Hi again! Sorry for the quietude, but I've been busy reading, listening to teleseminars, and concentrating on my well-being during this first week of the Six-Week Detox. I've been keeping a mini-journal on a private forum for participants, and between that and reorganizing how I use my time, I'm a bit strapped for spare moments.

So, I'm going to copy (and lightly edit) a bit from my mini-journal there.

Today I decided to make an all-liquid day. I think I may break with that and have some oranges, because my body's been craving citrus a lot lately. I sat down and ate three whole grapefruits the other day for lunch/brunch. I love grapefruit! I was surprised I felt so satiated and satisfied having just grapefruit for brunch and lunch. (I don't tend to eat anything until at least mid-morning - my gut is much happier that way!)
Last night I made a very green smoothie, low (for me) on fruit and loaded with greens and green powders - chlorella, spirulina, wheatgrass, mullein leaf (good for mucus issues), and dulse. That's what I'll be having for lunch today. I also juiced last night and froze the jar for today - one bunch carrots with their tops, one large bunch parsley, the center 1/3-1/2 of a head of romaine, and two pears. Verrrry green for me, juice wise, but the pears made it still palatable.

I can tell I'm detoxing again - I'm getting mild acne on my face. >.< But being less strict - not doing 100% raw every day - means the detox is much more gentle than it was when I did 100% raw for a full week. I am not feeling so overwhelmed and angry, either. (Hm, sounds like I need to detox some anger... gee, big surprise! NOT!)

Another thing I've been craving and eating a ton of is green olives stuffed with whole garlic cloves. They are oily, but very delicious. I don't even really like green olives, but I love garlic and I know how tremendously healthy it is. I realized I was sitting and eating the equivalent of one or two heads of garlic in one sitting, and found myself thinking, "Huh, I bet my body needs and wants all that anti-microbial goodness."
(Plus they are so tasty!)
Grapefruit is the same way, especially the seeds - an anti-microbial power-house! Huh, I guess my body is trying to tell me something.

I'm going hiking in the woods with friends tomorrow, and we'll be playing games and chasing each other too, so it's going to be my super-high exercise day for the month. (I'm usually worn out for a couple days after these monthly game days!) But I think I'm going to go bowling and/or roller-skating for fun and exercise tonight and/or Sunday too.

I've been making a version of the "Leaky Gut Repair shake" - with hemp protein, a red-superfood powder, chia seeds, coconut, a banana, and about 20 oz. water - and it is not only giving me indigestion, it's making me a little constipated. The indigestion is probably from combining the banana and hemp - and I know better, but man, the shake tastes pretty gross without the banana to sweeten it. I'm going to try my shake again with stevia instead of the banana to sweeten it. I think it is the bad food combining that is upsetting my stomach, but if it is the hemp alone, I should know soon. I hope not, though, because I bought three canisters of hemp protein powder, and I know that stuff doesn't keep forever, even frozen.

The red powder contains lots of stuff, too much to list it all here, but it's lots of high-anti-oxidant red/blue/purple foods (like pomegranate, acai, purple cabbage, berries of many sorts, etc.), detox herbs (milk thistle, tumeric, aloe, ginger, etc.), and enzymes & probiotics. I saw it at Trader Joe's and it sounded just about perfect, so I decided to give it a try.

Well, wish me luck!

Day 3/4, and the monetary price of raw food

To start, yesterday's food intake:

Day 3:
a glass of fresh raw almond milk
a couple heaping spoonfuls of "Mock Salmon Pate" from Living on Live Food
most of a whole pineapple
more zucchini and nut "alfredo"
several flax crackers from Foods Alive with mock salmon pate
a slice of raw pie, a friend's creation
an apple

If it doesn't seem like I'm eating a ton, well... I guess I'm not. But I'm a pretty small person, so I didn't before, either - unless I was overeating, and I felt pretty awful when I stuffed myself to the gills, so I'm making a point not to do that now! But it would be awfully easy to do with those Onion Garlic flax crackers... MM!!
My husband was very helpful yesterday in getting me through the day. I hit a rough patch emotionally, and all that fresh almond milk didn't sit right with me, as I have some trouble digesting raw nuts and I forgot to take digestive enzymes beforehand to help. So I was sitting there, feeling sad and sick, and that last slice of homemade vegan gluten-free pizza looked so tempting. "It's pretty healthy, after all," I told myself. And I told this to my hubby, who said to me, "You told me you want to eat raw this whole month, and I said I will help you. I will go make you whatever raw dish you want, and I will support you and prepare food for you all month, if you DON'T eat that pizza."
And so I rested, let the nausea pass, and then I pigged out on a whole pineapple my sweetie cut up for me, because that's what I felt like eating. ;)
And my hubby is going to finish that pizza so it stops tempting me every time I open the fridge!

