Raw/Living food - Day 6

Today was great for my raw foods, at least up until dinner. I could never do this sort of thing while I had a job so I am really appreciating getting to spend all of the time right now focused on my health and other interests. It's going to be so sad when I have to go back to work! First thing this morning, I made a fruit juice smoothie that came out delicious. It had a lot of strawberries, 2 nectarines, a plum, and a mango. When I tasted this initially, it was a bit too over-sweet to me, so I added some watermelon, rinds included. This did the trick! It added some lovely flavor but muted down the sweetness. My husband, who thinks fruit is always too sweet, will really enjoy this I think, and I like him eating raw fruits, so I'm going to try to make up a batch of this before he goes to work in the morning so he can have half.

Speaking of my husband, I don't think I've mentioned this here yet. He started eating a bit of raw food when I did. I've been shooting for about 66% of my day as raw (2 meals). He was only doing a raw breakfast, and all fruits really, no vegetables. Within just a few days, his serious heartburn issues cleared up all on their own - no other food changes! He has been doing things over the past several months like cutting down on sodas and eating less for dinner, eating dinner earlier, eating less tomatoes and spicy foods, ect, and it all helped a bit, but he was still having problems with it and taking lots of Prilosec and Tums. But after just a week of adding the raw food in to his diet, he kissed his heartburn bye-bye. Unfortunately, he just doesn't like the taste of fruits much, and raw veggies even less so it was a struggle for him, but I know he liked the results so he's going to keep trying to find things he likes. I just wanted to share his exciting 'success' story with raw foods, and it all happened in such little time! Okay, back to me.

After I ran, I cooled down with a veggie juice the way I have been doing for most breakfasts. This drink is really growing on me. My first experience with it was so negative! So if you have tried the veggie juices and don't like them, suffer with it for a few days. I really got used to them and learned to enjoy them so I think anyone could! I showered and cleaned the house until I was tired. Then I rested with a good book until I fell asleep for a nice little nap. I didn't give myself a chance to make the lunch I had planned up but after I woke up from my nap, around 5 pm, I was starving so I finished off the rest of the Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl from yesterday. It saved great and tasted fabulous today too. I must have been extra hungry because I didn't think it was overly sweet at all.

My husband wanted to go out car shopping after he got home from work so I knew we would probably have to go out to dinner, but I didn't want to AGAIN so I cooked dinner anyways (taco soup) in hopes we could just eat it instead. But no, we rushed right out to the car dealership (put a deposit down for a Honda Fit) and then stopped at TGI Friday's for dinner. I did not make healthy dinner choices. I didn't pick a well combine meal, I overate, and I had way too much fried food. I'm getting really frustrated with my dinners lately, especially since I work so hard to plan out something healthy!! But it seems even the best of my plans get thwarted into eating crap. No wonder it's so hard to lose weight. I did gain half a lb so I'm back up to 42.5 lbs to lose total. I have no hopes that it will be back down for tomorrow :( But hopefully tomorrow I can enjoy my HEALTHY dinner that I have planned and I can feel proud of my food choices! Tomorrow is another day :)

Raw/Living food - Day 5 - Back on Track!

Okay so this isn't exactly day 5 of all of this but close enough for my purposes. The dog was still sick last night and I was up for hours with her so today I have to admit I still did a half-assed job of the raw foods and the lifestyle that goes with it. I did not do my body brushing (I completely 100% just forgot about it), I did not work out (toooooo exhausted) and I did not do my morning papers (I started them and then I think she started throwing up again so I had to quit in the middle). But I did manage to eat my breakfast and lunch both raw! I think that is an important step to getting back into the diet. I think I must have missed my veggies the last few days because my morning drink was sooo delicious to me today! Today was the first time I cut the recipe in half and I will use the other half of the ingredients tomorrow in a new, fresh juice. The lunch (pumpkin pie in a bowl) I made was very tasty at first but too overpoweringly sweet for a full meal. I think if I had mixed it with a salad it would have been okay. I still have a lot of it left so I'll be able to make a second meal from it. I think it's fantastic I'm getting second meals out of these things because this is really going to help me cut down on my grocery bills!

This weekend I spent 30 dollars at Caputos, which is all of my fruits and veggies. I think the only thing I picked up from Target was the Almond Milk, which I think was around 3 dollars, and then at Costco I got romaine lettuce in bulk, which was another 3. If I can cut my Caputo's bill nearly in half by using each meal 2ce, then I'll really be in pretty good shape!

