Day Fourteen – Weigh-In #2, I Stop Going Nuts, and A Sauna Makes it All MUCH Better!

So after such a cruddy feeling 24 hours of lethargy yesterday, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Doubled down on the chocolate, as I realized a few things.  Well let me back up.

First, it was weigh-in time again today, and although I lost about 8.5 pounds last week, I only lost 1.5 this week.  So I’m at 219, which is excellent, but not the kind of weight loss I wanted.  But I can tell you EXACTLY why my weight loss was so little.  I gave in this week to so many cravings, and tried to make their raw equivalents, and that meant LOTS of nuts!!!  Too oily, too heavy, too acidic and not sprouted.  I was lazy, plus I was getting a little tired of cacao, so I wanted a lot more savory things.  I can’t say anything as harsh as “I paid the price for it”, because everything was still raw, but it  certainly didn’t contribute to my weight loss or energy reserves.  Oh!  I also had raw cheese (actual dairy cheese) on my seed crackers, so my ankles started to hurt again.  I never realized how adversely dairy affects me.  No more now.  No cheese, milk or yogurt.  Just doesn’t agree with me.  I actually expressed to Jason that I felt like I was back on cooked food;  with all the pain, the drowsiness, the clouded thought.

So I got my lethargic butt to the gym today and because I felt so dizzy from detox and overly-heavy unsprouted nuts.  I didn’t chance an actual workout (didn’t wanna fall off a machine).  So instead I did lots of stretching for about an hour, hand weights on the floor, then took a 45 minute dry sauna (came out 3 times to rinse off in cool water).  I came out of the gym feeling MUCH better, with clearer vision, more energy and the knowledge and sense that I had sweated some of the sludge out.  Later in the evening, Jahn and I went for a 1.6 mile walk with little bits of running thrown in here and there.  I can’t believe how much better I feel!

I think that’s a mistake lots of people going raw make, especially during detox:  they don’t incorporate exercise and sweating.  Jay has told me for over 2 years how important those are, and while I did them sporadically, I’m ready to incorporate them for a minimum of 3 days a week, preferably 5 or 6.  I really am feeling the value of them, now.

Also, I’m hitting the superfoods and cacao much more in the future.  I really felt a sloppy energy this week from eating less chocolate with each meal.  My moods weren’t as good either.  I’m going to incorporate more green smoothies, too for bone mineralization, a full feeling and the all-important chlorophyll.

I can see how people gain weight with raw.  Nuts, nuts, nuts and oils.  I’m such a little fruit bat, it amazes me.  When I was a kid, I remember wanting oranges more than cake or candy, so I guess it makes sense that these are the foods I do best on.  This is how I’m meant to eat, and it feels so great to be getting back to it.  : )

So what did I eat today?  (Let’s get to the good stuff).  I had a large chocolate drink of bananas, water, cacao, mesquite and maca.  No coconuts in the house today.  It wasn’t as good as my usual shake, but it was still really good.  VERY energizing, because I put in extra maca and cacao today (which made the drink too bitter, needed just a bit of agave).  For lunch I had what little was left of my huge banana cacao drink,  just 2 small seed/flax crackers with lots of pesto, as I made some last night, and a small salad of spinach, nutritional yeast and my apple cider vinaigrette.  Dinner was avocado with Herby and a few spoonfuls of chocolate syrup.  And no more un-sprouted nuts.  Check out what Elaina Love has to say about nuts and sprouting on YouTube here.  It’s GREAT information about all sorts of nuts, which to soak, which to sprout and why.

So I really feel like I’m back on track and ready to seriously get back into this.  No excuses this coming week for not exercising, sweating, eating chocolate or anything else that I know is good for me.  WAY less nuts and seeds, and only if sprouted from now on!.

Day Seven: Weigh-In & Super DUPER Superfoods Delivery!