One of the criticisms of the raw food diet is that it is expensive, especially if you go for all organic produce, which is the best way to do it. (I do feel that healthy eating is often out of reach for the poor, but I do think there are many reasons for that, and that is a topic for another post.) I have found that the initial, upfront investments can be pricy, but only as much as you want them to be. I recently acquired a Vita-Mix and a dehydrator, which are pretty big monetary investments, but they are also more-or-less frills that help make the raw diet more interesting. As for myself, I want to do this raw thing 100% of the time (at least for now) and learn to make a lot of gourmet dishes, both so that it is easier for me emotionally at first and also so that I can make really attractive and delicious dishes to share with friends and family. Hence the investment. But eating raw doesn't require special equipment (you don't even need a stove, microwave, or cookware!) or a lot of money. Eating more raw food can be as simple as allowing yourself to eat your favorite fruit to your heart's content.
Emotionally, I had to get past that myself. When I was little, fresh fruit and veggies were a special snack, not an every-meal food, so mentally I've had to get past the idea that one apple a day is all I can have, or eating an entire 8-oz box of strawberries in one sitting is selfish, and other ideas like that.
Anyway, today I did the week's grocery shopping, equipped with my list of everything I will need for this week's planned meals. I also picked up some goodies - like the organic mango I'm munching on right now and some Synergy GT's Raw Kombucha - for lunch. My total was under $32. Now, I will still need more greens (less than $10 worth) later this week, and I have some of the staples, like spices, almond butter, and that sort of thing at home already, so if you were starting with a bare cupboard, one week would cost more, but most people aren't starting from nothing. You can transition - when you run out of Jiffy creamy PB, buy a jar of organic raw almond butter instead. The price is higher, but the flavor is really amazing!

How much are you spending on groceries this week? Why not considering skipping the ice cream or crackers this week and buying some fresh fruit or almond butter instead? Yum! For those of us who are not chronically poor or disadvantaged, what we buy at the supermarket is more an issue of priorities than it is of having food at all or not. What are your priorities?

Don't just survive... Thrive!

I realize it's been quite a while since my last post. The truth is, I've had quite a lot of big, big stuff on my mind. I've done a good bit of writing in my person, paper journal, but I have been doing a lot of reading.
As you can see from the sidebar, the number of blogs I'm reading regularly has shot up. Probably too many, especially when you add in things like Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal, all of which I am still (theoretically) reading too, but only on occasion. Mostly, I am reading a lot of raw foods, sustainability, and crafting blogs, as that is where my mind is focused lately - internally, but looking to others for inspiration and ideas.

I have decided to go 100% raw on Jan. 1.

I have been adding more raw foods to my diet over the last six months and have seen some good results. My skin does better when I am eating a good mix of raw foods. Cooked food gives me headaches and brain-fog. Also, when I eat raw, I feel light, energized, happy, and optimistic. When I eat cooked food, I find myself becoming lethargic, pessimistic, listless, bored, and depressed. I can see this effect within a couple hours (or less) of eating.

I envision the person I want to be, the person I think I am inside the fatigue, headaches, eczema, depression, poor concentration, aches and pains, breathing trouble, etc.... And that person is healthy, happy, full of energy and love, and aglow with life. Everything I read about eating a raw vegan diet leads me to believe that this diet can help me manifest the life I want. My experience with eating more raw foods in my diet has been almost uniformly good. The only problem I have run into is how easy it is to pig out on rich, delicious raw desserts, and my digestion is too weak to handle that much fat at once. I now realize I need to take systemic enzymes before consuming rich dishes like that!

My cravings for greens, mentioned in an earlier post, comes and goes, but the healthier I eat, the more I find I want healthy food.
As an example:
Mexican food was a staple growing up with my family. I have many positive memories of it as it is one of my parents' favorite kinds of foods and eating out was about the only time we all ate together, so Mexican food is comforting to me. So, the other night, I went out for Mexican food. I had been craving it intensely and I thought it would be a good thing to satiate before jumping into raw foods so that I wouldn't keep thinking about it.
And... it was really disappointing.
All that thick cheese, heavy beans, corn... ugh. It didn't taste as good as I remember, and it made me feel heavy, sluggish, and achey before I was even done eating. But someone else's unwanted side of guacamole and lettuce? My mouth watered just looking at it, and I ate as much as I could scavenge from around the disgusting pile of sour cream. Yum. It was far from the best guac I've ever had, but it was what I wanted.

