
a smallish spiral notebook

The shoes were for walking around the neighborhood, the food scale to reveal how many calories they’d been eating, the people scale so they could see progress on a daily basis, and the notebook to keep track of their food and drink intake and any cravings or problems they encountered.

3) prepare for the assault

We spent the next three days going over the LeftLemon.com website to make sure they understood the two main ways to make a meal work:

properly combine foods (don’t eat starchy foods with heavy protein foods in the same meal)
balance each meal (30/30/40)

They also wrote down all of their food and drink intake for those three days, along with cravings, aches and pains, tiredness, and all other feelings they had. We used the Energy Cycle chart to determine they both had some LO problems going on, and Delores had 4C problems because of her stress levels.

They had a lot of questions, mainly asking why this way of eating (Francine didn’t like the word “diet”) would work when so many others had either failed or made them sick. “Eating for health” was my answer to most of those questions.

It isn’t about losing weight — it’s about gaining health.

It was easy to see why they had held onto those extra pounds when we analyzed the diet diaries on the third day. Both were surprised to find out they were eating well over 2000 calories most days, with a “good day” coming in at around 1400 calories.

4) launch

Both women were to begin each day with the juice of one lemon — straight. No water or juice added, just the juice.

Then they would move for twenty minutes, raising their breathing rate some but not too much. Francine was to go for a walk. Not a hard walk, but not an amble either. Just move her body, paying attention to posture, working up to 20 minutes. Delores went for a run — an easy run for her. She needed to calm down and relax through exercise.

On odd-numbered days they did the walk/run, on even-numbered days they did a stretching and free-weights workout lasting about 20 minutes. Francine used an exercise ball to do her stretching and strengthening exercises. Delores chose to do hers in the pool at the gym. They each chose one day each week to rest.

The first three days they ate 1200 calories, broken into three meals of about equal amounts of calories. Both had made marinated greens the day before, and found that balancing their meals made it easier to eat this way because the additional oils helped them to not get hungry.

They checked in with me every couple of days to discuss any problems they were having. Delores needed more 4C’s so she used a Rescue Remedy drink she could sip. Francine needed more lemon during the afternoons so added that to her afternoon water.

And they both stopped drinking so much water! Francine had been religious about drinking 8 glasses of water daily and suffered all sorts of swelling, stomach problems, excessive urination, and leakage problems. All of those disappeared quickly. Delores dropped back to one twenty ounce bottle of water each day, but sipped the 4C’s drink at least three times each day for the first couple of days. Then she dropped back to a 16 ounce bottle of water daily and found that worked well as long as she ate a lot of raw foods.

5) tweak

Keeping track of daily calories and weight helped them to find the sweet spot for their activity level and metabolism rate. After about a week Francine decided anything more than 1180 calories per day would stop the weight loss, but less than 1145 would make her lose too fast. Delores’ numbers were 1240 for the high and 1200 for the low. Every body is different, you just have to find your best spot and understand that additional stress changes things just like different activities change things.

Delores also found that relaxing a bit from so much physical exercise helped her emotionally. She had been stressing herself with so much activity, hating herself for not losing the weight, and comforting herself with sweet drinks.

6) emotional stuff

Both women examined their motives for eating, their feelings about food, and their early memories of how they were placated or motivated with food. Francine confessed she thought about food all the time and it was her primary way of motivating herself to do anything. Delores never saw the connection between what she ate and how she felt until she began keeping the diet diary and connecting yesterday’s eating with today’s pain. She completely eliminated knee and lower back pain by balancing her meals. Accepting responsibility for their own health was an important step for both of them.

They also went through Finding Comfort in Food several times, releasing anger towards friends and family, situations, and especially forgiving themselves.

7) the end…

Both women kept their weight loss to the “healthy standard” of about 2.5 pounds per week. And both women continued to weigh themselves daily for a full month. One huge lesson they learned was that the additional oils in their diets made them feel better, look better, function better, and eat less other foods. They were both pleasantly surprised with low calorie counts on several days so they could add something special as a treat.

During that first month both tried to lose weight without counting calories — each time ending in failure. Getting a feel for the amount of calories you are eating each day can be hard, and it takes a long time to defeat all those lies we like to believe about food. It took them both about four weeks. Then they continued to weigh themselves each morning and wrote down anything unusual in their diet diaries for another month.

The main thing that worked for them without counting calories was to have a collection of meal plans that were balanced, properly combined, and the right amount of calories for them. The favorite breakfast was fruit with some nuts, or fruit with yogurt or cheese. Lunches were leftovers from dinners planned weekly, but one day each week they met at a restaurant to encourage each other. The easy way for them to eat out was at a sandwich and soup place — they would order the sandwich on a plate, hold the bread. Or sometimes they would eat a bowl of soup with a salad on the side. Or side dishes of guacamole and hummus and eat them with a spoon.

Neither of them are finished with their weight loss, but they’ve both quit trying to lose weight. Why? Because they are eating for health, weighing weekly to make sure they’re still headed in the right direction.