So I was tired a lot today and took a long nap – almost 3 hours, took Miko to the dentist (yippee, he gets to keep his tooth!) and our delivery from Ultimate Superfoods came!!!  We got 5 pounds of cacao powder, 1 pound of cacao butter, 6.6 pounds of goji berries, 5 pounds of maca, a litre of clear agave, 1 pound of powdered agave inulin, and 5 pounds of Peruvian mesquite.  I waited until everyone was home to open it, so we could open and enjoy our first big delivery as a family.  Miko joined in, too, and we all were sticking our fingers into everything and tasting it straight out of the bag.  Then Jahn brought a few bowls and spoons into the living room and Jason started mixing little concoctions.  The best was the straight cacao with agave — tasted like the filling in a chocolate-dipped truffle!  Unbelievable!  Never had cacao of that quality before.  So intensely flavored that we had to use less to get the same effect.  And WOW does it give me energy!!!  I’m LOVIN’ it!!!  (No McDonald’s reference intended.)

Breakfast was a shake (what else?) and Miko almost guzzled his.  He’s just finding out about the joys of superfoods, even though he’s tried going raw a few before and has been doing green smoothies for some time.  We split a bit of our huge order up with him, so he will go home with maca, goji, cacao and mesquite.

Lunch was a salad and a chocolate candy for dessert, and dinner was just 3 dates with almond butter.  I can’t believe how little I need now!  I also had a few handfuls of trail mix that consisted of goji, raisins and pecans.

Weigh-in was a JOY!  No, seriously!!!  I went down 8 pounds in 7 days!!!  I’m now at 220.7 pounds (started this “diet” at 228.6).  I’ve lost 1 pants size and almost all of my back pain is gone, my knees and ankles no longer hurt, and I’m sleeping about 5-6 hours a night, with a small nap every other day or so (except for todays long one).  So far so good!  I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!!

Day Four: Sea Bird Watching and a Picnic

I woke up feeling pretty sluggish, so I made a chocolate & maca shake and it perked me right up.  My side of the family invited us all to a sea bird festival, but Jason had to work, so Jahn and I went with my mom, dad, sister, her husband & son.  We packed a picnic lunch of strawberries, grapes, Clementine oranges, chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, chocolate cheesecake and lemon cheesecake.  Jahn and I stayed totally raw, despite being surrounded by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bologna sandwiches, Cheetos, Doritos, juice boxes and hard-boiled eggs (left over from Easter).  I made sure to pack the cheesecake because I knew that it would fill us up quickly so we wouldn’t be tempted to eat the other things.

But the picnic was the last part of our outing.  First, we went to the funnest little festival.  It was all about sea birds, and there were real birds from a sanctuary there (permanent residents that are too old or injured to be returned to the wild), free games, prizes, face painting, a nature hike and a ferry boat ride!  Jahn and his cousin Ben got to actually drive the boat!  It only held 16 people, so it was very cozy, and the boys were beyond proud of themselves for actually steering under the Captain’s supervision.  Too fun!  And they even got Honorary Captain certificates to commemorate the day.

Then it was off to the picnic (which I described above) at a local park, where the boys got to run off the rest of their energy.  I was even able to keep up with them and didn’t need a nap!  Then Ben came over to our house and played with Jahn for a few hours.  Jahn discovered the sweetness of dandelion flowers and was smashing them up and eating them.  Ben wasn’t as keen on it, but we all had a taste and had some fun gathering up flowers and leaves and trying them out.  Worst case scenario, we get a little liver cleansing out of it.

I certainly got my exercise and was ready for bed by 10.  I had a bite of raw pizza with Jahn and the rest of the fruit with chocolate left over from the picnic.  Then, for dessert, we had sliced bananas with raisins on them, drizzled with strawberry and chocolate syrups.  Delicious!  All in all, a great day, and Jason stayed raw all day, too.  Looks like we’re finally on our way!

Day One:

So here we go!  Day one is complete!  For breakfast I had a chocolate  milkshake consisting of young Thai coconut (water and meat), maca powder, cacao (chocolate) powder, banana and Peruvian mesquite powder.  Somehow, the coconut makes the cacao taste more like milk chocolate than dark, which is always welcome for me, as I’ve always preferred the milk to dark.  Jason (my darling partner), is going raw with me and asking his 7-year old son, Jahn, to do the same.  He even got on-line today and found 5 pound bags of chocolate, maca & mesquite powder, 10 pound bags of goji berries, and clear agave in containers anywhere from 1 litre to FIFTY-FIVE GALLON DRUMS!!! Insanity.  I think we’ll start with a gallon for now.  ;o)  But such a helpful guy!  Trying to keep us raw and save us big bucks at the same time.  Oh!  I should state, for the record, that we aren’t just going cold turkey into raw with no prep time or education.  We have been working toward this gradually for over 2 years.

