160: Exploring Raw Foods Without Rules with Lissa of Raw Food Romance

What happens when you stop thinking about raw food as all-or-nothing and start seeing it as another delicious way to eat more plants?

In this episode, I sat down with Lissa from Raw Food Romance to talk about her 11-year journey with raw foods, the myths that keep people from trying them, and how adding more fresh fruits and vegetables can be more fun than you think.

Whether you’re raw-curious or looking for fresh ways to enjoy plants, Lissa shares practical tips, creative techniques, and a refreshing perspective that aligns with the Clean Food Dirty Girl philosophy: do what works for you, make it mouthgasmic, and focus on progress over perfection.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Lissa’s journey from high-fat diets to a raw food lifestyle.
• What a day of raw eating looks like for Lissa and how much calories she eats.
• How to safely make sprouted legumes, raw tempeh, and fermented vegetables at home.
• Creative uses for a dehydrator, including wraps, burgers, crackers, and snacks.
• Grocery shopping tips and sourcing ingredients in different environments.
• The difference between fermentation and pickling.

Helpful links:

• Raw Food Romance Instagram
• Raw Food Romance E-books & Recipes (Use code RAWFOOD40 for 40% off)
• Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz
• Plant-based documentaries
• Chickpea Miso Workshop
• Our Clean Food Dirty Girl Website
• Follow Clean Food Dirty Girl on Instagram

Transcript, auto-generated, may have errors

Molly Patrick (00:16)
Hey there and thank you for listening to this episode of the Clean Food Dirty Girl podcast. I am here with Alyssa from Raw Food Romance. Alyssa, thanks for joining us. This is a different topic than I have covered in the past. As you know, we are mainly whole food plant-based and that’s where we’re coming from. You’re coming from a raw angle, and I wanted to have you on just because we do get questions about this in our community. Like I was talking to you before we hit record, I’m always open to talking to people who come at it from a different angle, but there’s a lot of overlap as well. So I think that this is going to be a fun conversation. Thank you for joining me and welcome.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (01:01)
Thank you so much. This is so much fun. I’ve been looking forward to this one. Because like you said, it’s nice to merge them; it’s not about all or nothing. It’s about trying your best every day to include different things into your life. So it’s going to be fun.

Molly Patrick (01:15)
Yeah, and that’s very much where I come from as well. What we were talking about a little bit is there’s a lot of people who are eating a diet that’s not a vegan diet or a whole food plant-based diet or a raw diet. They’re just eating kind of a standard diet. And even within the standard diet, there are things that are plant-based that they’re eating and there are things that are raw that they’re eating. They might not look at it from that angle or use that language, but there’s so much overlap in all the different ways of eating.

Even in the whole food plant-based world, I live in Hawaii and we have delicious Jamaican lilikoi—it’s a passion fruit. There are a couple of big passion fruit bushes that I pass by on my morning walk. The people who live in these houses that have these amazing lilikoi bushes don’t eat their fruit, so it’s always just dropping and there’s so much of it. Every morning I’m taking some. I was eating this delicious lilikoi this morning and I thought of you because this is raw and I eat it every day. There are things that we do eat raw already. I want to first dive in and understand—I know that you’ve been raw for 11 years now. Is that right?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (02:39)
Yeah.

Molly Patrick (02:41)
And what made you go that direction?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (02:45)
Great question. I love that. I think it’s interesting how people will say certain things like, “I don’t eat raw food,” or they’ll see a raw recipe and they won’t make it because they’re not raw. They’re like, “Well, I’m not a raw vegan, so I’m not going to make it.” And I’m like, “Well, raw food is for everybody. You like guacamole? That’s raw. You like salsa? Salsas are raw if you make like a pico.” So there’s a lot of raw stuff already out there. I like that you mentioned that, and those passion fruits sound so good.

