Soup Recipe (Not Raw)

So far on my high-greens, whole-foods vegan approach I am doing greeeeaaatt! I've actually (surprisingly) lost a few pounds ANNNDDD the best part, I'm alkalizing! I've gone from a 6.0 to a 6.8! I hope that's accurate because it's pretty exciting. Now I just have to keep up with it. I'm pretty full still but I'll be eating a big bowl of spinach when I get home from work. Here's a Southwest soup I invented today...yummiiiiee

1 cup vegetable stock
1/2 a pound frozen corn
4 green onions
3 cups diced tomatoes (you can blend this if you don't want it to be super chunky)
1 TBSP cumin
2 TBSP chili powder
Handful of fresh cilantro (chopped)
Salt, pepper & cayenne to taste

Dice up some avocado and sprinkle it on top.
I've also been craving blue corn chips since New Mexico so I picked up some baked blue corn chips with flaxseeds from Garden of Eatin. They were a little salty but deeee-lish!

Warm Food!

So lately as it keeps getting colder and colder, it's getting harder and harder to stay raw! Warm food is so much more appealing in winter. Thus, instead of trying to force myself to stay raw, I'm incorporating more cooked into my diet as of late. It's also so much more EXPENSIVE To make a salad during the winter. I paid like $3 each for a bell pepper and a cucumber at the co-op yesterday, ridiculous! My CSA basket is brimming with greens but I'm not evolved enough to be satisfied with eating straight greens...I need some help here people! So right now I'm thinking of eating more steamed greens with different herbs and spices to liven them up. I'll also continue making my RAW green smoothies etc. but I really need to up my green intake as I've mentioned time and time again. It's so dang hard though! Anyways, right now I'm aiming for 100% vegan and at least 95% organic and 75% raw. That's that for now. I'm going to New Mexico to visit my Mama tomorrow and I can't wait. I haven't been in about 10 years and I'm super excited! Gotta go stock up on some raw meal bars just in case I'm in a pinch as far as food goes. She's pretty accepting of my decision to go raw though :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

You had me at chocolate covered greens

Yummie.

Good things from Matt Mueller

"When Dhrumil asked me to contribute My Way I couldn't help but to crack a joke. Was he sure I was Raw enough? Didn't I go out too much and stay out too late? I'm not exactly the Raw Role Model - was he sure that I was feature worthy? It was of course a joke, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I have felt some underlying social pressure since entering the community. The pressure to put up my best and healthiest front at all times. If you have a drink sometimes, eat the occasional cooked item, or go out past your bedtime some nights... keep it hush hush - right? This is about health and being RAW! - anytime you deviate from that you're obviously not having the best day ever. Go raw or go home they say.

Maybe I am making this up and no one else has felt this but I believe one of the most important things we can do is to be authentic. To be real, open, and honest people at all times. Warts, bruises, scars and all.

It's when we open up and share our true selves with others that we can create the space to allow them to open up as well. I believe magic happens in this space. I also believe that the most important thing for a raw newcomer is to feel that this life style is a hip, fun and sexy way to live. Portraying everyone as monk, living on only sprouts, always being perfect... well that may not attract people and keep them interested the way I hope too. Gone are the days of the crunchy granola types. In are the days of sexy people, both inside and out, eating great foods and living a m a z i n g lives. "

-Matt Mueller

Read more of what Matt has to say on www.welikeitraw.com

Raw Gurus

Listening to so-called "raw-gurus" really makes me realize how much sense 811 means to me. No, I'm not ready for it now but I do think it's the most logical way to eat. When I first started looking into raw foods it was the same epiphany. I knew I wasn't ready for it but it just made SENSE to me and logically I made my way closer and closer to it.

Doesn't it make sense that we humans have an ideal diet that we are MEANT to consume? Every other species does, why wouldn't we?? Why would we need anything else besides that diet? All of these complicated raw theories and time consuming recipes are so unnecessary. Are they fun? Yes. Are they harmful? I don't honestly know. I know this is probably getting really repetitive but I can't help it. I keep realizing more and more how drawn I am to 811. I'm not gonna stress about doing 811 just yet but I do want to go on a green smoothie fast as my NEW new years resolution. Can't wait!

Ps, today I had no overt fats and I feel great and full of energy!

Greens with greens on top

Tonight for dinner I blended up a ton of cilantro with some tomato, tomatillo, leak and jalapeno and ate it over a bed of fresh spring greens from my CSA basket and some sliced tomatoes....yummy!

I've been eating a lot of cooked food lately and binging on some REALLY bad stuff. I'm ready to be done with it.

