Day 7, still going strong

The detox is finally complete, but I'm pretty much going to stick to this type of simple food for a while. I will add nuts, seeds, avocado, and sprouted grains back into my diet, but I will try to keep meals quick and easy. When your body isn't working so hard at digesting your food, you really feel the extra energy. That is what I don't want to give up. For those of you considering this detox, go for it! You will learn so much and I know you'll loose weight if that's one of your resolutions. I lost 7 pounds, and would like to aim for 8 more, but I'm more concerned with just keeping active and eating raw. Weight is just a number, it's how you feel and the self-image you have that's really important.

As I promised, I have a video in store for you. Brent captured this video on our green smoothie this morning. I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think and if you would like to see more. Brent has also offered to demonstrate his delicious raw salsa recipe for a video next week. So here's the first, and very rough, Raw for Change video:

Blender mentioned on video: Breville BBL600XL Ikon 750-Watt 51-Ounce Blender. I happened to find the last one at Linens-N-Things so I got it for only $150 since they're going out of business.

As for the rest of the day, I had a plateful of fruits (cherries and an orange) and veggies (cauliflower, carrot, pepper, and tomato) for lunch with a banana for a snack before our bike ride. Then I had an even larger salad then yesterday's photo for dinner, but I couldn't finish it—too much to chew.

My confession: I ate dark chocolate (70%) and had a very small glass of red wine tonight. I was shocked at how a few sips of wine felt like 2 glasses! Wow, what a difference a cleansed body makes. Helps you realize just how much we poison ourselves... The chocolate was amazing. I'm not sure I can give that up completely, so I will just limit myself to small quantities of very dark chocolate and try out some recipes with cacao nibs. We also had a late night snack of zucchini "chips" and salsa while we relaxed at the end of the day.

To wrap up these past 7 days is hard. I've lost weight and moodiness, and gained so much more—energy, optimism, balance, confidence, clearer skin, and better sleep just to name a few. This is really going to help me accomplish my goals this year, from the inside out. Take care, and drop me a line/comment if I can help in any way. Health be with you!

Day 6, and I'm feeling good

It has been a great day! I feel so wonderful, like I did when I was eating raw before. But this time, I got to this feeling much sooner and I attribute it to the detox. I'll have to be careful about how much fat I add back into my diet, but cleaning out like this will make it easy to read my body, see what it responds to best.

We ended up going to the farmers' market later then I've ever been, so there really wasn't as much there as usual. I forgot to take photos, even though I brought my camera :( but I did take some of the stuff I bought.

We also stopped at the Almond Blossom Cafe to pick up organic produce before getting the rest of our groceries at the market. They catered our wedding (check out the photo of our cake here at the bottom of the page) and we signed up for a lecture by Dr. Craig Sommers, author of The Raw Foods Bible, there next week so I'll be sure to write about that.

Our eating schedule was thrown off a little too, so after a banana snack, I was super hungry for a late lunch consisting of a kale, blueberry, and mango smoothie (yummm) and a carrot. Then Brent made some adjustments to his salsa recipe and made it completely raw and we actually like it better. So I had that for a snack with zucchini slices twice today and my mouth was on fire—love it! Thanks Brent!

Dinner was a very flavorful salad with lots of veggies and a lemon-ginger dressing. I did crave some popcorn with our family movie night, but I resisted the temptation and had some "chips" and salsa instead. I also had a terrible lust for some red wine, especially since there's an open bottle spoiling as we speak, but I said no and it feels good not to care.

My body is feeling so light and fresh, that it's hard to go to sleep at night. I don't have that drained feeling and my mind is still alert even though my body is signaling to get to bed. I think kicking up the workouts is going to help with this. We wanted to buy a wii fit today, but it appears that they are hard to find, so I took the dogs out for a long walk. I think I'll try a different yoga video tomorrow and see how the challenge goes.

Thanks for the strange fruit comments. I wanted to find something at the market today, but didn't succeed. You should see our fridge though, it's jam packed with produce and I love seeing so much healthy stuff every time I open it. Off to bed, hope your day was lovely.

Day 5, I'll admit it

I don't know why I did it, and it's not all that bad... I had corn on the cob tonight. The smell was so delicious and I was so hungry. Can't be too hard on myself for what most people would say is healthy, but I really wanted to make it through all 7 days without anything cooked, and I cheated today. We can't always live up to our own expectations, those are the most difficult anyway. So, instead of dwelling on this and letting the guilt get to me, I will move on—no harm done here. I'm still on my path, I just took a pause.