And they are both very close.

LeftLemon.com

The Dreaded Diet Diary

Whenever I’m asked to coach someone through a crisis of some sort, the first thing I have them do is email me a list of everything that goes into their mouth each day along with a list of how they’re feeling, and the times all these are happening. This gives me two huge bits of information:

which system is having the hardest time functioning
what beliefs this person has about food and nourishment

Then it’s pretty easy to point someone to the appropriate website pages and help them understand how they are shooting themselves in the foot. It’s hard for many to understand before keeping this Diet Diary though, and you can learn much by keeping one yourself.

Some basic rules:

write down everything that goes into your mouth and what time it happens
write down when you’re feeling hungry, thirsty, sad, tired, or anything else, especially pain
don’t try to make your diary look good, just be accurate
don’t change what you eat just because you’re writing it down
do this until you have no problems left
analyze them by going through the Left Lemon System page on the website

Using the information found on that page you can adjust your diet to make your life work so much better! All sorts of **-isms disappear.

For a walk-through of using a diet diary to figure out how to change your diet, read Study: John or Sue’s Skin.

Here’s how I usually tell people to begin:

Get a smallish spiral notebook. Begin listing your food and drink intake every day along with how you feel before and after each meal (or between if there’s something worth noting).
If you are significantly overweight or have difficulty losing weight, two scales would be very helpful: one digital scale to weigh you to tenths of pounds, and one scale to weigh your food. I know this sounds tedious, but I was amazed at how much I was eating once I finally got around to counting calories. And weighing yourself every morning helps you to see the impact of that extra whatever you ate or drank yesterday. If you have bone density issues, get a digital scale that includes bone mass. You might have to go online to find one.

LeftLemon.com

LL Problems

LL problems center on protein digestion.

You could be overeating proteins and not have enough digestive enzymes to digest them.

Or you could be eating junk proteins and overly processed foods that don’t get digested.

The main way to remedy this is to use lemon juice liberally until you get your meals balanced and your body catches up with protein digestion.

If you don’t know what LL means, please read Left Lemon System first.

Typical LL situation:

Most of your problems of pain, weakness, or other complaints are in the yellow section of Stickman
Your body type is pear-shaped — you carry excess weight in the thighs and lower torso, or the lower part of your face
You don’t digest proteins well so you frequently have food allergies
You crave milk and cheese (dairy products) or ice cream
Your eating isn’t balanced according to 30/30/40
You frequently don’t sleep through the night
You are irritable and sleepy during the day
You’re low in essential minerals and high in toxic metals
You get nose bleeds or other bleeding easily
You tend to get stomach and intestinal ulcers
Most of your pain is in your pelvis and legs

To get out of this trap:

Add lemon to your diet, and to your drinking water
Don’t drink with meals unless it’s lemon juice
Avoid tannins — those brown foods that are so enticing: chocolate, coffee, tea, tobacco, colas
Eat marinated greens with red veggies added
Use red vinegar (umeboshi is yummy)
Eat foods high in zinc: sesame and pumpkin seeds, red muscle meats, garlic
Avoid copper jewelry or kitchenware
Don’t use creams on your skin that include zinc

The main problem with LL people is that they crave proteins so they eat more.

But the more they eat, the less they digest, making it all worse. You have to consciously choose to eat less protein at every meal, even decreasing the percentage from 30%, until your body can catch up.

And every time you crave protein, drink lemon juice instead to help you digest the protein you’ve already eaten.

It’s also a good thing to deal with parasites. They are protein (animals) and when you’re trying to digest them as well as what you’re eating it can be a losing battle. They are most active during the full moon phase, so it’s best to treat them during the week surrounding the full moon.

The zinc/copper thing is tricky — many of the same foods that are high in copper (which you need less of) are also high in zinc. Any time you add a non-food version of either, you easily make things worse. Like using a zinc ointment or sunscreen on your skin. Or wearing copper jewelry. Or using a copper cup because ice cold milk tastes fabulous in it! Or taking a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement that has both included but they work against each other so which one is your body going to use and which will it try to eliminate?

Perfect Diet

Actually, this is about the myth of the perfect diet.

The belief: every food must be nutritious and every meal must be Perfect and every day must be Perfect and you must deprive yourself of everything wonderful that you used to love and you can’t go out with friends and you can’t celebrate anything!

If you eat this way you will send your body into a tailspin of cleansing reactions and you will be miserable!

The 10% rule:

You can get away with 10% pure not-good-for-you food in your diet if you follow some basic rules of food combining, balance (30/30/40), and don’t overeat. Just about any food can be eaten that way.

For instance, suppose you want some ice cream. Cravings for ice cream are related to an LL problem so you could drink the juice of a lemon and the craving is gone. Poof!

