This is my first Winter following 811rv (started in June 2025). This is also my first winter dealing with a strange issue. Starting around November I started experiencing finger swelling and pain at night. I travelled to CA for 12 days and the condition totally resolved. However, after being back for about a week it started again. It lasted till I traveled south again. I stayed in CA one week, then went to HI, then Guam, and then two weeks in Ecuador. Once I came back, the fingers started swelling and later on fissuring within a week of being back. My father is insisting that I increase my fat intake , suggesting cor liver oil, claiming that it has always been part of the diet of northern climate dwellers. I want to stay true to 811rv but I find it strange that this wasnt an issue in previous years. If anyone has any suggestions I’m opened to hearing them. The swelling mostly affects my fifth fingers of both hands, and now it’s starting to affect my middle one.

Hey friends, What's your stance on buying Dole bananas or other fruit? Do you avoid at all costs because of the agregious human and environmental rights violations or do you see it as a necessary evil to be able to eat enough bananas? I generally avoid them whenever possible because I don't want to support that but here on Crete the only alternative to Dole bananas are the local greenhouse grown bananas, which are much more expensive and sometimes tough to get enough of. It's a bit frustrating.

Hi friends, This month marks about 10 years that I have been fruit based raw vegan. I feel like I am not as active in the raw vegan world as I would like to be, and although I don't consider myself a raw vegan "expert" by any means, I guess I have a good amount of experience under my belt now that I could share. I don't know if my experience as a raw vegan will be of any interest to anyone here, but I figure if I can help or inspire just 1 person it's worth it for me to share. I was raised eating a largely whole foods vegetarian diet, but I did eat a lot of dairy. I first became aware of raw foods when I went to university in Montreal and lived for 2 years with a professional chef at Montreal's biggest raw food restaurant. He wasn't raw or vegan himself but he did have lots of books about raw foods in the apartment. At this point I had already been struggling with anorexia for about 6 years but for the first couple years of my degree I managed to maintain a healthy weight and overall good level of health. When I went to live with Barry the raw food chef ,it coincided with me slipping back into a relapse, and I was very preoccupied with my body and calories and losing weight. These books ( don't worry Doug, your's wasn't one of them) unfortunately only exacerated my downward spiral by planting seeds in my head about "detox" and cleansing my body. I started dabbling with raw food meals but my weight was simultaneously decreasing very quickly because I was drastically undereating and when I flew back home for Christmas I narrowly avoided hospitalization by agreeing to let my Mom take charge of my food intake. Despite her good intentions, this involved a "refeeding" diet consisting of lots of cheese and eggs, nuts, starches and many other high calorie but hard to digest foods. I slowly gained weight and was allowed to return to university with supervision, meaning I had to move out of Barry's place and rent a flat with Mom, therefor continuing with the high fat, high protein vegetarian diet. I felt horrible but distracted myself with my studies and the belief that I was doing the right thing. One day I was watching some video on youtube about something totally unrelated and vegan activist Gary Yourofsky's "best speech you'll ever hear" pops up in my "recommended " sidebar. For those who don't know what I'm talking about this is a well known speech about the realities of how animals are treated in animal ag. I clicked on it of course and watched the whole thing start to finish in one go. By the end I was in tears and told my Mom I have to go vegan. After the initial shock she watched the video too and couldn't help but agree, so we started researching" how to gain weight on vegan diet". And of course what we found was "eat lots of nuts", "eat lots of grains, legumes, tofu, peanut butter!" ...

Hi friends, I have always understood that in order to build muscle you need to be in a caloric surplus and working all the muscle groups in the correct way top stimulate muscle growth. Howver a well known public figure in the raw vegan world who I follow seems to advocate for kind of the opposite, claiming that the secret to having a fit, strong healthy looking body is to get lean by being in a slight calorie deficit and simultaneously build muscle. This individual who is a substantially bigger guy than me practices and advocates a caloric intake of 2000-2200 calories and several hours of walking each day. If I ate that little, even without doing that much physical activity I feel like I'd be dead in a week. It doesn't make any sense to me that being in a caloric deficit would be a good idea when you're trying to build muscle. I get that lots of walking is always beneficial, but shouldn't the goal always be to be in a caloric surplus when you're trying to build muscle?

Hi everyone, I wanted to get your thoughts on nighttime urination. Lately, I’ve been getting up once (sometimes twice) at night to pee, which didn’t really happen before. At the same time, I’m also much more hydrated now, especially because eating fruits and vegetables contains a lot of water. I’ve heard two different perspectives on this. One is that if we urinate around 8–12 times a day on average, then statistically it makes sense that nighttime would sometimes be included—especially if we’re going every 2–2.5 hours. The other perspective is about sleep cycles: apparently, we don’t wake up because we need to pee, but rather we become aware of the need to pee when we’re already in a lighter sleep phase. So in that sense, it may not be as disruptive as it sounds. I’m curious how you experience this. Is it normal or “okay” for you to get up once or twice per night? Or do you actively try to avoid it, for example by eating earlier or adjusting fluid intake in the evening? How do you personally handle this? Looking forward to hearing your experiences.