Greetings and Welcome to the Overview of the Bountiful*Cafe.
This section has been a work in progress. It’s the one that has had the least amount of posts. I thought the other information in the other Bountiful’s was the most important to start with, so I started with those sections.
However, on a daily basis, it’s the food that will make or break your quest for health. It’s that important. Back when I was working in hospitals, doctor offices, and nursing homes, that never occurred to me. Sure we gave patients special diets sometimes, especially before surgery or afterwards or for tests. But not with the thought they wouldn’t be here for this procedure if they would eat a certain type of diet. Today that is changing in the medical profession and people in everyday life are realizing it’s true also.
The Bountiful*Cafe started out as a raw food cafe. Raw food does have some special “ommph” to it, but raw food alone will not necessarily get you well just because it’s raw. There are many junk food raw foodist’s out there. And many people looking for wellness will not find it by raw food alone. Especially the Candida patient.
It seems, there are no substitutes for what Nature’s Design thinks is appropriate for your body to operate optimally. And Mother Nature doesn’t take kindly to shortcuts either. I have found you can’t listen to your “head” at first and eat what “sounds good”. Even if you think it’s a balanced meal, something is off or you wouldn’t be looking for a better level of health in the first place. What you were eating in the first place has led you down this path and now there is an obvious problem. Depending upon how far down the path you are is how out of balance your body is. More symptoms mean more out of balance. Thank goodness more symptoms for a long time doesn’t mean a long time to heal! The body wants to heal, just get the roadblocks out of the way and watch how fast it zooms ahead. Twenty years sick does not mean twenty years to recover.
What sounds good for dinner can change after your taste buds have been cleaned and retrained and the Candida organisms aren’t providing their input. They can and do overwhelm your system and brain with their signal. Today’s food is so easily obtainable, and out of season crops are always available too. It’s easy to get sidetracked and head down the wrong path. The best guide is to eat an acid-alkaline diet and watch your ratios. That is the key to being successful and to staying successful, whether cooked or raw.
I personally have been 100% raw for 11 months with alot of additional raw stretches in the last 5 years. Raw food alone did not get me well. And when I ate the raw way that did improve my health–I realized I was beginning to starve to death. Raw foods are basically fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Sometimes grains. I couldn’t eat from the fruit category, nuts and seeds category, or the grains category. That left the vegetables. I felt great, but not alot of calories in there! Ummm, yeah, I did get sick of squash and sweet potatoes. Raw white potatoes didn’t appeal to me and I couldn’t eat them anyway, because those were one of my Candida sensitivities (allergies).
I researched a lot of raw food authors and they failed me. Even when they said they knew the Candida answer.
Right now, I am high raw, high green raw, and partially cooked. I believe the reason the raw food vegetable diet worked so well for us is because the vegetables are alkaline. So that is what it comes down to folks.
I believe there are three necessary prongs to a Candida Program.
- Antifungals — as in AquaFlora that’s my favorite.
- Acid-alkaline diet — raw or cooked.
- Raw foods as much as possible. (They do have other nutrient factors like chlorophyll and enzymes, more nutrients and who only knows what else we haven’t discovered yet.)
Exercise is not advised in the beginning stages of healing. It can be a stress on the body and actually delay healing.
Yoga can slowly be added and built up to more Yoga or other forms of exercise. The Yoga links on the Shop for Products Page are my first picks. The link to Amazon books and Raviana Yoga will be up hopefully soon. In the meantime just go to amazon.com and search for what I recommend.
That’s all for today. See you the next time around! If anything changes, I’ll post about it.
In the meantime, keep at it–you WILL get there. Bountiful Health for all.