Breakfast was delicious today, but then again, anything with raspberries is delicious to me. I made a green smoothie from spring mix greens and frozen raspberries. Still miss that touch of honey, but it's not necessary any more.

My "visitor" also came by today, and I bring this up because when I stopped eating raw a couple months ago this was greatly affected. Going raw helps with the emotions, bloating, cramps, regularity, and length. So I'm looking forward to returning to those days once again. And since we're on this topic I want to promote a product I love: the diva cup. That's all I'll say. Click the link, it's amazing—it works better, is better for the environment and saves you lots of $$$.

Back to foods, had an apple for a snack and lunch consisted of:

• tangerine
• brocolli (2 small heads)
• celery
• carrot
• baby peppers
• green onion

I brought a couple starfruits for an afternoon snack and they sure got a lot of attention at the office. I didn't realize so many people are affraid to try "exotic" fruits. Once they did, they realized what they were missing out on. Not sure why I craved coffee all of a sudden today, maybe it's the Friday atmosphere at work and how I used to have a couple cups out of excitement for the weekend. Well, I don't need that any more—I've got enough excitement as is :)

For dinner, I just added some more veggies to the leftover salad from yesterday, and the corn of course. So far I've lost 6 lbs! I didn't think it would be this fast, but it feels so nice not to have that heavy feeling any more. Even though my clothes don't show much of a change (I can usually fluctate 10 lbs in my jeans thank goodness) I feel great changes and soon they will show even more. Just need to keep up with the exercise. For which I took the dogs for a walk today, but not as long as I should have since it was so cold out and getting dark.

This weekend shall be fun. Tomorrow starts off with the farmers' market and I'll be taking my camera to share photos for the next post. Then look out for a video on Sunday.

Today's question:What's the strangest fruit you've ever tried?

Day 4, craving some flavor

Starting the day with yoga definitely puts me in a positive mood, but by the time I get to bed after a long day in front of the computer, it feels like all that stretching has been tightened back up. I need to make a conscious effort to stretch more throughout the day.

Breakfast was a little strange today. It needed to be a monofruit meal, but we only had 1 banana left, so I opted for 2 apples instead. This filled me up, but I had to have a snack (tangerine) before and after lunch. Today's green smoothie was not the best either. Brent asked that I not make it again. I've made similar smoothies, but with additional ingredients. It was romaine lettuce and frozen strawberries. Maybe more fruit would have made it better, but what I really wanted to add was raw honey. If you've never tried raw honey, you're missing out. Publix is actually selling it here, so you may not even have to go to a health food store to get it.

For various reasons we both had to work late today, so by the time I was able to make dinner I was starving and not in the mood to prepare it. But I resisted talking Brent into the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday, and make a big red cabbage salad with green onions, green beans, celery, sprouted spelt berries, garlic and lemon juice. If only I could add a little healthy fat... Next week, I keep reminding myself. The good thing here though, is that instead of craving my favorite foods at local restaurants, now I'm really looking forward to my favorite raw dishes that have nuts, seeds, and avocados. Either way, I got stuffed on that salad with all the chewing it took.

I hope these posts aren't getting boring. Hang in there, the fun will begin when I start posting photos and videos filled with rawsome goodness!

For anyone reading...
What would you like to see/read/watch once this detox is over?

Day 3, the hurdle

It's been a very long, tiring day. I guess the lack of calories is asking my body to go to bed and get rest so it can get to work on cleaning me out. I'm starting to feel the benefits though, as the bloating has gone away and some temptations are no longer bothering me. Since I honestly need to get to bed, I will just recap my meals with a few afterthoughts.

