Day Four

Posting at lunchtime today during my office hours (I'm a TA at my school). I should be grading papers, but I'll get to that later. Lunch today is the Hearty Corn Salad from The Raw Food Detox Diet.I made it last night for dinner, but really hated the raw Cesar dressing that was recommended. I made more of my Italian dressing today, and it's 100% better. In the recipe, Natalia Rose says something to the effect of It's so hearty, you'll think you're eating stew! which makes me think she hasn't had stew in a long while. It's a good salad, but really, it's a freakin salad.

I've been thinking a lot about why we're becoming raw foodist. It's been bothering me since the first day when we weren't prepared with what to eat and Madeline said, only half jokingly, "We've become anorexic!" Now that's certainly not the goal, and nor do I want this to be a diet of deprivation. But I would be lying if I said that one of my main motivations for changing my eating habits was not to lose weight. It certainly is a primary driving force. My father has an extremely high metabolism and despite eating mountains of food, there is not an ounce of fat on his body. I didn't inherit that genetic gift. If I did, fatigue and chronic stomach and headaches be damned, I'd eat vegan lasagna, fried tofu and double chocolate chip cookies every night. I know that I'm not really overweight. I'm well within the range of healthy, but probably 10-15lbs from what I consider ideal. But if I don't have the body I want at 23, then when? Madeline has heard me say on more that one occasion in the past month, "When I have my raw body, I'm going to..."

So could I eat a healthier cooked vegan diet? Probably. But it's much more difficult to make small changes, harder to reframe the existing picture. It's better to start with a new picture entirely and work with a whole different landscape. I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and was struck by this quote:

"Most of us are creatures so comforted by habit, it can take something on the order of religion to invoke new, more conscious behaviors- however glad we may be afterward that we went to the trouble."

She is referring to her family's efforts to eat locally for a year, but I find it to be very applicable to my current state. It goes beyond vanity, though. I have been reading as much as I can about diet, nutrition and raw food, and there's a lot of information out there. It's kind of overwhelming, really, to sort through the fanatical crap to get to the hard facts. But the more I read, the more I'm convinced that this is the answer. And if we stick to it long enough, it, too, will become a habit. It's easy to forget how inhibited I felt when I first became vegan when all I can remember is how easy it was before I began this raw transition. Over time, it became second nature, as will this. 

-Eloise