Raw Foods Trial: Day 5

Dan: You know why they call collard greens "cruciferous," don't you?
Laura: Tell me.
Dan: Because they are crucifyingly bad when you try to eat them raw.
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Welcome to Day 5 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As I've done on previous days, I'll first list the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Below, I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 9:00am
1 whole avocado, 2-3 cups of fresh pineapple chunks

Lunch: 1:00pm
Smoothie: 2 apples, 1 cup raspberries, 4 heaping Tblsp wheatberries, 3-4 ounces water, combined in blender. Yield: about 2.5 cups or enough to fill a 20 ounce glass.

This was a truly simple, good and delicious meal.

Snack 4:00pm
A quick snacklet of some pineapple chunks and a handful of sprouted lentils and wheat berries.

Dinner: 6:00pm
I made an enormous raw veggie platter, carrots, celery, cukes and broccoli with a small amount of tahini dip:

Then I had a huge, green(ish) smoothie:
1 carrot, 1/2 an apple, 3/4 cup of raspberries, 1/2 cucumber, a loosely packed cup or so of collard greens, 4-5 Tblsp sprouted wheat berries, water, juice of 1/2 lime. Yield: 24 incredibly filling ounces. More than I could really eat, but I made room.

Note: For some reason, I had a huge burping fit after downing this smoothie. A world-class burping fit. Oh, if I could have been transported back to my college days for just a few hours!

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) I'm feeling better today than yesterday. I still have that weird metallic taste in my mouth today, and a very mild headache as well.

2) I changed up my breakfast and had avocado and pineapple instead of a smoothie, partly because I'm getting a bit sick of smoothies, and partly because I wanted to listen to my body and give it the food it wants--as long as it's raw of course (if I really ate what I "wanted," I'd die of chocolate toxicity in a matter of days). Seriously, though, the avocado and pineapple were immensely satisfying, and the higher-fat breakfast fueled me just as well as a wheat berry based smoothie.

3) My body is getting still more and more efficient in digesting these large smoothies... Looking back, I think on Day 1 my body was confusing fullness with sufficient energy. I guess it pays to remember that hunger often lies.

4) Sleep: My sleep schedule is starting to rotate forward a bit. The past couple of nights I've stayed up a couple of hours later than usual, and I've been getting up later, at 7-7:30 am rather than my typical 5-6am. I've also needed a bit more sleep this week than typical, usually eight hours rather than my more typical seven. Hard to know if this is raw food- or caffeine-related.

5) On the aesthetics of veggie smoothies: I simply have to share a photo of today's dinner smoothie:

What, exactly, does this look like to you? One of my family members asked me if this was a "before" or "after" picture. Ironically, this smoothie didn't taste as bad as it looked--it was actually pretty good.

6) Finally, when Laura sat down tonight to her dinner of delicious (cooked) food and looked over at me masticating my way through a veggie platter and a barf-colored smoothie, she said, "today is the first day I feel a tiny bit sorry for you."

Onward to Day 6... only two more days to go!

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