Raw Vegan Lifestyle Lessons from 22 Years: A Live with Kiko of Namado

Two people who have each lived the raw vegan lifestyle for over 22 years sitting down to talk about The Model Diet, breaking free from health perfectionism, food combining, compassion, and what this lifestyle actually looks like lived from the inside out.

Kiko of Namado is one of those people in this community who just radiates genuine depth. Based in Japan, 22 years into her raw vegan journey, and someone who has walked this path through both the highs and the hard parts with real honesty and grace. Getting to sit down with her for this live was a genuine joy and this conversation went places I did not expect.

The 2026 Ultimate Raw Vegan Bundle Is Open Until May 11th

Kiko’s contribution to the bundle is Namado 2, and it is one of the most honest and quietly powerful books in this whole collection. It walks alongside a 22-year raw vegan journey that moves from control and extremes to grounded compassionate living, covering how to break free from perfection-driven health, how to rebuild trust with your body beyond rules and trends, and how to blend natural living with medical support without guilt or ideology. If you have ever felt like you were doing everything right and still something felt off, this book is for you.

My contributions are The Model Diet, 411 pages covering the full philosophy, science, and framework behind low fat raw vegan living, and the 80/10/10 Diet Masterclass, co-created with Dr. Douglas Graham, which also includes Dr. Graham’s The 80/10/10 Diet as an ebook right from the start. The masterclass alone will be $747 after the bundle closes. Right now it is part of everything for $50.

Over 30+ BRAND NEW Raw Vegan Resources worth over $1,500 all for just $50 until midnight Pacific time on May 11th.

The Model Diet: Why This Was the Right Time

Kiko opened by sharing something that really resonated. When she first discovered the raw vegan lifestyle back in 2004 she was absolutely certain it would go mainstream fast because the results were so immediate and undeniable. She lost around 15 pounds in her first week without even trying, people started commenting on her glow, and she had more energy than she could remember having. Sound familiar?

We talked about why that mainstream shift has been slower than either of us expected, and the reality is that changing someone’s relationship with food can be harder than changing their mind on almost anything else. Food is cultural, emotional, familial, and deeply habitual. The raw vegan lifestyle asks people to look at all of that honestly, which takes courage as much as information.

The Model Diet came out of years of percolating that exact conversation. The title carries at least three meanings: the ideal dietary template, the model that nature itself provides through comparative anatomy, and the diet that supports looking and feeling your genuine best as a natural outcome of true health. It landed on 411 pages without any forcing, which felt like its own kind of serendipity given what that number means in my life personally.

Food Combining as a Tool, Not a Rule

One of the livelier parts of the conversation came out of my orange creamsicle smoothie, a golden honeydew blended with clementine mandarins and a drop of vanilla. Kiko was curious and it opened up a really useful discussion on food combining.

A lot of older food combining charts say eat melons alone or not at all. In practice and from everything I have pulled together over years of research and conversation with people like Dr. Graham, the Dinas, and Don Bennett, mixing melons with juicy acid fruits like citrus, pineapple, or lemon actually tends to enhance digestion and satiation rather than hinder it. Many people who experience melon belly, that uncomfortable cramping after eating watermelon or sweet juicy mangoes or grapes, find it disappears almost entirely when they add some citrus.

The underlying factors that make melon belly more likely are eating too fast, not being well hydrated beforehand, eating without having done any movement to use up some muscle glycogen first, and eating when not genuinely hungry. Address those and the citrus combination tends to take care of the rest. Food combining within the raw vegan lifestyle is really about understanding digestion, not about following a perfect chart.

True Hunger and Knowing the Difference

This came up naturally out of the food combining conversation and it is one of those foundational raw vegan lifestyle principles that I never get tired of talking about. True hunger is not painful. It is not urgent, anxious, or accompanied by a headache or stomach ache. When you are genuinely hungry, almost any quality food sounds appealing. What people usually label as hunger is more often detox, cravings, or appetite, wanting something for its stimulatory or numbing effect rather than genuine physiological need.

Eating from a calm and genuinely hungry state is one of the single most impactful shifts anyone can make, independent of exactly what they are eating. It changes your relationship with food at a level that no recipe or nutrient breakdown can reach.

Budget Raw and What It Actually Costs

Kiko raised the budget question and it is always worth addressing honestly. Living in Malmö, Sweden, which has excellent wholesale options and a farmers market that sells by the case, I consistently spend under $10 a day on food and often under $250 a month. The raw vegan lifestyle does not require biodynamic everything or gourmet specialty ingredients to be deeply nourishing.

The comparison that matters most though is not just the grocery bill. As Dr. Graham says, he does not need health insurance. He has health assurance. When you factor in what the alternative costs in terms of vitality, time, well-being, longevity, and actual medical expenses, the picture shifts entirely. The Model Diet has a full chapter on budget raw with specific tips and approaches for making this accessible wherever you are.

Compassion as a Form of Nutrition

Part Seven of The Model Diet covers the raw vegan lifestyle as it extends beyond personal health into ecology, animal ethics, and what it means to eat in alignment with a bigger picture. Compassion as a form of nutrition is one of the chapter titles and it reflects something I genuinely believe: the center of this lifestyle is kindness and love, not restriction or discipline.

Fruit trees came up as a perfect example. They are three-dimensional food crops that build topsoil rather than deplete it, create habitat, support biodiversity, and produce extraordinary amounts of food per acre. Choosing a fruit-centered raw vegan lifestyle is not just good for your body. It is good for the planet in ways that are measurable and documented. The more you look at how the pieces fit together the more remarkable it becomes.

We also talked about how to share this lifestyle with others without pushing. Leading as a lighthouse rather than a megaphone. Coming from genuine care, sharing your own experience and feelings, and releasing attachment to the outcome. That approach, rooted in nonviolent communication principles which are also covered in The Model Diet, tends to plant seeds that actually grow.

The 80/10/10 Diet Masterclass with Dr. Douglas Graham

Kiko was excited to hear more about the masterclass and rightly so. This is five modules, seventeen plus hours of content built with Dr. Graham going into depths he has never covered in any video or writing before. It takes the 80/10/10 Diet book as its foundation and shows you how to actually apply that information step by step, drawing on his fifty years of living this way and decades of coaching.

Every single video comes with an action step handout and a synopsis so nothing gets lost. Dr. Graham himself has said that a single-digit percentage of the content overlaps with the book. This is genuinely new material and it is designed to make the raw vegan lifestyle more accessible, more enjoyable, and more sustainable for people wherever they are starting from.

Go Find Kiko, She Is a True Gem

22 years of living this with honesty, humility, and real depth. Kiko brings something to this community that is rare and I am so grateful she is part of this bundle. Find her on Instagram @namadokiko and on YouTube @namadokiko. Go give her some love.