Day 60 New Month!

photo credit iheartlinen@flickr

Once again a new month before me. I'm hoping I'll lose some weight this month. The inches are great but I'm not interested in being the only 170 lb size 2 person on the planet! I know I build muscle with exercise. That's great but lets get the weight off please.

Last month was hard, lots of stress and then I was sick. I am fortunate to have lost the 13.5 inches. Eating more simply works a lot better. I feel I have my food routine down well. It's interesting to see what a habit this has become and how there's really no turning back. Besides fruit and vegetables being such a huge part of my life, I never used to eat breakfast. I eat breakfast everyday now. I eat much more and more regularly than I have my whole life. I really look forward to fruit for breakfast and big salads later in the day. While I might not be following a perfect continuum, I think the progress over this year will be interesting and gratifying. I'm also curious how many other people are still working on their New Year's resolutions. I am!

With winter being so long it seems this year and having to care for my mom and try to keep my head above water, it's been hard to get to the gym. My sleep remains a disaster. I hope to still get more exercise in, miraculously fix my sleep and get to the gym more this month. HA!

I turn 47 on the 20th of this month - the first day of Spring. Please send some happy headway thoughts my way :)

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 49 Week 7

photo credit lusitania.etsy.com

For week 7 I walked 4 miles and 1.5 swam miles. Actually, that surprised me because I thought it was less. More would have been nice. The snow didn't help. I had other exercise in terms of physical work that is really taking a toll on my very stiff and sore arthritic spine. I actually burned more calories today (over 900) than I did even when I walked 2.5 miles and swam a mile all on the same day (600). If it didn't debilitate me so much I'd do more physical work but it really is hard on me. I crashed for 3 hours this evening. I couldn't help it - I was freezing and hurting and I just fell asleep where I was sitting.

This week I ate 27 bananas and 76 oranges. Wow. Just like trombones! To date I've walked 31.15 miles, swam 7.5 miles and have eaten 192 bananas and 197 oranges. Looks like the oranges are winning. I ♥ oranges.

I noticed in my weekly reports I have difficult weeks every week. I don't mean with food but with stress and things in my life. As I said, I'm working on it. Depression is starting to loom due to the longevity of it with not many rays of light ahead. I don't ♥ winter right now.

It doesn't feel I've made many body changes this week, or month for that matter. Not weighing leaves me feeling rather ungrounded. I'm not fond of it. Maybe it's part of my old anorexia days where it's one of the few stabilizing factors my little brain thinks I have. I think it's not a good idea for me and I probably won't do that next month.


7 weeks down, 45 to go!

Day 46 Forks Over Knives

I'm looking forward to this film coming out - Forks Over Knives.

It about the rejection of animal-based and processed foods - the cornerstone of the standard American diet. Unlike my blog, this one's done by people who have more than my one brain cell. Wow, data, research and findings - OH MY! I don't think it's 100% raw but it should be a good step in the right direction.

I'll be sure to post updates about it when they become available. You can also sign up at the film's website, Forks Over Knives and get the updates emailed directly to you.

Day 45 That Bright Shiny Object? Closer Than It Appears

photo credit ♥.·•Lovely Haru!•·.♥@flickr (seriously...)

You may not realize it, this just being Valentine's Day and all, but there are only 157 days left til the first day of summer. You've rolled your eyes at me, but I did detect your split second heart rate increase. Yes, I did.

If you do absolutely nothing different between now and then you'll spend another summer wishing you were fit and trim at the beach in your new orange bikini. Or whatever rings your bell. Speaking of which, I guess the only logical choice was to put the pink bikini on the doll with pink hair but I oh so wanted to see it the other way around *shrug*

Seriously, if you're one of the 17.2 billion of us who suddenly have that gigantic bright shiny object in the sky come out of no where, leaving a wake of frumpy sweat clad wearers behind, maybe now would be the time to make some inroads...

Today I ate 2,567 raw calories, banged out 2.5 miles at a 4.0 average pace and swam 1 mile - which was 60 straight minutes. I kinda love what's going on with this. I walk around in impossibly baggy sweats, sometimes two pair at a time because it's freakin' cold here. I wear plain, non-descript shirts and over-sized jackets. I toss my hair into a pony tail and forget the make up. I look 'like crap' most of the time. No one sees me. I'm completely invisible. I walk through the market and no one notices me. I go to the gym and though I have less clothes on, I don't have fancy work out stuff. My racing suits are ratty and I'm glad. I'm the invisible woman. I could have gone dancing on both Friday and Saturday nights - the two best days of the entire year thanks to Valentine's Day but I stayed home. On purpose. I washed oranges. I did laundry. I was happy.

