Day 52, 53, 54

photo credit: my daughter

I see it's been a few days. If you've read, I've been sick. I'm still standing. I'm just tired. I'm usually tired all the time but now I'm really tired - LOL. Wasn't sure I could be more tired than I was but apparently I'm wrong. Certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I'm not giving up. I'm just giving myself some time off from the computer.

I wish I could have been a little further along in this so I'd be stronger. I see that's not the plan. Still, I'm here. Eating bananas. Juicing oranges. Staying in bed as much as I can when my daughter is at school.

Speaking of which, most children grace the home fridge with colorful artwork. Mine posts warning notices. I have to wonder what sort of career she's headed for.

Stay tuned.

Day 44 The Two Types of Raw Food People

photo credit Libraryman@flickr

There are basically two types of raw foodists:
Raw Gourmet and Raw Low Fat.

1. Raw Gourmet. Many people initially embarking on raw food start here. They recreate as many SAD (standard American) diet recipes with raw food as they can. There are websites and glossy magazines devoted to fancy, beautiful raw food. So you have people making fancy stuff as well as pizza and White Castle sliders and crackers, etc., from raw food and you end up with a diet that can be as high as 80% fat and with as many health problems as they had before. Salt also runs a bit rampant in this mix which holds its own health problems.

Besides this flying in the face of proper food combining (a whole 'nother topic) they don't eat a high ratio of fruit and this is the downfall of the gourmet raw foodist - you have to consume enough fruit everyday to make it work. You simply cannot get enough calories from greens, zucchini and tomatoes - you would eat endlessly all day and never make it up. Furthermore, you don't just need 'calories'. You need specific things from those calories. If that were not true, we could all just blissfully chow down on Ho Ho's for the rest of our days and be thin, beautiful and healthy. Right.

1 cup of spinach leaves is only 7 calories. I eat 6 cups a day, sometimes more, but 6 cups are just 42 calories. Wow. Why bother? Well because of the minerals - that's why you'd want to eat those lousy 42 calories. You need that, particularly if you're in your first year. Calorie-wise, you need much more than that, obviously. On good days I eat around 2500 calories so what else am I gonna eat to make that up?! You have to eat high calorie fruit. In fact, this has to be the mainstay of your diet so you replace your glycogen stores. This is why we crave sugar in the first place: To replenish our glycogen stores - the fuel we run on all day.

Granulated sugar will never serve your glycogen stores properly. You'll just need tons and tons of it over and over and it's not the right stuff, so you'll just feel and look like crap. No one ever got thin and healthy eating large amounts of refined sugar and that's a fact. Only whole food (fruit) will meet your bodies requirements - and probably for the first time in your entire life. Wow.

If you eat enough fruit you will never crave sugar again. I have cravings sometimes if I've not eaten enough calories in a day but to my surprise they are never for sugary things because my glycogen needs are finally being met. I admit it's a relief to no longer crave sweets. So what do I crave? Stupid crap like McDonalds cheeseburgers. When I crave that, I know I just need a couple hundred more calories for the day. I finally learned how many calories a day make me tick. It's around 2500.

It's different for everyone but everyone who is a low fat raw foodist or low fat raw vegan needs a lot more calories than you're probably eating now. I've never eaten that much a day on a regular basis in my life. I had to work up to it but it feels good now :)

Those who don't make their calories up in fruit make it up by default in FAT instead. Lots and lots of nuts, tahini, possibly oils and the sad thing is, nuts in America are DEAD. Unless you get them from small independent farms, thanks to the USDA, any nuts you buy in the stores have all been heated - cooked - no longer raw. If you claim to be a raw foodist and you are eating heat treated nuts - you're no longer a raw foodist. You can't even buy them at Whole Foods. An independent store might have them. The way you can tell they are dead is they will not sprout. You're basically eating fat gravel You'd be better off fat-wise on a SAD diet where the fat is around 35-45% than do that to yourself. If you buy nuts locally you need to ask if they've been heat treated. Ask if they're sprout-able. If the person doesn't answer you with conviction either way, yes they're certified raw, they will sprout or no, they've been heat treated and they will not sprout - don't buy them.

Besides the fact they're not raw, even if you buy raw nuts you need to understand that fat will never fill your glycogen stores and you'll be forever craving everything you were trying to get away from in the first place, including your health issues. You cannot make up your other 2458 calories of the day with nuts - aka FAT. You need fruit.

