Busy, beautiful day

I was super-busy today and didn't get a proper sit down meal that wasn't rushed. This is very unusual for me. I love to eat and I also like the time to sit with my husband and kids every day.

I ran a boatload of errands, posted fliers for my garden club's plant sale, dumpster-dived at Aldi again, visited friends and neighbors to distribute my findings, planted lettuce, carrots, radishes, swiss chard and endive in two of my three gardens that are spread all over town, and cleared out more of my unwanted pantry items to give to my sister-in-law...

I had about 3 cups of defrosted mangos at 9 a.m., 1/2 of a banana at 1 p.m., a huge plate of iceberg with lentil sprouts, cucumber, grape tomatoes, shredded carrot and more of that creamy dressing at 3 p.m. After the salad, I ate 6 soaked almonds on the way to drop my daughter's friend off. At about 8 p.m. I ate 2 Bartlett pears.

Tomorrow, I have more planting and garden work to do, so I better head to bed.

Raw Radiance

I got this gem from Jinjee in my e-mail inbox today:

"When you are truly healthy, you are magnetic! When you are truly healthy you radiate! When you are truly healthy you attract your dreams to you! When you are truly healthy you have so much energy to give, share, and live an amazing life! You attract your mission. You are poised and ready to do the unique work you were meant for! You move forward at the speed of light! You are accelerated! You are living at the speed of life!!! When you are truly healthy you feel so good, look so good, and love the feeling of moving in your body. You have moves."

Jinjee

(Go to http://jinjee1.securesites.net/kidsblog/ to read her entire blog.)

If I had read this a few months ago, my mind would have immediately split in half. There would be the part that would intuitively embrace it and the part that would cynically reject it as hype. Now, after only a couple days in a row of raw, I can tell you that I am totally embracing this! If you are like I was, I say, give it a try. Open yourself up and ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE HAPPY.

Plenty of sunshine headed our way... and also a thunderstorm

I woke up feeling fantastic, despite the sleep deprivation. I also saw a loss on the scale, which was a welcome sight.

I am so glad I resisted the urge to eat late at night, since I know I wake up bloated and crabby when I do.

I had a late breakfast of 3 Gala apples--so crisp and delicious. An hour later I snacked on a banana. Unfortunately, I really don't like bananas all that much, except in smoothies, which I try to limit. How can a wannabe rawist survive without bananas?!?

An update on our cat. He will eat roast pork, although in small quantities. I am still feeling guilty and hope to get him better food soon. I plan to do some research on feeding cats raw. My first thought is perhaps some raw eggs?

Today a friend came over and I sold her $30 worth of pasta, flours and baking products. I also gave her a bunch of other foods like pickled jalapenos and curry paste. Woohoo! Feels great to be clearing out.

Because of her visit, I got distracted and didn't make my lunch until I was shaky and feeling irritable and unable to concentrate. I felt much better once I started to eat. I had 6 cups of romaine, half of a cucumber (peeled), half of a red pepper (chopped), 2 stalks of celery (chopped), a small carrot (grated), and a large portion of that yummy creamy dressing I made yesterday. My toddler snuck up and ate some of my plate, but luckily I got most of it. After eating, I felt much better!

While my friend was there, I got my co-op order together. She's thinking of joining and we're putting in a joint order. We are splitting some amaranth and wheatberries that I plan to sprout. I also splurged on 5 lbs. of dates. I have really been wanting some! I know 5 lbs. will last about 5 minutes in this house, but what can I do.

I really wanted to hang out my laundry and get some planting done, but a sudden thunderstorm moved in right after my friend left.

Instead the laundry went in the dryer and I made salads with iceberg lettuce and peppers and cut up melons for my husband and the kids, who don't care a thing about food combining. I also made them some fruit smoothies.

Here's what I ate for dinner. Four cups of iceberg. A dressing made with about 2/3 C. thawed blueberries, 1/2 C. thawed papaya, 1 banana, some juice from a thawed package of frozen fruit salad, and 1 large leaf of kale (destemmed) blended in the Vitamix. A couple of sips of my kids tropical fruit smoothie.

We were treated after dinner with the sight of a rainbow!

What a nice way to end the day.

Zipp-edy Doo Dah

It is a lovely day with lots of sunshine. A perfect day to eat raw!

This morning I lazed in bed with my dear husband.

