Just an update on my rawesome journey with raw foods. I am really thinking of staring a separate blog to discuss all this on a naturemoms subdomain but for now here is my progress.
I am feeling AMAZING! The other morning my family was eating breakfast with my parents and this is how the conversation went with my Dad:
Dad: You look really great. Is it that raw foods thing?
Me: Yes, I feel really good….lots of energy.
Dad: You look it…you seem really alert and your skin looks really healthy.
Me: Yes, I usually get dry skin this time of year but my hair and skin seems to be looking better than ever. In fact, I am just rinsing my hair with water and no washing and it just doesn’t get oily.
My husband also noticed a difference. He said I was more smiley and happy than he had seen me in awhile. It is hard not to be that way when you feel so good.
I have not had much of the detoxing symptoms I have heard about though and I think that is because I am still eating 30% non raw as suggested in The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose. She feels that people will give up on raw foods if their detox symptoms get too bad so she doesn’t recommend going cold turkey…she recommends making a slow transition.
I am conflicted about two things though. I have really run into the vegan police again. They are everywhere in the raw foods arena. Many of them think that raw means raw vegan…no exceptions. So I have already run into some raw vegans saying that meat eaters are setting themselves up for disease and parasites and they are saying that meat eating is inefficient and has a negative impact on the earth. They also don’t want to hear about ANY study that says otherwise…so far I am not so impressed with the “tolerance” of the raw foods crowd…they seem pretty militant. I can’t understand why they would get so upset about their fellow raw foodies eating a bit of meat or dairy when the alternative is the SAD (Standard American Diet). It seems kind of silly to me.
I am also wrestling with the environmental impact issue of not eating seasonally or locally. Meat eating hardly seems to be such a environmental horror when the raw foodists are talking about the exotic Asian fruits they are eating. WTH? I think this might be why many raw foods eaters live in warm climates. I am eating a lot of salads and fresh veggies and fruits and those surely are not growing here. The summer would be a snap eating raw but the cold weather months are troubling me.
I did buy some nuts from a raw foods farm here in Ohio though and I am excited to find out they have quite a few other offerings like dehydrated fruits and sun ripened tomatoes. I am looking to buy my own dehydrator this month too. I also found some local raw goat’s milk cheeses at Whole Foods that are really yummy. Another awesome find was Larabars. They are raw and so delicious it blows my mind. I love the lemon, key lime pie, apple pie, and cherry and they sell them in bulk at Costco for a steep discount.
I am just easing my kids into eating raw so they are not eating as much raw as I am but so far so good. I made my son a raw lunch for school this morning with raw key lime pie, fresh salad with sprouted beans and lentils, fresh fruit, dates, and a banana cookie Larabar.
The box is a Laptop Lunchbox.
