Two weeks and counting..

Two weeks have passed since I changed my lifestyle to become a 100% Raw Foodist and do you remember what I said about not getting on the scale? Well, this morning I wish I had followed my own advice.
After losing 5kgs in my first week I haven't lost in my second week and so I am disappointed. Even though weight loss is not my primary motivation, it is most definitely a much wanted side-effect. I know - and I can hear all of the dieting 'experts' (don't forget I am one too!) saying this to me right now - that when you follow a traditional 'diet' you can not expect to lose weight in your second week, when you have had such a huge loss in your first week.
When I speak about a tradional diet I am referring to those where your food is cooked, but you have a variety of other restrictions to deal with. You are counting - calories or points or portions - or you are not eating certain foods together, or you are only eating your food off a purple plate, or... you get the idea. So if Raw was a traditional type of diet I would agree with you. But Raw is the way we are supposed to eat, our bodies respond beautifully and quickly. So it makes no sense to me to not have lost anything. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not expecting another 5kg loss, but most certainly at least 2.
I have to add here that normally, with a traditional diet, it is at this stage that I would lose focus and revert back to my old eating habits.
So I had two questions to ponder. Firstly, why did I not lose anything in my second week and secondly, why am I not discouraged? I know that it might seem odd to want to work out why I am not discouraged but I feel that if I know and understand my successes, then I can duplicate them and continue to be successful. This, I must admit, was the easier of the two and with a little bit of thought the answer was straightforward. It is because at no stage have I felt that I am dieting. I am not suffering from feelings of deprivation, rather I am feeling that I am able to eat whatever I want and in the quantities that I want. That whole feeling of I've starved myself, weighed everything, counting even that lose crumb of chocolate cake that just happened to fly up into my mouth while I was heroically packing the leftovers away - is absent. I've enjoyed my food and, more importantly, I can feel that my body is enjoying the food I am feeding it. So that answers one question.
Now for the second. This one I must admit was not as easy to deal with. I first went through self-doubt. Perhaps I was, as opposed to sleepwalking, sleepeating! Shock horror could it be? Could I be scarfing up cooked food, cakes and bread and cream buns in my sleep? Umm...  No.  Was I unusually inactive? No. So I tried to remember back over the week and went through everything I had eaten. And I realised... it was the greens! In my second week I have been so busy that I haven't being paying attention to what I was eating. So while I was still eating raw I wasn't conscious of the balance of my foods and have not been eating enough greens. Your greens are a vital part of your daily diet and you should try to have at least 50% of your daily intake coming from greens.
So this is the beginning of a new week where I'll be focussing on more greenery. Hopefully next week this time I'll be kissing the scale! 
Pass that lettuce!

Self Love. Guilty or not?

I really hope you are. Guilty, that is. Of self love. Now, before all the puritanical types clutch their chests and start gasping, let me clarify. When I speak of self love I am not referring to things previously thought to cause blindness and hairy palms, I am referring to the love you have for yourself. Do you love yourself? Can you answer yes, emphatically, without hesitation? Did you even answer yes? Up until awhile ago I wouldn't have answered yes. I would have thought about it, realised that yes was probably the expected answer, and then mumbled a yes. The most important, life changing epiphany I have ever experienced was about self love and how absolutely vitally necessary it is to love yourself. So what is self love? To try and help me express myself clearly, because this means so much to me and I want to make sure that you 'get it', I'm going to ask you to think of the love you have for your child. I want you to bring to mind the relationship you have with your child and hold it clearly in the forefront of your consciousness, while I run through a few things with you.  This being that you are seeing in your mind's eye, or perhaps he or she is with you now, has the power to bring you to tears of sadness or tears of joy. While you are thinking about your child I want you to answer these questions.
Has this child ever hurt you or disappointed you?
Has this child ever behaved in a manner which you found unacceptable?
Has this child ever lied to you?
Has this child ever done something so disgusting that you thought you were going to upchuck?
Has this child ever caused you to lose sleep?
Has this child weighed heavy on your heart with worry?
Has any of this child's behaviour ever caused you to question your love for her? To stop nourishing her? To stop caring for her? To ignoring what she wants and needs?
Is there anything that this child can do that will cause you to stop loving her?
And this is how I want you to love yourself. Endlessly, without limits. Take care of yourself, pamper yourself, listen to what your body tells you about what it does and doesn't need, forgive yourself.
Love yourself. 

