It's time for a juice feast!

Photo taken by color line

I have decided to go on a juice feast! Starting tomorrow morning I will drink nothing but freshly juiced fruits or vegetables for 10 days. With a juice feast you can drink as much as you want to. As apposed to a juice fast where you are limited to the amount you drink. I should have enough energy to exercise, work and function like a normal person.
I'm a little nervous about it because I really like to eat and I don't like to get too hungry. Actually my stomach is growling already just thinking about it.

I am not doing this alone I am part of a group that Natasha at Raw Radiant Health started. She will help us along on our journey. She has created an online forum so we can interact with each other. This will make the feast much easier than if I were doing it alone.

The great part about feasting/fasting is that it gives the body a rest so it can heal itself. According to other people who have gone on these juice feasts, I should have some sort of breakthrough and mental clarity. Hopefully I'll make it through all 10 days, why does that sound like a really long time to me now.

Well I'm off to bed now, I am supposed to eat dinner early and go to bed early. More on my progress tomorrow.

Eating out is no longer a pleasure

I must say I love being on this high raw diet, I love all the foods that I eat. What I don't love anymore is eating at restaurants. You would think it would be easy to order a large salad! Last Saturday I went to lunch with my in-laws and every salad on the menu had cheese and meat as the star. I asked the waiter if they could just make me a really big salad with only vegetables. Sounds easy right? He got pretty confused by this and suggested I get the house salad, so I did with no dressing.
When I got my salad it was small, but I expected that because it was a house salad. Luckily I ate a small salad at home before I left just in case this would happen.

Perhaps I should have called ahead and asked them to prepare me a large salad, I will probably do that next time. I have had so many lunches that were so unsatisfying because the vegetables used to make the salad was not fresh and the salad was very small . Breakfast is often times much worse! I eat fruit in the morning and if I order that, usually out of season fruit with no taste is served.

I guess the thing I miss most about being on a cooked diet is to be able to go to a restaurant and order a meal and be full. I don't miss eating the cooked foods,I just want to be able to get large quantities of raw food when I want it.

Dear Dad I've gone raw...

Photo taken by bryan champ

The hardest thing about going raw was not giving up my favorite foods. It was telling my Dad! I grew up in a typical Egyptian household. Food was the center of everything. No one was a vegetarian and rice was always served with dinner. We did eat a lot of fruits and vegetables but most of the vegetables were cooked. It was a lot healthier than the standard American diet, but it was still a cooked diet

My son and I went to Florida this past August to visit my Dad and even though I was so excited to see him I was worried about his reaction to my diet. I decided that it would be best to tell him in person and not over the phone.

I didn't have to tell him to buy me any extra fruits and vegetables, because he LOVES buying in bulk. When I got there he had a case of mango and avocados. He also had tons of greens and melons. I knew it was going to be easy for me to make meals at his house.

My father is a great cook, he enjoys thinking of new recipes especially when family comes to visit. We got there at night and my dad had this huge meal on the table. I wasn't at all surprised even though it was 9:30 PM. My son and I ate a small amount and went to bed.

The next morning at breakfast I told him that I started only eating fruits and vegetables during the day and a cooked meal at night. He just said OK. I was so happy that he didn't say anything negative about it. I told him I had a lot more energy eating this way. It made me so happy that he just listened to what I had to say and was positive and supportive.

I had only been high raw for a few weeks at that point so it was scary to get out of my comfort zone and travel. It turned out to be such a great trip, my Dad is so awesome. But I always knew that. I made fresh guacamole everyday at lunch with fresh limes from my Dad's lime tree and herbs from his garden. He took me to an Asian market to buy young cocnuts. It was so easy to be raw at his house.

The airplane ride home turned out to be a success too. I got a huge salad and a few bananas and I was set. It was a great trip and it turned out I was worried for no reason. What else is new?

Eat your greens... and your children will too

Photo taken by wsilver

Lately I've been noticing that my son is eating more vegetables. I think it's because he sees me eat giant salads for lunch and dinner. He even tried raw cauliflower yesterday! He has always loved eating fruit but he only likes a few veggies. I made him a small salad today and he ate the whole thing. I was so happy and proud that my good choices were rubbing off on him.
I feel much more even tempered since I've gone high raw. If my 6 year old ate more raw foods I'm sure it will have the same effect on him. Which would be great since his a bundle of energy ALL the time.

So I think the best way to get children to eat more vegetables is for parents to eat more. Actions speak louder than words.

Getting organized

So far my week has been super busy, so I decided to get organized. When I went shopping yesterday I made sure I had enough fruits and vegetables for five days, to avoid going to the store too frequently. I also started washing my greens for the next day at night, that has really cut down on my lunch prep time.
I made two different types of dressings as well to put on my salads or for dipping veggies. Little things like that are a great help when you come home hungry and tired.

I have also started to keep a food log to make sure I'm eating enough and getting all the proper nutrients. This has helped me a lot with my meal planning. Sometimes small changes can make a big impact.

It finally broke and I don't want to fix it!

I was happily making a green smoothie for myself this morning until I noticed spinach juice running out from the bottom of my blender. I've been telling my husband that we need a vita-mix blender for quite some time now. But this is the moment I've been waiting for our blender is broken! Finally I can get the blender of my dreams.

