The Fire Inside - and The Fire You Use On Food

Hindsight is 20/20. The older I get the more I realize how unjust 20/20 hindsight is!

If I would've known some of the things at 20 that I know now - I never would've had health issues.

I starved myself as a model. In fact, the first two years I was working, I went from 165 pounds to 115 pounds and grew 2 inches from 5 foot 8 to 5 foot 10. By the time I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I was 115 pounds and 5 foot 10. From what I know about the body today, I would never, in my right mind, have done that. In fact, with what I know today I would not have HAD to do that. Back then I'd starve myself because I didn't understand how to use food to achieve my goals of being model thin.

I thought eating=being fat. When in fact the true equation is:

Eating the wrong food = being fat!
AND
Eating no food or too much cooked food=ill health

How do I know this? Because once I was eating more raw foods, not only did I feel better and eat until I was satisfied, but I was able to maintain my modeling weight and I looked younger! It was a miracle! No starving and the side effect of eating good food was I felt better, and I looked better.

Why did this happen?

  • A healthy human body is self-regulatory and self repairing.

But what makes a healthy body?

  • Understand that vitamins and minerals, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids (fats and proteins) are essential for, not just rebuilding the body, but rejuvenating the body as well.

(Notice I didn't mention CARBS! Nothing in the body is built or rejuvenated from simple carbs.)

I also know that food can be medicinal. But in order for it to be medicinal, it has to be the right food, for the right body, prepared the right way.

I know that everybody thinks that we can eat anything we want to; we can be vegan or vegetarian at our hearts desire - I wholeheartedly disagree. It's just as bad not to eat at all (like I did) as it is to eat the wrong foods; foods that are not healing for your particular body type can actually hurt you and hinder your progress towards health. (Some people know this idea as eat for your body type) Equally bad is to not give your body a food that it needs i.e. when a carnivore or a moderate vegetarian becomes vegan. Or, as Price Waterhouse found out- Eskimos should eat fish not grains! Not giving your body the food it needs can often make it diseased or just generally malaised.

I learned most of what I understood about food from Dr. Timothy Brantley.

What did Dr Brantley teach me?
Dr. Brantley taught me how to eat raw - and for me, because I was so malnutritioned, it was a very good idea to eat as much alkaline raw food as possible, that had as much nutrition and enzymes bio-available to help me.

Ultimately everything we need to do for the body needs to strive towards the goal of balance.

The best part of raw food was that it healed my body from so many things that I was suffering from. From acid stomach to headaches, colds and flus, sinus infections and allergies, raw food made all the difference in healing all the inflammatory diseases in me.

Besides the fact that it picked up my energy, rejuvenated my skin, and made my hair thicker, by eating the correct foods in a raw form, I was able to lose the excess weight I had gained. My body was in the best shape it had ever been in. If that is not the best advertisement for eating the proper foods, I don't know what it is.

So why is it important to maintain balance, in the body, with raw foods?

What we need to understand is that balance, in any system, is important. Too much of a good thing (or bad thing) is not good because it doesn't bring balance.

And by the way, my mom started eating raw food and adding supplements and enzymes at 68 years old-so it's never too late.

So why is it that cooked food doesn't help heal our body?

Many things happen to food when you cook it - but the main four things are:

  1. The pH changes. A mildly alkaline food such as a tomato becomes extremely acidic when you cook it. If we are trying to balance out an acid system, we need as much alkaline as possible. So we don't want our foods to become extremely acidic when we cook them. Besides the fact, acidic foods give you heartburn as you get older. Some people disagree with the pH principle- but heck, the other three reasons to eat raw are enough reasons!
    • Dr. Brantley once told me that if you eat 75 to 95% raw you can practically heal yourself from anything. So the more health issues you have, perhaps the more raw food you should eat. You'll get the most results-I know, because I got the results.
  2. The molecular structure changes. For example, a protein heavy legume, like lentils or chickpeas, becomes carb heavy. This is important because as I just said above, the body doesn't regenerate or rejuvenate from carbohydrates- only from proteins and fats. So there's nothing useful in a cooked chickpea even if the RAW chickpea is healthy; a cooked chickpea is just a carbohydrate.
  3. Enzymes. I will speak about enzymes in my next blog so bear with me until then!
  4. Next thing that happens to cooked food is: the bonds between the vitamins and minerals in foods that make it EASILY absorbable and READILY AVAILABLE are destroyed by heat, thereby making them not as easily absorbable by the body or not as readily available to be utilized by the body.

What does all this mean for us as people who need nutrition?

  • What this means is that if we are eating food that lacks the vitamins and minerals we need or has vitamins and minerals in a form that we cannot absorb, our body will keep calling for more and more food. We will always be hungry. Because the body will keep demanding it's vitamins and minerals. Better to give it its vitamins and minerals in the form of raw food and keep it satisfied then to keep eating and keep gaining weight and keep looking older and getting into that downward spiral.

