Toxic Bodies, Toxic Minds

A suddenly major interest among health-conscious people is detoxification. The fact that we are toxifying our bodies in the first place is a subject worth serious consideration and is usually skipped over in the conversation about detoxing. Why should detoxification be necessary at all? Why do we have to "clean up after ourselves"? What are we putting into our bodies in the first place?

What is a toxin? In general, the word toxin refers to something chemical, not considered food or nourishment, and which does not belong in our bodies. Toxins can be chemicals in the air, water, beauty products, and food which we ingest or which are absorbed through the skin. Toxins are, in part, stored in the tissues and lymph fluid.

Toxins are not stored intentionally--why doesn't the body just get rid of them? The body does get rid of plenty of junk we ingest, however, not everything can be eliminated easily. The way that toxins end up stuck in the tissues and lymph is due to a simple process of diffusion. Immediately after eating cooked food, the blood becomes thick. This is the reason one cannot eat 8 hours before surgery: the blood is too thick for surgeons to safely operate. Due to this thickness, toxins diffuse into the lymph which is thin and light in comparison. When fasting or eating raw food, the blood becomes thin and toxins naturally diffuse out of the lymph fluid and into the bloodstream. Then they are eliminated.

More complicated than that, however, is toxic residue. Toxic residue is basically a layer of junk lining the intestinal tract. This junk inhibits proper absorption of nutrients, which is the purpose of the intestines. This reduces the nutrition we can get from our food, even when we are eating what we should in the first place. Where does this come from? Cooked food, especially animal products, which are difficult to digest and do not "burn" cleanly. Toxic residue keeps us out of touch with our bodies. Many people believe food cravings are messages from the body, and sometimes they are, but often we are just craving what we are addicted to. This layer of junk is a barrier between the real messages of our body and our awareness, and our bodies cannot communicate through it. Until you have detoxified, you will not hear very well your body's real messages.

This junk stuck in the intestinal wall can actually ferment by being stuck in the gut for too long, hence becoming toxic. This buildup does also leak continuously into the bloodstream and cause problems, however, as illustrated by Gabriel Cousens, MD in his book Conscious Eating:

"Many people think that the phrase 'toxins in the body' is just some jargon of food faddists. Research over the last 100 years shows that these bowel toxins actually exist. Not only do they exist, but they also have a tremendous negative impact on mental and physical well-being. Toxins usually come from a process called 'intestinal toxemia,' an overgrowth of putrefactive intestinal bacteria in the small and large intestines. These toxins are then released into the blood stream and from there affect both our mental and physical functioning. Intestinal toxemia is predominately caused by a high-protein and low complex carbohydrate diet. Intestinal toxemia not only has been associated with severe mental symptoms such as psychosis, but with a variety of mental imbalances.

As early as 1917, Drs. Satterlee and Eldridge presented 518 cases at an American Medical Association conference that had mental symptoms which were cured by removing the intestinal toxemia. The reported symptoms of intestinal toxemia which are familiar to many people: mental sluggishness, dullness, and stupidity; loss of concentration and/or memory; mental incoordination, irritability, lack of confidence, and excessive and useless worry; exaggerated introspection, hypochondrias, and phobias; depression and melancholy; obsessions and delusions; and hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, delirium, and stupor. Senility symptoms are also common with intestinal toxemia."

Gee, does anyone here know any Americans that seem excessively anxious, stupid, or sluggish??

I'm going to make the bold statement that toxemia is rampant in this country. I do believe that our food HAS made us dumb and complacent, quite easily managed and manageable by the so-called powers that be.

The long-term solution is to eat more raw food and less cooked food, especially less animal products. Eat lots of raw leafy greens and fruit which contain fiber. For a more sudden and possibly slightly painful detox process, you can do a fast which will rather quickly and dramatically release toxins into the bloodstream and then out of the system. This might put you through some unpleasant symptoms as all this garbage comes out from its hiding place. It can be mild to severe, from a headache or a little crankiness to getting a cold or major aches and pains in the body. However, I have heard of wonderful benefits to doing this such as lasting weight loss, disappearance of minor health problems, especially digestive problems, among other things.