I just read a Q & A panel with Jingee from Thegardendiet.com and she said that "there are people who suffer from an addiction to self-destruction, and these people battle between their desire to be healthy and their desire to destroy themselves, and in some cases, their desire to destroy themselves wins out." I don't want to be one of those people. I'm tired of being self-destructive like this.

I am rapture. I am passionate. We are bountiful.

I had dinner at Cafe Gratitude in San Fransisco last night after a day in The City with my roommates. I literally think that might have been the first time I've ever ordered an appetizer, entre AND dessert at a restaurant in my life. We started out with WE ARE BOUNTIFUL which is a platter of 2 different kinds of crackers and 4 different spreads. The dill cheese was my favorite and the olive tapenade my least. The main course was I AM PASSIONATE (marinara pizza) which was pretty good. I'm a big fan of sunflower sprouts so that was a plus. My roommates got the sushi bowl which was pretty good and the taco salad which was okay as far as I could tell but I didn't really get the full aray of flavors since I was doing my best to avoid the black beans and not get sick. The layer cake (I AM RAPTURE) was banana and chocolate. The texture was greeeattt and as I was eating it I did like the taste but it left a bad vanailla extract-y (for lack of a better word) taste in my mouth. The tiramisu that my roommate got however was INCREDIBLE. You know it's good when a commited SAD foodie says she would go raw if "all raw food was like this". Overall the food was pretty good (I know my review doesn't sound like a rave or anything but it was) and the atmosphere was so cute. Going to raw resturants is a really fun treat every once in a while although I still think that simple 811 is the way we were meant to eat.

Cravings

I forgot to post this in my last entry but it's a little more about the observations I've made over the past day and a half. Yesterday, when I did have cravings I was craving the WORST things (French fries, tortilla chips, bread etc). These are cravings that disappeared after my first MC but came back during my second. It's very strange how that worked. Anyways, I realized that it wasn't the flavor of these foods that I was craving but rather that I was craving a binge! I like the comfort of eating that QUANTITY of food and complex carbs are just easy to shove down. It's not that these foods are good, they're just satisfying on that level. So far today I've craved sunflower and pumpkin seeds. That just shows what Dr. G was talking about in the emotional eating section of the 811 book; when we eliminate those complex carbs and other junk, we look to fatty foods to stuff down our emotions. Wow, many things are making sense to me. I'm interested to see how my cravings will evolve on my third day of fasting. Right now I'm very sleepy, almost in a haze. I don't know if it's from sleeping too little or too much. I know I'm not getting any energy from food so that could be it. Last night I had very clear dreams like I haven't in a long time. When my alarm went off this morning I wanted to stay sleeping, not really because I felt tired but because I was so into my dreams. I use to have that feeling a lot when I was younger but I haven't in a long time.

Addictions

Today I've got a short reading to throw at you; just something to think on. This is an excerpt from The Daily Raw Inspiration a few days ago

"According to the latest research addiction is a Chronic Relapsing Brain Disease. So when you feel an addictive urge to indulge in something that you know is not right for you, see if you can stall for time, until the dis-ease passes. Sometimes you will feel completely over it in just a few minutes! Try distracting yourself with your favorite hobby, or whatever work you feel most drawn to do at this moment. Perhaps our human brains are wired for addiction, and we can also help ourselves by cultivating addictions that are not destructive. If we could cultivate a few good addictions that could balance each-other out such as a work addiction, an exercise addiction, and a play addiction - we could indulge all three without over-indulging any one, and actually make our addictive natures work for us rather than against us!

In Joy!
Jinjee"

After fasting for a little over a day, I've made some observations that relate to this idea. When I'm not feeding my addiction for food or lending my brain to thinking about food, I leave open space for "healthy addictions". All day yesterday I was craving different random songs that I hadn't heard in years. I was thinking about music, art, love, relationships etc etc. These concepts are abstract and a little harder to digest. It's a lot easier to think about the simple things like food than it is to think about bigger ideas. In the interview on Rawkathon last night, Dr. G was telling a story about how he heard someone giving a raw food speech say he his goal was to make Raw Food the most talked about topic in the country. After that, Dr. G stood up and said that he wanted to make Raw Food so fundamental and familiar to every person that it didn't NEED to be talked about at all. There are more important things in this world than food. Wouldn't it be great if we all grew up in a world where fresh, raw, organic food was a GIVEN?!? We wouldn't have to think about it or be inconvenienced by a society where something so simple is so foreign to others.

I also caught this article on hotmail today. I'd like to hear what you think about it if you get a chance to read.

Right on Dr. G!