Tonight for dinner I did much worse than I planned. Everything fell apart when my husband came home from work early and wanted to go out looking at cars when I should have been making dinner. When we got home, we were both getting hungry, but the dinner I had scheduled took over an hour to cook. Then, to top it off, I think our dishwasher is broke. It was hugely frustrating to me because I just don't have enough counter space to store a ton of dirty dishes. I had so many dirty dishes that there wasn't even room to start cleaning them because there would be no where to put them once they were washed. I started to get really frustrated and overwhelmed by all of it and ended up asking my husband if we could just do leftovers instead of me fixing another meal as scheduled. I hate going off my schedule but I was starting to flip out. So I ended up with 2 pieces of pizza, 2 breadsticks and way too many french fries and onion rings that we had left over from the other day.

I'm sure with all of this crappy eating tonight, my weight will be up a good bit, especially because the food is all so salty too. However, this morning I was down another bit so I have 42 lbs to lose! I'm on a roll. If only I could get my dinners working the way the rest of my day does. Tomorrow's another day to try to get it right! :)

Raw/Living food - On Pause!

My dog got really sick and I haven't been able to keep up my raw lifestyle plans because we've been spending so much time at the vet and cleaning up her puke, lol. I can laugh, because she's doing a lot better now but it was pretty scary for a while there. But we had very little time for any sort of food preparation and got a lot of take out and pizzas. I'm sure in times of great stress, it would be more helpful to stick with a healthy eating plan, but it still takes me too long to prepare everything and I just didn't have that sort of time. I still did raw breakfasts every morning because those are easy. A piece of fruit or two and you're set!

I'm planning on jumping back on it tomorrow! I have all of my breakfasts and lunches planned out as raw for the whole week. My dinners are healthy (but not properly combined) and hopefully will be delicious also.

My mandoline showed up this weekend! The zyliss one from Amazon.com. I looove it already! I used it to make a non-raw dinner tonight. I sliced through 6 potatoes in no time at all! It's going to be a wonderful addition to my raw lifestyle. OH! And I got seeds and my sprouter this weekend also! My seeds are a "Zesty Sprout Mix" that I bought from Fruitful Yield. I was hoping for broccoli seeds and they stock them but they were out today. They also had mung beans but there was an episode of The Office where they talked about how mung bean sprouting smelled like death. I don't really want that in my kitchen. I'm sooo excited to see my sprouts grow though! Can't wait to get back to raw tomorrow!

Raw/Living food - Day 4

Today has been the day where I felt 'hungriest' so far. I upped my running this morning from 3 miles to 4, so I think that may have also had an effect on how I was feeling. It was pretty warm out today so I'm sure that was draining. I also realized I may just not be eating quite enough. I think for next week I should plan on adding a raw salad with my lunches and dinners. I like salad, especially if I can have tasty lettuce instead of spinach or something strange. It finally dawned on me today that while I made 3 meals out of my beet and sweet potato pasta, it also means that it took me 3 days to eat 1 beet and one sweet potato. That's not really a lot of food when it comes down to it and the point of this plan is just to eat what you want when you want as long as it's the 'right' sort of foods in the right combinations.

I do feel like the food combinations that Natalia Rose suggests in her Raw Food Detox books are beyond me to understand. I feel like it's like learning grammar rules all over again. I before E, except after C and when sounding like... well you get the idea. It's all like, veggies can pair with anything but raw fruit. Never eat fruit with anything except on an empty stomach. Veggies can pair with Flesh and nuts and starch. Starch never pairs with flesh. Dried fruit doesn't count as fruit but counts as a nut, except for bananas which can apparently pair all over the place. Cooked corn is a starch while raw corn is something else. Avocados also don't go in the group you think they would go in. Oh some how I forgot the dairy category. See, it's too much for my small little brain. She keeps claiming it's easy and not intimidating, and I keep feeling clueless. I'm hoping it will sink in eventually but for now I think I have to ignore her extra crazy rules because it's part of the reason I'm not eating enough. I'm worried I'm going to break her odd food combo commandments.

Both of my injured feet felt about the same this morning as last. After I ran though, I could barely manage walking for the rest of the day. I'm getting more and more worried there is something seriously wrong with my left ankle. The pain is crazy and it doesn't seem to be getting much better. I tried compressing it today so maybe that will help make a difference for tomorrow.