The question in my mind is: if we are meant to eat meat and cooked food, why does it leave us with a ton of toxic buildup that causes mental disorders and requires a dramatic fast to get rid of? And then, as popular raw food author, Shazzie, points out: "detox to retox?" because it sounds good to do these fasts or detox diets for anywhere from 3-30 days, but if you're going to go back to your old diet again...? Well, still way better to do a twice yearly fast than none at all.

Reflections on Raw Food

It's been about two weeks of eating almost 100% raw. I am committed to being fully honest and cannot say that I have not had a bite of cooked food. I have essentially eaten three raw meals per day the entire time--it's just that in between those meals have had either bites of other peoples' food, a snack while going out with a friend, and a soy chai twice at a coffee shop.

Which doesn't sound bad at all, I know, but I definitely hoped for "perfection" on my two-month commitment. The tough thing about raw food is that by being "perfect" and keeping absolutely any cooked food away from your mouth, you experience that over-the-top healthy feeling. For me, I don't seem to get it until I have been absolutely strictly raw for about a week. Seeing as I have not been so strict, although I notice changes, they are not the dramatic ones I enjoyed the last time when I did this diet for a month. Which THEN tends to make you less motivated....which is kind of where I am at at the moment.

The positive changes I have noticed are:
no interest in alcohol
no interest in sugar, cheese, or bread
absolutely loving all the raw meals I eat without missing anything
calmer mind
never heaviness after any meal
less hungry and less appetite--small meals will fill me for hours
no obsessiveness/cravings/compulsive thoughts about food
sleeping very well
much more energy in meditation

What I got the last time around (when I was strict) but not this time:
much less sleep needed--2 hours less per night
no negative thoughts/feelings
constant happy "buzz"

And this doesn't make it sound like I am missing out on a lot, but those three that I am not experiencing this time around are some big ones.

And, about that happy buzz, I have to mention a couple of powerful off-setting factors: it's winter (and feeling like a very long one to me), and my husband has been gone a week now on his 4-week contract job in Indiana, leaving me kind of lonely/bored. So part of that lack could be due to circumstance.

I think I am also not noticing as much drastic change because since doing raw last summer, I have added a lot of raw food into my life. It's been my habit for months to eat several raw meals per week, and I've been drinking green smoothies for months now. Before I ever tried raw food, I was eating zero and then went to 100% almost overnight. That exciting, drastic change probably won't be felt by me again unless I go back to eating significantly worse than I have been for the past 9 months. I am probably feeling 10 times better than a year ago but don't notice because I have added raw food gradually over a long period, so this 90% raw food diet of the last two weeks was just one or two steps upward.

I am reading lots of raw food dieting accounts online and it's kind of giving me an inferiority complex! Everyone seems to be doing a perfect job of it and having a fabulous time! This amazes me because the first time I ever did this, it was EXTREMELY difficult. I was tortured, craving my regular foods night and day for the first week. Then there was immense frustration in making the recipes which really took practice (as well as learning to avoid the difficult ones--and knowing in advance which ones will be difficult!). I am having a much easier time the second time around with no cravings and no difficulty making the recipes. I am just, somehow, not motivated to be super strict and I don't know why.

One important difference between me and a lot of people who start this diet is that I don't have any health concerns, nor am I overweight. Almost everyone who decides to do this who I have ever read about has health problems or weight problems. These are obviously enormous motivating factors for people. Who wants to go back to their old foods if they will be 50+ pounds overweight or suffer extreme pains or illnesses? I already rarely get sick in the first place. So for that reason, it's hard to be a perfectionist.

I think for now, I will accept taking my goal down to a 90-95% raw food diet for the remaining six weeks. This percentage is pretty comfortable and natural for me. Maybe I will change my mind and choose to be more strict later, but I am happy with this for now.

The Middle Road?

One of the most common things I hear when I tell people I'm only eating raw food for a certain duration is that I shouldn't be too extremist and moderation is best.

My question is, what is moderation?

In a raw food book written by two siblings brought up on raw food (Victoria Boutenko's kids), they were visited by a child services worker at the door once. Some school kid's parents thought they were suffering from child abuse because of the strange lunches they brought to school. They asked the kids what they had for lunch today, and, knowing what this child services worker wanted to hear, they said "we ate McDonald's." The person was satisfied and left.

Eating pizza and burgers is considered moderation today, an average middle-of-the-road diet. Wasn't it just 50 years ago that people commonly had 3-martini lunches? Old movies just crack me up because there's barely a scene where the characters aren't drinking straight whiskey, bourbon, or scotch every time they're home. That was moderation.