Just watched the rawkathon interview with Dr. G. It's the only one of the 4 so far that I've actually been able to sit through. I respect a lot of the raw food "gurus", don't get me wrong but what Dr. G says just really makes sense to me. He has such a simple view on raw foods and how it ties into health overall. It's very comprehensive, quite the opposite of the magic bullet approach that fad diets and yes, even raw food can often take. "Eating well is so easy and such a gift that people actually need to experiment and find out that hey, the water's fine here...So that we can start paying attention to the other issues in life. Paying attention to our food and our fitness is not what's important in life. There's a lot going on in the world that need help." Dr. G is right! We need peace of mind, an ability to handle and process our feelings, connections with other human beings, sunshine, physical activity ANNDD a healthy diet. You can't have tunnel vision and just focus in on one thing. We're so hungry for a quick fix but that's not what life is about. It's a journey and the challenges are always changing. It's an adventure and it should be exciting, not daunting.

BED returns with a vengence

I've been binging on highly processed carbs for the past 3 days like I haven't in MOOONNNNTTTTHHHSSSS. I think my cycle is that I restrict myself too much (811), put too much emphasis on diet and take the fun out of it. Then the stress that comes with obsessing over it causes me to binge. I've been eating a lot more highly processed foods since my second cleanse which is ironic since my first one helped me so much. Why is the second one hurting me????? It's such a horrible feeling to feel so out of control. I think I want to do a little mini cleanse for the next 3 days with some very alkalizing foods. I'm sure my stomach acid levels are having a fit right now. I just need some fasting time to reflect on my priorities and start respecting my body again Here's an excerpt about Emotional Eating by Dr. G

"One of the primary ways we handle painful emotional is to literally 'eat ourselves numb,' with dense, hard-t0-digest foods-the so-called 'comfort foods.' This is effective because of the nature of our nervous system. Our bodes have a finite amount of nerve energy at any given time. The digestion of food and the conduction of emotions each demand so much energy that they cannot be performed simultaneously.

A classic example to demonstrate this property of our nervous system is a funeral, where some people are grieving so intensely they cannot eat at all, while others cannot stop eating.
As we lighten our diets to vegetarian, vegan and eventually raw, we quite commonly become more aware of our emotional selves. When we commit to eating a raw diet, we gravitate toward fatty foods to provide emotional numbing, as most fresh fruits are not sufficient sedatives to overcome emotional distress. Usually this leads to the consumption of exorbitant amounts of nuts or seeds, which are easy to overeat, because they do not quickly trigger satiation. Digestive distress and undue suffering result from this behavior.

The answer to all this lies not in consuming food at all, but in maintaining emotional poise and developing the ability to fully feel our emotions. "

Wow, what a lesson. I know I have yet to really learn it, but I'm on the path which at least offers some comfort. It makes so much sense though. I stopped being so into songwriting and poetry when I first began struggling with BED. I thought it was just that I was so obsessed with food that I wasn't allowing my other passions in but that wasn't the whole of it. It was also the fact that I was suppressing my emotions by smothering my nervous system with food. For the next three days I'm going to live off of cucumber and lemon mineral water. I might put in a little wheat grass powder and stevia too just to make it even more alkalizing. I don't have a whole lot going on so I won't be stressed. I'll be able to take the time to relax, meditate and reflect on some things. I need to allow myself to feel and process emotions without stuffing them down.

Asian Inspiration

My sushi rolling skills need a little work but this flavor combination is deeee-lish

tomatoes
oyster mushrooms
zucchini
a sprinkle of sesame oil
a sprinkle of nama shoyu

As far as assembly goes, I think it might be smart to use the shredded zucchini as the rice and press it down across the nori as a base...we'll see next time. For now I'm out of zucchini...that was amazing though.

I bought a sushi rolling mat and a bunch of chopsticks at an Asian Market downtown a few days ago and today, at natural foods, I bought raw nori and kelp noodles. I feel inspired to create my perfect raw stir fry for dinner tonight. I'll report back later!

Autumn delights

Here are some beautiful raw foods that are currently in season...enjoy :)

Apples
Broccoli
Cabbage Chinese
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Celery Root
Cranberries
Cucumbers
Dates
Fennel
Grapes
Greens
Head or Iceberg Lettuce Leaf Lettuce
Mushrooms (my current obsession)
Nuts
Okra (another scrumptious new discovery)
Mandarin Oranges
Pears
Chile Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Persimmons
Pomegranates
Shallots
Spinach
Winter Squash
Star Fruit

