Does Raw Food Make You Sexier? Roe Gallo, Ph.D.
Website: www.roegallo.com

I am often asked if a raw food diet makes for better sex or perhaps makes you sexier. And, because I have a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality and I advocate enhancing raw food, I should be in the position to answer that exciting, widely-asked question.

So let's satisfy your curiosity right away. Yes, you can have that fabulous, fulfilling sex life. And yes, being sexy is absolutely within your grasp. What does it take to make this happen?

Energy is definitely the essence of sexy.

Having great energy is vital to having great sex and being sexier. Being lethargic or sick does not make you sexy or give you the energy you need to have great sex. This is where diet and exercise come into play. Who is sexier, a person full of energy or one who is sick and tired?

Therefore, when I get the question, "Will eating raw food improve my sex life or make me sexy?" My answer is a definite, "maybe."

Eating a diet of mostly enhancing foods (raw, organic fresh fruits and veggies) will help create energy in your body and energy is one of the key factors to great sex. Also, eating mostly enhancing foods will help you eliminate fat and create a body that can add to your confidence, and help you feel sexier. But having great energy and a great body are just not enough. You need to feel comfortable in your body and have that great attitude. All three are equally important: attitude, confidence and energy.

Being sexy and having great sex starts from the inside of the body and works its way out. It develops in beliefs and moves into thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and finally shows up in behaviors.

Let's look at what I call ACEing your sex life: Attitude, Confidence and Energy.

Attitude A great attitude toward life and a sex positive attitude are crucial for great sex that starts before and lasts long after the climax.

A powerful attitude includes a positive, fun disposition, an intense passion for living and an awareness of, a love for, and a connection to life. This type of attitude will continue in the bedroom and positively affect your sex life. And, who is sexier? A happy, positive person or someone who is miserable?

Genuine interest and passion are a must for great sex. Also, if you are genuinely interested, you will be more interesting. Again, who is sexier? Someone who is passionate and interested or someone who is boring and bored?

Along with a great attitude, sex positive thinking is essential for great sex. If you think sex is bad or wrong, you won't enjoy it. Neither will your partner and it certainly won't make you sexy. Think about it, who is sexier? Someone who thinks that sex is dirty and should be done under the covers with the lights out or someone who thoroughly enjoys it?

It is important to look at sex as positive and natural. This is a big step for most of us living in “sex negative societies.” What’s funny is that most of media, especially advertising, use sex appeal to sell TV shows, movies, books and almost all products. Yet, most of us are not inclined to admit that we like being sexually aroused, let alone arousing the sexual desire of another person or that we like sex period.

Having sexual desires is as natural as having an appetite for food or a thirst for water. Wanting to be sexually desired, to be sexy and to be sexual is also natural. Having sex with a great attitude about yourself, your partner and sex in general has the potential to make you sexier and your sex life sparkle.

You can develop a great sexy attitude by:

1. Looking for the best in everything that happens. Remember life is full of moments and we can choose to make them great. Ask yourself: "What could be great about this?" "What is the gift in this?" "What lesson can I learn from this and how can it help me be a better person?" When you continue to ask empowering questions, no matter how bad things may look, the answer will come. People who are optimistic, positive and joyful are sexy, negative people are not. Negativity does not make for great sex.

2. Developing empowering self-talk. Asking empowering questions and talking to yourself with love and respect is something that does not come naturally to most of us, and therefore, something you must consciously be aware of and develop. Self-hatred is not sexy. And, if you don't love yourself, you probably won't know how to love your partner in and out of bed.

3. Be passionate. Without passion for yourself, your life, your partner and sex, there is no sexy and there is certainty is no great sex. Without passion you cannot have a great attitude. Doing what you enjoy, expressing your enjoyment and not being afraid to let your partner know what you enjoy are a great start for becoming more passionate.

Confidence Confidence is the belief in your ability to succeed, to be the best you can be. This belief about yourself will affect every aspect of your life, including your sex life.

