A 30-day Raw Food Diet Challenge
To Transform My Health
Monday, August 25First day on my 30-day raw food diet challenge
Weight: 123.8 pounds I started my day with 1 teaspoon
BarleyMax®
at 7:00 AM. Then I went for a brisk 20-minute walk.
Breakfast: ½ small watermelonLunch: - 5 Romaine lettuce leaves
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 “raw sesame flax cracker” – Ingredients: sesame seeds, flax seeds, water, garlic, salt, nutritional yeast, ginger, lemon juice
- “raw curried almond pate” – Ingredients: almonds, garlic, green onions, olive oil, curry powder, raw shoyu, water, cilantro, agave
It was delicious. I’m feeling good so far. Afternoon Snack: 14 Bing cherries Feeling a tiny headache and sleepy/tired, want to take a nap. Having trouble staying focused on my work. Another serving of BarleyMax® when I was dragging and wanted some energy to finish writing what I was working on. Dinner: I prepared a recipe from How We All Went Raw by Charles Nungesser, Coralanne Nungesser, and George Nungesser: Fettuccini Not Alfredo consisting of a sauce made of tomatoes, garlic, water, oregano, basil, rosemary, cayenne pepper, scallions, olive oil, and salt, all blended together and poured over zucchini, which had been put through the Saladacco gadget, and some chopped mushrooms. It was delicious! More Comments: My day was good, although my energy level was low. I expected that kind of feeling during the beginning of a switch to a cleansing raw food diet. Not long after dinner I developed a mild sore throat and some mucus drippiness at the back of my throat. I didn’t expect raw food detox symptoms to begin so soon, but – yippee! I’m cleansing on my raw food diet!
Sunday, the beginnings of the raw food diet challenge...
I visited my friends Diana and Susan last weekend. Diana and I talked about wanting to make some positive changes in our lives, and I told her about
StevePavlina.com
and the forums and Steve’s articles and blog entries about 30-day challenges.We decided to each undertake our own challenge. I'll respect my friend's privacy but I'll share mine with you. People choose something beneficial to do for 30 days, or they may choose to eliminate a bad activity or habit for 30 days, thus allowing more positive and healthy energy in.
21 Days or 30 Days?
It has been said that 30 days is enough time to change one’s behavior… to form a new habit. I remember reading a book by Dr. Maxwell Maltz years ago, Psycho-Cybernetics. He was a plastic surgeon and noticed that it took 21 days for amputees to stop feeling the phantom-limb sensations in the amputated limb. After study and research, he theorized that it took 21 days for a new habit to be created.When I attended Optimum Health Institute in San Diego in 2001, I went for 21 days, and I certainly was hooked on raw foods by the end of that time. It was easy for me to maintain the raw food diet when my three weeks were up. So, I toyed with the idea that this time I would do a 21-day raw food challenge instead of a 30-day. Then I thought, well if I really want to make this my lifestyle, it’s silly to say I’ll do it for 21 days. And besides, 30 days should really clinch the deal. I’m planning on being easy on myself… this IS a 30-day raw food diet challenge, sort of an experiment. I’m not going to make myself continue doing it at the end of 30 days if I’ve decided I don’t want to. I’m already eating a healthy vegetarian diet plan. I just want to refine it. To learn about an exciting online program that provides support, recipes, and shopping lists, click here to visit The Garden Diet. I have tried it and can happily say it's delicious and it works!
Why Do This?
Why would I want to do this? I love the raw and cooked vegan diet dishes I prepare, but I want to take my diet and lifestyle to a higher level. If you’ve ever eaten an all raw diet and stopped doing it, for whatever reason, you may know what I’m talking about when I say that you feel so phenomenally good after you’ve been raw for just a short time, you never forget it. I want that feeling back… of inexplicable joy and well-being. It’s hard to describe, but it was just… there, with me effortlessly. I slept well and didn’t need as much sleep as when eating cooked food. I felt amazingly healthy.So, why didn’t I continue with eating raw food? Well, in 2001 I went back to Optimum Health Institute for another week’s stay with a friend visiting from Michigan. We happened to be there during the 911 tragedies. I wasn’t a committed enough raw foodist to not be caught up in some emotional eating, especially with a friend who really wasn’t even into healthy food, much less raw foods. So, I allowed myself to get distracted and fell off the raw-food wagon. There have been other times when I’ve eaten all raw for long periods of time, with the same wonderfully joyful results but didn’t stick with it. I think part of the reason is that eating is such a social activity. Hardly anyone I know is interested in following a raw food diet, and restaurants rarely cater to raw foodists, although there are more now than ever before. It helps to have support and someone to share this lifestyle with. I believe this 30-day challenge will be a great way to get the habit re-formed. It’s a way to make myself be accountable, even if the other people doing the challenge aren’t doing raw foods. Even if it’s kind of an ego thing on my part, that I don’t want to be a loser at this, that’s okay if it gets me through the 30 days. I’m going to be somewhat easy on myself by not restricting what I eat. For instance, Dr. Douglas Graham recommends a very low-fat raw food diet. But to keep myself raw, I’m not going to worry too much about fat and calories. At least not at the beginning. Maybe I’ll begin entering in the nutrient content of my daily intake at some point. For now, I just want to get started without too much getting in the way, too many excuses to stop me from going forward. Tomorrow, Monday, I’ll start the day with a weigh-in. Yikes. What woman likes to share her weight, much less on a web page? Accountability, that’s what it’s all about. My plan is to update my blog every day with news about the challenge. So check it to see how I’m doing. You'll find it by clicking
here
. Update: The challenge has ended. Click here to read all of the daily blog entries with links to daily pages. Read about other detox diets by clicking here.
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