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Raw Questions & Answers
No Pills Powders or Gimmicks!
Advice from Best Weigh founder Chris Califano, ten years raw & 25 years vegan.

Just click on the orange blog title to see a dialogue box for you to leave a comment or ask a question. 

To also see Chris' Raw Living Proof Eleven Years Blog click here

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Sprouting Raw Muscle
By Best Weigh Fitness Raw Blog | August 04, 2010 at 05:11 PM EDT | 2 comments

Sprouting Raw Muscle

 

This is the most frequent question I get.  Being able to produce lean tissue without any artificial means of any kind is the best way to determine if your raw diet is working. The same raw vegan diet that is best for firming and building is the same diet for losing excess fat or achieving optimum health and endurance. it all depends on how you implement the exact same nutrition.


Can you really build muscle on a 100% raw vegan diet? I'm doing it. The last time I had any animal food was in 1984. The last time I had a cooked food meal was 1999. The last time I had any health food supplement was 1991. I am interested in the "best weight" or more aptly the best body composition poiund for pound, thus the name of my gym and teaching kitchen: The Best Weigh. The best and healthiest cells have to eat raw, which I finally started eating and adding to the program in 2001. If growing just the biggest body based on simply size at any health cost and not pure muscle is your desire then you might want to consume some animal products. It is not animal–origin protein per se that helps to cause excess growth in the body but the hormone action that it causes. Plus the included hormones do not hurt the growth process including tumors. Animal protein is the most dangerous of all carcinogens based on T. Colin Campbell's famous 50 year study which includes the largest and most comprehensive human study ever done in human history.

 

Chris back muscles squat bar

Chris shown above warming up with the bare bar for a set of squats. Chris is not structurally suited for heavy weight training, especially basic core exercises such as barbell squats, due to poor leverages, weak lower spine and knees, etc, yet through proper application of fundamental physiological laws, persistence and a special program of his own design he was able to gain an amazing 70 pounds of muscle without drugs or supplements! Ask any of his Locust Valley or Long Island University classmates and they will tell you about his incredible transformation that literally changes his life.

 

Without a doubt this is the most frequently asked question I get other than "where do you get your protein"? Now keep in mind that I am answering this coming from a 100% raw WHOLE fruit and vegetable diet for the last TEN YEARS. I started going raw eleven years ago but did not start going all the way until ten years ago. 


So my answer is not to be confused with those who have been raw for six months or only a few years, let alone 100%. I have heard of others who say that they are raw but they also eat ingredients such as oatmeal, streamed vegetables, various supplements etc. I do not. I only ate that garbage when I was cooked, and even then I found that eliminating the supplements only helped me build muscle, as all my students over the decades have also experienced. 


Ever since I went raw I decided to do it the best way. Only 100% whole, fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts and seeds. I over-did the nuts and seeds as I transitioned with my own designed raw gourmet dishes. I mistakenly assumed that the initial "raw food restaurant" diet was healthy. Not only was it not healthy it was certainly not building any muscle. To actually add functional lean tissue to your frame you must be in 100% health. I knew that even when I was cooked. Fundamentals never change.


Nothing can match building muscle on a 100% raw diet! And to me that means ZERO supplements, "super–foods" powders or gimmicks. I just wanted to see what would happen when I did not so much as eat a dehydrated cracker, "raw bar" or other so–called raw concoction other than the basics.


Well now I can honestly say that you can build muscle on a raw vegan 100% pure diet. SInce everyone has their own idea of what enough muscle is I can only show you pictures and be a living example of my ten–year plus experiment. (Actually I also smashed the protein myth for over 25  years since I went vegan, so this is no biggie for me!) I am however overjoyed that something so simple can be achieved. Imagine: real food without cooking or processing in any way and not taking any extra pills, powders or gimmicks. And it feels, smells and works the best of all! I love simplicity. 


I want my readers to know that I have been 100% committed to staying 100% raw since I started. I will never "Sell out" buy eating any cooked food in my diet. The only supplements I ever took were some B12 micro-dots that I consume once every month or so if I remember. I did go about 20 years without them however. Oh well. I still built muscle.By the way, ever since I can remember; all the experts in the medical, nutritional and physiological field have always said that the most important indicator of health as we age is the maintenance of lean muscle mass. After age 55 if known that the main cause of death to replace heart disease and cancer, is in fact a fall that leads to death in the hospital from pneumonia and other complications. This is all avoided if the individual had maintained the strength of their muscles, which is the best way to create and keep bone mass. 


The added bonus of a proper raw vegan diet is the amount of body–recognizable protein and calcium that you get in abundance. But without actual weight training with the right all-body exercises (not arm curls and pec deck or flyes or namby-pamby chrome weights while swinging wildly to the beat…), then not much will happen.


I have always loved building and maintaining my tall skinny body ever since I moved to Long Island from Manhattan. When I went vegan I only got more in touch with better quality muscle. Now that I am over ten years raw I feel even more blessed and lucky to have decided to go raw! It is the best feeling in the world!  –Chris

2 comments | Add a New Comment
1. mrzhutch | August 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM EDT

I am not a vegetarian or vegan but I really like your web site. I do like eating a lot of raw veggies but I am not sure about eating that clean all of the time:-) Anyway, this was a very interesting article about building muscle as a vegan.

http://superbodyfitness.com/

2. Chris Califano | November 19, 2010 at 03:45 PM EST

If you are interested in a truly super body and super fitness then you should try to eat a totally raw diet made up primarily of the best proven super athlete food in the world, FFRESH SWEET FRUIT. I used to eat a \"typical raw\" diet, and was vegan since 1985, but northing compares to this. I have had my own training and diet business for over 30 years and have personally trained hundreds of serious athletes, men and women. The long term winners in terms of best strength to weight ratio are always those who eat The Best Weigh, which is the high fruit raw diet with less than ten percent total (overt as well as in the fruit and dark greens themselves) fat. Nothing comes close. Of course one must do the most difficult activity in their lives- it is all mental- and that is- DECIDE to change and then stick with it long enough to enjoy the truly amazing rewards that the uninitiated are truly missing. They slave an slave and slave away . \"eating soup with a fork\" and force feeding their cells with supplements and poor quality processed \"food\" plus second-hand animal products in the hope that they are going to get into shape. Some add what they think is mostly muscle but it is simply bulk from undigested waste products. I know. I used to be a walking garage dump (even when I was vegan i had no idea about how the quality of our food affects every single body function. I shudder to think that I actually ate chicken, and took \"protein supplements\" and other so-called mass marketed useless whey protein, creatine, or whatever mumbo-jumbo that unscrupulous or \"newbie\" fitness buffs \"believe\" in! Let me just say that when you have been in this as long as I have, you tend to live solely by what you ABSOLUTELY know, not by what you believe.

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