Why? Because this is time for me. Just me. I don't care what anyone thinks. In an hour I could dress up and look 'hot' by some standards but that's not what this time is for. This is time for me to finally take care of me, work on my diet, my body and my life. I've never consciously devoted any amount of time, much less a year to the care and feeding of myself. Oh, yes to quite a few others - boyfriends, daughter, my elderly mother, former ungrateful spouse, squirrels, birds, dogs, cats, fish, hamsters, neighbor pets - but never myself.

When would be a good time to start taking care of you? What will you do with your next 157 days? What will you do for yourself over the next year?

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 42 Week 6

photo credit Jennifer Chait

For week 6 I walked 1 mile, did not get any swim time in, which is not to say I had no exercise at all. I did. It just involved the clean up of an enormous mess which pretty much ate up 16 hours of my life in the last week rather than the preferred walking and swimming I usually do.

This week I ate 23 bananas and 54 oranges. To date I've walked 27.15 miles, swam 6 miles and have eaten 165 bananas and 121 oranges. Since my orange consumption is so high I thought it'd be fun to track it. Thank heavens no one is asking me to track baby spinach leaves! In other news, yes, Lori's bananas did come from the same farm as mine. I bought both batches but on different days. Hey, it was fun for me!

Well another difficult beyond belief week. Not having food on Monday just kicked my butt and I continued to live the after effects the rest of the week. I'm trying to get a grip on my food and exercise and sanity. I'm determined to win despite most days being pretty tired and needing a nap. My sleep is really messed up at night. I'll sleep 3-4 hours and BING! I'm done - up all night! Then I crash at 5pm for 2 hours. Yes, it's perpetuating it but honestly, that 5pm sleep is like the BEST sleep ever. I am so warm and happy and I sleep SO well. I decided to go with it today and hopefully things will sort themselves out over time. Maybe I just need to start counting sheep.

My goal is to start to get to the gym first thing in the morning, after my daughter gets on the bus. I'm usually so messed up from not sleeping all night that I just come home and go back to bed, then the day gets away from me and my daughter gets home and that's all she wrote. I'm told I 'have' chronic fatigue syndrome but I don't really like that label. I'd like to think I can FIX it, despite the medical profession being useless other than to assign labels to people. I am not doing that great with it right now but I've not lost hope. I have to wonder if a better label would be 'chronic bullshit' instead of chronic fatigue. Yes, I think that's a better title. The crap that goes on in my life wears me out. Like I said last week, I need some changes. I'm working on them. Maybe God will smile upon me soon.

6 weeks down, 46 to go!

Day 41 Making Up For Lost Time?

photo credit Rocketeer@flickr

Imagine my surprise when I realized I'd logged over 2700 calories for today - and I'm still hungry! What's up with that? I made sure I drank enough water (sometimes we confused hunger with thirst...) and I took a nap and took it easy today. Am I making up for Monday, still? I dunno but that's a new record for me. I'm not worried about it. I don't expect to 'gain weight' at all. Isn't that wild? In the past that'd be considered a banana split day for sure and I'd be beating myself up.

I'm getting a lot more used to eating what I want and not worrying about it. I don't feel like I've lost anymore weight this month but I did a quick waist measurement and lost another inch off my waist. That was pretty exciting. My hair seems to be oddly a lot longer all of a sudden, too. I won't measure til the end of the month but it's very noticeable. Ah - the power of oranges!

I've not been at the pool due to the weather and icy roads. Which is not to say I couldn't hop on my treadmill but I just haven't. Monday killed me, burning something like 3300 calories for the day on no food. I just want to get over this week and get on with it. It's the best I can do.

Day 40 Frozen Orange Juices Futures

photo credit artsydots@flickr

If you've ever seen Trading Places you'll laugh at that title and the pic! I'll bet you a dollar that orange can be reformed! Truth of the matter is it's FREEZING out and last night I bought a fabulous *new* orange squeesher thing (juicer...) and I was excited to be snowed in today to use it. We open it up and it seems someone else already had the same idea. I cannot believe that Bed, Bath and Beyond sold me a USED squeesher. GMAFB!

