by Crystal on April 4, 2009
I’m glad I did it, but now that the 30 days is over I’m definitely enjoying being able to slide a bit from being so good. It’s funny – one of my colleagues at work asked me was I glad to be back to “eating REAL food”. Since when have fresh fruit, vegetables & nuts been fake food, and how on earth did modified, plastic-wrapped, frozen, heated and generally mangled versions of them become “REAL”???
In that spirit, here’s the top 12 things I learnt from my 30 day experiment.
- Breakfast on the go doesn’t get any easier or quicker than grabbing some fruit to eat on the way. No preparation or washing up. Just unwrap (peel them) and eat. I’d suggest having at least 2 pieces, since just 1 leaves you a bit hungry for some reason. I was having 4 oranges cut into sixths – kept me going most of the morning. When I dropped down to 1 or 2, the weight loss slowed down and I didn’t feel as great. I’m back having 4 again, even with the trial finished. LOTS of fibre!
- Life is good when you don’t have to worry about competing for space in the office fridge. Or your food being ’accidentally’ eaten. (You’re highly unlikely to have it happen while you’re eating raw!)
- Leaving a raw lasagne on the windowsill beside you all morning is a wonderful way to have a nicely warmed lunch
- The more fresh, raw food you eat, the more full you feel, and ironically, the smaller you get…
- Another quick snack that’s great is a handful of raw nuts in the afternoon. Or they’re great tossed through your salad. They can even make great salad dressings (OJ and macadamias in a blender, then pour it over. Yum.)
- Raw food has incredibly intense flavour to it – unless you’re used to spicing everything, in which case it’ll taste bland initially until you get used to it. Once you do, you might find that even salads start tasting too mixed up, and you just want to enjoy one flavour at a time.
- Some things just belong together. Tomato and basil, for example. Fresh pesto on cherry tomatoes makes great finger food that even non-raw-ists will enjoy. As with point 6, though, I did enjoy just biting straight into a grape tomato, all by itself. Instant ’rush’ of flavour.)
- Avocados are a fantastic base for desserts, funnily enough. And for salad dressings. And for snacks (eg put some on rounds of cucumber & top with a pine nut). In fact, despite being “full of fat”, the more I ate of them the healthier I got. AND my cholesterol went down while I was doing it…
- Coconuts and macadamias are both difficult to open, but they both have a ’trick’ to opening them easily. Find the seam (it’ll run from the top down one side) and tap along it (ok, in the case of the coconut, bash the daylights out of it, and the bigger the hammer the better) until it cracks open. Disclaimer: I now have a macadamia nutcracker, but even that works better since I know to put it in so that dot is at the top and the seam gets all the pressure – it’s always the bit that cracks first. I’ve yet to find a coconut cracker, though. Anyone know where to get one?
- Zucchini is the raw vegan equivalent of tofu. It picks up the flavours it’s cooked with, and there’s hundreds of ways you can prepare it. There is no faster ’pasta’ than zucchini through a mandoline (my V slicer) – instantly al-dente. Toss it through some soaked sun-dried tomatoes blended with avocado and add pine-nuts or cashews, and it’s mouth-watering.
- Dehydrators appear to be the raw food equivalent of an oven, but they take a long time. In fact, between soaking nuts etc & dehydrating things for ’warm’ dishes or biscuits, breads etc, raw foodism appears to take a lot of advance planning. Going for raw foods in their natural state, though (not trying to mimic cooked dishes, in other words) was fast, fresh, tasted amazing and gave so many health benefits I loved it. I would suggest, though, that late Spring or Summer would be the best time to trial it for yourself…
- So much of what we’re drawn to eat is trained into us by advertising etc. By the end of the month, walking through the supermarket I was amazed by how much looked pretty, but didn’t look like ’food’ to me anymore. Especially coming into Easter.