Then you tell someone you're going to eat an incredible variety of plant foods and not cook them, and they think you've fallen off the deep end. But slicing potatoes and deep-frying them in grease--that makes sense. The only nutritional concept they're familiar with is protein--that's in meat!! But ask them where they're getting the maybe two dozen required vitamins and minerals, and they probably can't identify where to find even one of these nutrients--let alone tell you how THEY are fulfilling these requirements for themselves.

The extremists are the average Americans.

As I read in one of my favorite books, most people take better care of their cars than their bodies. The mechanic has a tizzy if you wait an extra month before getting your oil changed. But the doctor doesn't really mind what you do, there's always a pill!

The middle road isn't the sum average of what everyone in your culture is doing. We are blessed to have some pretty sophisticated techniques now to understand what happens when we do certain things to our bodies. It's time to let science rather than the overwhelming number of unhealthy grocery and restaurant chains guide our idea of "moderation." Culture and popularity so often reign in these decisions such as what we should eat. And Americans pride themselves so much on their freedom, their open-mindedness, and their individuality.

So let those values run free a little!

Protein

I was all excited to write my little schpeal about protein, and in looking up a few facts I found a web page that is so far superior to anything I could have written, I am just going to be totally unoriginal and paste a few things, make a few comments, and then put the link to the page at the end. Sorry, but it's more important to portray the best info than to come up with something original in this case!

To start: no dietary concept has been more hyped up than the one of protein.
This has an extremely simple reason, and it is that certain powerful people stand to gain a lot of money from their businesses if we think their product is nutritionally superior a.k.a. the meat and dairy associations. Otherwise, why wouldn't the average person know how much selenium, potassium, and vitamin D they need? Yet everyone knows about protein and calcium. This is sly corporate marketing and nothing else.

Did you know the beef and dairy associations supply free "educational" materials to children in schools? They get to color in pictures of happy cows on the farm to learn about nutrition: protein and calcium! What else is there?!?

I started doing some research to see which plant foods are complete protein because a few were mentioned in my raw food book, and I was surprised because of course I learned that no plant food contains all essential amino acids. Well, if I'm not the dumbest vegetarian that ever lived.

Here's some plant foods that contain all essential amino acids:

brown rice, tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, corn, lettuce, celery, cucumbers, oats, carrots, broccoli, pinto beans....and more. Maca contains all essential and unessential amino acids, along with some other superfoods.

The most everyday, common foods any American eats...

We have been duped.

The plant food with the lowest percentage of protein is the potato at 10% protein. Even the poor Irish farmers from the old days who had to sometimes survive on potatoes and water didn't have a protein deficiency.

Again, from this website:

"It's really meat that's incomplete:

When you think about it, it's kind of silly to single out protein, just one of the many nutrients, just so we can declare plant proteins to be incomplete (although they're not). Why aren't we declaring meat to be an incomplete vitamin? Because it is, you know. For example, beef is completely devoid of Vitamin C, an essential nutrient without which you'd die. And beef doesn't just have a lower level of this essential nutrient, it has zero. So why didn't the authorities ever caution us that we need to combine beef with chicken to get a complete vitamin?
But actually, no combination of meat will make a complete vitamin, since every single kind of meat has zero Vitamin C. And it's deficient in other vitamins as well. So while plants aren't actually deficient in protein, meat is definitely deficient in vitamins. But I'm sure you never heard about vitamin deficiency in animal foods. All you've heard about is the supposed deficiency of protein in plants.

And speaking about biases, the whole protein-combining idea supposes that vegetarians are eating just one food, which is allegedly incomplete. Okay, how many people do you know who eat one food? And since nobody eats just one food, the whole idea of protein combining would be unnecessary anyway, even if it were true. So here again, what would be the point of harping on protein combining when it doesn't matter?"