So this afternoon I head out against my better judgment into the great white-out. They took it back, gave me a *new* squeesher and off I went. Had trouble getting home but finally made it. Let's not do that again.

I hand juiced my oranges this morning but I'm not feeling too well 'cause I did way too much yesterday, didn't eat and made myself really sick. 12 hours of sleep later and some OJ I'm doing a little better but my energy is still lagging behind. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day with plenty of fresh orange juice.

Day 39 Some Days Chicken. Next Day Feathers.

This photo sums up my day exactly

I had a very long and tedious day today cleaning up a total mess. There was no time for myself and no food. I packed food for my day but left it on the counter :( It's freezing beyond belief here and after a 12 hour day with no food I'm just beat. Some days chicken. Next day feathers. It just happens. I grabbed something later but it wasn't the best thing and now I'm sick. Tomorrow will be a better day.

In other news I bought a new orange squeeger thing. You know, a thing that juices oranges :) I'm pretty excited about it. At least I think I will be once this awful bone piercing exhaustion wears off sometime tomorrow.

Day 38 YES They Had NO Bananas Today!

OMG I absolutely could not believe my eyes when I finally got through the crowds at Whole Foods to discover that YES they had NO bananas today! I just stood there in astonishment, blinking away, while the sign that loomed over the deserted lot came into focus and said something about their inability to get fresh produce due to the weather conditions at their warehouse in Washington, D.C.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

My daughter reminded me we needed to get water, too, so it wasn't a total loss but it certainly felt like a total loss. I can live without water. I can't live without bananas!!!

So, off to Paul's Fruit Stand I went. The locked gates reminded me they're closed on Sunday. What are they some puritanical fruit eaters - they don't eat fruit on Sunday? Holy freaking cow.

I begrudgingly drove to Kroger where they had plenty of bananas. Sadly they were mostly green and pathetic looking. I grabbed 3 big bunches since another storm is due. I then stopped at Costco and stocked up on oranges. Truth of the matter is I can just eat more oranges. I actually like them better, they're just not as user-friendly and I'm staring down the day from hell tomorrow and I need user-friendly food. Such is life.

I texted Lori (BFF) to casually inquire about her banana stock...and she said she had 3 left. Well, that's not going to do anyone any good at all! LOL - thank you Lori for sensing the panic in my text and offering me your last 3 bananas. It might have been the all caps that gave me away.

I'll be okay. I just want to carry on about it :D

Day 36 Week 5

YES I'm a day late and a banana short on this one. I don't know what I was thinking last night but I'd had the longest day that never ended and to add insult to injury, I was up all night. Which then made me sleep half the damn day today. I hate that.

For week 5 I walked 9.25 miles, swam 1.5 miles and ate 37 bananas. To date I've walked 26.15 miles, swam 6 miles and have eaten 142 bananas. Is that a bushel? Who knows. But while you're here, go visit the farm that my bananas came from today. Pretty wild! This farm has really big bananas compared to some other farms I've gotten bananas from. I'm wondering if Lori's bananas came from farm 633 as well. Though she did report that the bananas I gave her were definitely better than other bananas she's had. Can't wait to find out which farm she had. Keep those stickers woman!

Again I've had a stressful week and I'm pretty unhappy with parts of my life and I don't mean my diet. Things need to change. I can't keep doing things like this to myself, I'm destroying my body. I also need support from other people who eat like I do and I think I'm going to get that now, which will help.

If you're following this and serious, it will help you to connect with others on the same path. I did discover there is ONE other person in my city (that we know of...) who ascribes to 80/10/10, also called LFRV - Low Fat Raw Vegan. Maybe I can meet him. There is a girl another city away and I hope to get together with her as well.

5 weeks down, 47 to go!

Day 33 Bananobsession

photo credit mondopanno @ flickr

I remember thinking there was no way I could eat a banana everyday much less anything more than that on a continuous basis. At most, I ate 2 bananas a month. I'd read about other raw foodists eating 30 bananas a day. I love this site: 30bananasaday.com and Harley Johnstone is da bomb but there was no way I could conceive of anymore than 2 bananas a month. I remember when I first read Steve Pavlina's blog and didn't understand the whole 80/10/10 thing thinking that he was eating way too much fruit. I thought if I was to become a raw foodist I'd eat more vegetables.

WELL that's not the way it works and now while I don't eat 30 bananas a day, I'm absolutely obsessed with them. They are the most important thing I eat everyday. They are the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about on my way to bed. Then of course all day long I'm thinking about bananas. When I'm really hungry it's the first thing I want. I average around 6 bananas a day, which is actually very light for most raw foodists but there's so much more to it than that...