At about 10:30, I ate a banana, about a cup and a half of romaine, a few cucumber slices and some leftover salad that I made last night that contained purple cabbage, celery, shredded carrot, and a dressing of soaked raisins, hempseed and a little grapefruit juice.

I had a fun grocery shopping experience, despite our super-limited budget this week. I tried dumpster diving behind Aldi for the first time and hit the jackpot. Loads of green onions, several packages of multi-colored peppers, a dozen or so packages of button mushrooms, a cucumber, 4 heads of romaine, and some pork roast for the Bartimaeas, our cat and a couple of loaves of bread for a friend.

The pork roast reminds me to feel guilty about the diet of our poor cat. See, we're really too poor to have a cat and care for him properly. But we like him a lot and so we keep him. We were buying him the cheapest generic dry food we could get, but I always felt bad about it. I know all about the horrors of the pet food industry. So imagine how frightened I was when my son started eating the cat's food. Although I explained how horrible it was and tried many behavior modification tactics, nothing worked and he kept sneaking it.

What's a mother to do?

I started buying the cat canned tuna and chicken breast. At least if the boy was gonna sneak that into his mouth it wouldn't have melamine or euthanized animals in it!

I wanted Bart (the cat) to go raw, but he wouldn't eat the raw fish I bought him. (At least my son wouldn't eat that.)

I really hate to handle meat. I also don't have much money to spend on feeding a damn cat. The kids have to eat first, you know?

So now, I got three free pork roasts from a dumpster and hopefully Bart will eat roast pork, because I held my nose and roasted it and cut it up for the little furball. Sigh.

After I got back from grocery shopping and dumpster diving, I made myself a salad with about 3 cups romaine, a 12 oz. bag of thawed frozen raspberries, some chopped red pepper and green onions, a small sprinkle of soaked dehydrated sunflower seeds, and an ounce or so of raisins.

The evening involved a big production... helping my husband chaperone his high school's prom. I was a bit concerned that there wouldn't be much to eat. My husband said at least there would be a green salad, so I brought along lentil sprouts and my own dressing--made with soaked almonds, cashews, and sunflower seeds, lemon juice, onion powder, dried oregano, and sea salt. I also brought two Gala apples, but we ended up eating them on the drive over.

As I feared, nothing for me to eat. The salad was liberally sprinkled with American cheese shreds. I mean really, does American cheese make a salad more fancy?!? Ugh. I dug out the lettuce from the bottom and then picked out the leftover bits with my fingers. So annoying. I tried to be quick and subtle about it. The dressing and the lentil sprouts made the salad so sooooooo good. I really enjoyed my dinner.

I was hungry later on in the evening, and there was sheet cake and cookies to tempt me. But I stayed away.

And I had a great time watching the kids dance and joking around with my husband and the other teachers there.

Ready to Begin Living Joyfully

Chapter 9: Getting ready to Embark

As I write this, I am aware that I am healthier and fitter than I was 10 years ago. I am so thankful that I have come to this place.

But I am aware of the nagging pains, physical and emotional. I finally feel ready to fulfill my potential as a human being.

My decision to go raw was influenced by Ginger, known as RawVeganMom. I met her on SparkPeople and was drawn to her energy. She turned me on to the Secret, which led me to the teachings of Abraham through Jerry and Esther Hicks. She also turned me on to Doug Graham's 80-10-10 plan.

I began to do more research into raw and was powerfully affected by something that Nora Lenz said on her site RawSchool.com. Human beings are clearly made to eat fruit. Our teeth, our sense of smell and sight, our strong attraction to sweet tastes, our lack of strong stomach acids and the evidence from our closest non-human neighbors, the binobo monkeys--it all points to the fact that we should be eating primarily fruit, with some leaves, nuts and seeds.

I am ready to allow myself to heal. I am ready to be true to who I really am. I am ready to be healthy and in turn, happy.

A success story. Or is it?

Chapter 8: What's wrong with this picture?

My husband and I have lost a total of 130 pounds. We're exercising regularly, eating fruit and veggies, reversing chronic health conditions. A success story. Someone should buy our before and after photos and use them to sell Eat to Live, right?

Um, if this is a success story, then how come I still feel like crap.

Seriously, we still struggle with compliance. My husband is more philosophical, and therefore more moderate about it. I feel frustrated by going constantly off and on. I go off sugar, then a holiday binge would send me back to eating it daily again. I painfully, slowly got off the salt for over a month (and felt so much better--morning stiffness and achy-ness gone) only to go right back to square one after eating salty food at a social ocassion.

