Muscle Power: Nutrition and Strength
Would you like to gain weight or develop a shapely, contoured body with the help of raw foods?
Two popular rawfood books for muscle building and strength training are:
- Raw Power - Building Strength and Muscle Naturally by Stephen Arlin, and
- Nutrition and Physical Performance by Douglas N. Graham.
If weight-lifting bores you, then check out spin Poi at tonyakay.com where LA rawfood dancer Tonya Kay offers a How to Spin Poi DVD with a set of poi.
Tonya writes of her DVD:
“It’s a workshop designed to build core strength and define upper body, discover new levels of artistic self-expression, and offer meditation to the physically active.”
There’s a great video on her site showing her spin poi-ing! Poi spinning was used by Maori warriors as strength training before battle.
Doug Graham writes of his book Nutrition and Physical Performance:
“This book will answer your questions on raw food nutrition, and performance/recovery in athletics. I go into detail about the program I have used with thousands of top athletes. You will experience improved energy and performance ability using the principles in this easy book (this is the newest version of Nutrition & Athletic Performance).”
Stephen Arlin writes of Raw Power!:
“This is the only book on body-building, weight-lifting, total fitness, diet and nutrition for building and maintaining muscle and strength, and eating a raw food diet.”
“It has chapters on the Power of the Mind, the Rawfood Diet, Exercise and Weight Training, Weight Loss, Raw Body building Foods, Raw Body-building Supplements, and Raw Bodybuilding recipes.”
Photographs include: Proper execution of exercises, Men’s workouts, Women’s work-outs, and a work out for people over 50.
Doug and Stephen share similar views on raw food nutrition. Doug recommends we eat:
- Carbohydrates for 80% of our calories – from fresh, organic raw fruits;
- Protein for 10% of calories – mostly from vegetable fruits and green leafy vegetables; and
- Fats only 10% of calories – from nuts, seeds and avocado.
Doug is against oils, sprouted grains, and raw sun-dried olives. He says the bitterness of olives mean they’re not a human food. I disagree, we humans have eaten olives for 10,000 years. Wikipedia reports: “wild olives were collected by Neolithic peoples as early as the 8th millennium BC.”
Stephen reports that he eats, by weight: 70% raw organic fruit, 25% green-leafy vegetables and 5% raw nuts and sunflower seeds.
Both Doug and Stephen recommend a vegan raw food diet, low in fat. Read Why No Oils? here – not even virgin olive oil on your salad 
Back Pain: How to Sit
Using an MRI scanner, researchers found that a 135 degree trunk-thigh angle is the ideal sitting position to prevent back pain.
Rawfooders live by the principle: Prevention Is the Cure. Back pain is the biggest cause of work-related disability in the United States.
Read how to protect your back, and see a photo of how we need to sit.