Or maybe it’s your birthday and you’d really like something special for dessert. So here’s how you do it:

figure out whether this item is a protein, fat, or carb
decrease the amount of that type of food in your meal to keep things mostly balanced
don’t overeat

So for ice cream, real ice cream, made out of cream: it’s a lot of fat, a lot of carbs (the sugar), and not much protein. If your meal is steak and stir-fried veggies, the ice cream would work perfectly.

Figure the same for a doughnut (an LO craving) — it has a bunch of bad fats and a lot of bad carbs. But if you add a reasonable amount of protein and some green veggies, it won’t hit you as hard as a doughnut on an empty stomach.

If you eat three meals each day, seven days each week, that’s 21 meals each week. 10% of that is 2 meals each week when you can have a “treat” as long as you balance 30/30/40 and don’t overeat.

The other 90% of the time you eat dark green and red veggies, high quality proteins, and high quality fats so your body is regularly nourished and is healing.

That means 30% of each meal is high quality protein, another 30% is high quality fats and oils, and 40% is high quality carbs, usually raw.

Some ways to make your diet better 90% of the time

Try to eat about 80% raw. This can easily happen if you eat your carbs and oils raw almost all the time.
Eat more veggies than fruits because we live in a sugar-crazed world where the stuff living in our gut demands more sugars for survival. We can starve them out by eating less sugars.
Starchy foods are great for adding calories to your diet, but if you want your body to work better, eat most of your carbs in the form of raw veggies that aren’t starchy.
Know your problem areas — if a certain food triggers out-of-control eating, keep it out of your house. Or at least out of your sight.

Okay, you knew this was coming . . .

The one class of foods most people really should stay away from:

Tannins.

Yup, the deadly tannins. Those are brown colored foods and drinks. Like coffee, tea, cola, chocolate (sorry), and other stuff that has caffeine.

They are stimulants and some of us feel the need for stimulants but they always manage to get you in the end. And of course once they have you, you crave them all the more. If you’re stuck in 4C’s — they probably have you.

The keys to diminish the bad stuff:

If you have a choice between real ice cream and a frozen confection made from skim milk with 42 additives to make it taste somewhat like ice cream, choose the real stuff. Food additives do not enhance your health.

If you have a choice between an artificially flavored and colored popsicle and a piece of fruit pie, choose the real thing. Real trumps fake every time.

If you have a choice between a bowl of pasta and a high-fructose corn sweetened dessert, choose the pasta. High fructose corn sugar is bad to the bone.

If you have a choice between a glass of Coca-Cola and a glass of water with a lemon wedge, well, I hope you’ll make the right choice. :-)

Cravings

I just walked out to the kitchen to get a slice of cheese. A thick slice. It was my second thick slice. And this one didn’t satisfy either.

That’s what cravings are — your body is trying to tell you something but you don’t translate the message into an action that actually helps. So you keep craving the same thing and it still doesn’t help.

Sometimes cravings drive your entire life. For breakfast you open the fridge and see what entices. For lunch you drive down FastFood Avenue until something strikes your fancy. For dinner you look over the miscellaneous prepared items in boxes in your freezer.

Or sometimes you have good eating habits but maybe that chicken you ate for lunch was off a bit and didn’t get digested properly, or maybe you overate so it didn’t get digested properly, or maybe you haven’t been getting enough good oils, or maybe . . .

Maybe we need a chart to remind us how to translate cravings into something that brings peace.

Actually, I do have that chart. Excuse me a moment while I go remedy this situation:

Yup, I had the juice of one lemon followed by one nice belch and I’m at peace again. The problem was that I hadn’t completely digested the meal before and I needed protein. Adding the lemon helped me to digest it.

How to Beat the Cravings:

If you are craving milk or dairy products, ice cream, yogurt, cheese, or other proteins, this is an LL problem — drink the juice of a fresh lemon or lime and cut down on your protein intake a bit because you’re having problems digesting them. And squeeze lemon juice over your protein foods for a few days to get you out of this craving pattern.
If you are craving simple carbs, pasta, or baked goods, this is an LO problem — increase your high quality oils because your liver is in need of them. And make sure every meal has about 30% good fats to get you out of this pattern.
If you are craving tannins and caffeine (coffee, colas, chocolate, tea, or other brown stuff), this is a 4C’s problem — increase the natural green and red foods in your diet, and add vinegar and cayenne.
More info on the above may be found here.

But here’s the problem with this little chart:

If you’re not eating a balanced diet (30/30/40), with a variety of raw veggies and fruits, or if you’re eating most of your calories in one meal, or not eating enough food, or overeating, then you won’t be getting enough minerals and you just need to start eating right in order for this chart to work.

I’ve seen quite a few charts on how to translate cravings into what your body needs. They all have the same thing in common: they tie it to a lack of minerals. And here’s the hard part, for all you vegetable haters out there:

We get our minerals from veggies.

Three easy ways to get raw veggies into your diet:

Marinated greens — recipe here at bottom of page.
Fresh green salads — no iceburg lettuce though. Add lemon & oil.
Green smoothies — recipe here.