Molly Patrick (02:58)
It’s so…

Lissa Raw Food Romance (03:15)
Yeah, so I started my journey when I was roughly around 24. In 2004, I discovered raw food. I really resonated. I was like, “This makes so much sense to me because you’re eating living foods exactly the way nature provided them, right?” Of course, we pick them and we chop them up and play with them, but ultimately, raw is the main way that I want to eat my foods.

In 2004, I started kind of playing around with it. For the next decade, I would do different diets. I did all kinds of stuff. I was never vegan or fully plant-based, but I did some paleo stuff and I would always come back to raw. I tried it like a hundred times or more, and I just was never able to get to it because I was always eating really high fat and I was limiting my calories because I was stuck in diet culture where I had to eat less to weigh less. So I was eating huge amounts of fats, not very many calories, and then I’d run into cravings and I’d feel tired. Of course, I felt better than I did when I was eating animal products and ultra-processed foods, but I wasn’t getting that magic spark that I was expecting from raw during those 10 years. I lasted anywhere from three days to maybe two months. And then I started eating cooked food and animal products again because I wasn’t vegan.

Then in 2014, I had experienced about a year of a lot of really intense symptoms. I’ve always had gut problems ever since I was a teen. I had cystic acne ever since I was a teen, like horrible cysts underneath my skin. I had hormonal imbalance and joint pain. Like I was mentioning with the gut problems, I was diagnosed with Candida overgrowth when I was 19. I did a lot of cleanse kits and fasts and herbal stuff because I worked in the natural health industry. I was a nutritional consultant and I was selling supplements and all that kind of stuff. I was exposed to a lot of stuff and nothing really got to it the way I really wanted it to.

In 2014, I woke up one night and I had heart flutters. I was having those multiple times, maybe four to sometimes seven times a week. It was scary because I would wake up and be like, “What if I was actually having a heart attack? Is that what it feels like?” I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep because I’d be all anxious. So that morning, September 12th of 2014, I was like, “I’m going raw again.” My partner at the time just rolled his eyes. He was like, “Okay, you’re doing this again.” But this time I watched Forks Over Knives, Cowspiracy, and Earthlings all in one day and I was instantly vegan. Yes, it was a heavy day.

Molly Patrick (06:02)
Oof, that’s a heavy day.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (06:07)
What really resonated most with me was the female exploitation that we do for dairy and eggs. It never clicked in my head that that’s what was happening. I was like, “Whoa, I don’t want to have anything to do with this, not just the meat, but the dairy and all that stuff.” And so then I was vegan. I had no idea about whole food plant-based, whatever—I mean, I watched Forks Over Knives, but I immediately defaulted to raw because I was like, “Well, that makes the most sense. So let’s do it.” And it stuck because I immediately learned about low fat. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try the low fat and I’m going to try eating enough.” When I started eating a huge variety of foods and I was eating abundantly, I didn’t have any cravings. I had tons of energy and I was like, “This is actually working.” And then 11 and a half years later, here I am chatting with you.

Molly Patrick (06:59) Okay, so I love that. Wow, I love hearing about people’s “why” and how this stuck, because I think for a lot of people, they will try different ways of eating and it doesn’t stick for whatever reason. But when I hear people talk about a plant-based diet, or a vegan diet, where you’re avoiding animals—10 out of 10 times when I hear people say, “Hey, I watched this documentary and I had no idea the exploitation of animals that I was contributing to and I couldn’t be part of that”—for so many people, that’s what makes it actually stick. Because then it’s become something much, much bigger. Thank you for sharing that and for bringing that up.

I’ve never eaten meat in my life just because that was how I was raised; it didn’t ever feel right for me. I’m so sensitive to animals and I love them so much, and I think for anybody who’s really wanting to eat plant-based but can’t make it stick, have a documentary day like you had and I promise something happens.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (08:32) Mm-hmm, for sure.

