
A few years ago, a good friend of the family was visiting and he was following what I thought was a strict food plan. For breakfast he was eating Irish Oatmeal soaked overnight in soy milk in the refrigerator. At the time, I thought he was crazy and suggested he cook the cereal before eating it. He was polite about his response and ate his concoction. Whenever I seem to make a judgement about something, life has a way of bringing my words back to me and making me eat them. Yesterday, I ate my words in the form of oatmeal soaked in almond milk with blueberries. It was great and was truly the best oatmeal I have ever eaten.
For the first three days of this week, my husband and I were on a raw food mini detox. We ate nothing but raw foods. Well actually, I slipped up on the first day and we ate hummus, not even thinking that the chickpeas were cooked before being ground up. My whole life I have battled with my weight. This year, I made a promise to myself to be healthy. No more diets, no starving myself, but I was going to adopt a healthier lifestyle permanently. I have three young boys and I want to be around to see them grow up and to be able to be active with them.
Since January, I have been eating healthy whole foods, exercising regularly and keeping track of it all on MYFitnessPal, an app for my iPad and smartphone. I have done well, but the last month or so I have been on a typical plateau. Was I building muscle? Maybe, but it was frustrating not to see the results of my hard work. Matt and I talked about replicating the 7 day detox that we did after New Years which involved eliminating caffeine, wheat, dairy, meat and all processed foods. During this detox, we did not limit our calories extremely, we just cut out ALL the junk in our diets. At that time, he lost 10 pounds and I lost 6. Most of the weight had been holdover from holiday treats.
This time, we decided that we didn’t have a full week since the kids and I are traveling to Iowa this weekend, so we heard about a 3 day raw detox from http://bitchindietitian.com/ which is actually the same blog we learned about the longer detox in January. The bithcin’ dietician is the mother of our middle son’s classmate and she is a dietitian, cookbook author and vegan. We didn’t follow either of her detoxes step by step, but we used them more as a guide and followed in the best way that we could.
The idea of going raw was a little overwhelming and we probably should have done some more research before going forward because we could have used more protein in our meals. I would say it was a success. We had fresh fruit and veggie juices or smoothies for breakfast, fruit and nuts for snacks, salads for lunch and a heartier meal for dinner. As I said,t he first day, we slipped up and had hummus. We ate a lot of nuts and avacado, flax seed, chia (as in the pets) and more fruits and veggies than most people do in a week. We both felt great and I was able to move off my plateau. Will I go raw again? Maybe for a day or two, and we frequently eat no meat meals, but I must confess I really enjoy a filet or burger or sushi every now and then. I can’t eat as much meat as I once did, but I am not ready to give it up permanently. Next time we go raw, I will find some more raw food sources of protein. We didn’t limit calories, in fact a much higher percentage of the food we ate while eating raw, was fat. Both Matt and I had success and saw the numbers move down on the scale this week.
One other good thing I noticed about this raw stage is that I seemed to have a lot of energy both mentally and physically. I didn’t seem to need as much sleep and in fact, it was difficult to quiet my mind at night. I was pleased with the outcome and enjoyed the energy I got from this way of eating.