Since eating fruit for breakfast and/or salad for lunch fits perfectly with raw foodism, you might just be closer to eating raw than you think!?! If you’re curious to try it for yourself, why not try just doing those 2 meals raw for a week, and feel how your body responds?
by Crystal on April 2, 2009
Well, the 30 days is gone already. Now comes the really fun part of working out how much I’ll be adapting my pre-trial Lifestyle to include the new habits I’ve formed…
Some things, I think, are going to have to change, no matter whether I want them to or not. I was in town for lunch after getting my blood tests done yesterday, and the best lunch I could find was a crepe and salad. So I had a mini-crepe (spinach & cheese) with my salad. I tell you what, when I took a piece of that crepe onto my fork, not only did it not resemble anything edible to me, it didn’t actually taste like food! I kept going back to the salad, and ended up thinking I would’ve been much better off just buying 2 salads and forgetting the crepe. Not to mention that I couldn’t handle it hot. Blowing on your food doesn’t actually cool it down all that quickly, have you noticed?
There was something similar in the last week when I visited the supermarket. I was walking past all these bright displays that once would have been ‘bee to honey’ type stuff before, and it didn’t draw me at all. I’d look at them and think ‘pretty’ but I just wouldn’t be thinking of them as actual food. It’s amazing how full the supermarket is with stuff that bears little or no resemblance to the actual fuels we work on, but which we’ve been trained to put down our throats thinking it’s nourishment. Thinking about it, we’ll even take the raw, natural stuff we’re designed to eat and process the daylights out of it before we think of letting it near our mouths. I admit it, I was guilty too. Strange, isn’t it?
Anyway, in the last week I had a bit of a side effect I should probably mention here too. Mid-cycle, I started my period up again, as my body started pushing out what looked like hadn’t been cleared from at least the last 2 cycles. This is something that’s happened to me occasionally over the last 6 years, and the last female doctor I saw explained that anything affecting the hormone levels can set it off. Since I’m up to date with pap smears etc I wasn’t too worried, (time enough to check it out when I go in for my follow up with the blood test results) and I suspect the bf was spot on in thinking it might have been diet related. I’ve not been eating dairy. I used to eat lots of it. I’ve also not been eating tofu, although I didn’t used to eat as much of that. Anything soy has an effect on estrogen levels. No doubt dropping both of those out of the intake has changed the level of hormones floating around in my system significantly… In any case, the last week saw my weight loss etc rebound up a bit again. I don’t mind. My trousers are still lovely and loose, and since I’m not going to drop raw food entirely (I just have to work out how much I can incorporate into my routine without too many dramas) I expect it will keep dropping. Especially now that, with the diet trial over, I’m able to pick up my exercise routines again. Woo hoo! Love that part.
Besides that, the weight loss definitely slowed after the first week, when I was basing my menu on that raw Sunfood Diet. It even rebounded back up while I was experimenting with ‘raw recipes’ and making things like lasagne. I’ve tentatively come to the conclusion that the closer to it’s natural form your food is, the better the benefits. I’m looking forward to getting hold of the book and playing with some of the other menus in it! Meanwhile, I’m sticking with my fruit breakfasts (you can’t beat how easy it is to grab to eat on the go) and trying for larger and larger salads with my lunch. I suspect from what I’ve been feeling as I’ve eaten these that the fruit is great for energy and helping you go, but the greens and salad stuff is fantastic for cleaning up and flushing out the insides. For me, anyway. I suspect (although I haven’t tested it out yet) that the fats part of the sunfood triangle is good for helping your body generate heat and warmth during colder months, (most people get warmth from digestion), as well as lubricating the joints – I definitely noticed that when I started adding raw nuts in, the knees stopped creaking.