The World Health Organization recommends the diet be 5% protein. Mother's breast milk is 2% protein (although this website says 5%--I have always read 2%). There is no known death on record from lack of protein. The only way NOT to get your required protein is to not get a significant number of calories per day.

from http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html :

"We never talk about protein anymore, because it's absolutely not an issue, even among children," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Hotel Management at New York University. "If anything, we talk about the dangers of high-protein diets. Getting enough is simply a matter of getting enough calories."4.3

"'There was no basis for [protein combining] that I could see.... I began calling around and talking to people and asking them what the justification was for saying that you had to complement proteins, and there was none. And what I got instead was some interesting insight from people who were knowledgeable and actually felt that there was probably no need to complement proteins. So we went ahead and made that change in the paper. [Note: The paper was approved by peer review and by a delegation vote before becoming official.] And it was a couple of years after that that Vernon Young and Peter Pellet published their paper that became the definitive contemporary guide to protein metabolism in humans. And it also confirmed that complementing proteins at meals was totally unnecessary.8.5"

Let me repeat this: The person who wrote the American Dietetic Association's position paper described above said that complementing proteins at meals is "totally unnecessary".

There's a very easy way to see the completeness of plant proteins, that most nutrition writers haven't bothered to do: Look at what's actually in the food! It's not like this is a secret; that data has been publicly available from the USDA for decades, and now the USDA's database is even online.4'"

Did you know one teaspoon of sea kelp dissolved in water has 1,000 times the calcium of a glass of milk? 1,000 times the calcium! If we care so much about calcium, why don't we know that? Green leafy vegetables are a fabulous source of this essential mineral. The average person knows nothing about nutrition save the ridiculous claims and myths perpetrated by those who stand to gain from our purchase of animal products.

Vitamin B12 is one a lot of people have heard about because we have learned it can't be had without meat and dairy, and this PROVES we must eat meat and dairy! Humans need five millionths of a gram per day. The average meat eater can go vegan and not come up with a deficiency in this for over a decade because there is a massive quantity of it in a piece of meat. This is how out of proportion meat is with human dietary needs. Yet animal products are not the only source; otherwise, how could traditional vegan cultures survive without this necessary vitamin? Traditional vegan cultures do not have a deficiency in B12 for a simple reason: it is present in dirt and they do not meticulously wash their vegetables as we do. You can go without washing your (organic) produce and take in enough B12--again, only 5 millionths of a gram per day is needed.

What IS so special about meat? I have yet to hear of a miracle meat or egg that has helped eliminate free radicals in the body or protects against cancer. Yet we learn of new miracle plant foods every day from superfoods, to cancer-curing plants, to everything in between.

The human body, based on its teeth, saliva, stomach acid, and intestines, is an herbivore's body. As this website states, "we are most similar to other herbivores and drastically different from omnivores and carnivores." My best friend was Pre-Med in college, and her Anatomy & Physiology teacher, a Ph.D., said the same thing. The most common cause of choking death is eating meat, and animal omnivores and carnivores do not have that problem.

If you don't believe me...please, see for yourself!

100% Raw for 2 months!

I woke up today, feeling kind of groggy, and thought, "I can't wait till I do my next raw food experiment and have that amazing, energized feeling again, it will feel so good." And I have had this thought every single day for at least a month. I figured I'd start in a week or two, after having received another new raw book in the mail that I ordered. But today, the absurdity of looking forward to starting this eating plan when I can start it any minute I want finally hit me. So...nothing to look forward to--it's here!

The book I ordered is The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe, and it is fantastic. Everything you need to know is finally in one book. The other books I've read still left me with a lot of unanswered questions, mostly about the science/nutrition aspects. This guy has degrees in mechanical and environmental engineering, law, and a master's in nutrition. Both his parents are doctors. So he doesn't do anything that doesn't hold up scientifically, and he explains every detail to you in this book....at last. I am so totally fired up.

Welcome back: mental clarity, physical energy, total calmness, no food cravings, no under-eye circles, reduced weight, and 7 hours or less of sleep a night.

I am going to focus more this time on meditation and Pranic Healing and what changes happen on this food because it's common knowledge that the lighter the body is, the more energy it can hold. This will make you more sensitive and more powerful as a healer. I am really excited to see what happens with meditation experiences as well.

I did one month of 100% raw last June and loved it but caved into social pressure in the end. I have never been able to sleep under 9 hours for some strange reason, and I enjoyed 6.5-7 hour nights and woke up feeling like a million bucks. It is a huge time-saver, as you can imagine. The most amazing thing besides that was the total calmness I experienced. I have read many times that bad food makes you mentally negative, impatient, and generally miserable, but I didn't really believe it. I always thought, "I'm in control of my emotions, and if I'm negative, that's my fault for not being in control of my own mind." That may be true to some extent, but if you want to stop trying to be calm and peaceful and have it just come upon you effortlessly, eat only raw vegan food. Even when my husband did something "irritating," it didn't even irritate me, I literally didn't care and just felt love and happiness toward him. Some of the things that happen to you when you eat this way sound literally impossible. But if you don't believe me, try it yourself! The above book is the best one I've read (out of 4). It's the best place to start, I recommend it to everyone.

