Meredith,

It has been so long (about 17 years) since I got into NH that I
can't remember all the details, but I know that in the beginning it
was a real see-saw thing with lots of good behavior periods
interspresed with falling off the wagon & pigging out in between.
It took a while.  Your anecdotes sounded a lot like my exepriences.
I assume that since you did not mention it, that long fasting has
not been done yet.  If so, this is absolutely the best thing you can
do.  When you are long fasting you are totally free of all food
addiction, raw or cooked.  It is like entering a different world, a
slow, sane rational world where you are inside watching the food
addicted on the outside mess up their lives.  This is the best way I
can describe it, but it is absolutely the best way to get where you
want to go as fast as possible.  Just be very careful coming off a
fast & don't let the ravenous appetite you can experience then make
you run amuck.  Each year I am into raw seems to me to be easier &
easier to maintian this diet, & the negative reactions to even
minimal amounts of cooked foods become stronger.  Today I can
tolerate very, very little cooked without my body rebelling in one
way or another. I know that long ago when I was only part way into
NH that if I fell off the raw wagon & started pigging out on cooked,
that if I did this for 3 days I would be addicted to cooked again &
then have to exercise discipline to get off cooked.  Today I could
not tolerate even 1 day of cooked without getting sick.

My experience is that trying to ease into raw is the hard, slow way,
while fasting so that you first remove the addiction to all food &
then when you break the fast just staying with raw is by far the
easiest plan.  Fasting is really so easy & pleasant that I long for
those times when my schedule permits a long one, & after a couple of
days you are into the fast & feeling great.  Aside from that, the
best advice I can give is just to stay away from cooked temptations,
whether they be pizza joints or convenience stores.  Just get away,
because if you place cooked foods under the nose of somebody trying
to switch over, you are asking almost the impossible for them to
resist.

Good Luck & give it time,

--Doug Schwartz
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