You also need to know that too many nuts will start to affect your teeth. People think it's the sugar in the fruit when they start to have dental problems from a raw food diet, but fruit is not the culprit. It's the nuts. They stick to the teeth and embed in between far more than the fruit ever does. You can rinse the fruit down with water but the nuts stay adhered. Trust me on this one - cut the fat - forget the nuts! I eat some pumpkin seeds once in a while but I'm pretty much even over that. Bottom line - you don't need nuts at all.

Which is not to say you don't need some fat. I track my food everyday and if I need fat, I eat a half an avocado last thing of the day, all by itself. That's it. My body has all night to process the fat, I get to 'sleep on it' and I have no active fruit in my system to get bogged down in the fat - causing blood sugar issues. AH! There is much to learn.

2. Raw Low Fat. Those who eat simply fruits (80%) and vegetables (10%) and fats (10%) and those really into it take the time to learn about food combining (which is not recipes...) and they are adamant about exercise daily. They never try to recreate any of the former SAD foods they ate.

I'm of the 2nd group if you couldn't tell by now, but I'm considered 'transitioning' since it can take a year to fully adopt a raw low fat diet. Wow - just my luck I've set aside a year to do just that. HA! Those who are 100% low fat raw vegan absolutely never, ever eat anything they're not supposed to - not ever. That's why they're considered 100%.

I'm doing better than most people I'm told with my transitioning - mostly because I'm doing it in the public eye so I don't want to cheat or fall back or transition slowly. It's a little tough but I get there nearly all the time. I'd say once every two weeks something stupid happens and we're talking one item - not a Thanksgiving dinner or binging for days on end. It's one item - like some popcorn or a few bites of my daughter's pasta. It's OK. I pay the price which is huge (very painful) and learn once again why I don't want to do that.

The great part is I always get back on the horse, unlike other 'diets', and that's because this isn't just a diet. It's a lifestyle and once you embark on it, it's pretty compelling. Just one example, often gourmet raw foodists are still over weight even a year down the line, they have bloating and digestion and other chronic health issues that they really should be able to get relief from. All dedicated low fat raw foodists are very trim and cut, their faces and bodies have redesigned themselves in the most fantastic ways and they've eliminated their bloating and digestion issues as well as a myriad of health issues. Cut the fat. Up your fruit. Change your life!

As far as all the raw food info out there, a good rule of thumb is if the person is selling you supplements and hawking 'super foods' you might want to take their raw food info with a grain of salt. If you're 100% low fat raw vegan - you won't even have any salt! If you're really doing raw food you wouldn't need processed 'super foods' or any other strange processed preparation. Just RAW FRUITS & VEGETABLES.

Low fat raw vegans/foodists take little if any supplements. I thought I needed calcium recently but upon tracking saw I was actually above the RDA. I supplement Vit D in the winter and I'll supplement B12 as this is a concern for ALL vegetarian type people, but let me tell you - I needed B12 even when I ate meat and many other meat eaters do as well. So there will be no more blaming the veggies ;)

Day 26 Human Experimentation

Right. That would be ME. I thought I'd update on some instances of cause and effect. I've done a few intentional and unintentional food experiments. Here's the low down and results of those. Standard TMI warnings may apply.

My first experiment came when I reached the end of my salad dressing rope. Many days into this I decided I would just HAVE salad dressing. I mean, everything else has been so perfect and I'm really disliking dry salad or lemon salad. I wanted real dressing. How bad could that possibly be?

So, I picked Newman's Creamy Caesar. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best choice. I admit it was fairly yummy, though salty, but I never expected what happened immediately next.

My tummy bloated to the MOON. I mean, like Elasti-girl in all the wrong places. I was 27 months pregnant and counting all over again.

Wow. I was astonished. Anytime my belly bloated this badly was due to my 'candida' and only if I ate the mother-lode of candida reactive choices: a donut. All at once the chapter on Candida in 80/10/10 hit me right between the eyes. It's NOT the sugar - it's the FAT. Yep, it is. I've battled 'candida' for YEARS. Had doctors giving me all kinds of things, spent all kinds of money on cures, denied myself fruit, sugar, wheat, you name it and it *never ever ever* went away.

That's because it's NOT SUPPOSED TO GO AWAY. We ALL have candida. It's actually a necessary thing. OH YES IT IS. What is NOT necessary is the quantity of FATS we eat in our diets, totally whacking out our candida levels, bloating us to infinity and beyond.

