Days Twenty-Seven, Eight, Nine, Thirty, and into Thirty-One: One Month Raw

What a nice way to end my first month being raw: I won the video Eating from blogger April of Raw Food Passion. According to April, "I love this video because it offers a lot of scientific information that supports the vegan diet. It often helps to start eating healthier when you have the knowledge to stand behind your cravings"(be sure to visit her fabulous blog for ideas, recipes, and inspiration). I can't wait to watch it! Thanks so much April!

Over the course of the first month, I lost somewhere between 8 and 10 lbs. Losing weight was not my primary reason for starting this regimen, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

My husband said to me the other day, "It's hard to believe you're losing weight given how much of the day you spend thinking about food." He's right: I spend a lot of time reading about raw food (online and off), thinking about raw food, writing in this blog about raw food, shopping for raw food, and preparing raw food. But that's the nature of my passions, and it's what enables me to make a significant life change and get past the hump of habit and resistance. The passion probably won't last but hopefully by then I will have created new habits that support a healthier lifestyle.

That being said, at the one month mark I've found that I've been battling cravings. Victoria Boutenko says that if you eat cooked food at all, you leave the door open for cravings and make it that much harder on yourself. It's something to chew on (literally and figuratively). I love Victoria Boutenko's books. I just re-read Raw Family again last night and found myself re-inspired and committed.

Now that I've reached one month, I won't continue my daily eating log online -- by far the most time-consuming part of keeping this blog -- and will just blog to record my thoughts and progress in general. I may occasionally log a typical day, just not everyday.

Here's what I've been eating:

Day Twenty-Seven:

• 9:15 pm: 2 slices of raw pizza
  
• 11:40 pm: Salad (avocado, plum tomatoes, sunflower sprouts, sesame dressing), lemon sparkling water

Day Twenty-Eight:

• 10:30 am: Green smoothie (1 homegrown orange w/pith, 1 bag organic spinach, 1 kale stalk, wheatgrass, juice of 1 homegrown lemon and tangerine, banana, 1 tbsp. hemp powder, 1 tsp. spirulina and maca, water)
  
• 1 pm: 2/3 Leaf Cuisine Bedouin Burrito Wrap
  
• 3:30: 3 raw autumn squash cookies
  
• 5 pm: salted pumpkin seeds
  
• 5:45 pm: Green smoothie (1 bag organic spinach, organic dandelion greens, 1 homegrown orange with pith, 2 apples, fresh ginger, water)
  
• 10 pm: Kale chips, salted pumpkin seeds
  
• 11 pm: organic pear

Day Twenty-Nine:

• 10 am: Green smoothie (1 bag organic spinach, 3 organic kiwis, 1/2 banana, tsp. maca, tbsp. hemp, water)
  
• 3:30 pm: 1/3 Leaf Cuisine Bedouin Burrito Wrap
  
• 7 pm: Dinner with friends at The Danson/Espiau in Claremont (baked potato with salsa, broccoli, carrots and cauliflower; iceberg salad with tomatoes, cukes, and vinagrette; water)
  
• 9 pm: Raw vegan Mango-Blueberry cheesecake with Macadamia/Brazil nut crust (this turned out good, but you really couldn't taste the Mango even though there were two juicy ones in there)
  
• 11 pm: walnuts and raisins

Day Thirty:

• 11 am: raw granola with 1/2 banana and almond milk
  
• 2:30 pm: Lemon sparkling water and Eggplant Jerky (actually, called bacon in Matthew Kenney's Everyday Raw, but tasted more like jerky to me; this is another recipe by Kristen Reyes)
  
• 3:15 pm: Raw vegan Mango-Blueberry cheesecake
  
• 6 pm: Green Smoothie (almond milk, 1/2 bag organic spinach, 1/2 banana, organic apple, tsp. spirulina, tbsp. hemp, homegrown orange with pith, organic baby carrots, organic dandelion greens); couldn't finish all of this -- it was good but just too big -- and threw out about a third.

Day Thirty-One:

• 7 am: Raw granola and almond milk