Being happy with yourself and comfortable in your body will dramatically influence how sexy you are. Who is sexier a person who believes in themselves or someone who is insecure?

Let’s not make the mistake of confusing confidence with arrogance or conceit because arrogance and conceit come from a place of self-doubt and insecurity. True confidence comes from a place of self-love.

Being sexier is just one benefit of confidence. Being confident will also help you communicate more with your partner. Good communication about sex, both in and out of bed, will have a positive impact on your sex life.

You can develop the confidence to be sexier by:

1. Seeing yourself as the best you can be – what you look like, how you feel, what you say to yourself and others, how happy you are, what you contribute to the world, how much love you have in your life. How you see yourself is what you will move toward. And it's all about where you are going, not where you have been. How sexy is that? Very!

2. Expecting success and happiness. Expect the best in yourself, in your relationships, your career and your life in general. This includes your sex life. Expect it to be great, put the energy into making it great and it will be great.

3. Celebrating all wins – no matter how small. Honoring yourself for everything you do. Even when what you do does not turn out all that great, you can look for the lesson and celebrate how it is a win by getting you closer to your best self. And your best self is certainly your sexier self.

Attitude and confidence start from a positive and empowering belief system. If we have any disempowering beliefs, it's time to consciously change them.

In my books, I dedicate a significant focus toward changing beliefs and I'll give you a brief exercise here on how to change a negative disempowering belief to an empowering one.

1. Think of a negative belief you have about yourself, life or sex. 2. What is this belief costing you right now? What are you missing out on? How much pain do it create in your life by believing this? 3. What would your life be like over the next five years if you did not change this belief? 4. Change this belief to one that will empower and enhance your life.

Here's an example:

1. What if you had the belief, "I am not comfortable with my sex partner because I hate my body"? 2. This belief is costing you joy, happiness, love and fun. You are not only missing out on having a wonderful sex life, but this belief will negatively affect your health and your relationship with your partner. You create pain and stress on a day-to-day basis because you are not happy with yourself. This is not healthy – physically, mentally or emotionally. 3. Over the next five years this belief causes you to become more and more miserable. Your relationships, your health and your life have suffered because of this belief. 4. A more empowering new belief is "I am taking care of my body and see it becoming the body I love. My body makes me feel great and sexy and totally comfortable with my partner."

With this new belief your life changes. You create the body you want, you expect to be sexy and you become sexy. Everything in your life improves and continues to improve over the next 5 years.

Energy A healthy mind coupled with a healthy body equals unstoppable energy. Can you have great sex if you are unhealthy, in pain and/or lethargic? I don't think so. At least not consistently. Energy is a last layer in getting and maintaining great sex.

Your body creates energy through food and exercise. Exercise gives you energy because it delivers oxygen and nutrients to your cells.

Recent studies have shown that exercise also improves: · Muscle tone and bone health · Cardio vascular health · Mental acuity · Mood

The evidence for the positive effects of exercise is overwhelming and absolutely important as a foundation for having great sex.

But the most important thing about exercising is doing it. And you won't do it until you love to do it. Make exercise fun. If you find a variety of ways to stay active doing the things that you enjoy, such as hiking, dancing, or gardening, you'll keep up the activities that form the basis for your exercise program.

Also, it is important to remember that you don’t have to go to a gym or even leave your home to get in great shape. Movement is the most important thing - just keep active. There are effective exercises you can do at home or on the road to create and maintain extraordinary energy throughout your busy day.

The second way to create energy is through what you eat. (Finally, it's about food.) Eating mostly enhancing foods (raw and fresh organic fruits and veggies) will give you the nutrients to build energy in your body.

You may be able to create energy in the short term while ignoring your body’s nutritional needs, but it will be much harder and won’t last long. Certainly not a good plan when your goal is to have great sex.