Too much, sorry

I have to apologize to those who I promised daily menu plans, I just can't do it. I told myself that counting calories would be different this time because I'm doing it for totally different reasons: health, not immediate weight loss. Despite what I told myself, counting calories for any reason proved to be too reminiscent of an unhealthy mindset of the past and I just can't do that to myself. Another problem I was having with 811 is the strain it was putting on my wallet. It's a lot cheaper to get calories from dense foods like nuts and avos than it is to get them all from fruit. For that matter, it's a LOT cheaper to get those calories from top ramen so I guess how much you value your health is the real question. Can I AFFORD to spend 500 a month on food?! I digress, I don't know any answers. Dr. G's book makes a lot of sense to me though so I'll definitely be keeping his philosophies in the back of my mind. I went to the second installation of The Health Series last Thursday and we watched the film "Eating". I felt like it was a little bit of preaching to the choir but there were some interesting facts in there. The conversation after was better though. The woman who puts on the series is Marsha Vernoga. I've mentioned her in here before. She's a raw foodist and then she brought two other raw foodie friends down for a Q & A panel. As usual, I was the youngest in the room. It was cool to be able to connect with other people interested in health though. It would cool if more people my age were into it but what can you do? I guess I connect with those people on other things so it's okay. At least I have my roommate. She's doing her master cleanse now (day 6!)

8/84/8

or at least that's what i was at when i finished my big salad around 9 pm. since i got off work at 2 am, I've kind of had a binge. i was still eating all raw but shoveling sesame seeds, walnuts, dates, strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and an apple down my gullet, still feeling completely unsatisfied after the whole thing. i still don't feel satisfied. i think it's a lack of leafy greens. it's also hard because i have been counting the calories and trying to adhere to a strict 80/10/10 regime. I do believe that this is the best way of life but I think it might be too much for me to balance with my history of eating disorders. I don't really know where to go with it. The book makes so much sense to me but at the same time there are so many obstacles in the way. I'm a little discouraged but I'm honestly not too upset about it. Should I be? I've been thinking about my weight a lot lately which is bad bad bad. I gained back most of what I lost on the MC which was really disappointing because last time I lost so much and kept it off. I almost feel like I did the second cleanse for the wrong reasons and that's why I went about it wrong. My body and I definitely have some issues to work out.

811 Day 2

So far I'm loving 811! It's not as hard as I thought it would be, just EXPENSIVE! I know it will be worth it in the end though. I just need to up my calcium intake meaning more bok choy, broccoli, collards, Chinese cabbage, kale, mustard greens, and okra. I should get some okra in my CSA box tomorrow I hope. I never had it before last week and it's AMMMMAAAZZZZIIINNG!

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

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Shortcuts: log food | log meal | log exercise | log water | log fruit and veg | log weight | log body fat % | log meas. | log notes

CALORIE SUMMARY + Basal Metabolic Rate*: [view] + General Activity*: [view] + Extra Activity and Exercise: 0 kcal ± Weight Loss/Gain Goal: 0 kcal Day Quota: [view] - Consumed: 1991 kcal Calories Left: [view] *Estim/d; may vary for individuals up to ±20% [change].

NUTRITION SUMMARY Calories: personal details") to get personalised chart" width="74" height="12"> personal details") to get personalised chart" width="10" height="12"> 1991 (distribution: 8/84/8%) Total Fat*: 31% Sugars: 339g Satur. Fat*: 14% Protein: 43g Cholesterol*: 0% Vitamin A**: 1149% Sodium*: 61% Vitamin C**: 1862% Total Carb: 156% Calcium**: 82% Fiber**: 272% Iron**: 136% full analysis NB: All % (excluding distribution) are % daily values (customized) [change]. * Try to limit these nutrients (<= 100% daily value). ** Try to get enough of these nutrients (>= 100% daily value).

FOOD AND MEAL LOG

	Descripton/Name	Time	Summary
	Chard, swiss, raw		36kcal	modify
	Chard, swiss, raw		36kcal	modify
	Beet greens, raw		42kcal (5/62/33%)	modify
	Bananas, raw		315kcal (3/93/4%)	modify
	Dates, medjool		332kcal (0/98/2%)	modify
	Grapes, red or green (european type varieties, such as, Thompson seedless), raw		469kcal (2/94/4%)	modify
	Melons, honeydew, raw		230kcal (3/91/6%)	modify
	Lettuce, green leaf, raw		21kcal (10/61/29%)	modify
	Pomegranates, raw		105kcal (4/91/5%)	modify
	Nuts, pistachio nuts, raw		158kcal (67/19/14%)	modify
	Strawberries, raw		73kcal (7/86/7%)	modify
	Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, June thru October average		76kcal (12/75/13%)	modify
	Cucumber, peeled, raw		34kcal (12/70/18%)	modify
	Peppers, sweet, red, raw		62kcal (8/79/13%)	modify
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