Molly Patrick (08:33) Also, just focusing on how can I do this in a way that’s really healthy, right? Because you mentioned before, “I was eating not enough and I was eating really a lot of fat.” Even though what you were eating was technically healthy, there’s still a way to do it that’s going to support us. I hear a lot of people say, “I tried vegan diets, but it just wasn’t for me. I didn’t have any energy.” And I’m thinking, “Well, okay, I would love to see a food journal.” Because there is a way to do this where you do feel incredible. So, it’s awesome that you were able to experience that and just kind of go from there.

I want to talk about your “what I eat in a day.” Tell me a typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner for you. I’m assuming you cook most of your own food because raw restaurants are limited and usually pretty expensive from my experience. So what does a day of food look like for you?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (09:44) Yeah, that restaurant comment is so true, because there’s just nothing. We live in Las Vegas and there used to be two places where we could get raw food here and both of them are closed. All the vegan places are like vegan comfort food and fast food. Nate and I always say our favorite restaurant is our kitchen, and that’s where we make pretty much all our food.

For a day in my life, I roughly eat around 2,400 calories a day. We walk every single day. We do two breakfasts—we’re like the hobbits, we do second breakfast. We’ll wake up and we’ll have water and some whole fruit. We’ll eat maybe anywhere from 200 to 400 calories of whole fruit, usually just bananas, mangoes, or grapes, for energy for our workout. Then we go for our walk with weighted vests. Sometimes we’ll come back and do weight training.

Then we have our big smoothie. It’s 32 ounces and it’s usually around 600 to 800 calories worth of just plain fruit. Sometimes we’ll add greens, but we eat a lot of greens throughout the rest of the day. So by lunch, I’ve already consumed about a thousand calories worth of fruit and I have so much energy. At lunch, on average, we have either a raw wrap—if we’re going hiking or something, because my raw wraps are like game changers—or we just have a salad. We’ll have a really big “fruiting vegetable” salad. It’s a base of lettuce, like romaine or green leaf, and we’ll do all the fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini. We have a big hydrating salad with a low-fat dressing, usually a date-based dressing. Five dates blended with a garlic clove, some lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, smoked paprika, and maybe a little bit of chia seeds.

Then we’ll usually snack on fruit—grapes or sumo oranges are typical right now. Dinner is when we have our more grounding meal. Most of the time it’s another salad because we make it easy for ourselves. We make a really big, dark leafy green salad with kale, romaine, endive, radicchio, or dandelion greens. We’ll have herbs like parsley and dill in there, more tomatoes, more cucumbers. And that’s where we have our more fatty dressing using cashews, almonds, or avocado. We stop eating around 5:30 to 7:00 and try to get to bed by 8:30 or 9:00. With raw food, it’s so low in calorie density that you’ve got to eat more of it. A lot of people don’t realize how much they need to eat, but it’s good because I like to eat.

Molly Patrick (15:04) Well all of that sounds really delicious. It’s actually similar to how I eat. I love “big ass salads”—it’s more like a huge mixing bowl than it is a regular eating bowl. Of course, my salads have a lot of beans and baked tofu. Can we talk about beans for a minute? Because I know when I look at raw recipes, I find recipes for raw hummus that does have beans. So can you tell us how that works?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (15:34) I agree with the whole food plant-based science about how legumes are really important for longevity. So we do four main types of legume sprouts. We do all kinds of lentils, chickpeas, mung beans, and regular peas like adzuki or cow peas. What we do is sprout them. For example, the chickpeas we soak for 48 hours straight because they are such a dense, large pea. If you soak them for 48 hours, they sprout a lot easier. Once they have a little tiny tail, we’ll rinse them and freeze them. The freeze-and-thaw method actually softens them a lot. They’re not quite as soft as cooked, but they’re not as hard as they are straight raw. Like the lentils in a raw soup—if you thaw them from frozen, you can’t even tell that they’re not cooked.

The only one that we won’t sprout is the red kidney bean. You can even get sick from them if you don’t cook them properly. But for black beans, we actually make an unpasteurized tempeh. That does involve cooking the beans first, but then they’re fermented, so they’re considered a living food.

