Well, I guess some of you have noticed that I have deviated away from my raw diet quite a bit. Don't get me wrong - we still juice and have smoothies, and we eat at least 2 or 3 pieces of fruit per day - but in my quest to be as my grandmother was - I have been cooking lots of things that aren't so good for my husband and me. The point is to try to make everything from scratch as we can, and away from most preservatives and chemicals - and away from the human hair, pig bristles and duck feathers in store-bought bread, which is a good things, but it as been wreaking havok on my health, and I think my husband's health, too!
Please allow me tell my story. I smoked for 14 years - from September 1991 until June of 2005. I stopped when I asked Yahushua (Jesus) to come into my heart. He is who gave me strength to stop, but the thing is that before I stopped smoking I ate very little - some days all I had was a Slim Fast for supper, with no food at all during the day. I would usually eat supper each day, however, and occasionally I would eat maybe some rice or a bowl of soup for lunch, and sweets, bread and breakfasts were rare things.
After I stopped smoking, like you hear of most folks, I gained some weight. Rather than grabbing for a cigarette, I began to grab for food, which is just as bad; both are unhealthy, and if eating processed foods, both are laden with chemicals. And raw just didn't appeal to me at the time. I might have eaten an occasional salad or grab a banana regularly, but really raw was not a word in my regular vocabulary. Then, someone sent my a video. It was the trailer to the documentary, Raw for 30 Days. While I don't have diabetes, I was taken back by how fast these people lost weight - most lost (if I remember correctly) about 20 pounds in a month. I began to research the raw food diet and was amazed at the benefits of it. For one thing, people who are in their 60s and 70s look extremely young and healthy. Dr. Fred Bisci, who is 80, still is able to run - something I have never been able to do in my 40 years. I decided to start a raw diet. I went for 10 days almost 100% raw in early January of 2009. I would maybe eat a bite or two of meat each day, as my husband was not joining me in my raw endeavor and would tempt me to eat otherwise. So the ten days passed and I lost 10 pounds. At this time my husband decided to join me - but we decided to eat raw throughout the week and eat regular meals on Satur-day and Sun-day evenings. This is what we did from January until June and I lost 35 pounds and he lost a lot, as well, though I can't remember the exact number. In June I had gone to visit my mother and father in Tennessee, and they had so much junk food and cooked food there! Their freezer and pantry is always stocked, and so during my visit there, I became accustomed to eating cooked food again and never went back on the raw diet that we were on before, though as I said - we still eat a lot of raw foods! I have actually added some of the weight back, and with eating all the bread that I have lately (most being sweet breads - banana, apple, pear, etc.). My butter making experience has also prompted me to eat more bread. I have become terribly congested, I have had a considerable drop in energy, my asthma has worsened and my back aches have returned to some degree, as well, as I have had a few fibromyalgia attacks, all of which had left or had improved drastically. My cholesterol and blood pressure had dropped to normal, after both being high - so I don't know what they read now - I need new tests done for this year. I have also got ridges in my nails and blond streaks in my brunette hair - which the doctor things might be from hyperthyroidism. She did the test last time I went, but I haven't returned for the results. Other health changes include my body temperature being very high. It's not a fever, but more like hot flashes, except they aren't hot flashes. I'm not going through menopause but I stay hot when my husband is cold. I read that when your body has to do a lot of work in digestion that it can raise your body temperature. For me - eating a lot of bread causes my body to labor hard with digestion, so I just have to cut it out.
So what my husband and I have decided to do is to go on a mono meal raw food diet for a while. Why mono meals rather than just a raw diet? Well, there are a few reasons.
Benefits of a Mono Meal Diet
- They digest easier, thus detoxing you faster.
- Everything eaten mono is digested within a half an hour and and there is no laborious work for the body.
- It conserves energy that your body would otherwise use in digestion.
- You're diet is cleaner, lighter and healthier.
- It helps you to lose wight (if needed) or to maintain the weight you have (if you are at a normal rate). Raw foods balance your weight; they help you to lose weight if you are overweight and they help you to gain weight if you are underweight.
- It's simple and there is hardly any clean up.
- The body starts to look healthier; skin problems clear up.
- It's hard to overeat on a mono meal diet.
- And the main reason for us is - to stay focused. We haven't been raw in a year - not raw like we like. We have never been 100% raw, because I said that during our highest raw period we ate cooked meals on Satur-day and Sun-day nights. Since we are prone to temptation, if we eat mono meals then we know that is all that we are allowed that day and the temptation will flee, whereas if we were just eating a raw diet - we might be able to logically reason out fitting the temptation into our diet.
We are going to choose one food for each day and that is all that we will have. One day we will have apples, one day oranges, one day bananas, one day pears, one day cantaloupe, one day watermelon and so on.... however, greens are very important, so we will probably have two or three days of only greens or salads. Somedays we may go for all juice or all smoothies or do a water fast now and then. I am not sure yet exactly how we will do it. I guess it's just a touch and go plan.When we get a hunger pain, we will just grab an apple or a pear or whatever the appointed food is for that day, and we will eat throughout the day to satisfy our hunger. We haven't gotten everything worked out yet, but that is the gist of our plan right now.
So how is this different for the blog?
This is going to be different, because I am going to document what we eat each day or so and how we are feeling, the weight we have lost, mood changes, etc. (at least for me - I will have to get his permission to blog about him). I don't know how long we will do this, but hopefully at least a month. The purpose of doing this, as I said above, is to stay focused and not get off track, to detox quickly, and to get rid of the cravings that we have built back up. We have been eating alot of sugar and flour - two no-no's for raw foodists.
We plan on starting this tomorrow, Satur-day, June 18, 2009 if nothing changes - so expect to see these new changes take place on City Island Southern Girl soon! If anyone wants to do it with us, we welcome you!
Love,
Kimberly ♥
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