Day 133

Man, it's so easy to let blogless days slide by. My camera is on its way home to me, though. I find it so much easier to post with pictures to anchor my thoughts.

Raw and I have reached an understanding. We are going to co-exist in a way that makes us both happy. To be honest, with the zeal of a new convert, I pushed myself to be too raw, too hard, too fast, and I was unhappy. After giving strict 80/10/10 a go, I found myself incredibly unsatisfied and unhealthily obsessed with food. It's all I was thinking of, what I was going to eat and what I couldn't eat. Every night as I fell asleep, I was having intense cravings for non-vegan foods that I haven't eaten in years, even things I'd never in my life considered eating. I didn't want to be raw anymore. I barely even wanted to be vegan.

So here are my compromises. I'm sticking with the low fat framework, keeping the percentage of my calories that come from fat each day to 10-12%. I'm eating all fruit and veggies throughout the day. At the moment, I just can't stand to eat a salad, so I'm not pushing it. Instead, I'm getting my greens in smoothies and I've been making wraps for dinner using sprouted grain tortillas from Food for Life. That little bit of bread is making all the difference in the world. To mix it up, I've been experimenting with different dressings. My current favorite was found here, which I'm going to post with my minor mods:

Liquid Gold

1/2 c olive oil

1/2 c water

1/3 c lemon juice

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/4 c Nama Shoyu

1/2 c Nutritional Yeast

2 tsp Dijon Mustard

1 tsp ground cumin

Shake in a mason jar to mix. Dressing can be kept in a jar with a lid, refrigerated for 2 weeks. Makes 2 cups.

I am loving this stuff.

Other stuff I am loving includes My Daily Plate over at Livestrong.com. Like the cron-o-meter, it can be used to track calories and nutrients, but it's so much more. It can also track exercise, determine your optimal calorie intake based on your goals and includes more packaged food. The abundance of advertising is rather annoying, but being able to log into any computer to track my day is really convenient. Right now, I have my goal set to lose 1.5lbs per week, which for me means that I can take a day off each week to forgo keeping track and let myself indulge a bit without entirely derailing. It's been really great so far and I've already started dropping some of those last few vanity pounds. I sound like an ad for the damn thing, but I'm excited and I wish I'd found it sooner!

-Eloise