Day Twenty-Two: Oi, The Cravings!!!

Another hard day with cravings.  I mean a HARD day!!!  But, was I craving anything from my “previous life” that was healthy?  Don’t count on it!  Greasy burgers, dripping burritos, nachos with chips fried in lard, topped with lard-filled beans, hot, stretchy pus-teuriuzed cheese, canned jalapeños and the ever popular hormone-laden sour cream!  Maybe a bit of fresh lettuce on the side?  Only on occasion.  REMARKABLE!  Not referring to the taste, just referring to how remarkable it is that I ate that crap for so long, and that I lived to tell about it.  I mean yeah, of COURSE I miss the taste!!!  It tasted freakin’ treMENdous!!!  How could I NOT miss those flavors?  But I just kept reminding myself that just this past winter, I couldn’t even stand on my own tip-toes.  Now I can hop on one foot several consecutive times!  So I don’t miss the horrible health that came with it, the groggy mind, the inability to wake up, the constant post-nasal drip … oh, the list goes on and on.  But Jay and I laid there in bed dreaming of our “past lives” and jonesing for that food so badly!!!  Jay wanted gyros with Greek salad, as well as a burger and calzones from places he’d been to when he lived in Florida.  Thank goodness we live in WA state and far out of the reach of things in other locales.

I’m getting a little sick of chocolate, actually, but I had a chocolate-goji bar that I made for breakfast, lunch was savory trail mix with another piece of chocolate, this time flavored with orange oil, and dinner was a Greek salad (Jason inspired me with all the earlier talk of it), and some chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert.

Not sure why I missed this the 1st two times I watched Food Matters, but raw cacao is likely the highest source of iron in the world, and has a lot of vitamin C in it (which dies if you heat it up).  Fascinating.  I already knew about the magnesium content and antioxidant properties, but I’m glad to find these new things out.

Welp!  On to day 23!

Day Twenty-One: Weigh-In #3

Just a few seconds to write.  Well, I am on the BEST road to great health, and not only am I feeling better daily (not counting detox days)  😉  but the weight continues to fall away!  I am now officially down to 215.2 pounds ~~ WOO-HOO!!!  Today was Jay’s most challenging day, as emotional stuff came up for him from his past, and he sprained his back at the gym yesterday (we’re a mess, eh?), so I had to take the poor dear to the chiropractor.  I mean he was OUT!!!  He was actually out in SIX places!!!  Afterward, he came home and stayed in bed the rest of the day, and I rubbed a natural pain reliever on his back.

Breakfast was chocolate granola, lunch was a salad (I can’t seem to stop wanting salad after I have chocolate) and a goji-chocolate bar for dessert, then dinner was grapefruit juice, kiwi, apricots and a few chocolate cremes.  SUCH good food!!!  I can’t believe that I GET to eat this way and lose weight.  It’s worth it to me to give other junky stuff up, even when it feels hard and I have cravings, because what I’m gaining in the process isn’t weight, it’s optimum health!  😀

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all tomorrow!

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 Eight: Keep Me AWAY from the BBQ Beef!!!

My land and stars!  Ok, so if there was ever a temptation issue, it was today.  Thank GOURD I am gluten intolerant, and caramel coloring (which comes from wheat) is in BBQ sauce, or I may have lost it today.  I was over at a friend’s house, and he was eating BBQ beef, and it smelled SO good, I was going a little wonky!  It wasn’t even that I wanted meat.  Just that smokey-sweet smell of the sauce, I actually started to drool and hop up and down a little.  He would’ve offered me some, but thankfully, he is a better friend than that.  But I didn’t give in to temptation!  I TOTALLY stayed raw, put some goji in my belly for nutritional value and had a bit of avocado with Herby — that one usually kills my desire for meat and smokey flavored foods, as does the Rawmesan on salad.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to stay raw when you know what to do to kill your cravings by satisfying them with other nutrient-dense foods and specific flavors.

Breakfast was a shake with just bananas, water and cacao — not as good a smoothie/shake as usual, but good.  Oh, and I had to add a bit of agave as the bananas were under-ripe and I didn’t put any coconut in it.  Lunch was trail mix of goji, pine nuts, pecans, raisins and white mulberries.  Then I had a piece of fudge that I made with cacao, maca, mesquite, agave, pecans and … are you ready for this?  AVOCADO!!!  It tastes more like ganache, but it’s freakin’ YUMMY!  Dinner was a spinach salad with strawberry vinaigrette, Rawmesan, flax meal, hemp seeds, strawberries, grapes and pecans.

