Is Food an Addiction?

One thing for sure, as I grow, everything about how I perceive the world grows too. In some respects, I believe that ignorance is bliss. Yet, the purpose of my life isn't to achieve pure bliss, it's to create, to have a positive social impact and to love.

Bliss isn't love. Bliss to me is actually self-indulgence and perhaps even narcissistic. Not that those things are bad, it's just in the greater context of finding a deeper meaning to life than being high.

High? What does that mean and why do people go there through a range of external sources? I don't know. The few times that I dabbled were all in my teens. I haven't had a taste of alcohol in almost a decade. So speaking from my own experience, I did experimented because it seemed cool and I was into exploration at the time. After not so deep contemplation, I found that my life straight was pretty interesting. The pain, suffering, disappointment and anxiety added a level of mystery to my life. I was curious and constantly seeking feedback.

I love to create. I love a challenge. I love work. I manage to find meaning in the most trivial or complex tasks.

Clearly, the most challenging experiments have to do with dealing with people. It amazes me how "off" I can be in reading people and predicting their behavior.

I spent 2.5 years at Nimblefish in San Francisco, CA as the soul raw vegan or vegan period. Many of my friends and co-workers would go to Cafe Gratitude with me for lunch or dinner. Graham Gunst and his wife, read Raw Food Detox adopted the rawfood diet as a new years resolution and Graham lost a bowling ball or two and looked great.

Paul McGhee and his wife and baby would frequent Cafe Gratitude with me on the weekends and indulge in a fresh squeeze in the morning, but that was it.

Steve Bach even had a dinner with me at Cafe Gratitude and actually had them cater my going away party at Nimblefish.

All in all. I think most people became aware of the benefits of eating 100% raw/live vegan food, but at the time, no one took the proverbial bait at the time.

Since then, my buddy Gever Tully and I have eaten at Cafe Gratitude on my short visits to SF and I hear different raw stories from a lot of people.

It's now been three years since I started planting the raw seeds and we some success stories.

Francis Potter from Nimblefish is 100% raw vegan. He is even actively blogging about on his blog Success Zen.

Paul and his wife are now vegan and eating tons of raw.

There are also good signs coming from AdBrite.

Why doesn't everyone become a raw vegan?

I am starting to hallucinate that food is an addiction and that the addiction is more powerful than an untrained food eater.

Therefore, in order to eat this way, I believe that people need a strategy. Some things that might help the strategy:

1. Reading everything you can about raw vegan nutrition.
2. Associating with other people who are successfully living the lifestyle.
3. Fasting or doing a 5 day cleanse like the ones offered at Organic Avenue.
4. Getting a colonic or two from a raw vegan colon hydro-therapist like Gill Jacobs or the gentle team at LYT NYC.
5. Drinking only fresh pressed juices in the morning till noon and seeing how amazing you feel.
6. Signing up for a month of yoga and committing to go at least 5 times a week at a real studio like Jivamukti.
7. Making a written list of all the reasons that you must eat this way.
8. Attending any twelve step meeting that you can find and replace the "X" with food.
9. Smiling at every person that you see and saying to yourself, "I LOVE YOU"
10. Stand in the mirror naked and marvel and adorn your perfect self as you are, not as you think that you should be.