Don't believe me? I just lived it. The main 'ingredient' in that salad dressing was FAT. Not wheat, not sugar - but FAT. I'd never made this connection before. I'd eat a donut and it'd be all over. My daughter would marvel at my magically expanding belly. Having been told by everyone that claimed to know that it was the sugar, yeast and wheat, I believed that. No one ever said it's because of the FAT! Additionally, I've been eating large amounts (by any regular person's standards) of fruit all month and lost TWELVE inches off my waistline, and have had no more bloating until the fateful (fatful?!) salad dressing day. So, it's NOT the sugar. It's not the sugar at all.

Still skeptical? Do you have candida and want to finally understand your bloating? Read 80/10/10 and stop being a physical and financial victim of candida FOREVER. Incidentally the salad dressing wasn't long lived. It made me real sick and I was glad when that was all over. Ew. I like fresh squeezed tangerine juice on my salads now, thankyouverymuch.

The 2nd experiment was also kinda accidental. I did not expect this really, really cute guy to be handing out samples of little espresso chocolate thingies at Whole Foods. His eyes were blue and his smile engaging and he placed a little cup right in my hand and well yeah, I ate it. It was two very small little cluster things, smaller than the size of a dime. I didn't think much about it until I was laying in bed 4 hours later unable to sleep the entire night. I've not had caffeine for weeks and my body is so much more sensitive to things I eat now. I hadn't even thought of the caffeine load, much less that it would rob me of an entire night's sleep. Lesson learned - NO chocolate or caffeine or chocolate/caffeine!

The 3rd experiment was intentional, sort of. I was visiting Martin who somehow won the burger lottery at McDonald's prior to my arrival. Something had happened in line and they 'made it up to him' by giving him multiple extra cheeseburgers. He offered me one and I declined and reminded him I don't eat that. He apologized but then said, "Do you think it will taste different to you now?" I thought for a minute. I figured it would and said, "Okay, let me see for the purpose of experimentation." Maybe you don't know how far you've come if you never go back to see. Kinda like spending the weekend at mom and dads where you realize it's not only as bad as you remember, it's worse, and suddenly you feel much better for the choices you've made.

OMG - I just don't have words to describe what happened. Not only was it the most massively salty thing I've ever tasted, it felt gritty as if it was just rolled in salt. It was as if someone had poured pure salt all over every inch of it. I spit it out; it was absolutely not edible at all. I knew it would be salty but didn't expect it to be that salty. What shocked me more, however, was the grainy feel. I took the rest of the sandwich apart and looked at it again and again, expecting to see it covered in salt granules. I figured maybe this sandwich was faulty or something. It just had to be. I've never had one feel like this before. I saw nothing, it looked as they always do. I touched it. I could not detect salt granules on my fingers. Really, really weird.

Then a few days later I came across an article that talked about the Window Cleaning Chemicals in Fast Food Hamburger Meat. You might want to check that out and save yourself while you can. I admit to being doubly sorry I went back home again, even if it was just to poke my head in the door! *gag* Makes visiting mom and dad with all the cigarette smoke and alcoholism seem preferable. Hmmm well okay maybe not. I'll pass on both.

My other bad experiments simply involve me getting too much fat in my diet, either at my own hands or at others. I never realized what that load really felt like until I got away from it. It's heavy. It's tiring. It takes your body forever to process too much fat and it does bad things with the other foods you eat as well. It's these long processing times that rob us of our energy and bring on fatigue. There is no fat that's immune, it includes even those that we think of as 'good fat'. Olive oil is not your friend. It's the friend of the man who sells olive oil. The fats in nuts and seeds in too great of quantities are not your friend, either. They bog your system. They tie up the sugars eaten with them and prevent them from exiting your blood in a timely manner - thus creating blood sugar problems. Everyone blames the sugar but the truth of the matter is - it's the FAT!

Sadly, many vegetarians, vegans, raw vegans & raw foodists are consuming 60% to 80% fat in their diets. They're doing more harm to themselves than someone on a Standard American Diet which logs 35-40% fat at that point. If you're eating veg, go track your food online and see for yourself how much fat you're getting and while you're at it, do yourself a favor and get the whole story - read 80/10/10. It will change how you think about food. The pieces will finally make sense and you'll be astonished at the bill of goods we've been sold all these years, mostly for reasons that line other people's pockets.

