Dan: No way, man. By boiling that tea, you've killed it! I eat only living foods now.
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Welcome to Day 2 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As with Day 1, I'll first give the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Then, I'll share some closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]
Breakfast: 7:30am
Breakfast smoothie: 1 apple, 3 Tblsp sprouted buckwheat (no wheatberries this time) and 4-5 red raspberries in a blender. Combine in blender. Add 2-3 ounces of water as needed. Yield: about 1 cup (enough to fill an 8-oz. glass).
Note: see below for a critical mistake I made with this smoothie.
Second Breakfast: 10am
Breakfast smoothie: 1 apple, 3 Tblsp soaked wheatberries and 2-3 Tblsp sprouted lentils combined in blender. Add water add needed. Yield: a little more than 1 cup.
Lunch: 1:00pm
I made a huge salad of spinach, cucumbers and red peppers with just a bit of dressing that I made out of lime juice, water and tahini sauce. I could barely wait to eat it; in fact it was so good that I made an identical salad later in the day.
3:00pm Snack: 2 applesDinner: 5:30 pm
Yep, another smoothie: 1 apple, a handful of red raspberries, one cup of cubed cucumber, about 1/8 of a red bell pepper, 4 Tblsp sprouted wheatberries and 3 Tblsp sprouted buckwheat. Combine in blender, add a few ounces water to achieve desired liquidity. Yield: ~1 3/4 cups.
Note: my most bizarre smoothie yet, and also the most bizarre tasting. This one takes the early lead for the worst-tasting smoothie so far.
Second Dinner: 8:30 pm
A large salad identical to today's lunch: spinach, cucumbers, red peppers and a fresh lime juice and tahini dressing.
Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) Today was a stiffer test of my willpower, mainly because I had promised Laura that I'd cook for her one of our favorite family recipes that night (Hamburger Corn Pone Pie--I'll run a post on it in the coming weeks). It's a delicious meal, I cooked it all up... and I couldn't even have a single taste of it. That's true love, is it not? Other than that, I felt a few cravings for cooked food at various points during the day.
2) Why did I eat two breakfasts? I made the mistake of using buckwheat grains rather than wheat berries in my morning smoothie. Buckwheat has an interesting and nutty flavor, but as I shortly found out, it does not provide anywhere near the energy or satiety that wheat offers. As a result, I was ravenous within two hours of breakfast. I didn't make the same mistake twice--I made sure to include wheat in my next meal.
3) You'll note that I consumed food on six separate occasions today, which from what I can tell isn't uncommon for raw foodists. However, it is also possible that yesterday on Day 1 I underfed myself, but "fooled" my body into thinking it was full with all of the fiber and bulk in what I ate. Thus it's entirely possible that today I was simply experiencing residual hunger left over from the prior day.
4) Detox already? I woke up today with a mild headache that lingered for most of the day. Also, when I got up, I was so dehydrated that I needed to drink about a liter of water and wait nearly two hours before my fluid levels corrected (that's an oblique way of saying "before I had to pee"). This surprised me, simply because so much of the raw foods I'm eating are heavily water-based in the first place. My normal water intake should have been more than enough to keep me fully hydrated. Furthermore, from what I understand after reading other peoples' experiences with raw foods, Day 2 is too early to begin experiencing any detox symptoms. Readers, if any of you have thoughts or context that you'd like to share on these symptoms, I'd be grateful.
Onward to Day 3!
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13 comments:
Well, every hobbit knows that second breakfast is the most important meal of the day! :)
It sounds like you may in fact have underfed yourself on Day 1, so the headache might just be from hunger. I found it was very easy to eat too little food when I tried going all-raw last December (I've since adjusted to about 80% raw, 90% vegan). It sounds like you're in tune with your energy level and how it's connected with food, and that for me has always been the best monitor (not hunger) of whether I was eating enough on a raw diet.
LOL on the oblique language of "fluid levels"! I will so be using that in polite company. "Pardon me, I need to go correct my fluid levels." Snort!
Not sure why they call it "detox", since you're really just adjusting to a different diet. You ate less food (and therefore less water) and more fiber per calorie. And then those soaked wheatberries and lentils keep on soaking up the water all the way through your system. You'll need extra water to wash them on through, especially on a day you're going to run 5 miles, and you're not getting it from things like hamburger corn pone pie (yum!) so you'll need to drink it (raw and not from the tap? according to that other site). The headache was due to the dehydration; I'm going to guess that it went away as you increased your fluid intake. This is my opinion, and it is not particularly humble. It's just biology.