I'm dreaming of all the smooth salad dressings I'll be making in the future. My green smoothies won't be chewy anymore. This is a happy day for me.
I couldn't justify getting one while our blender still worked, but now it is a necessity.

Get me out of the kitchen

Cooking dinner for my family on the weeknights is NOT my favorite activity. I never know what to make. I always feel like I recycle the same recipes week after week and nobody likes my food. How did this happen to me? There was a time when I loved making dinner. I was once a big foodie.

Then finally I had a very important breakthrough. I went away with my two awesome sisters for the weekend and I shared my lack of enthusiasm in the kitchen with them. Since they are both really good cooks they gave me so many great recipes and ideas. When I got back home I had a new energy and I was ready to try to love cooking dinner again. Somehow when I tried to implement their ideas I still dreaded cooking. What was I doing wrong?

My breakthrough occurred when I realized I had control over this situation. I was making it much more complicated than it had to be. I decided that I would find some delicious raw food recipes that my family and I would simply love and pair them with their meat dishes. I looked for recipes that were simple and full of flavor. I went old school and got some blank index cards and wrote the recipes on the card. If they were too long to write I skipped over them. It made making dinner a pure pleasure again. Somehow writing the recipes down caused me to get excited about food again.

I also realized my sisters loved cooking because they found a way to make simple and delicious recipes. They recited their recipes with so much enthusiasm,they loved food and they loved to cook and it showed. I needed to create that same feeling for myself, and I finally did.

Instead of trying to make two dinners I started to make one dinner that always included raw vegetables plus a cooked dish. Sometimes I ate the cooked dish and sometimes I only ate the raw one.

I also realized that I like to chop fruits and vegetables and make beautiful salads, but I don't like cooking on the stove. I have always been this way even when I was on a primarily cooked diet. I'm glad that making dinner is no longer the huge stress that it once was. It has made my nights so much more enjoyable.

My high raw life

Photo taken by sweetbeetandgreenbean

Transitioning to a raw diet was easy in some ways and more difficult in others. After being raw until dinner for just two days I no longer craved coffee. I also lost my appetite for dairy and sugar as well. Just by eating more fresh fruits and veggies I no longer craved some things that I wanted to cut out of my diet anyway. This was fantastic!

The funny thing is I always thought I had a pretty good diet. I didn't eat hydrogenated fats, I always got organic snacks, and I ate fruits and vegetables everyday. I never realized how much processed foods I was eating. Yes they were organic and made with good ingredients, but they were still processed.

It was however hard to break the news to my husband, he supported me but I could tell he was worried about it just a little. After all we both loved to go to restaurants and try new foods. We also liked to stay in once in a while and drink wine and cook together. How could we still do this if I was on a high raw diet?

Part of the reason I did not go 100% raw right away was because I still liked doing all that stuff. I wanted to have the option of eating what I wanted for dinner. I have only been high raw for 2 months and I must say I don't like cooked foods as much as I use to.

I think it was a good decision for me to take it slowly and be raw until dinner. Now I have a few days out of the week that I am 100% raw and some days where I will eat cooked food at dinner. The longer I eat raw the more I naturally don't crave some of the foods I once loved. Sometimes it's good to take things slowly.

I'm not a good vegetarian

I tried to go that route and it just did not work for me. I loved eating fruits and vegetables, but I did not like traditional vegetarian sources of protein.

I tried many different tofu recipes. Since they all contained soy sauce, they all started to taste the same after a while. I also tried to eat tempeh,I did not like the texture at all. I tried many different types of soy sausages. I just didn't like them. I was not into "impostor foods".

During my brief period on this vegetarian diet I gained weight. I was eating too much cheese, pasta and bread. And I'm not even a pasta lover. I needed a change, because this was not working. Plus I was making two dinners every night. One for my meat eating family and one for me. I started to detest cooking!

Then one day I was on Twitter and someone who I was following put up a link to a raw food blog. I watched the video she posted and I decided it was time to change my diet.

Going raw has been in the back of my mind for years, but I just didn't know how to do it. Could you really live on salads and be healthy? I decided to give it a try.

The next morning I had a raw breakfast and lunch, I decided to be "raw until dinner" until I felt comfortable with my new diet. I have been on this diet ever since.

Here is a link to the blog that got me started on my raw food journey. Her blog is one of my favorites.

Please don't pass the steak

Photo taken by EssjayNZ

There was a time in my life that I loved red meat, I craved it and really enjoyed eating it. My husband knew how to cook it really well, and we enjoyed it a few times a week. Then, when I heard that the FDA approved cloned meat in January of last year I lost my appetite for it.

Even though it was not going to be in our stores for years, I still couldn't bring myself to eat it. I knew I had to stop eating it now, before it hit the stores.

My husband thought it was silly of me to stop eating it, especially because I enjoyed it so much. I knew it didn't make much sense, but I knew I wanted to stop eating it anyway. Let's face it most of us have at least one food that we will not eat, unless of course you are Anthony Bourdain.

Amazingly, it was very easy for me to stop eating red meat. After a few weeks of not eating it I didn't like the smell of it anymore. It was very strange there was a time when I loved that smell, now it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.

I have not eaten it since and I don't miss it. But this was just the start of a series of many drastic changes in my diet. More on that in a future post.