Breakfast: green smoothie (more like purple though)

• spring mix
• banana
• frozen blueberries
  

Snack: apple

Lunch:

• tangerine
• carrot
• zucchini
• celery
• green onion
• kohlrabi
  

Snack: cherries

Dinner: collard green wraps (2) stuffed with things I threw in the food processor:

• cauliflower
• peppers
• carrot
• ginger
• garlic
• chopped asparagus
  

If it weren't for mental exhaustion, I'm sure I would be more energetic right now. My mom and stepdad also came for a visit today. They brought veggies from the farmers' market in Immokolee, and lots of them—thank you! Of course the dinner discussions involved a bit of arguing and teasing about what I'm doing, but I did not cheat except for a trivial amount of oil and spices in Brent's homemade salsa. You must be thinking "what about the chips?" I actually used thinly sliced zucchini left over from lunch, and it was a great alternative. I will be doing that more often, that's for sure. I get my chips & salsa kick without chips :)

We also discussed a possible business I would be helping them with that follows my beliefs and design skills so I'm pretty excited about that as well. Funny how this fits in with my career horoscope I mentioned before. I hope to be making an announcement here about this business once we put things in motion. But, I'm also getting overwhelmed with everything I want to do. I need to take it moment by moment—it will all come together with time. Let's enjoy what we have now. Yoga should help my mind in the morning.

Day 2, the hunger begins

Since I started eating raw foods today, I decided to log my intake and exercise on Nutridiary so I can keep track of my calories, nutrition, weight, and more. It takes some time to set up, but once you've got your basics in there, it's really neat to see the reports and track your goal.

I am proud to say that even though I went to bed late last night, I woke up and did 45 minutes of yoga today. Boy did I need it! The stretching really revealed all the tight areas of my body that need work. I'm sure I'll be hurting tomorrow. The DVD I followed was Denise Austin's "fat-blasting yoga" but I didn't get time to do the last session on abs.  This DVD is a nice cross of aerobic and yoga exercises and really works the muscles us women want to shape most.

Then, I finally got to eat some food! Going with the monofruit meal, I ate 3 bananas. That's all it took to get me full. Sticking to one food actually helps your body learn the signals of when it's full, so when breakfast can be more complex, you're less likely to overeat because of the crave for variety.

Lunch consisted of my favorite—green smoothies. We've actually been sticking to green smoothies for lunch at work for quite some time now, so it wasn't difficult for us. I'll be posting a video of how I make them over the weekend, as I get asked about this all the time. You should see the looks people give you when they see you slurpping down that "green sludge." But honestly, it's a super quick and easy meal to make. I usually add other ingredients, but the detox calls for simply greens and fruit so today I blended some spinach and kale with frozen mangos. It was delicious, refreshing, and satisfying. I do admit though, that because I couldn't add the other things I usually include, I was hungry a couple hours later. No snacking during the week though, so I reminded myself of yesterday and regained focus.

I usually really look forward to a huge salad with all my goodies, but no oils are allowed this week—and that means no avocados, nuts, or seeds (the things that make salads unique), so I was kinda bummed when I had to prepare it. I decided to go with turnip greens for the base and added: green onions, celery, asparagus, tomatoes, and carrots, with a lemon juice and grated ginger dressing. That ginger really gave it a kick and a little too much lemon juice with turnip greens makes for one tart salad.

Hopefully my sprouts will be ready by the next salad. I have a photo of my sprouting jar ready with a zesty sprout mix in the slideshow of this blog if you're curious. Sprouts are wonderful and easy to grow. They are also VERY CHEAP. A $5 bag lasts me a couple months with constant sprouts in the fridge. I would probably spend about $20 in that time if I bought them at the store. I see another video on this topic in the future...

Besides being tired, dealing with cravings, hunger, and a sore neck—it's been a pretty good day 2 of detox. And by the way, I've already lost 4 pounds!

Day 1, not bad at all

26 hours have passed since I last ate, and I can truly tell you I am not hungry right now. I never thought I would say this after a fast, but it's true. Of course, I had cravings and was hungry throughout the day, but I made mental effort to prepare myself and I succeeded at enjoying the beginning of this cleanse.

I drank a lot of water today, and not just to ward off hunger, but because I was honestly very thirsty. Maybe our bad Chinese meal last night did it, but I haven't gone to the bathroom yet (yes #2, this is a raw blog so that will surely come up again as it's a part of knowing your digestive system) and that is very strange for me. I feel a bit bloated—ready to eliminate the toxins and rejuvenate with nutrients. The biggest shock was that my hunger was never in my stomach (which only growled twice) but in my mouth. I had to ignore the smells of food in the office that triggered saliva, and I even gave away the last piece of chocolate I had at my desk. That is a true victory right there!

In addition to the time I saved by not having to prepare any food, I had enough energy to take our dogs for a walk after work and check off most of my to do list. This also helps keep Domino and Oreo (our dogs) from trying to get my attention when I'm on the computer for hours at night. Next step (hopefully I feel up to it in the morning) will be getting back into yoga, my favorite exercise.

