I truly appreciate all the great advice you posted here and wil read every last link you noted. I am open to all the help and advice I can get.

Gracias!

Paula

Thank you for your comments and question. A great book I’d recommend for anyone who wants to be physically active while eating a raw food diet is Dr. Graham’s book, The 80/10/10 Diet. It lays out in great detail the way you need to eat and why to get enough calories to be so active. Even so, I found it took me months of trying, and even attending his two week walking tour in Costa Rica, before it really clicked for me. I just couldn’t conceive of how much I really had to eat until I saw other people doing it.

Bananas were the biggest help for me, since it was fall/winter when I started trying, and fresh fruit gets harder and harder to find. I started feeling more satisfied and started losing my cravings for cooked food once I had more practice with how to buy enough bananas, wait for them to ripen, make them into smoothies, and consume them for lunch every day to insure enough calories overall.

As far as carrying enough food for a long run, what I started doing was placing/hiding the food and extra water at the halfway point on training runs, or wherever appropriate, before the run begins. When I ran the actual marathon in March, I didn’t want to use solid food, and instead I had 3 small water bottles filled with the water from soaking dates overnight. I placed in boxes for the aid stations at the beginning of the race, so I’d have a new bottle at miles 2, 19, and 16. There were about 300 calories worth of fruit sugar in each bottle, and it was enough to help me through the race. After the race I ate a lot of bananas at the finish area.

I haven’t written a blog post about the marathon yet, but I did mention it briefly at the end of the Costa Rica wrapup post. In the walking higher and harder post, I mention some advice I got from Dr. Graham about the date water (he actually suggested using raisins instead because it’s easier on some folks digestive systems). I’ll repeat it here:

I’ve been asking Doug questions about how much to eat or drink during my upcoming marathon. I want to know to survive it on raw food. He guessed that I probably have about 1800 calories of glycogen store to start with at the beginning of the race. I will use about 2400 calories during the race, and I should try to replace the 600 - 800 calories difference.

He suggested raisin water. Soak a pound of raisins in a quart of water overnight. In the morning you’ll have a pint of water remaining, in addition to some well-hydrated raisins. The water will have absorbed about 3/4 of the sugar from the raisins. Use the water, without the raisins in it, during the race, taking a swallow of it every 1/4 or 1/2 mile.

This is in addition to the meal I will eat two and a half hours before the race. Those calories should be coming online before/during the run as well. If done right, apparently you need never hit the wall during the marathon. The key seems to be to consume simple sugars slowly enough that a lot of energy does not go towards digestion during the race. After the race I get to refuel (and eat those raisins.)

And lately, there been a great discussion on the VegSource forum about quantifying 80/10/10 athletic gains. It’s a great thread, and I agree that eating a low-fat raw vegan diet, and getting almost all my carbs from fruit really gave me a boost, similar to what some of these other folks mentioned.

I hope that helps. When I get a chance, I want to write more about the marathon experience in a new blog post. Good luck with your marathons. I hope you find it possible to successfully give up the rice, beans, and pasta. In time, as I have become accustomed to this new way of eating, I have found the level of nourishment I can sustain makes it possible for me to exercise longer without refueling than it was possible for me before. Fruit, eaten in enough volume, really can be a complete substitute for the more traditional forms of carbohydrate.

Cheers!

- Van

Got a question for you. I tried the raw diet a year ago and did well for a few months. I don’t remember why I returned to cooked food though. Anyway,I have completed two marathons this year on cooked foods. I’m thinking about converting to the raw diet over the next five months. I also plan on running two more marathons. Is there a book or something that supports raw diets for runner? My next marathon is in October and I am starting a very slow conversion - i.e. cutting out all chicken, fish, meat. I can do without those for energy sources. But man, I’m getting antsy about eliminating the rice, beans, pasta . . . Also, how are you carrying all those orange slices when you run? Are you running with a backpack or something? I hate carrying those things, but on long runs I will strap on a hydration belt (I’m in Los Angeles - it get’s hot)! Basically, I’m just wondering how you are doing this whole thing.

Thanks,

Paula

7kidmom, I can really appreciate the cravings for complex carbohydrates that you talk about. I’m not a perfect follower of the raw vegan diet just yet, and I found that if I don’t eat enough fruit during the day, and especially after working out, that by 9pm I will be seriously craving carbohydrates and fall prey to an old favorite: almond milk and raisin bran.

I can’t really get excited about uncooked, sprouted grains because the taste just isn’t there for me. Raw, sprouted garbonzo beans taste kind of like chalk to me. I think as far as sprouts go, I’m going to use them for the tasty and tender green parts that grow off of them. I enjoy adding them to my salads occasionally, especially snow pea and sunflower shoots.

Wendy, I have found that a good way to avoid binging on cooked carbs later is to do two things on long run days: a) eat immediately after the run, and b) eat again as soon as possible.

For (a), I typically pack a bunch of oranges slices (usually about 6 oranges worth), and maybe some kiwi fruit as well. These taste great after a run and also serve to quench my thirst. For (b), I wait about an hour (ie. after I’ve returned home and showered) and then eat as many bananas as I can fit in, usually about 6 or 7. That’s a total of about 1000 calories or more between (a) and (b).

It’s still not quite enough, so in summer I recommend eating watermelon as well, because it’s high in calories. Later on a salad is nice too, and celery, yum. And lately, I’ve been supplementing my calorie intake by adding dates to my diet, because they really concentrated in terms of calories.

I hope that helps!

- Van

T. P.