Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet to Suit You => Instincto / Anopsology => Topic started by: Iguana on January 21, 2011, 05:32:40 pm
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Tyler and Francois, I don't want to get into a debate on it, so I'll just report that while some elements of Instincto make sense to me, my experience doesn't exactly match yours when it comes to Instincto, so from my perspective you speak for yourselves on the topic. I think some of the more cantankerous debate could be mellowed out into more reasonable and fruitful (pardon the pun ;) ) discussion if folks frequently made it clear that they speak only for themselves.
These are separate issues: on one side there are theoretical questions concerning everyone and on the other side personal experiences, which are anecdotal. So, about my anecdotal personal experience…
1964. I was 18 years old and my health state was an absolute catastrophe. No wonder: I fed mostly on pastry, chocolate, white bread, dairy, supplements and the various medicine our family MD prescribed me - and I refused to eat meat! Then I read “The dance with the devil” of Günther Schwab. I could hardly believe what this guy wrote, as it was in complete opposition to the prevailing way of thinking at the time which assumed that technology and science would solve all the problems, mankind would dominate the world and be triumphant over nature.
But still the book was very well documented and the author seemed logical. So I decided to experiment his ideas to know whether he was a total fool or a clever unconventional thinker.
At once, I stopped to eat refined industrial food, especially white sugar, white flour, chemical drinks, coffee, all supplements (digestive enzymes, vitamins, minerals, micro-nutrients) and medication. I started to eat much more raw fruits and vegetables, whole foods and some meat. The result was immediate: in one week I was fine. My former diet was simply causing acute deficiencies and by eating more natural food (in a Weston Price style) I just overcame those deficiencies.
Günther Schwab on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnther_Schwab)
Amazingly “The dance with the devil” is available on line, apparently on a religious website even if the book has nothing to do with religion. It just uses “the devil” words as a metaphor; the whole book reads like a kind fiction novel in the form of an interview with the devil in his premises.
Dance With The Devil, by Gunther Schwab – a must read. (http://www.peterjamesx.com/ebooks/Dance%20With%20The%20Devil/index.htm)
Such an experience seem to happen quite often, as reports on this forum show. Fruitarians, vegans or even standard dieters in a poor state of health suddenly start to eat raw meat, sometimes even going from an extreme to the other, becoming “zero carbers”. They think they have found the holly grail as their health dramatically improves. But there’s no wonder: they are simply filling deficiencies induced by their former diet which prevented them to be in the normal shape their own genetic inheritance leads to. I didn’t go to such an extreme, but going to something like a partly cooked Weston A. Price diet sufficed to put me in an apparently good shape and health for more than two decades (from 18 to 41 years old).
But then I started to have growing health problems and, coincidentally, I read GCB’s book. Being skeptical (as always) I decided to try for one week to eat 100% raw, unmixed and unprocessed as he suggests. As I felt absolutely great, I went on for another week, at the end of which my wife told me: “we have some visitors for dinner tonight, you should eat with us”. It thought my raw experience had lasted long enough and I had seen what I wanted to see: Burger’s arguments were valid.
So, I had a full standard cooked western dinner (but "healthy": grilled NZ grass-fed lamb leg, polenta, steamed vegetables, raw swiss cheese, fresh fruit salad). The result was that I subsequently felt so bad that I couldn’t sleep the whole night. Well… I felt that I had to still go on with raw, since my body reacted to this cooked dinner as it had been poisoned. I never thought that I’ll do that for the whole rest of my live (it was just a temporary experiments of one week, 3 months, one year, another year…), but now I think I may well do it till I die. The pleasure is very important and I have more pleasure in eating that way than cooked. I wouldn’t be able to stick to a diet if I don’t find in it enough pleasure to eat.
I never pretended to detain the ultimate truth, I’ve just been experimenting in “natural” nutrition since… 1964, long before many here were born.
François
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Thanks for sharing your experience Francois.
Great. Immensely great.
way back 1964.
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Can we feature your testimony on rawpaleodiet.com?
I'd like republish your post above to my health blog as well... can I ?
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Yes, Francois's testimony would be invaluable. After all, he has been rawpalaeo for 23+ years, which is amazing. Still would want that Schwab link for the Raw Weston_Price Diet forum., though.
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Can we feature your testimony on rawpaleodiet.com?
I'd like republish your post above to my health blog as well... can I ?
Sure you can, but perhaps I should complete it? Please let me a few days to do so, or you can ask me questions about the points you find not detailed enough.
Yes, Francois's testimony would be invaluable. After all, he has been rawpalaeo for 23+ years, which is amazing. Still would want that Schwab link for the Raw Weston_Price Diet forum., though.
Just 24 years this January. Günther Schwab link would be better in a more general section since it’s a fundamental wide-ranging book about all the interactions between civilization and nature: I’m thinking about where to put it.
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These are separate issues: on one side there are theoretical questions concerning everyone and on the other side personal experiences, which are anecdotal.
I think it's wise to keep these issues separate and your sharing of personal experience and providing an interesting link is the sort of post I treasure.