Happy Thanksgiving to all of you though belated. For those that do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a peaceful and thankful day yesterday. For me, it was Day 22 of this 28 day detox which it seems I will be completing after all. I wasn’t sure about doing this for 28 days when first starting. In looking forward to this I have learned multiple things about me and about the foods we eat.
1. It takes wonderful discipline to eat consciously each day. Planning the food to eat as well as being determined not to eat unless it’s apart of the detox took a real discipline. There have been many days when I just wanted to grab some chips and dip and squelch a hunger. But instead, I grabbed some carrots or celery to hold myself over until I could get to what was really good to eat.
2. The pantry and refrigerator actually start to take on the look of the type of foods I want to eat. That means as I focused on purchasing foods to go with this detox I found I just reached for those foods at the store instead of spending loads of time considering foods I really didn’t want to put into my body. Shopping for food became much quicker as a result. It meant spending time on the parameter of the grocery store where the fresh produce is located instead of in the middle aisles where you find the packaged foods.
3. Physically, I can see the changes as the excess weight and puffiness is starting to fall off. It took a while to get going with the weight loss. I’ve realized that weight loss doesn’t happen immediately. It takes time to get going. The body must adjust to a new way of eating. Sometimes, eating less calories will make weight loss take a bit longer than going faster. The body will put itself into a starvation modality if there aren’t enough calories. Eating raw and vegan can mean cutting out calories and only eating a few at a time. That takes some adjusting to get the right calorie count.
4. Mentally, I definitely feel more clear-headed. This is one of the best, unexpected benefits about this experience. Instead of waking up feeling “fuzzy headed” with all of the obligations I have to fulfill daily, I feel like I wake up able to zoom into exactly what I need to do with clarity and assurance. It seems that my memory has improved too. What seasoned person wouldn’t love that?
That’s just a few ways I can see the benefits of this detox so far. I’ll share more as the days start to wind down.
Okay, confession time. I tried two different carrot cake recipes yesterday. Unfortunately, I made too many changes to the original recipes at once and had some flops. I Know better than to make changes to a recipe prior to doing the original one first. But I wanted to modify a gluten free recipe to also be vegan. Instead of using eggs as a binder, I used applesauce for the eggs. That meant with the lack of gluten and lack of binder, there was nothing to hold the cake together. DUH! Ended up with a gooey mess. I really hated to have to throw that cake out but there was no saving it.
The second recipe was a raw carrot cake. I thought I had read the recipe repeatedly, but missed a crucial step. After mixing the grated carrots and walnuts, I should have set these aside to process the other ingredients and spices that would serve as the binder for this cake. Instead, I blended half of the carrot,walnut and spices mixture until smooth. Fortunately, I was doing this half at a time but the batter was now too soft. So I had to try to salvage it by turning it into a regular cake by adding almond and amaranth flour, baking soda and baking powder and two eggs. I baked this batter. It still came out a but mushy but edible. Oh well, when you’re trying to start something new, you have to experiment. I’m not accustomed to food failures so I had to encourage myself in this remembering that great things come out of experiments.
Otherwise for Thanksgiving, my main meal was black-eyed peas with collard greens which was sumptuous. I’m having a bit more of that for lunch today (the day after).
 Savor A Taste Of RawEating raw, whole foods can quickly make a difference in your life and you don’t even have to go 100% raw to get the benefits. In fact, by simply replacing some cooked foods in your diet with more raw foods you can start feeling better very quickly |