A New Idea of Healthcare

It's not only hard to imagine our world without a gigantic medical industry with its gigantic health insurance industry and gigantic pharmaceutical industry, it's hardly even been attempted.

I watched a David Wolfe video (prominent raw food expert), and he mentioned that you can't ask a fish about water because it's "right here," and he put his hand on his face, covering it with his fingers spread out. In the same way, we are so used to our diseases, doctors, pills, that we have never even looked at it. They are the water we're swimming in.

Conversations with God says what we have is a "disease-care system," not a healthcare system.

Consider this: In some traditional Indian villages, the village doctor would go around to each home in the village on a regular basis, and was paid by every healthy person present. Does this make sense to you? It's such "backwards" logic to us, we have to think about it. The presence of sick people meant the doctor had not done the best job.

Who do you owe your health to? I hope you're buying their book! I am happy to pay PCC or the farmers at the market more, for they keep me from having to go to the doctor in the first place! I am saving not just money but suffering and pain.

By a simple flip of our thinking, the solution is so obvious, we wonder that we never saw it before. As my parents used to say when I couldn't find something I was looking for that was right by me, "if it gets any closer, it's going to bite you." Enough of us have been bitten by the obvious to be paying for prevention, saving our short- and long-term health on top of the environment in the form of supporting organic farming.

Things will go on much longer this way. Nowadays, when someone is diagnosed with cancer, they go home and get on the Internet before they submit themselves to drugs and radiation. Some have healed themselves through their own self-education in ways their own doctor SAID was physically impossible. They go back to see their doctor after their full recovery, and the guy or gal literally can't believe they are seeing the person alive in front of their eyes. When an uneducated common person can read some free stuff online, change their diet/lifestyle, and CURE CANCER, how much longer do you think we'll have to fund these research studies that cost millions upon billions of dollars to "find a cure"? It's just a matter of time.

How many people have already fired their doctor? You can now go to an un-trained energy healer who can accomplish more in an hour than many have accomplished in years of advice from mainstream health practitioners and pills. Doctors will claim to be the most scientific-minded folks of anyone, yet they are in total denial of their abysmal success rates in healing. At the same time, they deny the better success rates of natural, nutrition, and energy healing remedies!

The sad truth for mainstream medical practitioners is that the combination of proper, natural, organic nutrition and energy healing would eliminate or heal probably 80-90% of ailments and prevent the vast majority from ever occurring in the first place.

I get a thrill when I imagine our future: herb and vegetable gardens at every home, farmers markets in every neighborhood, an energy healer in the average health office. High school health class requiring instruction in honest nutrition education (without the free "educational" materials from the Dairy and Beef Associations), herbal remedies, energy anatomy, and simple vegetable gardening skills. In California, some elementary schools have school gardens which the students work in and then EAT FROM at their school cafeteria! I cannot think of anything smarter or healthier.

Green Smoothie Experiment

I almost called this the "The Accidental Experiment" because I wasn't trying to learn anything, but after drinking green smoothies regularly, I got kind of bored with them and stopped. I've never been nuts about them, but I learned about the health benefits of consuming raw greens, and it seemed like the easiest way, so I started doing it.

For those that have not read a bunch of raw food books as I have, eating food raw keeps the enzymes intact which the body needs for various functions. Cooked foods have no intact enzymes, and the body then uses up its own stores to digest food which is very taxing, especially after doing this year after year all your life. Some people really connect loss of enzyme reserves to aging. Aside from that, cooking food destroys 75-97% of the vitamins and minerals. This is huge. Even if you are eating spinach for dinner, if it's cooked, you're not getting many of the vitamins and minerals. (Add onto that if it's not organic. Non-organic fruits and vegetables have significantly less nutritional content.) It's a big shock to realize most of the food the average person eats isn't feeding their body at all.