So, I've decided to give 100% raw a try. I have a one-month meal plan, a ton of recipes, and lots of books and blogs to keep me inspired. I figure I can do one month and see how I feel and what I want to do from there.
There are so many reasons I want to do this. My health is the primary one, but there are so many others... I want to be happy, and I want to be the best person I can be, not just for myself, but for every member of my family and friends, present and future. I want to be someone I can be proud of and that my family and friends can be proud of. That means taking the best possible care of my health that I can. I am done just surviving, just slogging through the work day to go home and flop down exhausted. I'm tired of going through things either half-asleep or so preoccupied I wonder where each month, each year has gone.
I want to be fully ALIVE. I want to THRIVE.

Love,


Kasi

Cure for Diabetes

Two posts in one day? Crazy, you say!

A Solution For Diabetes: A Plant-Based Diet

"I’ve been researching the most common and devastating diseases Americans are dealing with, with the aim of finding a common thread running throughout both cause and reversal. As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease, and one out of every three children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. These are devastating diseases, certainly to those who are burdened by them, but also to a health care system that is struggling to keep up.
The extraordinary doctors and nutritional scientists I’ve talked with seem to be saying – and saying fervently – the same thing: a diet high in animal protein is disastrous to our health, while a plant-based (vegan) diet prevents disease and is restorative to our health."

I have been vegetarian for 9 years now. I discovered I am lactose intolerant several years ago. Almost two years ago, I researched the vegan diet and nutrition, tried it for a while, and then decided it was not right for me at that time. Since then I have been continuously improving my diet.
I think the tack that many vegans take of trying to convert people via guilt trip over the suffering of animals is not only not very helpful, it has been very detrimental to the cause. While the suffering of the animals is a very valid concern, some people don't care much about the topic. Many individuals respond to being told what to do by vehemently doing the opposite. But what if it is presented in a different light, as a lifestyle full of yummy food that makes you feel good?
Above all, I believe in paying attention to how your body responds to different foods and learning to listen carefully to our body's messages. Very few people do this any more, but it is such a very valuable skill for living a long, happy, healthy life.

Still craving greens!

I am still craving greens! I can't get over this, it's weird. Tuesday and Wednesday I had salad for lunch AND a green smoothie once I got home, and I want more!

A couple weeks ago I sat in a Wendy's as a couple friends were eating. Since we were there and I was hungry and craving salt, I decided to get french fries. As I sat and looked around, I had the sudden, terrible revelation that I was surrounded by death. From the greasy french fries we shared and the chicken nuggets and burgers they ate that came from tortured animals raised in unsanitary factories, to the tons of plastic for windows, seats, ads, trash cans and the disposable, single-serving everything, to the overweight customers killing themselves with so-called "food"... Death. There was death everywhere. It was like one of those movies where suddenly the character realizes that it's all an illusion and suddenly sees the broken lights, rotten wood, and sunken skull-like faces behind everything and every face around them that looked so bright and normal a second ago.
I asked myself, then, what if I decided to make choices that affirmed life, in every decision I made? What food I eat, whether or not to buy something, what materials to use in my garden and house, even what hobbies I have and how I spend my time.
What if, every day, when faced with a decision I asked myself the simple question, "Is this life-affirming?"
And if the answer is no, then don't buy/eat/do that.
Choose the most life-affirming option in every decision you make.

I don't think it's a coincidence that my cravings for wheat products have dropped dramatically recently. I look at them and think, "My cravings are just a manifestation of emotional need - I should deal with the source, not the symptoms" and "This isn't nuturing to me, it will hurt me. Do I really want to eat something that will leave me hurting for far longer than it would give me pleasure?"

I am tackling the great (and difficult) emotional work and realizing that there is no wonder I was failing to improve my health the whole time.
-I could not access or make progress on locked-up emotional problems without moving and exercising my body.
-I could not exercise without tools and support in place to deal with the intense emotions released.
-I could not eat healthily because of emotional needs connected to food.
-I could not feel stable and happy emotionally because I ate food almost every day that made me subtly sick and ill.
-I could not exercise without pain when my body was full of toxins from bad foods.
-I did not have the energy for exercise when eating unhealthy foods, and without the invigoration of exercise, I had no energy to take the time to prepare healthy foods.

Every problem fed into one another. Buddhists have a word for this that translates approximately as the "interdependent co-arising" of phenomena.
It seemed so helpless, so pointless, doing little things when each little thing does so little toward improving the big picture of my health. But it's all connected through feedback loops, so a little healthier food means better emotional processing and more energy; more energy for exercise means less joint pain and sounder sleep; therapy for emotional issues gives the strength to make healthier food choices... etc. I have so far to go but after this long the progress I am seeing feels so wonderful!
And hard! Wow, this is exhilerating but also hard work! I am so grateful for all the ways I am blessed - especially, this week, all the loving support I am receiving from my husband.

Until next time, love and light,
Kasi