One month!

indeed! August 13th to September 13th. so, how has it been?


Food: i have tried making new things and eaten foods i wouldn't normally. the juice is nice, except it's a bit annoying to clean all the parts every time, and i don't really have the counter space to keep it set out permanently. sometimes i feel too lazy to prepare all the different veggies for a good salad. so i end up eating too much grains, instead of fruit and veg. i also get a little bored with my food or i crave other things, especially breads. i think i should fight this by experimenting with more new recipes to keep myself interested.

i'm concerned about how i will be able to do this in the future. I'm pretty spoiled right now with my nearby cheap produce stand and some free produce from work. but if i'm planning to move away from all that (and the stand closes down for the winter anyway), i'll lose my access to cheap,fresh food. there is always supermarkets, if i can get nothing else. plus, in terms of the seasons, there's less fruit available in winter, unless it's all flown in from south america.

i tried to keep track of the amount of money i spent on food, but it's approximate. some of the food i had before (spices, bags of bulk grains, produce i got for free at work...) and my boyfriend ate a portion of the food, and i didn't include my 14$ juicer or the price of food my boyfriend ate). but all in all, my bill came to ~95$ i don't think that's too bad (and i'm chronically thrifty) it looks like our usual food bill is at around 140 for the two of us, more if we went to costco that month.
anyway, i dont think it's more expensive to eat this way, especially if you can get local, inexpensive food or, even better, grow some of it yourself. Tip: buy in bulk, like scooping it out of bins, when you can. get things that are shelf stable like grains, legumes (sprouting beans and seeds), dried fruits, nuts...) you may have to go shopping weekly for produce, but at least you can have big stores of these.


i haven't been completely raw. i have had some tofu, cooked eggs, a piece of bread or two, cooked oatmeal, soymilk. i think I'm near a balance that i could keep up for sometime. and still have a pretty normal looking diet. (more on this below)

Body:
well! i really have kept up 10 pounds in a month! it's quite unprecedented for me. i
m happy to me able to make a change in my lifestyle and see it reflected as a change in my (stubborn) body. i feel like it's easier to move around and my clothes fit better. i'm wearing pants that had previously been living in the closet only.
the only discouraging part is that all that change was basically in the first two weeks, and now i seem to be stuck. i'm glad i've made progress, but i hope to see more. i'm a little worried that this is all the weight i'm going to lose. my body seems to want to hang onto fat like the apocalypse is coming and it knows i'll have to survive in the desert for a month.
i guess all i can do is try to keep eating as much raw as i can, and i really should exercise more. i don't like getting all sweaty :P

face, ack, my face. i definitely have more acne than before. :/ i guess this is a result of detoxing and all the toxins are coming out through my skin. but when will it go away? when does detoxing stop?

..and, i know this isn't pleasant information, but i have been having, let's call it, soft excretions. well, eating a lot of fruit and no blockage causing meat will do that to you.



Life: I haven't told many people about my raw food diet. maybe i don't want them to think i'm doing some weird extreme thing when i'm really just eating fresh produce. when people offer me a piece of chocolate or a bite of something, i take it. i'm not so rigid that i won't have a bite of the "bad" stuff.

one thing i haven't run into too much, but is a challenge is restaurants. eating with other people. at home i make a dinner for my man and a different dinner for me and we eat together. but out at a restaurant, it's nearly impossible to find an all raw meal.(well, maybe salads, but restaurants load theirs with fat somehow, i guess it's the dressing) there are a small handful of raw restaurants, but i've never been to them. there are 2 in portland, maybe 2 in seattle, and probably a smattering in california. like i said before, they are pricy, but worth it for a special occasion.

so what do i do? we don't have many friends up here, but when i do go out with people i'll just have to try my best. the holidays are coming up and i will surely be tempted.

my boyfriend asks me "how long are you going to do this for?" i don't really know. Good diets are always called "lifestyle changes" because you really need to be eating different than you had previously been. i think he misses getting my cooking every night. his diet has suffered a bit as a result of mine improving. he eats more things that he can prepare himself, partially because he feels bad about making me prepare food that i can't eat. but this means he eats mostly bean and pasta and rice dishes. whereas if i were cooking, he would get more cooked vegetable stirfrys (which i do still make for him, just not as often)


i'm worried that if i go more and more back to non-raw food that i will just gain all my lost weight back. i'd definitely rather stay at 160 than go back to 170.