With raw food, we eat less food and come away with more nutrition; with cooked food it's the complete opposite. With cooked food, we eat way more food and come away with less nutrition and we are also less satisfied.
The problem is if the body is not getting nutrition, it's going to keep eating until it gets what it needs. (Does this partly answer why Americans are so overweight? We're always hungry, never satisfied and we keep eating so we gain a lot of weight.) But also, without enough nutrition - the immune system suffers. The same immune system that is supposed to protect us from diseases, such as cancer.

I found that raw food filled me up faster, satisfied me more, and because there was so much nutrition available to my body, it anti-aged me as a side effect! I liked the side effect so much, that I then decided to take it one step further: I decided to add supplements. And I added the supplements because I understood that food wasn't completely and wholly nutritious. (Blog 3- next blog) And that's thanks to our farming practices. When we constantly grow food in land that we constantly don't nutrition or grow it in Bio-sludge (see blog post on the horrors of Bio-sludge)
our food becomes devoid of vitamins and minerals.

Where do you think vitamins and minerals in food comes from?

  • They come from the ground into the plant, into our bodies. When farmers don't rest the land or plow crops back under to feed the soil or even put vitamins and minerals back into the soil, we end up with food that's lacking.

So our farming practices leave a lot to be desired.

Yet, I mean, if raw food has the most nutrition available to the body - and even though I eat raw food, as opposed to cooked, I still felt I could do more with eating the right supplements. So, If I eat a lot of supplements and I eat highly nutritious raw food, can you imagine how many supplements a cooked food person should eat!

Raw and juiced foods are much more nutritious than cooked food. That's just the nature of the beast.

And the nature of the body is such that you need as many vitamins and minerals in a wholly absorbable way to not just lose weight, but anti-age and to heal. Because the body works in a hierarchy, the first thing it does is keep itself running and the last thing it does is anti-age.

So if you're reading this blog to anti-age - you need to eat enough raw food, vitamins and minerals to keep your body running, help it heal itself, help rebuild itself, and THEN whatever nutrition is left over will go to feeding your skin hair and nails.

By the way, JUICING is the fastest way I know to do this - so if you're ill, start juicing. It's the fastest way to alkaline the body, add power-packed nutrition, and enzymes; and it's the least stress on the digestive system because there's really nothing to digest - no pulp.
I know that's a bummer - because juicing can be boring. Much more fun to eat a turkey hero. But, like I said, I don't make the rules, it's just the nature of the beast.

You need to find what diet works best for you. Even if most people thrive on raw food, there are a few who thrive on cooked food. That info even surprised my doctor when he started his practice! So now that we understand why we need raw food and how it heals the body - the next blog will be on the power of enzymes and supplements

But I'm not done yet-
Read on......

I always believed in the acid/alkaline balance of the body- some people do not. But since watching my pH actually helped my issues, I'd be remiss in leaving out this "theory." I was taught that our bodies naturally create a lot of acid - like lactic acid when we workout to hydrochloric acid in the stomach to digest food - we create lots of different kinds of acids. We create no alkaline.

This is unfair, you say! If we need balance, why do we create so much acid and no alkaline at all? The answer is simple: nature is amazing - our bodies create acid but we should be eating alkaline!

See? Balance!

When we eat or drink acidic foods such as cooked foods, in general, but especially cooked tomato sauce, cooked spinach, coffee etc. we are just putting acid into an acidic system. When we add no alkaline(we're not alkaline enough) to the system it cannot achieve balance.

What happens in a very acidic system is that acid blood does not carry enough oxygen. Oxygen is important for the metabolic processes of healthy cells. Cancer cells, however, love it when the blood doesn't carry lots of oxygen. Cancer cells are anaerobic cells which means they proliferate (they grow) they multiply when your blood carries little oxygen. Most of our diseases are what they call "inflammatory diseases". Meaning the body is inflamed. What inflames the body is "acid" pouring through our veins on a consistent basis. If we can neutralize these acids, we can usually heal.

But there is more....

If you are suffering from low oxygen levels in your blood - anything below 90 is low oxygen levels-perhaps you might want to research Hydrogen Peroxide Therapy.
https://peoplebeatingcancer.org/blogcancer-coaching-getting-different-kind-second-opinion/?gclid=CO-DpLiFxM4CFQQehgodBdwLmg

Does it work? Who knows - I did the therapy and my standing blood oxygen level is 95! I didn't take my blood oxygen levels before I started the therapy - rats!

Follow me on my Social Media platforms:
Twitter: @ModelCarolAlt
Instagram: @modelcarolalt

Request your library to bring in my books to help you learn to eat raw, find recipes, understand why raw foods are more nutritious for you and to learn other protocols not mentioned in my blogs.

  • Eating in the Raw
  • Easy, Sexy Raw
  • A Healthy You

You need to find what diet works best for you- I have a few friends who thrive on cooked- not because they like it better, but because a doctor tested them and said that this is what they should eat! That info even surprised my doctor when he started his practice

Warm Regards,

Carol

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CAROL ALT is a pioneer and chameleon in the entertainment industry; constantly on the lookout for new challenges. Since her days as the world’s most renowned Supermodel, Carol has gone on to be multi-award winning actor, successful entrepreneur, best-selling author on Raw Food and Nutrition, and the host of A Healthy You & Carol Alt on FOX News Channel.