Lettuce. Fruit. Avocado. Nuts (not roasted!). Quinoa (only if it's sprouted!). So.Much.Water. This was essentially my (skimpy) diet for two weeks as I ditched everything I know, love, and scarf on a daily basis—cheese, bread, meat, COOKED vegetables—for a walk on the raw side. Raw food diets have been growing in popularity for the past few years, thanks to healthy food bloggers who tout the most glowing, luminous skin, shiny hair, and renewed energy as a direct result of their no-cook eating habits. After years of cycling through dermatologists and antibiotics (including Accutane—twice), I had to see if these raw ladies were up to something.
I've done a handful of juice cleanses, so for me, being able to cleanse and eat was a huge bonus. The first few days were rough though. If you haven't done a cleanse before, this is when your body is begging for more caffeine, more protein, more anything to feel normal. But you train it, and once the initial hump was over, I started to feel truly GREAT. How great? I was jumping out of bed in the morning without an alarm (this is a big deal, guys), I felt light and springy—the opposite way that throwing back three slices of pizza makes me feel— and my skin...oh, my skin.
When you do a raw diet, you're taking in so much water than you're likely used to because you're mainly eating fruits and vegetables, which are, well, mostly water. Raw food advocates also claim that you're not getting true-enough nutrients from your boiled, steamed, or sautéed food, which they say leach all the good stuff during the cooking process.
After two weeks of no restaurants and eating mostly salad, smoothies, and whole avocados drizzled with cold-pressed olive oil (cheated!) and seasoned with paprika, I had achieved skin that I could only dream of. Now, when I'm not tinkering with recipes in the Delish kitchen that are far from raw, I do try to work in at least one raw recipe a day, typically a smoothie bowl for breakfast. My skin isn't as stellar as it once was, but whenever I have a wedding or other big event, I'll work in a whole lot of raw vegetables to my diet to get back to those glowing glory days.
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