Banana Management
One of the things you learn right away is that you need to maintain a steady supply of ripe bananas. Sounds simple enough but one snowstorm and the banana supply chain is broken. You find yourself either cut off from access due to the weather or find your store only has hard green bananas or worse - there are no bananas. "Yes, we have no bananas today" is NOT funny during these times. Pretty quickly you learn that PANIC is your friend and you start to worry about your banana supply on a regular basis. Everything from inclement weather to truckers on strike and world trade agreements stand in the way of you and your main food source: Bananas. I can't even begin to face the fact that the bananas we currently eat today are not expected to be available in 20 years. IT'S STRESSFUL!

Even with ideal weather, trucking and trade agreements there are days you walk in the market to a sea of only green bananas. HOW CAN THAT BE?! This results in visiting multiple stores to see if they have ever-ready fruit. This is a real step down for me because if they're not Whole Foods organic bananas they don't taste as good and now you're settling for second best on your most important food.

By then you're so tetched that regardless of the fact they're not the bananas you really desire and despite being successful at the next store, you'll still drive to others just to verify that there is still food available for you on the planet. While there, you'll go ahead and buy another bunch and then continue on, arriving home with 4-5 bunches of ready to eat right now bananas. Oops. Mostly, it works out. To date I've never been bananaless but it's been close. I can tell you though I've yet to waste a banana!

If you've survived the supply chain problem and can buy the bananas you like in various degrees of ripeness to keep you going, you still must address ripeness on a daily basis. This goes hand in hand with banana demand but basically you're always overseeing your lot for ripeness and guesstimating when the next batch will ripen and if you have enough in between all that to make it through. You contemplate how many you'll need over the foreseeable future and weigh that against the varying shades of bright green to yellow before you. Your job is to make a determination worthy of the psychic network in terms of just how yellow they will become in a given amount of time. Despite sucking at math, I find I'm fairly banana psychic but it's not fool proof.

Banana Obsession
You thought I just described banana obsession above? No, my friend. The obsession has to do with having a ripe banana or two within your grasp at all times. At any given time there is a ripe banana in my car console, my purse, my swim bag, next to my computer and so on and so forth. Of course they're not just traveling, I'm frequently eating them as well. I'm driving, I'm online writing, I'm helping with homework, you name it.

This morning I was faced with the reality of just three mint condition bananas remaining and a huge bunch of still super green bananas. OMG! What the heck happened? Those three bananas would be gone by mid-day and the other bunch was inedible. What were the banana stores like at Whole Foods and when can I fit a trip into Whole Foods? GAAAAAAAAA! I managed it after my run/swim but I was down to my last banana at the pool. I bought two big bunches and the other ones should be ready in a couple days. Whew.

Banana Complications
A friend of mine recently asked me if I'd go on a water rafting trip with him this summer. I admit my first visualization was the bananas in the raft. I'm serious. I was thinking how would I keep them in the raft and how would I keep them from getting bruised? The idea of the water rushing over them was appealing to me, no pun intended. All I could see was me and a big bunch of brightly colored bananas bobbing through the rapids. Not him, not him and me, just me and the bananas. Is that bad? He mentioned there was a base camp but holy cow - we'd be away from camp all day. I am seriously going to need to EAT during the day. He then mentioned how the ranch hands would be cooking up more food than anyone could eat at all the meals. Ahem. Cooking? I realized I'd have to pack in 3 days worth of bananas as well as the other fresh food I eat. Plunging into a cooked food camp out on the first night would be suicidal. I'd be as green as the unripe bananas on my counter hanging over the side of the raft the entire next day. Now this doesn't mean I can't travel or do things but it does bear some thought. I think I'll wait til I'm further along in the program to make any life altering decisions.

Bananas & Your Friends
Basically your friends (who aren't raw foodists or at least vegan) think you're insane. My daughter thinks I'm insane. But to your good friends they're a gift of the highest honor. I recently gave a very beautiful bunch of organic bananas from Whole Foods to Lori, my BFF, who launched her vegan lifestyle just yesterday. YAY Lori! And now I'm obsessing over her bananas, contemplating when those will be exactly ripe and when she'll need more...

Day 32 New Month!

