Baby Steps

I am slowly moving into raw. The thought of going cold turkey sent me into a frenzy of eating all the "forbidden" foods I felt I would be giving up. I decided to make baby steps by avoiding wheat and sugar. Then I will move to dairy, corn chips, and chicken (aka nachos). I reserved my favorite Raw food "cookbook" at the library and I got a notice letting me know it is waiting for me to come and get it. I can't wait to pick it up tommorow.

PS. I had to convince my husband that the models featured on the cover were the authors of the cookbook. He has an image in his mind of dreadlock wearing hippies eating salads all day. I am greatful to show him an acception. (Just for the record...I wouldn't mind being a dreadlock wearing hippy eating Salads all day. It sounds kind of fun.)

Santa got me what I wanted

For Christmas my sweet husband (aka Santa) got me a Vitamix. I was not expecting it but it was number one on my Christmas list. I have been using it and am loving it. Tommorow we are making banana "ice cream" for breakfast. Yum!

Sacrifice

I heard somewhere that sacrifice is giving up something good for something better. I'm not sure that the definition is exactly right. I think it should be giving up something you already know is good for the hope of something better.
So it is with this new diet. I first want to tell you the things that I will miss the most:
1) Warm bread spread with salty butter
2) Whipping cream and cream cheese frosting
3) Melted Cheese...I don't eat it much but once in awhile I get the hankering.

Sure, I know there are a lot of great things that I do get to eat. The real rewards, however, come with how I hope I will feel. Those who have followed the raw diet said that they had great rewards:
1) The need for less sleep. I need about 9 to 10 hours to feel really good. (I rarely get that much sleep so I rarely feel really good)
2) More energy (I want to do a triathlon)
3) Happier and goodbye PMS
4) Reaching my ideal weight
5) Great skin/Healthy body

I have Hope. But do I have the tenacity to follow through? Shoot, I can do anything for a year. Right???

Ramping up

This is the fist entry of my year of eating raw. I'm not actually going to start until 2010 but I am ramping up for the big day.

My first introduction to the concept of raw food was about three years ago at my friend's jewelry show. One of the guests mentioned in passing that she had done the raw food diet a few years back and her body was "humming". I wasn't sure what that meant but humming sounded good and I wanted to learn more. I put it on my list of things to learn about someday.

Nutrition has been a topic of interest since I was in High School. My mother is an excellent cook and has always fed us well. I do remember the occasionally Mac and Cheese as kids. It was always served with tomatoes for extra nutrition. But generally speaking we did not eat processed foods. My mother has many food intolerances and as she has aged her reaction to the foods she is intolerant to have become worse. Now if she eats something she knows she shouldn't she gets sick. She no longer eats wheat, sugar, corn, red meat, milk products, coconut... etc. The list is quite extensive.

During High School, I was a devout runner and decided to stop eating processed sugar. I had a will of iron and refused to eat anything that wasn't sweetened naturally. My parents were nice enough to go along with my fad and tried to accommodate me whenever possible. My favorite present I received for my seventeenth birthday was a fruit sweetened chocolate cake. It was delicious and I felt very loved. I was generally really healthy and never got a cold or any kind of seasonal sickness.
When I went away to college I wanted to continue eating sugar free so I moved into an apartment so I could cook for myself. My brother found the place for me. Five miles from campus, a mile from the grocery store and I had no car. I'm not sure why I trusted him. Nevertheless, one day I got hungry, very hungry, and all that there was to eat in the house was a pan of my roommates brownies. Thus started the obsession with sugar. I think I ate the whole pan. I still love sugar to this day. I always regret it after the fact, but, boy do I enjoy it whilst eating!! I stopped running, got sick a lot and gained the freshman fifteen that year.

Fast forward twenty years, I have three fantastic kids, a great husband and I feel grumpy two weeks out of the month. I love being a mother...most days. There are many days that I just want to go back to bed. I exercise regularly and try to eat well but I know I could do better. Thus started my interest in the raw food diet. I was ready for that "humming" feeling. I began by checking out every library book I could about raw food. For my birthday, I asked my husband to take me to a raw food restaurant. I was interested but not sure I wanted to make the commitment to a full on raw foodie.




I'm currently reading The Sunfood diet by David Wolfe. It's a great book and it's made me want to take the plunge. There are some great practical ideas for eating and food combining food David Wolfe is not really into recipes (my kind of cooking..no pots, no pans and no recipes) but if I want to get my husband at all on board with this I'm going to have to make some recipes that he might possibly eat.

One of my favorite recipe books that I checked out was Raw Food, Real World by Matthew Kenny and Sarma Melngailis and I'm putting it on my Christmas list this year. I also wouldn't mind a Vita mix and maybe a mandoline (it's a cutting tool) and oh, yeah a dehydrator. Why do all these tools cost so much? I think all of those put together are about $1000.00. I really don't deserve it Santa, I haven't been that good this year. Oh well, I guess there's always next year.