I'm down another half a pound so that makes me at 42.5 lbs to lose. Not bad results for 4 days! I did have a meal at Chipoltle for dinner though (and I ate every last bite) so I'm not expecting anything good for tomorrow's weigh in. We'll see though! I was pleasantly surprised by losing another half of a pound this morning. Gotta love the raw fruits and veggies! :)

Raw/Living food - Day 3

Today I really made some bad eating choices. The day started well with my yoga work out followed up by some vegetable juice for breakfast. Then my husband remembered that there are some fun buffets around on Wednesday, and we are never both home on a Wed, so we should take advantage of that and go try one. I feel so horrible saying no to him about going out to eat all the time so I didn't even put up a fuss. I think that's the part of this that makes me the most frustrated with myself is that it really was not what I wanted to eat but I hate disappointing my husband so I went along with it. I just want to make him happy and it really sucks when making him happy has to make me unhappy in some way. So I went to the buffet and even though I tried not to over-eat, I totally failed. I really noticed a huge difference in my energy level after that meal. We went to a store immediately after and I was so groggy I was nearly falling asleep in the aisles. When we got home, I took a nap from 2 pm until 5 pm!! 3 hours of nap time all because of one overly large meal!

I ate raw food then for dinner, so I stuck with my 2/3's raw meals for the day. I had my left overs from the sweet potato and beet pasta with pesto sauce, and it was still very tasty, but still too much food! I have some left now for tomorrow's lunch which means I'm going to end up getting 3 meals out of it! I think that's fantastic and helps cut down on the prices so much. I love eating the beets and sweet potato for pasta and I can't wait to try this with other pasta sauces.

After lunch, we had gone out to our Whole Foods store, which isn't super far, but it definitely isn't close to us either. We just wandered around and looked without buying anything. I saw a lot of things I wanted but it was mostly all way more expensive than I thought it would be. $9.99 for a bottle of agave nectar... $7.99 for a jar of raw honey... I can't bring myself to justify those prices right now for a sweetener so I'm going to just be leaving that out for a bit. Maybe in another week or 2 when I sort of get a handle on the cooking I'm going to be doing and the amount of things I'll be needing, I'll be able to make one of those work into the budget. The vegetable prices there were more reasonable than I expected them to be. The bunches of organic kale were only $2.99! We may be stopping by there more often. I just wish it was as little bit closer to our house.

Okay, on to the really shocking news. Today I woke up this morning and was half way down the stairs with the dog when it suddenly dawned on me - there was almost no pain in my right foot! My plantar fasciitis pain was nearly gone! It was a glorious day!! I don't know how much really can be credited to the raw food, but I am certain some credit has to go to it. I've been stretching and wearing my insoles for weeks and have had very little results. I've also been icing a lot over the past week or 2 and have not seen any change. I think I'm being healed by raw foods!! My left ankle is still a problem, as are all my other small issues, knees, hips, ect. But it's a start! Through out the day the foot was better and worse randomly. I can't wait to see how it's doing again tomorrow. I am also down another pound so I've got 43 more to lose. I will be surprised if I keep that pound off when I weigh in tomorrow though, after my behavior at the pizza buffet. But we'll see, and tomorrow is another day where I can go further on my raw food journey!

Raw/Living food - Day 2

Day 2 of my Raw/Living food experience.

So far, still so good. I enjoyed my morning vegetable juice more, probably because I chose a recipe that doesn't include celery for this morning. It was carrots, beets and cucumbers. Not the world's tastiest drink, but definitely drinkable. It made a ton too so I froze some for tomorrow morning. I'm noticing that all of the recipes I'm following actually make enough food for two meals for me, which is great because it will cut down on the expense of this lifestyle. The only tough part is that a lot of the food includes avocado which doesn't save very well. I will have to find some way to work around that. I ran this morning and then had the veggie juice. I didn't drink the juice until around 10 or 11 this morning. I wanted to eat between 12-1 but somehow I didn't get around to starting to make lunch until 2, and it took me until nearly 3 to finish it. I made the sweet potato and beet pasta with basil pesto. It was very pleasantly delicious! I don't have a mandolin though so I had to use a regular vegetable peeler and scrape at slices of the potato and beet. It was super messy and slow and sort of dangerous if I wasn't careful. It also wasted good chunks of beat and potato. I need a mandoline! I think I'm interested in this one http://www.amazon.com/Zyliss-Easy-Slice-Folding-Mandoline/dp/B000HVDZU4/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
but I need to do more research. The price seems reasonable though and the reviews are generally good. My big problem with lunch was that, while tasty, it was definitely not filling to me. I never really felt like I had any food actually reach my stomach though I felt like I was doing a lot of eating. On the other hand though, I wasn't really hungry through the afternoon either so maybe it's just that difference between being hungry and being empty. The food digests quickly because it is all living, raw food, so it doesn't stay in your stomach long, but the nutrients from the food fuels your body so you technically are not hungry. This has been an important difference to me and it's one I didn't realize previously. Even if I get nothing else out of this raw food lifestyle, I think that difference is enough.