Molly Patrick (18:41) That is very interesting. So how do you make your black bean tempeh? That sounds amazing.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (19:22) In our raw vegan culinary technique book, we have detailed instructions. Basically, you need an instant pot that has a yogurt setting to keep it at 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. All the tempeh you buy in the store has to be pasteurized for food safety, which is understandable. But if you want it unpasteurized where it’s still microbially active, you’ve got to make it yourself. It goes bad in three or four days, so you have to eat it fast.

You soak the beans overnight, cook them at pressure for like eight minutes, then let them dry. Once they’re tacky to the touch, you spray them with an acid like apple cider vinegar and then sprinkle on the starter. We like to use fresh banana leaves to form them. There’s something in the banana leaves that makes the environment friendly for the yeast to grow. You put the starter on, wrap them in the leaves or Ziploc bags with holes poked in them, and put them in the Instant Pot on the yogurt setting for two days. After 48 hours, you get that beautiful “cotton candy” mesh going on with the beans.

Molly Patrick (24:45) Where do you get banana leaves in Las Vegas?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (24:48) There’s a Mexican grocery store called Superior. They had banana leaves there for $3.99 for a big bunch. We cut them into pieces and froze them. Asian grocery stores or international markets usually have them too if you’re lucky.

Molly Patrick (26:07) We have so many banana trees on Maui, but I’ve never used the leaves! That’s very interesting. I used to spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia at a restaurant called Banana Leaf where they used them as plates. So, fermentation can be intimidating, but I would like to try tempeh. Let’s talk about dehydration. Do you use a dehydrator all the time?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (29:38) We use a dehydrator multiple times a week. Mostly we make our wraps. They’re gluten-free, low-fat, and made with fruits and vegetables, a little bit of chia or flax, and some psyllium husk. We pour the blend onto trays and let them sit for 12 to 16 hours. They’re 14 by 14 and we take them traveling, camping, or on the airplane. We also make burger patties, taco meat, and “pepper nori” sticks. We also make our own crunchy raw vegan tostadas and taco shells. We also use the dehydrator to condense sauces or marinate vegetables for “rawmen”—we spiralize cucumber or zucchini and put marinated veggies on top.

Part 3 of 3

Molly Patrick (33:42) Awesome. We’ll definitely link to your resources in the show notes of this episode too if people want to check that stuff out. I hear a lot of people who are new to eating at least whole-food plant-based approach it with this idea that it takes a really long time. I’m always like, “It doesn’t have to take a long time.” You can also make it very complicated—there’s a way to do that—but it can actually be a very quick way to eat. Do you hear that a lot about the raw way of eating? Let’s talk about the time commitment.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (34:33) I fully agree. It doesn’t matter what diet you eat; there are going to be easy things and challenging things. It just depends on the level of complexity you want. One time we had Nate’s sons over and they were making mac and cheese on the stove. I was able to chop the big salads for Nate and I and blend our dressing before their mac and cheese was done. Another time, I got off a call early and in roughly nine minutes, I had lunch and the salad ready for Nate.

Fruit is so easy. Blending a smoothie takes five minutes.

Molly Patrick (36:01) Biting into an apple—it doesn’t get any quicker than that.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (36:07) Exactly. We also really like making raw soups because you just put everything in the blender and blend it on high for about two minutes. The friction of the Vitamix blades warms it up to about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. In our online community, we show how we make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two people in under an hour. It actually takes more time to eat it than it does to make it, which I don’t mind because we’re watching a show on Netflix or whatever while we’re eating.