Tomorrow starts the raw detox with food. I will be posting everything I eat for your curiosity. Breakfast is a mono-fruit meal—I'll probably stick to bananas for the instant energy boost and satisfying texture.

As some of you had commented via email, we may have had similar struggles with weight, or you may be on your own journey to health with the new year (congrats if you are). I hope to provide you with some of the best resources I've found and answer any questions you may have. I will get more in depth after the detox is over and I can truly introduce you to this incredible lifestyle that is changing my life.

Before I retire, I just want to share a wonderful horoscope I found for Pisces, thanks to Darice, who will probably find it very touching after our last few chats.

Career

The Aquarian energy of 2009 encourages you to weave new dreams into peoples' lives, and to help them feel at home in the world. Success grows as you exemplify your visions, attracting people who appreciate your compassion to raise their consciousness to a new level. In your service to help others realize deeper realities, you become more aware and sensitive to your own connection to the powers that be.

Your profound ability to explore transformation and share wisdom with large communities helps you find a welcome place in society. The love you discover through your own transformation will bring abundant manifestations for others. As you help people heal their consciousness, they can more easily find sanctuary from harsh realities. Your sensitivity to their needs reaches into the deepest realms of a their psyche.

For those who wish also to support change in the world (that's me), emotional affinity comes easily between you and your peers. From time-to-time this year, step back and reflect on the deeper purpose of your life's work. Be sure to make decisions that match your own objectives, values and goals, and don't allow yourself to be swayed by others desires. Maintain your individuality. Getting in touch with your dreams will help you know which direction is best to take in your effort to expand your beliefs and be of service in a much larger way.

Question for You

So tell me, by commenting below, where do you stand with your health and what are you goals for 2009? Just writing them here will put the intention into the universe and place you closer to reaching your goal. I want to help any way I can.

The Journey Begins

This is the year—the year great things will happen. The year dreams will come true and goals will be fulfilled. I have made attempts before with much success, but this is different. The intentions have been written down—I am committed to creating the healthy and happy life we all deserve.

Let me start with a little reminiscing... I've been on a health kick for almost 10 years now. I've been researching natural lifestyles and gained many new friends, insights, and lessons along the way. The most dramatic though, was trying raw foods fall of 2007. I was 30 pounds overweight when my now husband and I (Brent) got comfortable and settled into our life together. I knew I had to do something that would make me stick to the diet and exercise I once had no problem following. So we got strict and lost weight, but I had a little more to go. Those last 10 pounds are evil...

In my search for a photographer for our wedding, I found Darice Michelle. Not only did I pick her to shoot our wedding, but we became instant friends when we met—a connection that is so rare and since the spark, has only grown stronger. She mentioned raw foods at our consultation and shortly after invited me to a raw food party she hosted. I had just recently read a little of this diet so I was eager to learn more.

I did my research—staying up late on the computer after work for hours and decided to take a raw pecan pie. Oh my! I had no idea how great the food would be. I was in love! I was hooked! Thank you Darice! Not only did I get a prize for getting the most correct answers on her quiz, but I found out that her daughter voted my pie for her favorite recipe! What a great start, and that was just the beginning. One of the most amazing parts of the night was how I felt after I stuffed myself with all that rawsome goodness—I felt so light and satisfied. I wasn't bloated or tired at all. The next 2 weeks were spent with experimenting in the kitchen and enjoying everything I was discovering. I lost those 10 pounds and I felt terrific—full of energy and optimism.

So life goes on and here I am now, ready to do this again. A trip to Europe (my place of birth with all my favorite indulgences) and the holidays broke down my will power and I've become addicted to cooked, bad-for-you food. I feel tired, not my usual happy self, and just all around blah!

With this new year, I decided to devote myself to getting back into the raw food lifestyle (because it's way more than a diet), working out again, and starting a blog to help me be accountable in hopes of teaching other people how great you can feel and look by doing likewise. Not only do you benefit, but the earth does too—there is no greener way to eat that I know of.

Since I feel so loaded with toxins and bloated with "dead" food, why not begin by trying something totally new for me—a detox! I found this free 7-day detox and I will begin tomorrow with a 24-hour fast. Kinda scary for me, I'm a food lover, I'm hungry the second I wake up, and I think I've only skipped breakfast a couple times my entire life! So stay tuned as I post each days' results, you just might want to try it yourself.