Greens like kale are full of calcium and other vital nutrients. Consuming them raw is the absolute most nutritious way. The problem is that raw kale is a little tough to chew and doesn't taste great. For some, it can even be difficult to digest and give some feelings of indigestion. The reason for this is simple: we are meant to chew our food into a liquid, and doing this breaks down the tough cellulose wall of the plant. When we don't break down this wall with our teeth, our stomach can have a tough time with it. Your options are to chew your kale to death or stick it in a blender. Thank you, Vita-Mix!

In casual experiments, raw food teachers/coaches have noticed that consuming these raw greens regularly drastically reduces peoples' cravings for unhealthy cooked food such as fried foods, sugar, and cheese. Most will tell you that if you want to go raw, start first by adding green smoothies to your regular diet, and after you don't crave your usual foods, you know you'll be able to cut them out completely.

SO... as I said, I stopped drinking these, not thinking about any daily impacts to my life. I forgot I had made this important move but noticed I was feeling cranky, impatient, and then started thinking about food all the time, craving sugar, cheese, and fried foods. Now, if I hadn't eaten any of these all this time, I wouldn't have suddenly gotten cravings for them out of nowhere, but I occasionally do indulge. This time, though, a couple of indulgences turned me into an addict! The crappy food made me feel more sluggish and crappy, and it was this downward spiral. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized this had all started a couple of weeks ago when I took this extremely important component out of my diet! (duh)

Today, I am on to PCC Natural Market for some kale, collard greens, and spinach.

If you are interested in trying this yourself, here is the general formula to make one: 60% fruit and 40% greens. This makes it sweet and very drinkable. About 2 cups of water. Make sure there is enough water or you'll feel like you are chewing what should be a drink. You can go online for some more specific recipes. The Vita-Mix is the best blender because the blades turn at something like 500 mph which obliterates those cell walls quickly and easily. For other blenders, I would recommend leaving it in to blend for a good minute or two so it's broken down as thoroughly as possible.

This is the most powerful "diet" drink out there. Try it for yourself, and you will be amazed that you don't crave unhealthy foods anymore. It's miraculous.

A great way to drink these is to have them handy when you're doing something else like working on the computer. You'll mindlessly keep sipping away and consume a large quantity without thinking, "ok, here's my smoothie, now I have to drink it."

By the way, most people love them. You will probably just love the smoothies. I am weird and don't even really like fruit smoothies, I don't know why. My sister doesn't have any special fascination with raw food but makes one every day and LOVES it. So don't let ME get you down!

Enjoy!

Late Night at a Friend's...

Last night my husband and I went to our friends' house for our typical late-night dinner party. We ate an absolute ton of cooked food--rice, chapati (Indian bread, look like tortillas but wheat flour), dal, garbanzo curry, and a third curry I was not familiar with. There was wine and whisky floating around. Then truffles for dessert. I somehow ended up with a torturous case of the hiccups by the end of the night. I rode home in the car bent over, trying to be upside down, hold my breath, whatever.

Of course, we didn't get to bed until 2:00AM. And slept late. And woke up thoroughly groggy with that fuzzy head. Every time, I ask myself the same question: why? I know this is not good for me.

These are the days I say, "I'm going raw." No more heavy food. No more sugary desserts. No more bread!!!

Then I look in the fridge and see a carton and a half of eggs, a whole package of tortillas (to be treated as chapati), a new package of gardenburgers. How will I explain to my husband I won't eat any of it? He is so beyond-supportive of my nutritional schizophrenia. But I hate to yo-yo with him... "Honey? Can I make curry tonight? Will you eat it?" I've been hinting at him I want to go raw again (we did a month together of 100% raw and, actually, loved it--just got inconvenient in social situations so we set it aside to be decided upon later). I haven't heard any major objections. He likes us to eat the same things together, so I know if I do it, he will, by default, be part of it. Last time we did it, he lost 7 pounds and his skin got really clear. He got tons of compliments on his appearance....so I think he might be happy to experience some of that again!

I just want all those benefits back: never feeling heavy, tired, groggy. total mental clarity, a razor-sharp mind. never bloated. 7 hours of sleep a night and feeling like a million bucks every morning. energy for exercise, work, cleaning, everything. lost a couple of pounds. knowing you never put anything bad into your body that will hurt it or drag it down. better-looking skin. a lighter footprint on the planet and knowing you aren't giving one dollar to those nasty food corporations.