I had to take Miko home, and even though I took an apple and a mango along as snacks for the drive (it’s about an hour and a half trip to his house and back), by the time I got to his place to drop him off, I felt like I might make a bad food choice.  So I threw myself on the mercy of his kitchen and good nature and begged an avocado off him (trying to get some fat in my tummy to distract me for a bit).  He kindly obliged, and I was able to make it home without incident.  It is so nice to finally be raw!  I just almost can’t stand how great this is.  :o)

Day Six: Have I Been Doing This For Almost a WEEK Already?

Ok, so don’t hate me, but this is actually feeling pretty easy!  Doing raw, I mean.  And it’s NEVER felt easy before.  I don’t know what made me decide to do only chocolate for 30 days (and obviously, I’ve added to that out of necessity), but something is clicking this time that never has before.  I’ve been trying to go raw for over 2 years, and it’s never stuck.  Maybe it just took me that long to transition, maybe I needed the education base and it took that long to get it.  Maybe I needed to get that “magic diet” I’ve always wanted, but never really believed I could have.  Or did I?  I didn’t give up on it, so some part of me must have intuitively known that chocolate was good for me, I just hadn’t looked enough to find the right kind.  Maybe I’ve only been able to do it twice for 2 weeks at a time in the past because I wasn’t getting superfoods often enough and overemphasized the greens.  Or maybe it is just time, so I’m simply ready.  I can’t say for sure.  But there is a calmness now that’s never been there before.  Like that guy Dhrumil that I saw on We Like It Raw talking about letting go of seeking.  That really hit me in a profound way, and I haven’t had the need to look for perfection in my diet anymore since I saw that video.  It’s like somebody else said it was ok to stop seeking perfection, and even though he wasn’t giving me permission to eat Volcano Tacos, I just felt like his words helped me give myself permission to do so.  But once I gave myself that permission, poof!  Most of the desire for them went away.

What’s I find most interesting is that we’re all ready at the same time (everyone in my household) to finally BE raw, and not just try again to GO raw.  I’ve just finished day 6, Jahn has finished day 4 and Jason has finished day 3.  For some reason, within days of each other, we’re all just makin’ the leap, and it really doesn’t seem that hard.  And it’s not like we have less access to the old foodstuffs, or like we suddenly don’t want them — it just sort of seems gone from our consciousness, in a way, and this way of eating now suddenly seems normal, easy and preferable.

I had this conversation with Jahn recently (after we went on the picnic on Saturday at the bird festival), and we were talking about our cravings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at picnics and for pizza at parties.  I said to him, “So here’s the deal:  there’s nothing cooked that we can’t make a raw version of, if we put our minds to it.  We’ve already made pizza and peanut butter, and I think I can figure out jelly with a good freezer jam recipe.  So,  if we can have a raw version of it, WHY would we eat the cooked one???”  And I could see the light come on in his mind and his eyes as he TOTALY got it and said, “YEAH!”

It’s almost like we tripped and fell into it, or at least that’s how it seems now, from this side of things.  It’s a beautiful thing, and we are all requiring just a few hours of sleep each night now, with a nap here or there.  Jahn got a cold and it was gone in 24 hours.  The stresses and situations of life are not much changed, but we have.  And it’s so nice.  I don’t know if I’m just rambling, but it just feels so different now.  And not in a trying or striving or attempting kind of way.  There’s just a state of being that is so calm now, and Jason noticed and conveyed to me last night that time seems to be slowing down so much.  We are getting more done in a day, or at least it seems that way.  Is this making any sense?

My friend Michael is here and I just read the above paragraphs to him to see if they made any sense whatsoever, and he said that yes they does make perfect sense, so they it seems weird to you, then we can blame him.  ;o)  J/K  Love you Miko!

So I started the day with our chocolate shake/milk this morning that we’ve had most mornings, then I spent the day taking Miko to different stores for produce as he is working on going raw, too.  He’ll be staying at our place tonight, and I fed him salad with a new strawberry vinaigrette recipe that I came up with on the spot.  Jahn made him banana slices with chocolate and strawberry sauces on them for dessert (which he loves to call annunaki towers) , and they were both thrilled with it.

So let’s have the rundown:  breakfast was a chocolate shake, lunch was an avocado and a mango because I was on the road and it took MUCH longer than I thought it would to get home (errands kept coming up — one of those days, dontcha know), and for dinner it was, of course, salad, and then a piece of chocolate candy and annunaki towers for dessert.  Oh!  I made Miko a chocolate shake as he’s trying to get more recipes to help him stay raw, so I had a second one as an afternoon snack.

All in all, even though today was a busy day and I would have called it stress-filled in the past, now it just seems like an unusually busy day.  And staying raw was easy.  The Taco Bell sign wasn’t even tempting today.  I’m really starting to FEEL different, and my false body is slipping away, finally giving way to my REAL body!

