30 Days Raw for Queensland – Week 2

Well, this week I was very glad I had my body composition scales.  All week I was noticing clothes sitting better, hanging more loosely and feeling fantastically un-tight (I know that’s probably not a word, but I don’t care!), but then I jumped on the scales and discovered my weight had gone down all of 100g.

Then I checked the other figures.  My body fat is the lowest it has been for over 6 months, dropping down to 46.7%, and my muscle mass and hydration are both up.  My weight may not have changed, but my body sure has!  I pulled out the calculator and worked out exactly what those body fat percentages meant.  I’ve gone from 69.2kg of fat to 65.8kg – 3.4kg of fat lost in 2 weeks while INCREASING muscle mass!

Besides the 100g weight loss, this week I got serious cravings, after a bit of drama threw my routine right out of whack and I stopped keeping myself filled up on fibre.  I wanted cheese and egg muffin for breakfast so badly that I would have trampled over anyone in my way.  Luckily, having the bigger reason of doing this for fundraising helped me resist, but only a few days later I started with the detox.  I’m still going through the nasal tissue bugling as my lungs clear out what’s probably only a fraction of my years of dairy consumption.  The worst few days, though, coincided very luckily with my day off and the weekend.

I’m still feeling lots more energetic, moving more, wanting to get up and move around when I sit still for any length of time.  I’m even fidgeting a bit sometimes.  The knees are still moving nice and freely, minus creaking noises. I also discovered that the skin on the back of my arms is now losing its stretch marks and feeling silkier than it has in years!  As I mentioned, my clothes are hanging more loosely as well.  All up, I’m still very happy with how it’s going.

Oh yes, and the bf did get lasagne this weekend.  Not that he ate much of it, he brought a steak around to have with my salad.  The size of the recipe, though, means I’ll be having it for lunch, and probably dinner, for a few nights.  It’s very rich, you don’t need much of it, and for some strange reason it makes me want to eat a huge raw salad with it!  Anyway, the photo is at the top.

Today was also the “Living Nutrition” class at Bondi Junction.  The two of us headed up together and he wandered off to look around the city while I did 4 hrs there, then we met up again afterwards to head home.  It was absolutely great.  The setup was very professional and there was even a huge mirror strategically positioned above the kitchen bench so you could see EVERYTHING she was doing with a birds eye view as well as front on.  We went through courses from breakfast to dessert, although I didn’t think to take a photo of the breakfast dish before I ate it.  It was very yum.  Too yum, even.  I had some fantastic chats with the people around me, and introduced myself to Julie, the presenter, during the break.  She was absolutely lovely and very knowledgeable about just about anything food related we could think up to ask her.   Overall, it was a great time, fantastic food and really well organised and orchestrated.

Mirror above the bench helped show everything	Kale Seaweed Slaw	Shepherds Pie with caramelised onions	Vegetable Teriyaki Stirred not fried	Pear & Ginger Cream Flan

The one thing that’s striking me about a lot of the raw recipes is how much they tend to use the dehydrator almost as an oven replacement.  That, and how much thinking ahead you have to do to plan soaking times etc.  I’m personally gravitating to sticking with the simple, natural forms of food that I started out with – fruits, salads, at most a dip/pate or two.  But that might change as the weather gets cooler, and I’m also still very much in the novelty phase.

I also met one of the people organising the Sydney raw vegan potluck in early April I’ll be going to. While it’s been eye opening how many ‘cooked favourites’ you can imitate while eating raw, I’ll probably be bringing one of my all time simple favourites – basil cherry tomatoes.

PS Don’t forget, I’m doing this to raise funds and awareness for the Queensland Flooding victims.  Their flooding issues are far from over.  Any help you can provide will be appreciated, either donate at the right (all donations this month go to help unless requested otherwise) or visit the Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal for other ways of donating…

Tagged as: Body composition, Donation, how to open a coconut, Lifestyle Choices, Queensland, raw food diet results, Raw foodism, Weekly review, weight loss, Weight Loss results, you-tube