Experiments in Light Eating on the Raw Food Diet

Spring is fab - warm sunshine brightens the soul and gives pretty much everyone a boost - and the clocks go forward tonight:). I love the light evenings. Joe just wants to stay outside and kick a ball around. Ran round Kingley Vale early last Saturday, and hopefully it'll be bright and dry tomorrow so I can go again.

8am Breakfast

Fresh juice for everyone, and a spare juice for me to have at 10 o'clock as I get thirsty around then.

I started out this week completely in love with fresh carrot and celery juice, but for the last few days I've had a major crush on grapefruit juice.

10am Morning Splash

Hmmm, more juice - usually grapefruit through a straw.

12-2pm A different sort of liquid lunch!

Usually a pint of green smoothie. Sometimes for a change I'll make a raw pie, or have a pure fruit smoothie with soaked almonds or hemp seed. I'm a big fan of berries and love to add blueberries, blackberries, or strawberries to my smoothies. This time of year I tend to use frozen berries as I've still got some blackberries in the freezer from last summer.

Plus I've been growing lots of sprouts, and love to eat them fresh from the sprouter, as well as whizzing them up in smoothies. I also enjoy eating whole peppers, carrots, and greens. Eaten fresh they taste good just as they are. My body just loves the liquid in them.

2-6pm

It depends what I've been up to what happens now. Sometimes I like to have a wheatgrass shot, sometimes an apple and wild green juice - the warm weather has meant the garden is full of nettles and cleavers.

Evenings

If I'm thirsty in the evening then I just drink water. Looks so simple when I right it down!

So how's it been?

The hardest part is not eating with Dave and Joe in the evening. I'm not hungry, but the restless part of me that's used to numbing out on heavier food wants to eat.

I am in the process of breaking the habit of eating bread and other grains, and find it much easier to simply not eat them at all. I've made lots of tasty raw crackers in the past which are an excellent transition food, but I find I only really want high water content foods at the moment.

Other times when I've gone raw I've made the mistake of eaten raw fudge in the evening to fill the void, but while I still love a bit of raw fudge (sun-dried fruit and nuts or seeds ground up into soft sticky fudge), eating too much of it, or eating it when your not actually hungry is numbing too.

As I live on raw high water content food I'm aware of my senses sharpening and feeling more alive.

It feels strange not eating in the evenings. But I'm kind of enjoying it - more energy and feel lighter. Very restless though - lots of decluttering going on!

The Goal

Next weeks goal is continue eating most of my food before 2pm, plus a juice in the evening. I'm not ready to give up my evening juice as I still feel a need for dinner replacement.

I'm also committed to practising 10 rounds of sunprayers and 15 minutes of pranayama in the morning, and half an hour of t'ai chi later on in the day. Can I manage a 30 minute run too?

I'd love to get myself organized so I have time to do 60 minutes of drawing or painting every day - but one step at a time!