For lunch I had ice cream with just 2 ingredients:  cacao powder and frozen bananas.  Delish!  I also had chocolate chip cookies that I  found at my local faboo health store, Terra Organica, and they’re made by Sun Power Natural.  Just came in during the last week or so.  They were so good that I ate FOUR!!!  I can’t wait to try the cinnamon and fruit burst ones!  Maybe if I break them up on top of chocolate-cinnamon ice cream?  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … sounds delectable!

The wee one came home from school and was delighted to find a sunny-faced snack of Clementine chunks (for the eyes), a chocolate chip cookie nose, and a dried white mulberry smile.

Jahn's Sunny-Faced after-school snack. He said, "This cookie nose is TERRIFIC!"

He is so excited that I’m doing nothing but chocolate for 30 days that now he wants to try it, too.  Not too hard to get a kid to eat raw food if he thinks he can have dessert for every meal (and rightly so)!  He’s having more of other things than I am, but is liking the raw cacao more and more each time he tries it.  A year ago he said it was “too sour”.  I think his taste is changing more toward raw food.  Woo-hoo!

I experimented with a chocolate sauce for the first time today that has raw agave nectar, cacao powder and maca powder in it.  Took pics of it for the book and the kiddo dipped his grapes in it for dinner.   Jason had raw food of his own today (he’s not really going as hard-core into the chocolate thing like I am, but is doing all raw) and he had a chocolate-lemon candy bar this morning, some chocolate cake this afternoon, and had a chocolate milkshake in the evening.  More like snacks on the chocolate front for him.  For dinner, I had a plate of fruit (orange slices, banana slices, grapes [the kid suggested it] and strawberries) — and each and every bite was first dipped generously into the chocolate syrup that I mentioned above.  VERY popular and successful!  1/2 a cup of chocolate sauce gone in under 6 hours.  I wasn’t too fond of it on grapes, as the flavors seemed to blend together too much, but it was good on the oranges, quite good on the bananas and abso-farking-lutely UNBEATABLE on the strawberries!!!

Here's what I ate for my late-night dinner, as explained above.

I feel great right now and don’t feel a real need for sleep, although poor Jason is trying to get to sleep to the clickety-clack lullaby of the laptop keyboard.  He says it’s ok, though.  Sounds like he’ll be snoring soon.  (I love to hear him breathe when he sleeps.  So sweet.)  I had a few emotional moments today … even raw chocolate can’t make EVERYthing ok … but alas, raw food does bring up your stuff for a fresh spring cleaning, dudn’t it?  I’ve gone totally raw for 2 weeks twice – Once in late June/early July of 2007, as  well as the first 2 weeks of 2009.  I’m really hoping to stick to it this time.  I loved how much energy I had when I did it, especially the first time.  I detoxed too quickly the second time and got sick, then we moved and fell off the wagon.  No excuse-making here, just stating what happened.

I watched a LOT of David Wolfe and Markus Rothkranz today to get and stay motivated.  The oddest thing is thing is that my stomach is growling and I am craving not Sausage McMuffins, not Volcano Tacos, as I so often do (anyone who says they’re not addicted to cooked food should try giving it up completely for a month!  I’ll show them and addict every time)!  But SALAD!  I find myself wanting it so bad that I’m wishing we had cacao nibs in the house so I could “cheat” and eat them as croutons.  Who the hell ever heard of cheating on a diet by eating SALAD???  Clearly I need help.  But after awhile, I guess one gets tired of the same thing.  I am curious how I’ll handle it when I want something savory.  There’s no such thing as chocolate cheese or chocolate-dipped olives.  If anyone sees me eating those, they’ll think I’m pregnant!

Well, I’m off to bed.  A successful day all around, happy that I’m doing this, and I didn’t need a nap today.  That was new.  For breakfast, I’ll probably have my chocolate milkshake again (it’s so easy and quick to make) because it gives me SUCH the better pick-me-up than coffee!  See you when the Sun graces us with his presence again!  ¡Hasta pronto, amigos!