Molly Patrick (37:55) Yeah, it’s a lot of chewing! This way of eating is so much more nutrient-dense than it is calorie-dense, so you’re eating so much more volume. If I can’t put lunch together in ten minutes, it’s not going to work for me. We’re bursting that myth that whole-food plant-based or raw has to take a long time. Where do you buy the bulk of your produce since you’re eating so much of it?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (40:29) Great question. We don’t do 100% organic; we call ourselves “accidental organics.” We get organic when it’s there, but we don’t stress about being 100% because the point is to have food freedom. In Las Vegas, we shop at Winco, Costco, Sprouts, and sometimes Trader Joe’s. We also go to the Mexican market for exotics like jackfruit, the giant low-fat avocados, cherimoya, and mamey. Don’t be intimidated to go into different grocery stores; go in and support the people who have that store.

Molly Patrick (41:57) Yes, I’m a big fan of international grocery stores. For people who are interested in eating more raw stuff—maybe not going totally raw, but just incorporating some more meals—where would you have them start?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (42:59) I would say start where you’re at. I don’t tell people to go all-raw right away because everyone’s microbiome is starting from a different place. If you’re eating a low-fiber diet, you’re going to need to go slow to avoid gas and bloating. A little bit of gas is a sign that your microbiome is active, but painful stabbing pains mean you’ve had a little too much fiber too fast. I recommend going slow like Dr. Will Bulsiewicz suggests in Fiber Fueled.

Also, lower your fat intake as you increase fruit and vegetables so your insulin isn’t sluggish. Breakfast tends to be the easiest meal to start with. I also recommend chopping your evening vegetables in the morning because dinner is usually the hardest meal to choose healthy. The number one struggle I see is that people are not eating enough volume. If you’re having cravings, it’s usually a sign you haven’t eaten enough.

In modern life, it’s so easy to skip a meal, but by six o’clock at night you’re ravenous and exhausted, and that’s when we don’t make good decisions. Plan out your meals and schedule the time to do the prep. We show up for other people all the time, but we rarely show up for ourselves. Finally, connect with your “future self.” Ask your after-dinner self, “What would you wish that I would have eaten?” They’re not going to say the pizza; they’re going to be glad you made the salad.

Molly Patrick (48:57) All very practical tips. We have to eat anyway—it’s a requirement for all humans—so it makes sense to do it in a way that supports us and helps us thrive.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (49:40) I love that. You don’t have to be a “raw vegan” to eat raw food. It’s just fresh, delicious energy.

Molly Patrick (50:55) Exactly. Those labels can freak people out, but just eat the yummy food. Can you clarify the difference between fermentation and pickling?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (52:08) With fermenting, you’re mainly using salt to create an environment where beneficial bacteria flourish and pre-digest the food for you. It’s a great way to get probiotics. Pickling usually uses white distilled vinegar. That vinegar kills bacteria—it’s why our grandmothers cleaned their kitchens with it. When you’re pickling, you’re destroying the bacteria to make it shelf-stable, but you’re ingesting something that isn’t beneficial for your microbiome. We call ourselves “raw and living” because the ferments are alive, whereas the vinegar pickles are dead.

Molly Patrick (55:10) Thank you for clarifying that. What did I miss?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (55:10) I would say give yourself grace. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s a sign you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, which is good. It’s like learning a new language: you start with one word, then a sentence. Find your “Fallback Five”—five recipes you know and love, that you always have ingredients for, and that are quick. For us, it’s that French dressing. Being hard on ourselves doesn’t work, so be graceful. Taking time for yourself is not selfish; it’s actually selfless because when you nourish yourself properly, you can serve others better.

Molly Patrick (58:13) Beautiful. Where can people find you?

Lissa Raw Food Romance (58:36) The best place is either Instagram or YouTube. On Instagram, I am @rawfoodromance and on YouTube, it’s Lissa’s Raw Food Romance. We’re doing daily videos for 2026. You can find our community at skool.com/rawfoodromance and our ebooks at payhip.com/rawfoodromance. If they use code RAWFOOD40, they can get 40% off anything.

Molly Patrick (59:26) Awesome. Thank you for this chat, I really enjoyed it.

Lissa Raw Food Romance (59:33) Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Bye!