Then on to the other important information. So far, I still have all the usual aches and pains. Possibly even worse foot/ankle pain since today was a running day. My PF in my right foot hurts like heck, and my whatever new pain in my left ankle also hurts like heck. Not sure which is worse but I'm hobbling around pretty badly. My throat had been really bothering me a few days ago, very sore and scratchy. It is better, but not completely gone yet. That, of course, could have happened either way, but I figured I'd report on it all the same. While I haven't really felt hungry, I did take a long nap this afternoon and that might have changed things. Also, it shows that my energy level is not all that high. I think the meal we chose for dinner tonight, chicken breasts with cauliflower, was a healthy choice and pairs well with the raw food diet transition so I don't feel guilty about that. My favorite part is though, that now I only have 44 lbs to lose, instead of 46. It's a great start and I hope it keeps up!

Raw/Living food - Day 1

I recently stumbled onto a raw food book. I had no idea there was a whole world of eating like this out there! For anyone else not really familiar with it, it's only eating foods that are not cooked above 118 degrees. This rules out... well a lot of stuff. It's about eating fresh food, and often organic food where you can, and avoiding processed food. The people who have been living this lifestyle claim all sorts of fantastic health benefits and crazy amounts of weight loss. I feel like this is close to the eating style I had towards the end of college, where I just ate things like sprouts with mustard on them. My body felt so good then too. I just didn't wake up with aches and pains any longer. I know I'm a lot older now so more aches and pains are to be expected, but I had pains that did go away with my eating style changes. So I'm considering trying to go back to it.

It's a hard transition and yet, not hard at the same time. On one hand, I've been against processed food for a while, especially all of the additives. And after reading these books, now I just look at it and think Toxic!! But who knows how long that strong of a reaction will stay with me. Also, I know from personal experience that I felt better in the past, so that should be strong reasons for me to do it again. On the other hand though, it is hard to do! It's expensive! We've been to our local fruit and veggie place two times today alone and spent over 50 dollars between the trips. That's only getting me about 6 meals in this lifestyle. I can't be spending hundreds of dollars a week just on my food alone! Plus there is no way that my husband will be joining me eating like this so now we have double the food costs, plus double the time and energy to make a whole second meal. These raw meals do not just make themselves. They are time consuming and use just about every dish and device I have in the house it feels like. They need the juicer, the blender, the food processor. They often call for a dehydrator, a sprouter and an ice cream machine but I don't have any of these items yet, so I'm skipping those recipes for now. Then I have to sit next to my husband while he eats things that I know are delicious! It's hard to sit there and smell that food and never have a taste! I'm still not sold on the taste of all raw vegetables yet. I'm sure it would be fine if I never knew other things, such as pizza and tuna casserole and others along those lines, but I have had delicious foods before and I know what I'm missing! While I had the willpower to turn it down today, will I tomorrow? Or the next day? Enough so that this can be a lifestyle change and not just some odd fad I'm going through? I'm not sure.

But surely a healthier, less painful life should be worth giving up a bit of taste, right? Taste is just one little sense. I have 4 others! Plus it's not like you can NEVER eat anything else in this lifestyle. Just mostly it has to come from raw, unprocessed foods. I'm going to try to monitor my body and feelings carefully as I try this lifestyle on for size. It would be great if it would help me lose excess weight while still having tons of energy as it claims it will. I would love to lose 46 lbs from this point. I'll watch to see how much weight I lose from here, if any. The book I'm following to make these change also asks you to rate your energy level every day, presumably so you can see how much it improves over time. Today's energy rating would be between 2 an 5 throughout the day. At one point I was so groggy I was bumping in to all sorts of things. It would be so fantastic not to feel so sleepy in the afternoons!

I do know one thing though, if I always ate alone, always had enough time to prepare my food, and money wasn't an object when purchasing ingredients, I would definitely always eat this way. This sort of lifestyle really speaks to me. Maybe that should be reason enough to give this a try, even if it may be hard along the way.