So, although I haven’t been back to the doctor for his weigh in yet (I’ve only just got the blood test results back, surprisingly fast considering they warned me it could be up to 6 weeks), here’s what my home scale tells me I achieved over the month.
| |
Pre-Start |
Week 1 |
Week 2 |
Week 3 |
Week 4 |
Change |
| Weight |
146.0kg |
141.0kg |
140.9kg |
138.1kg |
139.1kg |
- 6.9kg |
| Body Fat |
47.4% |
47.0% |
46.7% |
46.6% |
46.8% |
- 0.6% |
| Hydration |
38.4% |
38.7% |
38.9% |
39.0% |
38.8% |
+ 0.4% |
| Basal Rate |
2158 |
2107 |
2106 |
2079 |
2089 |
- 69cal |
| Muscle Mass |
28.3% |
28.4% |
28.5% |
28.5% |
28.5% |
+ 0.2 |
| BMI |
55.1 |
53.1 |
53.0 |
52.0 |
52.4 |
- 2.7 |
Now for the cholesterol changes. Remember, this is over a MONTH only. (I had to do some fast talking to get the referral, they don’t like sending you for it in less than 3 months…)
| _ |
Pre-start |
‘Normal’ |
After |
Change |
Comments |
| Weight |
146kg |
67kg (chart) |
139.1kg |
-6.9kg |
Nice loss for a month without any exercise, don’t you think? |
| Cholesterol (total) |
7.09 (high) |
2.30-5.50 |
6.50 |
-0.59 |
Getting closer to ‘normal’ |
| Cholesterol ratio |
3.9 |
0-4.5 |
3.4 |
-0.5 |
I know it dropped, I just don’t know if that’s good or bad. Anyone? |
| Triglycerides |
1.53 |
0-2.0 |
2.17 |
+0.64 |
This one went up a bit, and now it’s considered high. |
| HDL |
1.8 |
1.0-3.0 |
1.89 |
+0.09 |
This one is supposed to protect you from heart disease. It went up.  |
| LDL (bad one) |
4.6 (high) |
0-3.5 |
3.6 |
-1.0 |
The one I was trying to get down – and look how close I am to the recommended range already! |
| B12 |
202 pmol/L |
>144 |
? |
? |
Although I asked the doctor for the same tests as last time, they obviously weren’t all on the request form. They didn’t take as much blood, either. Means I can’t be sure on these, but you can bet I’ll be asking for them at the 3 month checkup… |
| Iron |
11.5 umol/L |
8.8-27.0 |
? |
? |
| Red cell folate |
2146 |
>776 |
? |
? |
| Thyroid TSH |
0.35 mU/L |
0.30-5.0 |
? |
? |
All in all, I felt fantastic for the change in diet, and would heartily recommend checking it out for yourself, but if you live outside a city it can be surprisingly difficult to manage. My garbage was also distinctly heavier with all the rinds, capsicum seeds etc that I was throwing out, although I didn’t fill the garbage bag up nearly as often – one medium bag a week instead of two-three. I also felt the lack of a car in not being able to go to markets & the like, which would have made it a lot easier.
The blood tests seem to bear out that it did me good, and I’ll be keeping as much of it in my routine as possible, although I will go back to a less strict version and let myself find the balance that works long term for me. The sneaking suspicion, though, is that over time I’ll end up going further and further down this track anyway. I just felt so darn good!
PS A big THANK YOU to everyone who pledged to sponsor me. We raised over $300 towards the Disaster Relief fund. For any of you that were thinking of it but didn’t get around to contacting me, I may be finished my 30 day raw trial, but you can still visit the Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal and donate to help them out…
by Crystal on March 24, 2009
Today was amazing. I had a real problem at work – my trousers kept undoing themselves because they were so loose. I pulled out a safety pin and did some emergency surgery, but even so I found I didn’t even need to undo anything to pull them off – and there’s not a shred of elastic in them! I think I need to move down a size… Nice problem to have, isn’t it?
This afternoon I also finally got approval to send out an email to my work colleagues about raising funds for Queensland Flood victims. Now I know how Internet Marketers get such a buzz – within 10 mins of sending it I had over $200 of pledges (the top bid so far is $60, or $2 a day). It really was lovely to see all the generous hearts that work around me, all chipping in for the cause. It was even better to know I’d orchestrated it – this feeling could very rapidly get addictive!
