Many people going raw (such as Alissa Cohen and the moderators of these forums to name a couple) have shown that not only is losing weight while eating nuts/seeds/fruit such as durian or avocadoes possible, but actually quite common. Obviously this flies in the face of the beliefs that most of us have about having to eat low calorie diets to lose weight, so what's going on here? How can Alissa or Sheryl be eating multiple avocadoes in one day and still lose significant amounts of fat also (often it can be pointed out with no difference in exercise).

One of the (wonderful) culprits may well be what's known as lipase.

Lipase are what let our body break down and use fats eaten in the diet, and are found in significantly higher amount in - you guessed it - raw plant foods - than anywhere else (naturally occurring)! The effects of this, combined with the natural useability of the types of fats found in plant foods have been theorized to be behind such surprising developments as various athlete studies where athletes who's weight loss had hit a plateau, after having flax (high in fatty acids) ADDED to their diet, that they actually LOWERED their body fat (while still being on the same work outs). 

Anyone interested in learning more about this area would be well off checking out either anything by Dr Udo Ersamus (probably the worlds leading educator on dietry fats).