“Consistency Is Key” - An Article by Matt Monarch

The following information is for education only and is not meant to diagnose, prescribe, or treat illness. It is valuable to seek the advice of an alternative health care professional before making any changes.

In my opinion, eating consistently is one of the key ingredients to health and longevity. When I say eating consistently, I don’t mean sticking to a 100% Raw Food Diet, always. I mean eating the same kinds and quantities of food every day, no matter what type of diet you eat. For example, you could be on a 100% Raw Food Diet eating three times a day on Monday and seven times a day on Tuesday. Or you could be eating 16 ounces of food, twice a day with the same amount of fats and carbs in each of those meals, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

When you make any PERMANENT improvement in your intake, you will become younger (regenerate) and go through detoxification. A ‘true’ improvement in diet is when you ALWAYS and FOREVERMORE eat fewer kinds and quantities of foods than before.

When you go from almost any cooked/processed food diet to any 100% Raw Food Diet, it is generally an improvement. Therefore, often a new 100% Raw Food Eater can overeat massive amounts of food and still become younger. However, this does not last forever. As you detoxify more and more, your body becomes cleaner and more efficient. Your body ‘evolves’ and doesn’t need as much food (fuel) as it used to require, to maintain high energy levels.

In my book ‘Raw Success‘, I introduce the concept of ‘Stabilizing Out’. You can pick ANY IMPROVED DIET YOU WANT - vegan, macrobiotic, raw, whatever - and if you eat the same kinds and quantities of foods every single day, then you will become younger, detoxify and at some point, you will catch up with the diet that you are doing and stabilize out at that CONSISTENT diet (where the massive detox will slow down). All intake of food produces fermentation and gas (waste) in the body. The better your diet (meaning the fewer kinds and quantities of foods you eat), then the less waste is produced in your body. Since with an improved diet there will be less waste consistently entering your body, your body now has the space to dump out the old waste produced from our past poor food choices.

As I said before, you can choose ANY IMPROVED DIET YOU WANT. You can seriously take your diet to eating just one small 5oz meal a day or even less than that (if you keep up with the detoxification) if you choose (in ‘Raw Success’ I discuss all of the benefits and consequences of doing something like this). The key for ultimate health is to drink vegetable juices/green smoothies/energy soup and other ‘ocean mineral rich’ foods/supplements alongside whichever diet you choose, to make sure you are getting all of the nourishment that you need. The solid food you are eating is mainly working as a detoxification regulator. The true nourishment can come from the vegetable juices, which are easily absorbed into the body.

There is about a 20% margin for error at your stabilized out, consistent diet. If you have been on a 100% Raw Vegan Diet for 10 years and you eat a McD’s Hamburger, there is a big chance that you may end up gravely ill. This is because you were edging up to that 20% margin of error. If somebody that has been on a 100% Raw Food Diet for 50 years ate that same hamburger, there is a GREAT chance that could kill them. The longer someone is 100% Raw, the more damaging past food choices becomes to them. The 50-year 100% Raw Food Eater would be eating out of their 20% margin for error range and it could kill them. If you used to eat vegan junk food for years on end, and then improved your diet to a 100% Raw Food Eater and stabilized out on this 100% Raw Food diet, after 4 - 12 years (depending on who you are: weight/age etc.), your body will have detoxified a lot and is now cleaner and doesn’t need as much food. The 20% margin for error will have shifted from the intake of a ! ‘Junk Food Vegan’ to a ‘100% Raw Food Eater’. Those vegan junk foods are now tapping closer to the edge of that 20% margin and will now most likely leave a 100% Raw Food Eater like this feeling extremely ill, whereas before they improved their diet, they would have had no problem with those vegan junk foods.

If you eat poor food choices from your past and break that 20% margin for error, it can be dangerous. If you go in the other direction of that 20% margin and CONSISTENTLY eat less than your stabilized diet, then you will detoxify and become younger again. When you eat less like this, it shifts that 20% margin, so your body requires less and less food. Again, you can seriously take your diet to eating one small 5oz meal a day or even less than that, if you choose. In ‘Raw Success’ I discuss all of the benefits and consequences of eating very little like this.

The further you take your diet by eating fewer kinds and quantities of foods, the less leeway you’ll have with that 20% margin of error, and the more consistent you’ll want to be with your diet if you want to feel good. Check out this excerpt from my book Raw Spirit:

In Hilton Hotema’s, ‘Man’s Higher Consciousness‘ book (my FAVORITE Raw Food Book) there was a story about a man (Luigi) who only ate 12 oz. of food once a day for many decades. Before this regimen, he was very ill and nothing could be found to cure his sickness except these small meals once a day. Years later, a friend of his challenged him to eat 16 oz. of food. Neither of them thought much of the dare, but after eating those extra 4 oz., the man became grievously ill. He had become “locked in” and any deviation was dangerous. After readopting his previous quantities, the man recovered and continued thriving.

After you stabilize out on ANY diet for a long period of time, at some point the ‘Becoming Younger Process’ ends and you will start to age again. In regards to your stabilized out diet, the fewer kinds and quantities of food you eat, the slower this aging process occurs. If you wanted to restart the Detoxification and Becoming Younger Process again, you would then need to start CONSISTENTLY eating fewer kinds and quantities of food again. The main issue here is that the less you eat, the more sensitive you become to environmental and other toxins, which have the potential to accelerate aging also. In my book ‘Raw Success’, I discuss in great detail how to find an optimal balance between your food intake and the environment around you.

