Thank God a friend’s mum gave me Viktoras Kalvanaskas’s book, Love Your Body. His introduction to raw foods made so much sense and felt so natural and wonderful.

I transitioned slowly from 80% to 90% to 95% raw and now having just finished nursing I am 100% raw and loving it! The transition was slow, as pregnancy and nursing puts huge demands on your body and you need to reduce detox effects for the baby’s safety.
Now, I have abundant energy. And on average ride 15km a day, do at least 2 hrs of yoga, swim, surf, dance and play all day. All thanks to living foods. One thing is for sure, adults and children’s nutritional requirements are very different and we’ll look at this in detail today.

A friend recently asked me “Why are we so concerned about this raw food diet for our kids when everyone else is feeding their kids junk and they are surviving?”

I’ve spent 100s of hours researching raw to ensure my child gets everything she need during this essential growth stage of her life. It is apparent that great care must be taken when turning raw, because our bodies are no longer optimally efficient in manufacturing every nutrient we need to be healthy. Truth is, we don’t live in a pure world, we don’t come from pure parents and our bodies are clogged with generations of toxic waste. We have to detox and deprogram ourselves from everything we’ve been brainwashed to believe about diet and relearn how to know instinctively what we need, like a child does.

As Gabriel Cousens puts it “We got kicked out of the Garden of Eden…and now we a re trying to get back”. By being aware of my child’s inner wisdom, she is guiding me back.

1. Super nourishing pregnancy and nursing

You can start Raw when pregnant; in fact it will ensure the baby gets the correct nutrients for development and assist in a more gentle birth, as more oxygen is available to the womb. Go slowly and with lots of superfoods to aid the re-mineralisation process. The detox will be mild and release through other channels rather than the breast-milk (Mother Nature is not silly!)

• Green smoothies and spirulina are great for iron and energy, but be sure to take a B12 supplement. B12 is crucial for nerve health and your needs are much higher when breastfeeding. Greens will also provide you and bubs with vitamin K needed for bone and jaw formation. And guess what if you don’t get enough, the baby will suck it out of your bones and teeth.

• Fats and Protein. You’ll need to eat more fats and protein to make quality breast-milk, so go for avo’s, chia seed and olives and olive oils and fresh coconut and coconut oil. You may want to consider a Vegan DHA oil blend (1 tbsp of Udo’s oil per day), as our bodies are no longer efficient in converting ALA found in plant based fats into DHA essential for babies brain and eye development.

• Calories. You don’t know what hunger is until you are a breastfeeding mum. You need at least another 500 calories per day that’s nearly 30% more calories per day than normal. Eat tones of fruit, followed by nuts, seeds and green smoothies, salad with avocado and sprouts and then finally if you are still ravenous (you probably will be) and you cant stomach another banana, try lightly steamed veggies, such as sweet potato, green beans and broccoli or cooked sprouted brown lentils or quinoa.

In the first few months of motherhood, my friend mama Skye and I estimated we spent over 16hrs a day breastfeeding!! I was still eating some cooked food at that stage and we frequently made huge batched of wholesome whole-meal spelt pasta and brown lentil bolognaise with spinach and olives.

During transition enjoy some wholesome cooked foods to nourish your body and baby if you feel like it. You both need the sustenance, its survival!

This concludes part 1 of this amazing 4 part series - catch Kath next week to find out more....!

Be Love; Be Peace; Be Vegan.