On the practical front, I bought myself a new juicer the other day, because the old one was a cheap and nasty supermarket bargain that I had to open and clean after every apple – sometimes twice. Most of the juice went into the pulp. It was frustrating me no end. I read something along the lines that as you clear out your body, your ability to manifest things quickly goes up too, and it was either a bizarre coincidence or I just proved it on myself – I’d decided last weekend that I wanted a new juicer, I wanted to spend around $150 and get a juice bar standard of quality. The one I was looking at was selling for about $499, with a 1500 watt motor. On Sunday I saw one at Shellharbour that was a 1200w motor for $151.95, tossed up about it, and on impulse on the way home asked to stop in to “Good Guys” at Warrawong. They had 1 left of a display model, 1300w, solid steel construction, pulp hopper and the whole lot, for – guess what – $150! Reduced from just about $300. I was very happy with my bargain.
This afternoon I gave it a proper try, after going shopping for some more fresh veggies. Rinsed some celery stalks & stuck them in there, leaves and all. A small beetroot, also no problems – it went through easier than apples did on the old one! Then I added 2 cucumbers and had a lovely juice for dinner. Since I’m getting up early tomorrow for work, leaving home at 4, I didn’t want to have a full stomach going to bed early – juice was the perfect solution. It even cleaned up easily! I’m loving it.
Now I’m toying with the idea of a juice feast… *grin*
Anyway, this time next week I’ll have had my blood test and be waiting for the final verdict. I’m pretty sure the cholesterol will have gone down, it’s just going to be interesting to see how much. The weight, I already know, is falling off (along with my trousers…) although I also know that it goes up whenever I short myself on sleep – which I’m unfortunately having to do for work this week. That’s part of the reason I’ll be staying with a lot more raw foods even after March draws to an end, but the other reason has to be how much energy I have and how good I feel! Knowing that I’m helping raise money for a good reason adds even more to it – I’m feeling GREAT about this!
I’ll drop you another update in a few days, but meanwhile, have a fantastic day.
by Crystal on March 22, 2009
Hard to believe there’s only just over a week left to this trial!
I managed to arrange the Sunfood Diet Success book on an Inter-Library loan, but they tell me it could be anywhere from 2 up to 6 weeks. Apparently, it’s only held at two libraries in Australia – one in Western Australia and the other in Victoria. It’s the 2000 edition (the latest is the 7th edition from 2008) but that doesn’t matter, I’m just looking forward to reading it. I suspect there’s a few more books I’ll be ‘devouring’ even after the month is up…
This weekend I also went back to the doctor to get the referral for my ‘after’ blood test. He tried to talk me into waiting 3 months, because that’s how long they recommend between tests to see any changes from diet. While I love the effects I’m seeing from doing Raw food, I’m also looking forward to going back to a more moderate form – something like 70-80% raw, after March is over, so I may end up having to pay out for the blood test up front, and then seeing if I can claim any of it back on Medicare.
Either way I don’t particularly want to wait another 2 months to find out how it’s changed/changing things health wise. Anyway, I got my referral, and when he ran some checks he was amazed at how my blood pressure and weight had gone down in such a short time. He thinks my positive attitude might have been helping it. That’s fine, except the positive attitude to the diet came AFTER the health benefits started showing up 
Having bought the V-Slicer to do the linguine recipe this weekend, I changed my mind and went with raw tacos instead. Probably partly because I’d been having so much ‘zucchini pasta’ since I got it (so quick & easy, it’s hard to beat). There was a recipe in the Lazy Raw Foodists Guide, but not having everything I needed for that I ended up mashing that recipe together with one from http://mattyeleesvegankitchen.blogspot.com/2007/08/mattyes-raw-vegan-tacos-and-all-fixins.html
Here’s the photos. It was fun, and actually easier to eat with the leaves than it usually is with corn shells breaking into bits with every bite *grin*
 |
 |
Here’s the last two tacos. I thoroughly enjoyed
the neater ones I had before I thought to photo them… |
With all the bits. Salsa (top right) was a scorcher!
