Eating Your Way To A Healthy Heart

How a Raw Fast Can Transform Your High Blood Pressure and Your Life!

Most people are aware of the strong link between a healthy diet, obesity, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. Yet, millions of people are still suffering from these easily treatable and preventable diseases.

Why are so many not willing to change?

Is it the fact that eating a heart healthy diet means cutting out read meat, alcohol, salt and eating more fresh fruits, vegetables and lean proteins?

Or, is it because the abundance of highly processed and highly salted pre-packaged meals that ready to eat rather than make a home made meal each night?

The Good News: Not a lot of hard work

The good news is there is a simple, quick and easy way to get started in the right direction: no hard to prepare meals, no tasteless dinners, and no laborious preparation. You can lower your high blood pressure, lose weight, and start eating healthy in less then 30 days. All you need to do is take the 30-day Raw Challenge.

The 30-Day Raw Challenge

The raw food diet is based on unprocessed and uncooked plant foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, dried fruits and seaweed. The belief is that processed and cooked foods destroy the natural enzymes that aid in digestion and absorption of food.

A raw food diet is ideal for those people suffering from High Blood Pressure because it is low in calories, fat and sodium, but is naturally abundant in potassium, magnesium and other heart-healthy substances such as vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber.

While maintaining a raw food diet for a prolonged period of time can be difficult for most individuals, this challenge is a great and easy way to get started in the right direction. This eating plan will teach you and your body to break old, unhealthy habits and reinforce healthy habits and foods into your diet.  You will also learn that eating healthy is easy*, quick to prepare and that it can be very satisfying for the entire family.

The Raw Diet Action Plan

Week 1: Meal Modification

During the first week, you will  be removing read meat, refined sugars and white flours from your diet. This means no bread, crackers, lunchmeats or soda pop. Instead of white pastas, eat whole wheat, substitute red meat with grilled chicken, exchange all desserts for fresh fruits and replace cooked vegetables with raw varieties.

On a raw food diet, you should only be consuming unprocessed whole foods such as:

Fresh fruits and vegetables
Nuts
Seeds
Beans
Grains
Legumes
Dried fruit
Seaweed
Unprocessed organic or natural foods
Freshly juiced fruit and vegetables
Purified or filtered water
Young coconut milk

See Recipe: Asian Vegetable Nori Rolls

Week 2: Get The Juices Flowing

This week you’ll eliminate meat, poultry, eggs and dairy from your diet. Supplement these nutrients with lots of fresh vegetables and fruit smoothies. Try interesting combinations of fruits and vegetables to substitute for dairy and meats. Try combinations of fruits and vegetables that are both colorful and nutrient rich such as bananas, blueberries, apples, spinach, tomatoes, carrots and beets.

See Recipe: Super Fruit Juice

Week 3: Getting A little Nutty Now

During the third week of your diet action plan, add raw nuts and seeds to your meal planning. You can substitute some dairy items with those derived from nuts, like raw almond milk or yogurt. When snacking on nuts, soak them in water first to wake up their natural enzymes. An excellent lunch on the go is a raw veggie burger made with almonds and walnuts, which can be purchased at most vegetarian restaurants.

Week 4: Full Raw Diet

This week you will now be substituting the whole grain pasta, from week 1, with raw shredded vegetables. Try a meal consisting of shredded zucchini pasta marinara. This may be the most challenging week, as you will be eating 100% raw foods.

See Recipe: Zucchini Pasta Marinara

Follow up: Watch Your Numbers Drop

At the end of each week, evaluate what you liked best and work into your regular diet. Make sure to always substitute whole grain pasta for white pasta or even better yet, with raw shredded vegetables.

You should also try incorporating as much of the raw aspect as you can into your diet. Instead of red meats, eat lean chicken or fish. Snacks should be raw nuts, fruits or vegetables. You will notice that you have not only cut a majority of the sodium that your previous diet may have contained, as well as a large portion of the fats and cholesterol. Now you can watch your blood pressure and weight drop.

Sample Recipes:

Recipe: Asian Vegetable Nori Rolls

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  4 sheets raw nori* (thin, dried seaweed sheets)
• 4 large, flat collard greens or romaine leaves
• 1 ½ cups shredded carrots
• 1 ½ shredded daikon or radish
• 1 avocado, thinly sliced
• 8 scallions, green sections only
• 2 cups clover or cress sprouts*
• ¼ cucumber, seeded and cut lengthwise
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced

1. Lay out the nori on a clean, dry surface. Arrange the collard or romaine leaf on top of the nori so it covers one half of the sheet completely.
2. Place the carrots along the nori sheet leaving ½ inch room to one end. Top with remaining ingredients making sure to keep them in a narrow pile.
3. Roll the nori sheet over the filling and away from you. Roll into tight, firm wrap leaving a little exposed edge. Seal edge by wetting with a little water and fold over to seal.
4. Continue with reaming 3 nori sheets and ingredients.

Recipe: Super Fruit Juice

• 4 Carrots
• 1 beet with greens
• 1 Apple
• Large handful of spinach

1. Cut ingredients so they can fit into your juices.
2. Process ingredients in juicer, mix well and enjoy.

Recipe: Zucchini Pasta Marinara

• 1 ½ cups blended tomato
• ½ cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons Nama Shoyu*
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 table spoons copped yellow onion
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes
• pinch sea salt
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  6 to 8 zucchini peeled and cut into spaghetti shaped noodles. Using Spirooli slicer or food slicer. Let sit at room temperature for a few hours if possible – texture improves when left sitting out in for 6-8 hours.

1. Combine all ingredients (except zucchini noodles) into blender and blend until smooth.
2. Place noodles in a large bowl and poor the sauce over them, mixing well.
3. Enjoy, Serves 3 to 4

*Having trouble finding any of these ingredients? Most specialty vegetables can be found in the foreign section of your local grocery store or at many of the fine natural health food stores near you.

After experiencing the incredible energy and vitality of the 30-day Raw Challenge, you’ll see the incredible feeling of well-being — emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually – is perhaps the diet’s most attractive benefit. Get a taste of that feeling to know that it’s worth some effort to figure this out:  lower your high blood pressure by eating your way to a healthy heart!

David Randall (Healthy Recipes & Eating Ideas), diagnosed at the age of 15 with type 1 Diabetes, started to learn everything he could about living healthy. With a love for cooking, he made his way through college teaching young diabetics how to manage the disease. He then turned his ambitions towards spreading what he knows and loves to others, having ghost written for over 10 years on nutrition, vitamin and mineral supplements, as well as cooking and healthy lifestyle. David spends his free time with his family in Northern Michigan sailing, cooking and volunteering.