I’m gonna go work on my books now, and tune in tomorrow for my first weigh-in.  I can feel a difference in my body already, we’ll see what the scale says.

Last, here are a few pics of me on Christmas Day, 2008.  Just to give you an idea of where I started with raw at approximately 240 pounds (as I was over 300 pounds at my heaviest, but would never consent to pictures at that weight).

Me giving Jason an "I Love You" hand sign

Me smiling with glee at getting the Obama calendar I asked for!

So there, now you can at least see what I look like “before”.  I will post more pics at the end of the month.

Day Five: Let the Cleansing Begin!

Good GRIEF!  I know that one always goes through detox when going raw, but this is ridiculous!  I woke up this morning, and my bowels were competeing with every other part of my body for the “Who can release the most” award.  I went 3 times in under 1/2 an hour!  And all afternoon, it was my bladder in the lead.  But I’m 8 pounds lighter in only my 1st 5 days, so I’m off to a freakin’ good start!  🙂  I say good riddance to the weight — as Nathalia Rose says, “waste = weight”.  Let’s get all the crud OUT!

Breakfast was a mango with chocolate, then to the gym for a workout, sauna and lots of stretching.  Let me tell you, while detoxing, there is NO substitute for moving your body and making yourself to sweat in a sauna (followed by a cool, refreshing shower!)  Moves those toxins RIGHT on through and you feel so refreshed and cool-headed afterward!

Went and looked for wild cattails before the workout, and met a nice lady at the gym named Peggy (who told me I should be writing a book about raw food with recipes) 😉 then stopped by Kent’s Garden & Nursery to look at Frost peach trees and blueberry bushes.  We’re gonna start growing some of our own food this year!  We’ve already got an apple tree on the property that came with the house.  All we have to do is fence off the remainder of the yard and we’ll be able to keep the deer and other animals out of the garden.  Plus, a little diatomaceous earth, and we’ll be able to keep the buggies off naturally.

So back to today (I do tend to get off on tangents, don’t I?)  I’m really starting to lose my appetite during the day.  All that chocolate is really keeping me full, plus the fat in the mangos is really helping.  I’ll be making frozen bananas tonight (on a stick) for dipping and rolling in chopped pecans tomorrow … who says you can’t have your favorite Disneyland food as an adult and have it raw?  Remember those frozen, chocolate-dipped bananas on a stick?  First place I tried that as a kid was Disneyland.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Jason and I had late-evening cravings – he for raw tahini and I for avocados – so we went to the grocery store and got avocados, more young thai coconuts, bananas, a large mango, celery and something else I can’t remember.  Then we went to Terra Organica and got his Tahini as well as something called Rawmesan by Gopal’s Health Foods — and it is AMAZING stuff!  It’s unbelievable how tasty raw walnuts, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast and celtic sea salt can taste in the right combination!

But this isn’t about chocolate, is it.  Alas, I am rambling, yet again!  I’m just so thrilled to be finding all these fun, new things to eat.  If I’d’ve known raw could be this much fun, I’d’ve done it years ago.  I didn’t really have lunch, as I’m not too hungry during the day very often.  I think I had maybe a banana or 2, of course dipped in chocolate sauce.  For dinner, I had about a quarter of an avocado with Herby on it (the Rawmesan wasn’t too good on it, in my opinion – not a great complementary taste), and a chocolate bar I made.  Then I had a bit of the most bizarre food I’ve ever eaten.  Jason mixed raw tahini with Nama Shoyu raw soy sauce, added some water, and dipped green cabbage in it.  Now, I hate cabbage.  No, no, you don’t understand.  I HATE cabbage!  Cooked, raw, dudn’t matter.  HATE the stuff.  And this tahini mixture is fairly repugnant on its own.  Bitter, slick and just all-around odd.  All that being so stated, when you dip the cabbage IN the tahini sauce he made, something frickin’ MAGICAL happens.  This bizarre, nutty, sweet, almost meaty and fruity flavor with several layers … it just blossoms in your mouth!  I can’t explain it.  I’ve never had anything like it in my life, but it’s farking fanTAStic!!!  In fact, I want some more right now!  But how to incorporate chocolate into it ….  Maybe sometimes you just can’t eat chocolate on everything.  😉

Day One Addendum: I “broke” my “diet”

So the salad craving just would NOT go away last night!!!  I couldn’t take it.  I wanted it worse than I’ve ever wanted any food in my life.  No, seriously,  It actually kept me awake until 2:43 a.m.!!!  So giving in, I made a small salad and promptly devoured it.  By 2:49 I was done, and by 3 a.m. I was sound asleep.  Slept like a BABY!  I guess too much of a good thing really can be too much.  I’m thinking that maybe I’ll have to incorporate a salad every day if I crave one, as long as all the ingredients are raw.