Cashew cream was also nice, and made a great base
for another zucchini pasta dish the next day… |
Now for the technical details on this week’s results. I think it could’ve been better if I’d been more conscientious about drinking enough water and getting enough sleep, but them’s the breaks. I’ve also got a very early start coming up this week, which usually throws me out for a couple of days, so I’m a bit nervous about next week too. Still, all up I don’t think it’s too bad a drop for only 3 weeks, with no extra exercise.
|
Pre-Start |
Week 1 |
Week 2 |
Week 3 |
Change |
| Weight |
146.0kg |
141.0kg |
140.9kg |
138.1kg |
- 7.9kg |
| Body Fat |
47.4% |
47.0% |
46.7% |
46.6% |
- 0.8% |
| Hydration |
38.4% |
38.7% |
38.9% |
39.0% |
+ 0.6% |
| Basal Rate |
2158 |
2107 |
2106 |
2079 |
- 79cal |
| Muscle Mass |
28.3% |
28.4% |
28.5% |
28.5% |
+ 0.2 |
| BMI |
55.1 |
53.1 |
53.0 |
52.0 |
- 3.1 |
PS I’m in the wind-down now with just over a week to go, but please don’t forget, I’m doing this to raise funds and awareness for the Queensland Flooding victims. Their flooding issues are far from over, and although I’m glad they’re now getting some assistance (the recent ‘Sound Relief’ concert was for both them and the Victorian disaster) I’m still determined to follow through on my commitment from February to help out. Any help you can provide will be appreciated, either donate at the right (all donations this month go to the cause) or visit the Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal for other ways of donating…
by Crystal on March 19, 2009
It’s been very quiet here on the blog this week, mostly because I was off the PC. The contacts I was wearing while I waited for my replacement glasses started causing problems, so I’ve had to rest my eyes up this week and wander around looking at vague blurry coloured blobs instead of actual objects. 
Anyway, I picked the glasses up today so I’m BACK!!!
This week’s been both harder and easier than the last two. Easier in being at home for most of it, although I was fairly reluctant to use a knife for obvious reasons, so the blender & food processor both got good workouts. Harder for the same reasons, plus a uniquely female recurring issue that tends to play havoc with cravings etc. Noticeably this month I DIDN’T get chocolate cravings. Instead I wanted milk. Fortunately I had a pile of almonds so I pretty much had some soaking every night to make nut milk. Thankfully I bought a nut-milk bag last Sunday at the raw class – that’s a fine mesh bag to filter the milk away from all the nut pulp, so you end up with just the liquid. I discovered that when you don’t have dates/vanilla extract to flavour your milk, a bit of agave nectar does really nicely, although today I stocked up on dates & I have to say that does make it really, really yum.
Having done the lasagne from rawchefblog.com last weekend, this week I wanted to try his linguine recipe. That, along with several 
other dishes I wanted to do, involved a mandoline – a kind of manual food slicer. Fortunately the seeing-eye boyfriend was very good about taking me out to find one, and actually doing the finding (since I couldn’t see much until he passed it to me to stick under my nose) so I came back home with a V slicer – a German version of the mandoline that has all kinds of neat accessories. I was ready to fork out an extra $20 to get a spiral attachment, but when we opened it up we discovered the box already had it in there as a bonus. No mention of it on the pack, just a very nice surprise when I got it home. Tonight I ran 3 zucchinis through that spiral thing and it makes the neatest, most beautiful, delicious ‘pasta’ you can think of. I used the last of the ‘cheese sauce’ and tomato sauce from the lasagne, diluted it a bit in the almond milk to make it a bit more sauce-like, tossed it all through and had a meal in minutes – plus enough leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch at work. I was too hungry to photograph it, sorry. Maybe tomorrow…
The other thing I’m thinking now is that, although the body is still slowly changing shape, my weight really shifted in that first week, when I was using that “Sunfood Diet Success
” menu plan. Also, it felt more like I was eating whole foods when I wasn’t prettying them up to turn them into some kind of recipe. So, I’m working on finding a copy of that book and do that for another week. It apparently has a lot of menu plans etc in it that I could use. When I did it back at the start of March, I really had to push myself to eat all that fruit & veg, and most evenings I was already too full to have the scheduled meal, but it seems like even just the breakfast & lunch in it was able to kick start my metabolism again after all those years of starving it. I’ll post back here if I get hold of it quickly enough to use it for next week (shame it’s not available in an ebook form, I’d fork out for it in a flash), but it seems like the only ordering option I have involves 3-6 weeks shipping. So, I’m in to the library tomorrow to see if they can source it in an inter-library loan somehow. Wish me luck?
