Books in Bed

Alrighty then, that pretty much sums up my feelings about Raw Food Life Force Energy: blah blah blah. But, I’ll expand on that.

First, the book itself – once you take the jacket off, the book screams Life! Force! Energy! Awesome color choice. Awesome texture, kind of soft but firm and smooth. Cool. Nice book to hold. I found myself wondering right off the bat why we needed “Acknowledgements” “Forward” and “Introduction”. Couldn’t we have just gotten on with things? I appreciated the index in the back. I think some of the other “charts” and such should have also been in the back, along with the 21 day plan with a better layout – but I’ll get to my issues with the 21 day plan in a second. The questions and answers were a nice way to tie things up and answer some situational type questions that obviously come up while reading the book.

Next, the writing. Life! Force! Energy! Ack. It read like an infomercial. Total and complete turn off for me. Anything that guarantees “Effortless abundant weight loss” makes me suspect and that’s pretty much the way I felt all of the way through the book. Bad idea to start the meat er flesh of the book with that statement. Very bad idea.

I must say that while I am not a “raw foods believer” I do believe that many of our weight and health problems are related to the SAD (Standard American Diet). As someone who spends the day talking about diet, I AM very interested in the raw food movement. So I’m not totally blowing off this book.

I do think claiming Life Force Energy is a bit much. And the whole vibrating thing just left me cold. Yes we should be taking in a ton of vegetables, preferably organic and yes raw would be ideal. Also whole grains and a lot less processed JUNK. Agree, agree, agree. I am also very interested in food combination theories and I can see how that might work for many, many people. Overall, the whole raw food movement goes just a bit too far for me.

They lose me, and this author lost me specifically, in these areas:

1) Flesh, even organic free range chicken and eggs and such, have the aura of death and so they should not be eaten because of the negative effect on the human spirit, body and “Life Force Energy”! Cheese and milk from these poor DEATH FLESH creatures is bad but cheese and milk from goats is great! Okkkk then. Also apparently FISH don’t have the DEATH FLESH or as much DEATH FLESH so fish is OK! That makes absolutely no sense to me. Either you go all out or you don’t.

2) Juicing. Ack. No thanks. I don’t do juice for any reason. Ever. Really. I don’t want to drink my vegetables and I don’t want to drink my fruit. An occasional fruit drink is fine, no problem, but all of this push to JUICE! is INSANE! (I’m using a lot of ! because the book used a lot of ! INFOMERCIAL!) Drinking my breakfast of vegetable juice until 1/2 hour before lunch just doesn’t work for me.

3) Colonics. No, I’ve researched this and researched this and I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that we need to use colonics for any reason. Eat raw foods or more raw foods, I can get behind that. But as soon as you start to tell me to take an enema or have a colonic, I’m done.

4) Don’t keep selling me stuff in your book! Probiotics are something I can get behind until you tell me that the only ones that really work are the ones you sell on your website. Nope! Done! Infomercial!

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s look at the 21 day program. Waste of paper! Every single day is exactly the same except for day one when you’re told to “eliminate” first thing in the morning and do that every morning… and you’re given the option of a pre-dinner snack of a POUND of RAW carrots! And day 3, day 9, day something else when you’re told to use an enema or have a colonic. Yes, you’re given ideas for meals or for relaxation and you’re given homework as well. Those relaxtion tips and homework ideas – I’m good with those. But the layout for the 21 day plan could have been better, handled more efficiently and saved paper (not to mention my time.)

The recipes. I can take them or leave them. Mostly leave them because they didn’t knock my socks off. They weren’t BAD and I could see myself referring to a few of them from time to time. Even some of the juice drinks, excuse me, Elixirs!, were interesting. I think I expected more because I’ve read so many good reviews about Rose’s first book.

So – scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best vibration! I give it a 4. If it didn’t sound so much like an infomercial, it probably would have gotten a 6.

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