Eating enhancing food has so many benefits. It helps you:

1. Get and maintain a healthy weight without excess fat. Eating this way naturally lowers appetite. Your body creates appetite when it needs nutrients to create energy. When you eat foods that do not supply easily usable nutrients, your body will continue to create appetite until it is gets the nutrients it needs. Eating only compromising foods is one reason why most people are fat and obese and so undernourished. Getting fit helps you feel and look sexy.

2. Keep your body healthier. The majority of disease is caused by life style induced toxicity - mostly through the way we eat. A report released on March 16, 2007 from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on not eating enough fruits and veggies states: "A diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with decreased risk for chronic diseases." It continues about weight management. "In addition, because fruits and vegetables have low energy density (i.e., few calories relative to volume), eating them as part of a reduced-calorie diet can be beneficial for weight management." A healthy body is a sexier body.

3. Increase your natural energy level by providing more easily digestible, and easily usable nutrients to your body. Enhancing raw fruits and vegetables are the fuel for a great sex drive

Notice that I'm talking about enhancing raw food and not raw food. Why? Just because food is raw does not mean it is healthy!

Enhancing foods are easy to digest and high nutritional value. They get in, give you the nutrients you need and get out without a lot of fuss.

Foods that are considered part of a raw diet also include: nuts, seeds, dehydrated foods, badly combined foods (nuts and/or seeds mixed with fruits and/or veggies). These foods and combinations of foods don't provide nutrition in as easily digestible forms as enhancing raw foods.

Eating a mish-mash of food combinations, even if they are raw, will give you indigestion, create toxicity in your body and gas, and you will not assimilate the necessary nutrients from your food. Flatulence is not healthy, nor sexy!

With raw enhancing foods, the ideal is to eat only one food at a time. More common practice, however, is to combine like fruits or have simple green salad with one or two additions. My co-author and I refer to this focus on enhancing foods and food combinations as Mainstream Raw. Mainstream Raw is also the title of our new book coming out in October of this year.

Mainstream Raw focuses on the foods that are easiest to digest and have the greatest nutrient value: raw fruits and vegetables. In Mainstream Raw, these are considered enhancing foods. The Mainstream Raw approach creates a framework to incorporate more of these enhancing foods into our life style, and to make it easier to be enhancing raw anywhere, anytime.

While Vegan, Vegetarian and Raw food diets have been promoting fresh fruits and vegetables for a long time, there’s a difference with Mainstream Raw.

Most diets are focused on exclusions. What you can’t eat. Whether vegetarian, vegan, or raw, after the exclusions there are still plenty of compromising foods. You can easily become unhealthy on any of these diets – some faster than others.

Mainstream Raw is not a diet. The objective is to add enhancing fruits and vegetables in their most beneficial form: fresh, organic and raw. The focus is on additions. It’s about what you should eat more of.

However, that does not mean that there are no compromises. That’s why diets are dead-ends. No one likes to feel restricted or guilty about what they eat. In Mainstream Raw you choose your own compromises. The experience of most people who try this is that without restrictions they naturally begin to increase their enhancing foods intake, and as a result reduce the amounts of compromising foods they eat. More enhancing foods means more nutrients, less hunger, less eating and natural weight loss. More energy for better sex, and a body that makes you feel sexier.

Perhaps, it's more than a definite maybe then. I believe that following these tips and incorporating the benefits of Mainstream Raw within the ACE (attitude, confidence, energy) framework will get you to being sexier, having a great sex life and a great life overall. And I think we might agree that it is certainly worth trying for, isn’t it?

Dr. Roe Gallo Roe Gallo, Ph.D. is an internationally known and recognized author, motivational speaker, and health educator. For over 20 years, Dr. Gallo has successfully used the concepts in her books to help people become fit, healthier, and overcome serious diseases such as cancer, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Dr. Gallo began her private consulting practice in 1988, and published her first book in 1994. Along with individual counseling, she now conducts lectures, seminars, and workshops through the business she founded: OTM mindbodyTM. Dr. Gallo earned her Master's degree in Health Communication and her Ph.D. in Human Sexuality. She is an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University. Her website is: www.roegallo.com