Did I mention, I do love having my glasses – and eyesight – back again!!! I don’t think my mp3 player has EVER had such a good workout, but by the end I was brainstorming things I could do, and was surprised at how many things I could think up. I think it must be almost an automatic response to panic when something as important as one of your senses is threatened, but when you actually face it, there are always ways and means to get around not having it. It was also a bit of a push to get myself organised and find a VA (virtual assistant) so if things go wrong again and I can’t post for whatever reason, there’s someone I can call to put something up here for you.
by Crystal on March 16, 2009
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.
|
Pre-Start |
Week 1 |
Week 2 |
Change |
| Weight |
146.0kg |
141.0kg |
140.9kg |
- 5.1kg |
| Body Fat |
47.4% |
47.0% |
46.7% |
- 0.7% |
| Hydration |
38.4% |
38.7% |
38.9% |
+ 0.5% |
| Basal Rate |
2158 |
2107 |
2106 |
- 52cal |
| Muscle Mass |
28.3% |
28.4% |
28.5% |
+ 0.2 |
| BMI |
55.1 |
53.1 |
53.0 |
- 2.1 |
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…
by Crystal on March 14, 2009
It’s Friday the 13th, and this morning I felt that was entirely appropriate. I went to sleep feeling like I was coming down with something. I woke up knowing I had. The dreaded Detox…
Between last night, overnight and this morning, I emptied half a box of tissues, and probably kept the entire apartment block awake. Fortunately, I had already arranged to take today off, so I was able to give myself a sleep in during the intervals when I wasn’t emptying half my lungs into tissues. No, you can rest assured, that’s NOT going to be today’s photo!
The other reason I’d arranged today off was to check out the local markets. I know there are several farmers that have stalls there every week, plus there’s a plant stall that I hoped to be able to get my beloved Sorrel from, after my last lot expired over a year ago. Nobody else seemed to be carrying it, and there really is NOTHING that tastes as good with avocado. Luckily, he had 2 pots there. At least, he did before I got there. *grin* Now I’ve got the biggest pot on the balcony aside for them, so I don’t have to try and transplant them – check it out at the right. Transplanting was what killed them off last time, after they did take over my kitchen window and I tried shifted them outside.
While I was there I stocked up on some lovely fresh veggies, and bought a juice for lunch – I really must invest in a new juicer. Unfortunately I also discovered that my health fund, which I haven’t used in a few years, only gave me back $147 of my $511 new glasses (lucky I went with the cheap frames!). So, $300+ to find for that first. I might have to do a fundraiser for me after this month, so I can pay for the glasses, and invest in some decent equipment to keep on going with the raw foods.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot. This morning in the shower I noticed the skin on the back of my arms felt a lot smoother than usual. I checked it out in the mirror when I got out, and it looks as though I’m losing the stretch marks I had there – they’ve contracted back to a much smaller area around the shoulder. Fantastic! Even the bf is now noticing the changes to my body shape. I like that part of it very much!
Anyway, getting out and about helped with the symptoms a bit, but tonight after I got back home they became noticeable again. Not sure if they actually went away, or I was just too distracted to notice while I was doing other things. I’m thinking of having a dead sea salts bath tomorrow night to help draw anything out that needs to be, but couldn’t be bothered tonight. After a full on day in which I set up a few good looking raw recipes in the Mastercook software I have, (if anyone wants a copy of the cookbook, email me via the contact form – MP2 format so it should import into the major software packages), learnt about xpathing to set up an automatic import for some fun recipes on sparkpeople, and went out for all the other stuff, I’m worn out and ready for bed! See you tomorrow…
