Raw Food Blog

Recalling Health to the Body

Here’s my journal/blog since beginning the Living Foods Lifestyle Raw Food Diet.

The first week (12-17 June) of entries are written from memory. The others should be a day to day rundown of the challenges, struggles and successes with this new raw food menu. I’ll be trying new raw food recipes as I attempt to get the best out of these whole living foods.

I love drinking fresh fruit and vegetable juices, so there will be some juicing recipes too.

This is a personal journal to help me map my progress, so if you are reading this Living Foods Lifestyle journal, you may find the list below useful.

BOA: Blessings of Abundance

BOP: Blessings of Povery

FOTSW: Fell off the sugar wagon

HM: Holosync Meditation CD

IOP: Inconvenience of Poverty

LFL: Living Foods Lifestyle

12 June 2009 Friday

It is enough.

This is not the health news I wanted to hear from the radiologist. I must change some things if I am to improve my quality of life, my health index and my satisfaction with life.

Right now my energy level is way down. My sleep patterns are off. I wake up tired. If I sit in one spot more than five minutes, I start to doze off. If I sit behind a red light too long when driving, I start to doze off.

I’m overweight, need to lose about 50-65 pounds. I’ve reached the “weightless” mark. This means I often make the scale go to the “O” mark, meaning I’m 200 lbs or over. My cholesterol reading, last taken, was about 270. My blood pressure about 135/80.

My mental clarity is not as sharp as it used to be. I feel some early signs of dementia. I can’t access certain centers of my recall as I used to.

I have an infection of my gums that may be contributing to some of these problems. I have mercury amalgam fillings that I would like to have removed.

On a positive note, I do walk the yard dog two to three times a week around the block, maybe half a mile each time.

So, today I’m committing to beginning a new way of eating and living.

Today I commit to giving the raw food lifestyle a try. It should be easier than dieting and much less painful.

13 June 2009 Saturday

Started new raw foodist lifestyle. I know I do not know what I’m doing, but will do it anyway.

The IOP means I have to do it without a VitaMix machine. This machine has about 14 different blenders in one, plus a whole food vegetable and fruit juicer, hot soup maker and even ice cream maker. It’s an easy way to make nut butters and grind grains and will do just about anything else you need to do to make being a raw foodist a pleasure and not a chore.

The best part of the VitaMix machine is the clean up. Only 15-30 seconds versus the 15 minutes with my traditional juicer. That fact alone could mean the difference between me sticking with the lifestyle or going back to the old way of eating. I’ll call my brother up to ask if he will donate his to me. I already know his answer, but I’ll call anyway.

Today I purchased and cleaned pounds and pounds of veggies. The good part is that I have tried the vegetarian lifestyle before so I do know a few things. So I gathered my salt and apple cider vinegar and used them to wash my veggies in the kitchen sink. I added just a drop of dish detergent b/c I did not have a regular veggie cleaner mix.

Cucumbers, carrots, lemons, kale, mustard greens, celery, apples, radishes, watermelon—all so colorful in the sink. It did bring back old memories. The difference is now I am living with my mom and a couple of other folks so finding a place to keep this food in the refrigerator will prove a challenge.

I can remember when I was living in Israel, and buying a chicken for the first time. It was then that I had decided to become a vegetarian before. That was in 1995 or so. I stuck with it for about 18 months. But the reason I did it was twofold. I did not like trying to get the extra feathers out the chicken there. In America, the chickens  you get from the grocery store are almost clean with only a little extra cleaning needed. This chicken, on the other hand, had feathers that you had to pluck out. I never bought another raw chicken in Israel throughout my four year stay. The fish was too expensive for me to buy, so it made becoming a vegetarian a no-brainer.

When I really got serious about being a vegetarian was actually when a friend of my roommate came to the Holy Land on Bahá'í Pilgrimage. He had lost hundreds of pounds from incorporating the living foods lifestyle into his diet. He looked radiant. He had a happy disposition and he showed me his driver’s license to prove how much weight he had shed.

This gentleman also gave me a two page list of things the raw foodist should adhere to. I kept that piece of paper all these years, and in 2007, added the information to my Recalling Health Guide in the section on Natural Nutrition. It was great information then, and I think I will soon revisit it to remind myself of a few thing.

Today, I made a fresh garden salad for lunch. Mom suggested fried fish would be great for dinner. I agreed. Had some. Don’t know that I will give up fish in the short term. It is one of my favorite foods. The other meats are not a problem to give up. Fish is a problem to give up. It may be the last to go, if it ever goes. Time will tell. I’m already severely allergic to crab meat so all shell fish are already out of my diet.

Tomorrow I will juice some stuff. I do not have the energy to do it today.

Falling off the sugar wagon (FOTSW): My addiction to sugar in the form of cakes and pastries may be why I am overweight. This addiction will visit me during the course of implementing this new lifestyle, this new way of eating so I may as well create this “falling off the sugar wagon” addition to my journal so I can notate it.