I'm kind of excited - a whole new month to get at it again. Sort of like getting a new lease every 30 days. The only thing I'm really concerned about right now is that the numbering thing on the days is going to get harder. During January it was easy. What day is it? I'd simply have to look at a calendar to see it's January 5th - Day 5! Now it's all messed up and I'll have to look at my last post to see what my next post needs to be. I'm probably making it harder than it has to be - my forte. Got any ideas?

I spent last month getting things right, and of course, getting them wrong sometimes too. I bought a large variety of fruit but discovered I really only wanted certain things. I pretty much ate everything I bought but wish I'd stuck to the few things that I kept craving - bananas, oranges, grapes, melons, cherries. I'm not really fond of mangos. I hate peeling them and hate cutting them almost as much as I hate peeling them! There are a few left. I'll try to eat them so they don't go to waste.

While I'm here, for the record: I hate celery. I've put up with it smeared with peanut butter or in chicken soup but no more. I don't have to eat celery if I don't like it. YAY for me! Sometimes I really like salad and other times I eat it because I need to. I make a salad dressing now that I like and once in a great while just put a little garlic salt on it. I like that, but I don't really want to eat the salt. Someone told me that dried celery is salty and used by raw foodists. I HATE CELERY. So, we probably won't be trying that! LOL!

This month I'm going to stick to my simpler fruit choices, endeavor to work out more and make a concerted effort, even if it means duct tape, to stay off the scale the entire month. I'd like to work hard this month and be surprised (in hopefully a thrilled way...) at the end of the month.

February is supposed to be a very good month for me (Pisces, yes, I'm one of those people...) and so I want to get the most out of this month. I am ahead of the game, though. I had planned a 5 lb a month weight loss over the next 12 months, but I lost 10 last month. YAY! I'd love it if I could continue to lose 10 lbs a month. We'll see. If not, Christmas is still coming :)

Day 31 Weights, Measures and Pictures!

Well, it's finally been a month!

I was thinking last night when I went to bed that there really wasn't going to be much discernible change with my measurements and I was certain there would be no change in the timeline photos for the last month.

I was so happy to see I was wrong! How often can you say that?! LOL!

So, here are all the stats and pics. They speak for themselves. I wanted to add that the surgery that's noted on the pics was a hysterectomy where they found a severe case of endometriosis. I did not have a tummy tuck or gastric surgery or anything like that. I am now 8 weeks post op from all of that.

Starting weight: 192 (Nov)
Current weight: 170

Total weight lost: 22 lbs since November. 10 lbs lost in January

Total inches lost: 32 inches to date since Jan 1

12/31
Weight 180
Neck 15
Chest 41
Bust 45
Midriff 38
waist 40 (on Nov 16th, 2 weeks before my surgery, this measurement was 48". The additional 8 inches is not factored into my inch loss.)
Belly 45
Hips 45
Thigh 26
Knee 20
Calf 15.5
Ankle 8.5
Bicep 16
Forearm 9.5
Wrist 6.25
Hair 16

1/31
Weight 170
Neck 14.5
Chest 37
Bust 42
Midriff 35
Waist 35 (I've lost 13 inches since Nov here!)
Belly 43
Hips 42
Thigh 24.5
Knee 16
Calf 14.75
Ankle 8
Bicep 12.5
Forearm 8.75
Wrist 5.75
Hair 18 (I'm growing my hair...)



YAY! I'm excited. 334 days or 11 months to go. Can't wait to see the changes for next month!

Day 29 2000 Calories

Yesterday I set a lifetime record. I ate 2000 calories in one day. On purpose. Okay, there may have been days I've eaten that many or more (such as Thanksgiving) but not while following a specified diet.

If that had been any other diet day, I'd have blown it massively. It was actually really cool to be fueled all day. Today, on the other hand, I've eaten around 600 calories and not feeling like a lot more. Some days chicken, next day feathers.

But, I'm getting in the swing of eating as much as I want. I feel pretty good but am awfully tired tonight. Didn't sleep much last night and I'm not sure if it's diet or stress of other things in my life, or just what. Physically, my feet are bothering me at night. It's the craziest thing. I cannot sleep without socks but despite wearing them they are still uncomfortable. My skin feels really sensitive. Depite wearing socks, if my feet touch each other or anything else for that matter, the skin on top feels like it's been irritated and it wakes me up. I can tell you for sure that I'm irritated!!! I'm going to try something a little different tonight and hope I sleep more hours. Getting the cats to settle down would be a good idea, too. I'll put my request in early!

