Angela Stokes' Tips on How to Stay on the Raw Food Diet

Raw foodism involves is a step beyond vegetarianism since it excludes all cooked foods including pasta and beans. Diets consist of unprocessed foods.

On the diet, Stokes, 30, went from 300 pounds to 138 pounds in two years. She has kept off the weight for four years and feels great about it.

"Six years ago I was 300 pounds and had no interest in health whatsoever. And I'm still here," she told Natural News. "I wouldn't be here still, six years later, if there wasn't a good reason for it.

Stokes suggested that one way to stay on a diet which eschews cooked food is going to potlucks.

"I would see people's different creations and just that sense of community and it's not just me," she said. "That really nice feeling of 'there's other people who are on this path'."

She also suggests the site GiveitToMeRaw.com as one online community for raw foodists.

She also suggests that people who want to attempt the diet realize that for her, it "is a lifestyle." She suggests starting off at a 50 percent raw, 50 percent cooked diet and working up to 100 percent if possible.

"It's not about going on some diet you're going to go off again at some point. That's not the mentality around it from my perspective.