One month, I ate 5 pounds of raw cashews. Cashews by the handfuls day after day.

After having a miscarriage in November, 2006, I binged on SAD foods for 2-3 months... Easy to do since it was Christmas and everyone was giving out cookies. I gained back 13 pounds, while continuing to exercise 7 hours a week. Luckily, I've lost those pounds again. Yet here I remain, at the same weight I was a year ago, still 25 pounds from my goal.

I never quite felt right when following the diet 100% either. I found that I would get constipation with too many cooked greens. (Or maybe it was the nuts?)

I joined SparkPeople.com and began obsessively counting my calories and exercise minutes. Obsessively counting sometimes led to an almost ritualistic overeating pattern.

I would fast from the computer for weeks to break the cycle, only to begin it again.

I read other similar books such as the McDougall Plan for Maximum Weightloss and all of Dr. Neal Barnard's books. I began baking whole grain bread "for the kids" but eating much of it.

I consider raw-ism several times, but was turned off by the multiplicity of conflicting voices shouting at one another. Superfoods. NO, Natural Hygiene. Raw chocolate is good for you. Raw chocolate will kill you. B-12 deficiency will kill you. Green Smoothies. Juice. Don't juice. Sprouts. Sprouts will kill you! Ack!

Stress is killing me, is the problem.

And everyone has something to sell me, which makes them all a bit suspect in my mind.

Eat to Live

Chapter 7: Greenmama stops looking at everyone else and takes a good hard look at herself.

When my youngest had just turned a year old, the family decided to take a 4 day trip to Washington D.C. to march in a protest and visit a friend.

My husband had just recovered from an obstructed bowel. His doctor had told him to take some laxitives and come in for more drastic measures if that didn't work. He was also told that it was probably related to high blood sugar.

In the enclosed space of our car on the 10 hour trip, I demanded that we come up with a plan of action for life. This blow-up argument was about more than his health, but his health played a major role in it. Poor man, the things he's had to endure from me.

Anyway, my argument was, how can I raise three kids by myself when you die in 10 years, as you're sure to do if you continue on this path.

On the way home we stopped in Chicago. I wanted to go to Karyn's to try it. I don't even know why? I think it was a place that I had seen many times when I was in Chicago and I knew it was vegetarian and raw. I only had a vague concept of what raw could mean. But I like food adventure.

We found out that Karyn's had moved and expanded. It was much more tony than it had been when we knew of it a few years before. For all of the beautiful surroundings, the food was just o.k. The nori wraps with walnut paste and strips of peppers and carrots--to die for! The corn soup--just eh. Something, I can't remember what, had baby tomatoes in it that were flavorless and past their prime. I remember thinking how expensive it was for mediocre food.

But the book store! I found so much to inspire me. And, in a gesture of good faith, my husband bought the book Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman. I bought Vibrant Living: Over 250 Heart Healthy Live Food Recipes, by James Levin and Natalie Cedarquist. I bought it for fun, thinking it'd be neat to try out some different recipes. No thought of going raw. On the way home, my husband promised me that he'd get back on the path to health.

We both read Eat to Live. I actually only read it because I was going to help him by preparing meals that fit in his plan. (I prided myself on how much I knew about health and nutrition. I ate 5-9 fruits and veggies a day. *I* certainly didn't need to eat better. God, it's embarrassing to realize how dense I was!)

After reading Dr. Fuhrman's explanation of the China Study, as well as his statistics on how much we actually should weigh for maximum health, a lightbulb went off in my head. Duh, you ninny, you're overweight. Not to mention you have several risk factors for diabetes. And you're eating eggs and some dairy, thinking they're healthy or "not that bad".

The whole family went on Eat to Live, which meant lots of salads, vegetables (especially dark colored), fruits and beans. The kids ate more grains than the adults. We ate raw nuts and seeds only. I dropped 30 pounds in 6 months.

Over the next year and a half, I gradually added more and more exercise to my routine as well. Walking to school with the kids, aerobics videos, some weight training.

My husband moved on the path toward overall self-improvement. He began exercising more, addressing his emotional eating patterns, studying Taoism and other eastern religion and philosophy. He has lost 97 pounds and counting. His blood sugar is back under control without medication and his blood pressure is normal. He snores less and doesn't have apnea episodes that I know of. His back pain is gone.

A success story. Right?