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 23 Fruit Phobia and Other Psychosis

You may not realize this, I hadn't even realized this until I entered into this, but most people are fruit phobic. Don't think so? Okay, how much fruit did you eat today? One piece? None? Do you rarely eat fruit? Why is that? It's because we've all been conditioned that it's too much SUGAR. Even the food pyramid doesn't allow for much fruit. But I bet you'll freely eat a donut - heck the grain section of the pyramid is way bigger! And you may regularly eat dessert at a restaurant if not after dinner at home frequently as well and if you're me - you want (wanted) dessert after every meal. That's right, breakfast, lunch, dinner and even snacks.

Well gosh, you've just got to get a grip and have more willpower! Don't you? But day after day we sadly fail. We can't help ourselves. We crave sweets like they're going out of style and as of 1999 Americans consume a little over 158 lbs of sugar a year, and the number increases every year. Even more interesting is that fruit is not part of this tally.

So, we eagerly consume 158 lbs of sugar a year - that's 13 pounds of the stuff a month or almost a half a pound a day yet I bet very few people reading my blog eat 13 lbs of fruit in a month.

The reason you crave SO MUCH sugar is we're designed to eat sweet fruit and lots of it. But, we don't allow ourselves to, so instead we consume 13 lbs a month of other sugar to try to fill the genetic need. I mean, you can't be going eating 6 bananas a day and 4 oranges and several apples and who knows what else! Who does that? That's NOT okay in our society. I've had people write me and say 6 bananas a day are waaaay too much and I'm going to do bad things to my blood sugar and become very sick. People get really passionate about it, nearly as passionate as the protein issue, which is coming up tomorrow, but no one says a word if I consume 13 lbs a month of sugar in the form of cane, beet, or corn, now do they? No, they don't.

Couple this with being a woman, and if you're a woman in this society you come up against the fact that we can never eat what we want or as much as we want or we'll be fat and to be fat in this society is the social and often professional death knell. Most women fall into this category. Yes, there are the skinny girls who can eat anything and everything and never gain and we hate you. Okay, not really - LOL - but most of us fall into the other category and my point is that we are always restricting our food in some way, all the while being out of our minds with cravings. If we don't, we weigh ungodly amounts and we suffer atrocities at every level - personal, professional, you name it. We're treated differently by men, women, doctors, lawyers - everyone - including ourselves. So, even if you refuse to 'play the game' and don't restrict yourself, most people still feel it and it's ugly.

So, here I am, able to eat as much fruit as I want and I'm having trouble with it. Why? Because of the whole frickin' paragraph above! I'm conditioned by society to NOT EAT and in particular, not eat FRUIT.

I know I'm not eating enough everyday and so I have to work at it. Imagine that! I've spent years restricting all my food but especially fruit! I'm having to work at eating all I want. Maybe Lori would say this is another one of my non-problems and she may be right as she usually is, but it's something to witness.

I know my weight stands still when I don't eat enough and I know the fact I was tired the last few days is because I haven't eaten enough, coupled with a lot of stress. I have to wrap my head around the fact I get to shed a lifetime of ugly and unfair rules about food, except I feel ill-equipped! You'd think I'd dive right in.

Conditioning runs deep so I'll have to keep working on it. I have all year to 'get it right' but hope to arrive there a little sooner than 12/31!

Day 21 Week 3

3 weeks? It seems a lot longer! LOL! Not in a bad way, though today was like forever and a year, but not due to my food.

I've lost 8 pounds since the first week of the New Year and 20 pounds total since last year. I've also lost 20 inches, and those are from January 1st to date.

For week 3 I've walked 4.7 miles, swam 1.5 miles and have eaten 36 bananas. To date I've walked 13.4 miles, swam 4.16 miles and have eaten 76 bananas. Who knew?

This has been a pretty rough week. Lots going on and many distractions and lots of stress. Hopefully next week won't kill me like this one did. It was just a series of unfortunate events.

I admit to be pretty banana obsessed. I'm always buying them, always carrying one or two, always on the look out for the correct ripeness and always worrying I won't be able to get them if I need them.

DR. PHIL!!!

Other than that, things are fine. I'm hoping the next week is a little better though. I still need to eat more, get a little more organized and not do bad things to myself like try food I shouldn't be eating. Hopefully lesson learned.

But still, progress. 3 weeks down, 49 to go!

Here's the most current before and after face shot:

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 :)