So here goes:  today I ate a chunk of delicious homemade pound cake given to me by my niece at my sister’s house. I had planned to take a bite and give the rest of it to my sister to finish, but the temptation was too great after that first delectable mouthful.

I ate the whole piece.

I enjoyed it.

I have no regrets about that. I am just beginning this new diet, and refined sugars will eventually be eliminated, but for now, I will just do my best. I have failed in this arena before. I may fail again. I will try to do better tomorrow.

14 June 2009

Ate well today. Juiced some lemonade made with three apples and a half of lemon. It was delicious. I also juiced some carrot juice. Then I made my green juices using the kale and mustard greens with some added carrots to mask the taste. Then I made what I considered to be my detox, antioxidant juice by using the greens, adding about 3 cloves of garlic, some celery and radishes. I combined this with carrot juice, again to mask the taste and make it more agreeable to my tastebuds. I poured all three juice concoctions into those little individual water bottles. This is what I would be drinking with my fresh salads for the next few days. Life is good.

15 June 2009 Monday

Today I rested a lot. The BOP means you can take a day to rest if you want to. Am trying to get my sleeping habits back in check. So I am trying to get to bed by 11 p.m. each night. This will be a drastic change since I am a night person and it means nothing to me to shut down at 4 a.m. in the morning and still want to stay up longer.

Today I opened an email from Bill Harris of Centerpointe and he directed me to this website on health, so I went to hear the video.  They had an interesting perspective and I learned some things I did not know. Like they suggest you walk barefooted as much as possible to recreate a sense of balance. They also talked about reducing your shower temperature, alternating between warm and cold water to build up your immune system. This I already knew. They discussed some other things that I do not recall. I probably need to go back and relisten to it to remember more.

I called my little brother today, the one with the VitaMix machine. As expected, he LOL, said he could not part with it. I told him if he only knew the reason I needed it, that he would just give it to me without giving me such a hard time. He said he knew the reason I needed it. I asked him what, and he said “for your health”. I thought, Yeah. For my health. Ah, the IOP.

FOTSW: Today I bought some sugary cake with nuts and syrup on top. I ate two chunks before heading into the library. The rest I took home and sat on the table hoping others would eat it.

16 June 2009 Tuesday

Oatmeal for breakfast. I suppose this is ok. I don’t usually cook my oatmeal on the stove. I usually just take the hot water from the tea pot and pour it on the oatmeal and let it sit for five minutes. Our coffee/tea pot does not heat water to boiling so I hope this is okay for the LFL. Anyway, it will have to be for now. I do not have a substitute for breakfast foods yet.

Ate a fresh veggie salad with spinach, spring greens, broccoli, walnuts and a chopped up boiled egg with some ranch salad dressing from the bottle. I know I will need to clean up the use of salad dressing from the bottle and maybe should even give up the eggs. That will come. Right now I am using what I have. I also had toasted 7 grain wheat bread with real butter  to add some fiber to the recipe and to make the salad appear more filling. The nuts and egg were for my protein. As someone who comes from a family history of diabetes, I realize I have to have protein with my meals, especially since I still have sweets in my diet.  For dinner I had the same salad, but I added some canned organic black beans to the mixture. Oh yum yum.

17 June 2009

Yesterday, I ate watermelon for breakfast. Finished off the last of my juice concoctions, went grocery shopping to replenish my veggie and fruit supply. Had a garden salad, same as yesterday but without the egg, and instead of black beans I used canned blackeye peas by Hancock. I am using the canned beans that are made without pork. I know I should not be doing canned goods, but that is what I can do for now.

 18 June 2009

Today begins with watermelon for breakfast and a decision to create this journal to record my progression with my new living foods lifestyle. Will post on a blog.

I mentioned Bill Harris sent me an email on health. What I did not say is that I have his holosync meditation CD which I have been using off and on for some months now. Have decided to be more consistent with it as I implement my new LFL. It can only help. I really enjoy the Super Longevity that he included as a bonus CD. I think it will assist me in my healing. These CDs help me get in a relaxed state without all the chanting and other going ons of meditation. They have been a God send in terms of convenience and creating change.

When the blessings of abundance (BOA) reenter my life, I will move on to the next level of meditation CD Centerpointe offers. This is really good stuff and I’m glad I found it when I did.

Hey, when the student is ready.

Later in the morning, I indulged by having grits and eggs and buttered toast, which my mom cooked,  although I did forgo the bacon. Though tempting, I find I can usually abstain from pork and other meats with little resistance. But that bacon did look good…

The sugary brown pastry cake with the syrup and walnuts is still on the table. I do not think I am craving refined sugar as much now and that’s a good thing. Now if I can just do the right thing and clean my veggies and do some juicing before the afternoon cravings kick in.

Hey, at least I recognize my pattern.

I’m drinking some of that green stuff now that I bought from the store. It will serve as a substitute till I can juice my new batch of green juice in a few.