Raw for Lent: Day 10-12...or almost 1/4 the way.

Today I ate pretty okay... it was a dark and awful day so my yoga motivation kind of died again. I got up and had a banana and the rest of yesterday's kombucha. I got my motivation and spun up a mega-batch of green smoothie so I can eat tomorrow.

Green Smoothie:
1 pink lady apple
5 stalks kale
2 slicing tomatoes
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 cucumber
juice of 2 limes
juice of 2 lemons
2 carrots
1/2 c parsley
1/2 c cilantro

I'm not gonna lie, trying to kind of bite the Green Rx formula. Next time definitely some celery and grapes to sweeten a little. The citrus juices in here are a little bit souring, but it's not too bitter from the greens. :)

Work Friday was definitely a trial of my patience but I got off early, then stayed up way too late watching Puissance trials on Youtube. Oh my horse problem is really a problem.

I took the rest of the juice to work in the morning and also bought a pineapple at lunchtime, because drinking every meal is really not particularly fun. After work, I ran home and changed, then dashed over to Full Lotus for a salad with baby greens, spinach, cherry tomatoes, figs, sunflower seeds, pepitas, goji berries, sprouts and the same ACV/cayenne dressing. Clarissa dressed the salad so it would wilt a little before I ate it, which was lovely. I ended up getting off work crazy early and meeting up with Kitchen Island Show Print to trade dollars for a screen and drop my cardboard for their screening. After the lousy Duke/UNC game, I went home to a handful of almonds and a crash at about 11:30pm.

This morning I slept about 14 hours...body is still not getting quite what it needs. I'll probably have to pull out the Sun Warrior soon to make with the protein. I'll give you the straight dope. After about 10-12 days of raw a few things happen:

1. You are no longer hungry all the time.
I don't know if this is the official amount of time it takes for your stomach to unstretch or for me to hit a raw groove, but yeah. It's always around now that I'm like, "Hey girl, don't forget to put some calories inside you!"

2. The first sort of noticeable hit of weight loss occurs
After about 10 days of mega-cut back calories, practically no salt and no preservatives, your body just lets go of tons of bloat and water weight. I generally drop about 10 pounds by this time, about 5 of which are real weight and 5 of which are probably retained water because I eat tons of sodium usually. I'm not proud, but it's true.

3. The crabbies go away
When I say the crabbies, I mean you get the sort of raw high where you feel amazing mostly. I kicked this in the teeth by staying up until 4am Friday night/Saturday morning before a 15 hour workweek, but you get clearheaded and once you start something, it's easy to stay focused.

4. The CLEANSING.
The cleansing...you get all the narsty crap out of your intestines the first several days, then you're done, right? NOPE. All the toxins stored up in your skin and your glands and whatever else decide to work themselves out next, now that you're burning clean fuel. As a result, I usually break out BAD. Like, cystic boil style stuff. It is the worst, but then it is done and my skin gets to be amazing for about 3 months.

5. The first blah hits
Along with the weight loss and the zits and the yeah okay I'm generally with it, part of the loss of hunger is loss of appetite. A lot of the raw nut cheese recipes stop appealing to me around this time and my stomach starts to get sensitive. I tend to not want more than a few bites of any one thing and have to force myself through everything. This is the phase during which small fruits and veggies (bananas, kirby cukes, cherry tomatoes, pink lady apples) become super useful.



Anyways, I pulled out my emerald kale salad that I made Friday and about six bites in totally lost my taste for it. I decided to hit the Triangle Raw Foodists truck. They had already sold out of their "Pad Thai" which sounded really appealing to me, since if I had my druthers and the ability to properly metabolize carbohydrates, I would probably live off Thai noodle dishes. The TuNOT nori rolls are good but a little rich for me. I kind of hate that all raw food people make everything with tons of nuts and oil, making everything kind of hard to swallow and fatty. Is it crazy that this year I am craving mostly whole raw fruits and veggies, less mixed together? Everything tastes so good on its own... Anyway, I also got their banana cream tart something or others and those were to die for. I think I probably just like anything sweet, but I think raw food definitely translates more easily into desserts. Fatty and oily and sweet are partners in crime.

Now I'm doing some late night laundry and watching Monk. I'm going to have to put away the rest of the kale salad and instead eat some golden cherry tomatoes and maybe some nuts if I can convince myself to eat them.

I'm considering ordering the Dr. Cow Tree Nut Sampler as a fast easy snack to have available. Does anyone know how long they keep in the refrigerator, or if there are any that are just not worth buying? It has been probably 15 years since I've had any cheese at all.

Also, any advice about how to help your skin not be a crazy volcano is appreciated. :)