Hi Lisa,

and welcome to the list. Craving for carbs, and more specifically for
sugar, is indeed a common problem. I think part of the solution is just to
get the habit of non-sweet foods. When I was a child, I put 2 pieces of
sugar in my cup of tea. A few years after, I suppressed the sugar in my
tea, but I still used sugar for my coffee. It took a while before I became
able to drink coffee by itself (but I gave up coffee when I started raw
food).

To decrease the need for sweets, what worked for me:

 -do not have fruit-only meals. I know that some people on the list will
disagree and say that fruits shouldn't be combined with any other food,
but unless you eat a high quantity of fruit, hunger is difficult to
satisfy and fruit-only meals can promote carb-cravings.

 -Don't finish your meal with something sweet. It can be hard at the
beginning to be satisfied with a meal which starts sweets and finishes
bitter, but once you get the habit, you become less addicted to the sweet
taste.

 -Fats satisfy hunger very quickly, and the satisfaction by eating them
replaces the need to be satisfied by sweets.

> Dinner is the hardest.  If I eat a couple of crackers with my mate-(who is a
> bread/salami & heavy cheese man), I end up binging on them.  Then the cheese,
> which dosen't set well in my system.

Is your cheese raw or cooked? [In the latter case, replacing with raw
cheese in moderation can be an improvement].

Also, as Tom said, eating a raw is not a goal in itself; rather, you
should aim at eating foods your body is comfortable with, raw or cooked.
If you find that you binge excessively on crackers, it could suggest a
lack of satisfaction in your current raw diet [I am speculating], which
may fade away or not. Perhaps introducing a small quantity of lightly
cooked food can help to decrease cravings?

JL