There is no need to JUMP into eating small quantities of food on a 100% Raw Food Diet or even eating a 100% Raw Food Diet at all. In the long run, it is key to eat the same kinds and quantities of food every single day. It’s not all just about eating 16oz of Raw Foods 2 - 3 times a day, because eating 16oz of almond butter is very different to eating 16oz of watermelon. 16oz can be an ideal average meal size (quantity) - eating just almond butter is not really advisable though in terms of the kinds of foods ingested!

I feel my BEST when I am consistent. I practically eat the SAME thing EVERY SINGLE DAY. Dr. Norman Walker states in one of his books that he ate the SAME breakfast for over 12 years. When I am consistent, I eat the same amount of carbs and fat each day. I blend a couple of apples with a couple of tablespoons of nut butter and I add a SMALL handful of dried fruit to that mixture as my lunch every day. My salad later in the day generally consists of 1/2 an avocado, a bit of nut butter with a certain amount of vegetables, every single night. You may think that this gets boring. Absolutely NOT!!! I get excited when it is mealtime. I switch up the fruits, nut butters, and veggies to make sure I am getting a wide variety of nutrients. However, I eat the SAME AMOUNT of fat, carbs and veggies EVERY SINGLE DAY. That is what I mean by consistency!

When I eat consistently like that, I feel my best. When I eat more than that, I don’t feel as well. When I eat less than that, I have MASSES of energy. When I eat less than that consistently, I detoxify and become cleaner faster.

In the beginning when you choose an improved consistent diet, it may feel difficult to get used to an empty stomach feeling. Additionally, you will most likely go through mood swings and emotional issues may rise to the surface. In the beginning, it can be ok to slip around with the QUANTITIES of food, because it can take MANY YEARS to stabilize out on your new improved diet and to shift that 20% margin for error.

It gets even BETTER!!! After many years of being stabilized out on a particular diet, your body will now take advantage of this consistency and become cleaner and more efficient on its own. At that point, even when eating your consistent intake, your body will now give you signs, such as sluggishness, which are an indication of your body asking you to eat even less food because you don’t need as much anymore. This is around the point where the ‘Becoming Younger’ process ends and we start to age on our particular consistent diet. This is where your absolutely consistent stabilized diet (lets call this a ‘0% margin’) starts to raise to 1%, then 2%, and so on, as you pollute your body with this consistent unwanted extra fuel. This may extend its way up closer and closer to the 20% margin for error, at which point you will age more and more. This is why it is important to eat less and less as the years go by.

I have been eating 100% Raw Vegan for 10 years now. My 20% margin for error has been shifting to smaller quantities of food for 10 years. When I first started to eat 100% Raw, overeating on Raw Foods was my consistent stabilized diet (my base point of 0% margin for error). As the years went by, I became cleaner and more efficient and my body didn’t do well with that much food anymore. This shifted my 20% margin for error to a Raw Food Diet eating fewer kinds and quantities of food. After 10 years of eating a 100% Raw Food Diet, if I were to overeat those same amounts of foods that I used to eat when I first started eating this way, I feel I would be pushing to around a 8 - 10% margin, damaging my body more than if I were to consistently eat less food at my new 0% margin.

If I were to overeat Raw Foods consistently for the rest of my life, I would most likely not live past 90 years old (all other circumstances aside). My body would continually become cleaner, so if I carried on overeating and working against the body, I would start to push to perhaps a 12 - 15% margin for error, damaging my body. The key for optimal health is to continually systematically under eat, at or near that 0% error margin. Someone eating a cooked whole foods diet at their stabilized out, 0% error margin would most likely live longer than a 100% Raw Food Eater who is overeating at their 18% margin for error. When you are pushing your body to the edge like this, it is damaging to you. When you eat healthy cooked whole foods, it can hold you back and stop the RAPID ‘Becoming Cleaner’ process that a 100% Raw Food lifestyle can provide.

A great example is the man who was eating 12oz of food once each day for many decades. If he were to start eating a 14oz meal a day, he would be pushing towards that 20% margin for error, which in turn could age him more rapidly than someone who is stabilized out eating fast food on the Standard American Diet three times a day.

I know…CRAZY!!! Misunderstanding around these ideas is only ONE of the reasons why I feel a lot of the 100% Raw Food Pioneers didn’t live that long. My book Raw Success is about raw vegan longevity and discusses how to succeed in the long-run. Raw Success also gives many other reasons why I feel a lot of 100% Raw Food Eaters are not living well past 100 years old.

In summary… Yes! The less you eat, the less eating food will age you… IF… you eat consistently at your stabilized diet (0% error margin). If you push the edges of this 20% margin, you will age rapidly, as you are eating more than your body requires.

Consistency is key to being in balance on all levels. When you bounce all over the place with your diet, your stabilized consistent diet is somewhere in the mess and you will most likely range from high to low amounts of energy as you push both ends of your 20% margin for error. As you reach the lower end of the 20% margin for error, you will become cleaner faster. Each time you push towards the higher ends of the 20% margin, you are cleaner and each time you do this, it becomes more damaging to your body. Consistency is key.

It can feel like an extraordinary accomplishment to eat small amounts consistently, with a 100% Raw Food Lifestyle. I feel this is one of the reasons that many of the Raw Food ‘Experts’ out there eat an 80% Raw Food Diet. They are successful eating small consistent amounts this way, which is GREAT. In my opinion, if you can accomplish the seemingly testing task of consistently eating small amounts of food as a 100% Raw Foodist, it is the IDEAL WAY TO GO for health. Doing this, you will likely go to bed “hungry” and have endless amounts of energy all day long. I have the intention to reach the point some day where I am eating small raw food meals CONSISTENTLY I’ll let you know when it feels like I’m there…!