I've been dipping my toes in the Raw till 4 world the last couple of weeks. My question is about between meals. I have a hard time getting in 1000 calories worth of fruit in one sitting. Everything I've read suggests 1000 calorie breakfast and 1000 calorie lunch from fruit. I haven't read anything regarding snacking though. I tend to fill up quickly and then get hungry an hour or so later. Is there any harm in having a 600-800 calorie meal and then supplementing with fruit between meals as I go through the day? And is the idea to refrain from eating all food between 4:00 and the cooked dinner?

There's no specific guide on what to eat and when to eat - it's all up to you and how well your body works with what you're feeding it. Eat as much as you want to feel healthy and happy, and keep it raw until dinnertime, that's the overall plan! Personally I take a 700 calorie fruit smoothie to lectures in the morning, then have another 700 smoothie before the lunchbreak and then at lunch I will have some more fruit, or a salad. Between lunch and dinner I'll snack on some veggies or more fruit, and then for dinner I will make a gigantic curry or potato-based dinner! I, like you, have quite a small stomach and so this is the plan that works best for me. However, since fruits and vegetables digest so fast you will find yourself being hungry ALL the time unless you train your stomach to enlarge and contain large amounts of food from one sitting. I like to do this by eating a gigantic lunch and dinner, with my breakfast and snacks around that being pretty 'average' size. Before I could barely finish a jacket potato and now I can have a big curry with a big bowl of rice and about 3 potatoes cut into chunks. Good luck!

I simply do not have a large enough stomach to eat the portion sizes the raw diet requires in a setting, and that would be about 500-600 calories a meal (I'm a smaller woman, I don't need 2500-3000 calories a day!). I eat several meals throughout the day and still struggle with the portion sizes because fruit and veg are so 'light' in the calorie department! I feel better eating many small meals, and that's what I'm going to do. I would follow what your body is telling you too! This is an inexact science, and so long as you are getting the amount of calories YOU need to feel good, it doesn't matter (IMO) how many meals to eat.

I am vegan ( not raw vegan), I would like to know what food is your main source of protein, and what is your daily intake if you don't mind me asking? I want to eat more fruit, but I am concerned about a blood sugar spike, is that a problem for you eating so much fruit?

I have a wordpress blog, which is linked to in my signature underneath this, where you can see plenty posts of "What I Eat In a Day" which follows with my nutrition for the day - I use a tracker called CRON-O-Meter which seems to be very popular amongst foodies. I normally hit 90% nutrients or so - I have a very busy lifestyle so it's great that I can even get that in!

I don't have a main source of protein per se because it exists in all fruits and veggies, such that I naturally hit my goal (10% calories coming from protein) from the food I'm eating. In fact sometimes I find it hard to keep my protein low! I do always have spinach in my morning smoothie though - it's a good protein source if you end up not eating very well that day.

No, it's never a problem for me! My smoothies give me an amazing boost - not the boost you get from a candy overdose, but a clarity-of-mind brain boos - in the mornings and I don't know what I'd do without them. Breakfast is boring if I don't have a smoothie!

My daily intake seems to be around 2500+ calories! Some days a lot less, some a lot more!

If this helps any: my digestion used to take about 48 hours to process food before going vegan (time from entering to exiting) and apparently this is normal for a meateater. With the way I eat now, my digestion takes EIGHT hours! I could eat at 10pm and wake up the next morning pooping it all out, my digestion is that fast. The quality of my digestive system and my poo, to me, is a perfect indicator of how well my body is responding to my diet - I'm obviously doing something right and would recommend more fruit to everyone and anyone!

Since I quit eating meat and dairy a few months ago, I noticed that my digestive system is moving a lot faster. Sometimes I go 3 times a day. Thanks for responding and I will check out your blog.

TMI