If you have considerable non-vegetarian food in your diet presently, and want to shift to a vegetarian diet, it is better not to make the complete switch all of a sudden. The gut microflora and your digestive organs need a couple of months to make a smooth transition. Taking about 3 months for this shift is quite safe. In the first week itself, you can drop up to 70% of your non-veg intake. Then taper off the remaining 30% over the next 2 months. In case you do not get a good range of protein rich vegetarian food where you live, you could perhaps use some of the superfood supplements or vegetarian eggs.
During your shift to vegetarianism many of your body parameters and set points will also shift. Be sure that you are working with the correct measurements that indicate beneficial change, like a feeling of lightness, higher energy levels, reduced sleepiness during the day, regular detoxification, healthy weight loss, clearer complexion, a clearer mind, better concentration, lesser sensitivities and allergies, lesser flatulence, reduction in body odor, reduction in teeth plaque and bad breath. During your shift, always adhere to the laws of nature and the laws of the human body that are explained all throughout this book. Without their support, you may chronicle just one more story of a person failing to make the switch.
Switching to vegetarianism also sets in a natural detoxification process in the body because of the cleansing effect of fruits and vegetables. If you make a quick switch, your body could detoxify very fast, even to an extent that you may feel that you are coming down with severe illness. One more reason of spreading the switch over a period of 3 months is to keep the detox effects mild. During detoxification, a lot of stored up toxins in the body re-enter into the blood stream to be processed and expelled out of the body and this manifests as many symptoms. The most common symptoms are headaches, aches and pains, feeling irritable, congestion, in severe cases vomiting, sweating, fevers, and dizziness. Often you may find yourself re-experiencing symptoms of diseases or sickness you have had in the past. Detox can last a day or two, and sometimes even a week. Drink lots of water during the detox phase and be patient with yourself. Take a nap whenever necessary during the day and do not cut short your night sleep. You might even want to take a day off from work and go for a walk in nature while your body cleanses itself. When the detox period is over, you will experience a new level of energy, rejuvenation and mental clarity.
As you transit into vegetarianism and especially if you are having more of raw vegetable salads and raw vegetable juices, you may feel them lacking in taste at the start and for a little while later too. This happens because the strong tasting tenderizers, sauces, condiments, and flavor enhancers that are normally used in meats have numbed the natural sensitivity of your taste buds. All you have to do to regain this sensitivity is stop using strong flavorings and watch your taste buds liven up again to appreciate even the subtlest flavors of vegetables, grains, roots and fruits. Towards the end of your switch, take help of the 21-day principle and just shift entirely onto the subtle tastes of all things vegetarian and let your body set itself into the new norm. Do not feel insecure about being called a vegetarian. Going vegetarian for healthy or compassionate reasons is quite in vogue nowadays with thousands of people making the switch everyday.
If you are planning to go completely raw, now that is a total different experience in itself. As you taste the natural flavors of raw vegetables and fruits or even lightly flavored cooked vegetables and smell their delicate fragrances, even feel their textures with your tongue, your senses take you on a trip into nature through your imagination of the fields, gardens or orchards where these foods could have grown. You also wonder about the seasons they are grown in, their organic origins, farming methods and you also feel an inner gratitude for the people who have toiled to supply you with these foods.
There are many non-vegetarians who portray that a pure vegetarian diet is not complete because it does not supply the body a select few vitamins and enough protein. In fact, there are even some vegetarians who say that vegetarianism seems lacking in complete nutrition. All these people have not yet understood how the human body absorbs nutrition. There are several intrinsic factors within the human body that are responsible for the nutrient absorption capacity of the body and if
you are lacking in those factors, then even though you supply yourself with nutrition, it will not be absorbed properly.
The common modern view is that, it is only what is put inside the mouth that constitutes nutrition. But that is the incompleteness of modern understanding. All physical beings on this planet, including humans, exist in a soup of internal energy that is balanced by external energy. The internally energy is created from physical nutrition and radiates outward from the body. This is balanced by fields of external energy that surround the earth and radiate into the human body, supplying it with subtle etheral energy that is also a form of nutrition that the human body needs. I will explain what these forms of energy are and how they work, in the next chapter.