Day 19 I Picked The Wrong Week To...

I had the day from hell with little sleep, way too much to do and not enough hours to do it in. It was a mad dash to get everything done before 5pm because I made a commitment to attend a local raw food group's potluck with Lori (BFF!) tonight. I was really sweating it through much of the day but things eased up once we finally set our bowls on the buffet table and settled in.

Normally I live for potlucks and this potluck was one of the most beautiful and diverse I'd seen. But since having gone Commando with my food I was faced with a lot of raw but prepared/multi-ingredient foods that all looked yummy but weren't really legal for me. I made raw chow mein for everyone else and we brought a big bowl of bananas and red grapes so I'd be sure to have something I could eat. However, I decided in the spirit of the group to try things, and I have to say everything was truly wonderful.

Unfortunately, it looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue :) I'm paying the price with a very sore belly from all the added oils, salt, spices and multiple combinations of the foods. It'll pass and I'll get all that extra fat out of my system in a few days. I know, I have all year to work on this. I'm just trying to simplify things and get my energy levels back up as high as I can. I've lived with exhaustion for too long. Setting myself back probably isn't such a good thing but that's life. I think next time I'll stick to my path, though I'm happy to create something more interesting for the rest of the group.

I was really excited to eat a banana on the way home :)

Day 15 Cookies & Cravings

Today in my search for raw tahini (sesame seed paste) I stumbled across the raw section at Rainbow Blossom - an organic and whole foods/health type store. I usually stick to the perimeter of the store, or more pointedly, the produce section but I was looking for raw tahini. Turns out it is also in the produce section! They were just out of it.

So as my quest led me astray I discovered these raw organic almond raisin cookies. The thing was over $2 for one cookie but I really wanted to try it. The ingredients listed were organic almonds, organic raisins, organic raw agave nectar and organic cardamom. But even with a raw food lifestyle there is room for interpretation. I tend to lean towards the hard-core and this doesn't fit my profile exactly but more importantly, I have issues with nuts in America, and the ones on trees as well :)

If you're buying what you think are raw nuts in this country you might want to think again. The USDA or whomever is in charge of nuts (don't get me started...) has mandated that all nuts be heated to destroy - well whatever - fungus, mold, my health, you name it. At that point the nut can no longer be sprouted and it's a dead food. You're eating gravel. Raw vegans typically won't eat these for good reason - they're dead.

What made me buy this, however, was that the package specifically said it was made with soaked and germinated almonds. That means the almonds are very much an alive food. They've not been heated and destroyed. I've not had a real raw nut in so long I just had to try it. I ate half before I swam and the other half well after dinner. I liked it a lot, though 240 calories seems like a lot for one cookie and I feel like I'm cheating. But, it was all raw. Between the price, more fat grams than I want to eat in a day and the lingering guilt-for-no-reason, I'll reserve these for times when I have a craving for something like this.

The truth of the matter, though, is that I really don't crave anything - except more raw fruits and vegetables. What I've read all along is true. If you're raw vegan and you consume enough fruits and vegetables during the course of the day you will not crave anything except more fruits and vegetables. When I say you will not crave anything I have to tell you that this is a level of 'no cravings' that I've never experienced before. I can literally sit down with someone eating (name any number of yummy things) and absolutely not have any desire for it whatsoever. They might as well be eating cement - it holds virtually no interest for me.

Now, on the days where my calories have been lighter, I have thought of other things. Thursday night I had had a long day and was driving home from the other side of the city. Suddenly I wanted a McDonalds hamburger. OMG could I have wanted anything worse? Probably not. So, my first thought was McDonalds (because I obviously needed to eat) and my next thought was had I had a banana next to me in the car I would have eaten that and never thought about McDonalds at all.

The craving wasn't horrible, though I did pass a McDonalds and for a second did think - oh... but I continued on. I was simply hungry. I really needed a piece of fruit in the car with me and usually I have something. I came home, ate a banana right away and then went onto make chow mein. I ate that and it was wonderful. Never thought about McDonalds again and that's unusual. Typically, once I have a craving for something I will continue to crave it regardless of what else I eat and at some point in the next 24 hours would have definitely had a burger at McDonalds. But not now. Once I ate what was legal the craving vanished permanently.

Here's the cookie if you're interested. It comes from Gopal's Health.