Fiona beat me to the elevensies remark. Hehe.
I bet that salad was like manna. Don't know anything about the detox, I'm just finding this whole thing an interesting read. :)
(And yes, yes that is true love. Kudos.)
I'll agree that it was probably dehydration and not detox, however when I first gave up dairy last year, I started detoxing within 2-3 days (I was really sick for a couple days from it!). There's the possibility of a food intolerance to something you're not eating on the raw diet, so it might be good to pay close attention to how you feel when you return to "normal food".
The lack of hot tea would drive me nuts. I like my tea piping hot. Not lukewarm. I guess I like my hot beverages "dead". :-) Same with soup.
A admire your willpower in this -- and your humour. Not sure I could do it, but for now, I'll live vicariously through you. It's an interesting read.
Fiona: happy to hand out a new expression to you. :) And I am inclined to agree with you on the underfeeding... which implies that this diet has powerful implications for anyone who wants to make it easy on themselves to lose weight.
LL: You may very well be right--I'll have more to say about the headaches in the coming days.
Melissa, manna is the perfect word. That's exactly how it was.
Hi Anon, thanks for your thoughts. Good point on a possible food intolerance. I'll keep my eyes open for this over the rest of the trial.
Charmian: Thanks for the positive vibes! You know, it's funny, I thought the lack of coffee or some kind of hot beverage would drive me nuts too--it turned out that was one of the easier things to adjust to. If anything, it showed me why it's worth it once in a while to try something like this... the things you think will be hard to do don't always turn out to be so hard after all.
DK
As I've mentioned before, I've been eating raw foods 100% for years and feel wonderful.
As to smoothies: My favorite one is to take one whole apple; put it in the blender with one whole stick of celery, then add 1/2 cucumber, 1/2 of an orange, and a tiny bit of celery salt.
It's so refreshing!
When I make a spinach smoothie, I use either frozen or fresh spinach; add in one cup of applesauce, one T. of honey and one carrot.
I often make up my smoothies with half vegetables; half fruits, and add one cup of apple juice (fresh) and a little honey so I always get that nice energy from the honey and it makes nearly all the smoothies I eat taste better.
I love just cutting up fresh vegetables; put them on a plate and eat them raw with only a tiny bit of lemon juice or lime juice on them.
You'll find eating 6 meals of raw foods to be low enough in calories and large enough in energy to make for a wonderful diet.
Just a post script: My photo is me with Doug McClure - I was 60 years old when this was taken; you can see I have no wrinkles - no gray hair, and have remained slender all my life. I have no healthy problems and I'm 70 years old now.
Hi Happy in Nevada--thank you for sharing your thoughts. I found the same thing to be true regarding my energy levels. And thank you for your smoothie recipe!
DK
I'm following this with great interest. Two questions, partly in relation to Happy in Nevada's responses and mostly because I know next to nothing about raw food diets:
1. Frozen foods are okay? I've been thinking things had to be not only uncooked, but unfrozen. Boy, would that make so much more sense to me as far as trying, since I'd be doing this on my own.
2. How do you make applesauce on this kind of diet? Just blend the apples without cooking them?
Thanks for letting us follow along with your trial!
Hi Laura, it's my pleasure. First of all, frozen foods are only okay if the foods aren't blanched (quick-boiled or par-boiled) before freezing. The problem is, almost all store-bought frozen foods are processed this way. Otherwise, you can freeze your fresh foods yourself and that's acceptable. I suspect however that most raw foodists vastly prefer fresh food to frozen.
Does anyone have a suggestion for Laura on applesauce? I can say that when I processed apples in my blender (including the peels), the texture was quite a bit like applesauce.
DK
since a raw diet permits low heating of certain foods this method could be used to make a pretty good apple sauce, especially if you puree first. unless you already have a fancy-pants dehydrator, which is another option.
If you use the right kind of apples, you'll have better applesauce than using others that are 'soft' to begin with.
Then blend up with some honey; some cinnamon, a little nutmeg and a few walnuts - gives it flavor and texture without cooking. Also add a wee bit of sea-salt to bring out the flavor and a little lemon juice.
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