Day 100

One of many, many salads

100 days! The days seemed to creep by so slowly in the beginning, but holy crap! 100 days now seems like nothing.

You know, I really thought that this raw thing was going to be a piece of (figurative) cake. Eat fruits and veggies, feel great, drop those 10 lbs, easy peasy. After more than three months, though, I'm not where I want to be. After graduation, though, I am recommitting myself to starting over, to eating better and exercising more. To taking care of myself. That's always the first thing I let slide when I get stressed out, and I can only imagine that grad school is not going to get any easier. I stopped weighing myself a couple weeks back, because I wasn't making any progress and it was occupying too much of my mind.

I think that the most difficult thing has been trying to break the habit of using food as emotional comfort. I suppose this is hardly a revelation, nor is it uncommon by any means, but I have the uncanny ability to make even raw food unhealthy (did you know that dates stuffed with cacao nibs taste like an inside out Raisinet? And whereas Madeline will eat half of one and enjoy it, I will eat four and feel guilty).

There has been a really interesting shift going on in both our diets, though. We're eating far fewer nuts, much less oil and way more fruit. The few nut heavy recipes I've made over the past few weeks, even the things we used to heartily enjoy, like walnut pate, leave us feeling sluggish and heavy. I haven't posted any recipes recently because in addition to being too busy to prepare anything interesting, we're eating primarily whole fruits and vegetable, nothing revolutionary.

So here's the plan: I bought The 80/10/10 Diet, which I am going to read. I've had it for a few weeks, but I think I've been scared to find reasons to want to change my diet further. I've also been really annoyed with the junk science in some of the raw books I've read previously, so I hope that this will be different.

We also purchased a treadmill, which was an incredibly huge investment. Scarily huge. I've been reading everything I can find about treadmills, and a lot of lower end models are good for walking, but don't have the structural integrity to withstand running, which is what Mad and I both want to do. So we went with a more expensive model that will hopefully last us for a long, long time. Once it arrives, I am going to start working on Couch to 5k, which is something I've wanted to do for a while.

This has been good. And it will get better.

-Eloise

Day 60

The following (one sided) dialogue is what occurred when I walked into the kitchen, camera in hand...

"Mad! I'm going to take your picture! Okay, smile!"

"Wait the flash was on, let me try again...Don't make a face at me, smile!"

"That's better."

Heh. She's been so busy at work lately that this is pretty much the most I've seen her in the past couple days.

Two months raw! It's definitely getting easier, and I'm definitely getting better at putting together meals. Preparing food has become kind of a mediation for me, which is good, because I do spend a ton of time in the kitchen. Right before going raw, I was talking to a co-worker at my weekend job about how great raw was going to be, and a customer who overheard me chimed in. He said that he had been raw for a while, but he hated having to think about what he was going to eat days in advance. I politely nodded and we went on to talk about the best places to get raw food in the city, but inside I was thinking, How long could it possibly take to make a salad?

How naive I was. We do eat plenty of salads, but I do my fair share of soaking, sprouting, slicing, processing, dehydrating... I spend a good couple hours in the kitchen everyday, and it's important to me to keep things interesting. It would be too difficult for me to stay committed to being raw if I wasn't willing to put in that time.

That being said, though, tonight's dinner was pretty quick. I made a variation of Kristen's Candy Kale Salad with kale (massaged with lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt), chopped dates, raisins (both soaked to plump), brazil nuts and strawberry slices. It was so incredibly good. The strawberry was a particularly inspired addition, if I say so myself, although that's makes it a poorly combined meal for those who follow those rules. I'm lax about them, but I can't help but note when my foods are "mis-combined".

I've lost weight this month, too, about 5 lbs. I can't say that's entirely because of going raw, though, but more of a lifestyle change. I've been watching calories, limiting nuts and oils and getting out to hike a couple times a week. I'm just a lot more conscious about the way I take care of myself, and I'm a lot more balanced for it.

-Eloise

Day 54: 'Peanut' Sauce

I'm having a very lovely morning. I checked my email this morning, which is unusual, as I don't typically have time, and found out that my first class was canceled. So instead of running out the door, I'm curled up on the couch in the living room with a giant green smoothie. I'll still have to head out in about an hour (and it's my late day), but it's a nice reprieve.

Two nights ago, I made the "peanut" sauce from The Raw Food Detox Diet. It was absolutely delicious. We tossed it with shredded carrots and then rolled spoonfuls up in spinach, mini burrito style.

In the back of my mind, though, was a slight nagging guilt. The sauce was heavy on expensive ingredients, namely almond butter and maple syrup. In fact, I'd halved the recipe from the start, as the full batch calls for a full cup on almond butter. That would have been our whole jar, and on our limited incomes, we need to save where we can. As it was, the half cup made a huge dent.

We were also concerned about the high caloric content of the almond butter, since both Madeline and I are trying to get into shape. Now I know that a hundred different raw sources will refute me in a hundred different ways. Every raw book I've read tells me that extra weight will magically melt off on a raw diet, no matter how many nuts and avocados you eat. I can see how that may be true if you're coming from the typical standard American diet and cutting out fast food, meat and dairy all at once and have a significant amount of weight to lose. But Mad and I were already vegans (albeit not the healthiest), and we're only looking to drop about 10 pounds apiece. When we went raw, not much happened for the first month. It was only once I started paying attention to the good old fashioned calories-in-vs-calories-out and curbing the nuts that I begun to notice changes to my body.

So long story short, I wanted to make a healthier recipe. Last night I experimented with using zucchini as the base, and if I say so myself, it was pretty damn good. It's a bit thinner, but all of the flavor is there. Instead of heavy nuts, it's chock full of water-rich zucchini. I'm pretty proud of this recipe.

Guilt-free 'Peanut' Sauce
1.5 c peeled and chopped zucchini
3 T raw almond butter
1.5 T fresh minced ginger
Juice from 1 lemon
2 T agave
1 T maple syrup
3 T Nama Shoyu
3 cloves garlic
1 dried red chili pepper, including seeds

Throw all of the ingredients into a food processor fitted with an S blade. Save the chili pepper for last and crumble it on top. Process until a smooth, creamy consistency.


We ate it as a veggie dip last night with cucumbers, bell peppers and celery, but it would work equally as well tossed with noodles or as a salad dressing. As for how it adds up, by my calculations (using the CRON-O-Meter), a half cup serving of the original recipe is about 494 calories and 40 grams of fat. My version is 128 calories and 7.5 grams of fat. I'm bringing leftovers today for lunch!

-Eloise