I might try to experiment with a compromise where everything eaten at home is 100% raw, but for socializing, some exceptions can be made. Or holidays with family. Anything with other, non-raw people, basically. Which we probably only do about twice a month. Won't get in the way of the goal...

*sigh* I'll keep you posted.

Raw Thai Soup

I made this recipe night before last and loved it. I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. I got it from the book Fresh by Sergei and Valya Boutenko.

Blend together:

2 cucumbers, peeled
2 cups water
1/2 cup walnuts (I grind these in my magic bullet first)
1/4 c. Nama Shoyu
1/2 fresh spicy pepper
1 teaspoon salt (I would actually put less in next time)
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup chopped ginger
1/4 cup lemon juice (could do with less of this too)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

Chop up and mix in at the end:

1 cucumber, peeled (a little too much for me)
1/2 cup dried mushrooms (I will do fresh next time...too chewy)
1 bunch cilantro (a little too much for me)

It's so quick and easy to make, and no exotic ingredients, which I appreciate. I love making raw soups. They are always quick and easy and taste great. It's very hard to screw them up. I just got a new book I ordered from amazon called Eating for Beauty by David Wolfe. He's apparently the stud of the raw food world, and I haven't read anything by him yet so I'm excited. There's supposed to be Kirlian photography pics showing the energy field of a food before and after it's cooked--cooking disrupts the energy field.

Enjoy!

Vegetarianism, Raw Food

I think some people are scared off by vegetarianism because when you are used to eating meat and then take it out of your diet, it feels kind of weird. You feel lighter. That sounds nice, but for some people, it's an unfamiliar feeling. I believe some people sort of feel subconsciously that without that heavy feeling, they could just float away or disappear. We are used to that "grounded" feeling that eating meat gives us. Yet it's not groundedness, it's more like sluggishness. And just because you are used to something, it doesn't mean it is good for you. We are used to all manner of sicknesses, obsessions, and addictions. Most of us are used to a muddled, heavy body as well as a muddled, heavy mind. Just because you don't feel tired and heavy after eating doesn't mean you didn't eat the right foods or you didn't eat enough!

It is our spiritual and physical nature to be and feel light. Being in a physical body is heavy enough, and eating meat adds to this unnecessarily. (Of course, there are a million other factors involved in choosing to eat or not eat meat, but I won't be going into those today!) Familiarity is comfortable for everyone, but what we eat must be looked at objectively and scientifically.

I think it is amazing the way that we talk about meat's nutritive value. We look at the lack of health of some vegetarians as proof that eating meat is part of the healthiest diet. Hunter/gatherer cultures have been found to eat hundreds and hundreds of different types of fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and seeds. Us European folks did the same thing long back. The lack of vegetarian nutrition is not due to a lack of meat but a lack of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and seeds! The typical grocery store carries a miniscule fraction of what nature offers us. Unfortunately, we don't grow up with the valuable information we need to make healthy choices, and you have to either do a lot of research and reading or be a nutritionist to figure it all out.

Being a vegetarian means learning about food and learning, finally, how to cook. (Throwing a slab of meat on the grill is easy.) These are not quick and easy things to learn. I went vegetarian on my own in college and lived with another vegetarian at the time. She ate worse than anyone I've ever known--and it showed. I was clueless but struggled through it and figured it out little by little. I wish it was easier, maybe more people would do it!

If you want to force variety on yourself overnight, go raw and vegan. The variety of ingredients in raw recipes is huge. The food is bursting with incredible flavor and depth. The food is unlike any vegetarian or meat-eating meals you have ever had. I tried this diet for a month and literally felt like I was eating like a queen. I went from eating the same 10 things (tomato, avocado, onion, potatoes, lettuce, sprouted grain bread, beans) to regularly eating figs, dates, cashews, almonds, vanilla bean, kale, collard greens, cilantro, carob powder, sprouted mung beans, sprouted barley, and on and on. None of these things did I eat previously.

You don't have to cut out all meat and dairy to add some of these to your diet to increase your nutrient intake-and probably health-by a lot. I highly recommend these raw food recipes to anyone at whatever level they want to add them to their diet. I will say: For them to taste the best, you will have to be 100% raw. Why? Because cooked food kills your taste buds!! Salt actually numbs taste buds. The first few days of all-raw food do not feel very exciting at all. After that, you will feel and taste total luxury in the raw food diet.