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One of the most important aspects of eating a low fat, high fruit raw vegan diet is (you guessed it) eating low amounts of fat.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before and has been covered extensively by low-fat promoters Douglas Graham, John McDougall, Jeff Novick, Joel Fuhrman and others, an *optimal* human diet consists of no more than 10% of calories from fat.

On a 2000 calorie diet, this works out to around 4 oz (or 1/3 to 1/2) of an avocado or 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) of nuts/seeds.

However, I recognize that sometimes you may wish to have a little bit of extra fat.  Maybe you are attending a raw food potluck and want to try some of the dishes offered, but many of them are nut-based and you’re worried that they will push your fat intake over the top for the day.

Or perhaps it’s a particularly cold and rainy day outside (like it is today for me, actually) and you just really want a big, hearty salad with a nice diced avocado (or two) on top.

I’m sure we’ve all been in these situations (I know I have), given in to the extra fat and possibly (okay, most definitely) felt guilty as a result.

But is this guilt really necessary? Can’t we indulge in high fat raw recipes from time to time?

Yes, We Can!

I just cut right to the chase on this one, huh?

An important concept to understand is that the 10% or below fat ratio – as mentioned above – does not have to be followed every second of every minute of everyday.  Making sure that every meal you eat falls within these low fat guidelines is not necessary for optimal health.

What IS necessary for optimal health is that you follow a low fat raw vegan diet *overtime.*

Overtime, Not Everyday

You can indulge in high fat raw recipes as long as you remain within the healthy fat range overtime (say, over the entire month) and you will still be maintaining a healthy low fat raw vegan diet.

But how do accomplish this?

Easy!  Here’s an example:

Say you eat a 2000-calorie diet.  For five days, you choose not to consume any overt fats and so your fat intake stays around 5% of total calories.  On day six, you decide to eat one avocado for the day, shooting your fat intake up to around 20%.

No big deal!  If you average out the entire six days, you’ll notice that you have only consumed about 7.5% of your total calories from fat!

One Word of Caution

After a while you may experience some negative consequences from eating fatty recipes, even if it’s an infrequent event for you.

I know that in my early raw days, I could eat 2 avocados in one sitting on occasion without any ill effects.  Today, I can’t eat more than about a third of an avocado at a time without getting a headache and waking up nauseated the next morning.

And I only eat overt fats later in the day, as any morning or afternoon fatty snacking leaves me very groggy and irritable.

Easy, Right?

Hopefully I’ve shown how easy and guilt-free it is to indulge in high fat, gourmet raw recipes from time to time.  As long as you remain mindful of the fat you are consuming and average out your fat intake overtime, you can easily make sure that you remain well within a healthy range.

For more information on the best raw vegan diet, be sure to visit www.fitonraw.com and subscribe to Swayze’s newsletter Peachy Keen Ezine. By subscribing, you will also receive the free report The 4 Principles of a Healthy Raw Diet as well as the 5-week mini-course The Fool Proof Transition to Raw.