5kgs Darling!

It's important to me that you understand that while I am looking forward to weight loss as a Raw Foodist, it is not my underlying reason for the lifestyle change. A large part, but not the only reason. Now that we understand that I have more serious and more important and more noble reasons than mere weight loss, let me say that I have lost 5 kgs IN MY FIRST WEEK!!!!!  Ta ra ta ra ta ra! And I've never felt better! Today is the 8th day of me being a 100% Raw Foodist and having felt that my clothes were no longer shrinking, I jumped on the scale. I promptly got off and checked the dials, shook it, bashed it against the bath and this time stepped slowly and cautiously onto it. The scale, she doesn't lie baby! 5kgs down! If that is not sufficient motivation and encouragement to change to Raw, I don't know what is.
But let me tell you about some of the other health benefits I have started experiencing. Firstly my relationship with food is changing. Those of you with deeply ingrained weight problems will know exactly what I am speaking about when I say I no longer feel guilty about eating. This is a huge benefit and it all ties in with loving ourselves - another blog post for another day.
My knee joints have been agonisingly sore for many months now - to the extent that I would go up a flight of stairs sideways. Just so that I did not have to bend my knees. I am now bending my knees pain free! We have a short flight of stairs from our front door to the area where we park the car and I am now climbing up and down those stairs easily, painlessly and fast. I know that it sounds like a huge benefit for a short space of time but that is what Raw Food does. Once your body realises that this is the way it is going to be, the effects are fast and furious and nothing short of miraculous!
I'm moving out of that 'sleep all day' phase and the energy is now kicking in. My brain is firing faster than it has in ages and all of a sudden I don't have enough things to do.
I find that I am expressing myself more eloquently to my children and I am managing whole days without screaming at them!
My complexion... I'm not too sure what to say here. I have taken a photo now - this morning - and will take another one in a few months time and then post the two of them for comparitive purposes. But I have lost wrinkles. Yes, I know you don't believe me - I wouldn't believe me either if I was reading this - which is why I've taken the pics. I've read that even grey hair reverts to its natural colour after awhile so I've taken pics of the grey as well. Imagine how amazing that would be!
It's not as difficult to change to Raw as you might think it would be - you can read my blog Raw Delights  - it will give you more information about the food that I am eating.
The secret is to ensure that you have Raw Snack Food close by.

Most importantly, the results so far are that I'm feeling great, feeling gorgeous, collecting heaps of energy, losing wrinkles and 5kgs in the first week darling!    

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Did I mention that initially when you start eating raw food you might find yourself wanting to sleep a lot? No, I mean really. While this can be a little bit worrying - I mean hello what happened to the energy levels? - it is actually a very good sign.
On a day to day basis while we are eating processed foods and dead flesh, we are actually poisoning ourselves. But our bodies are such magnificent things, that they just deal with it. We keep shoveling it in and our bodies just carry on, like little worker ants, and keep trying to combat the toxins and the poisins. And of course, when our bodies realise that they are unable to move the sludge through our systems fast enough, they start packing it away.
What do you do when you see a cockroach or some other creepy crawly? I am unable to kill them - the thought of hearing that 'crunch' causes gooseflesh to run - but also will not have them running loose in my home. So what do I do? I find a bottle or a pot and I trap them. And I keep them there until someone more suitably qualified to deal with pests comes along. This is exactly what our bodies do.
Those toxins and chemicals all get packed away in fat. Our bodies surround them with fat and put them on our hips and across our bellies in an attempt to keep us safe.
Stress of course plays a huge role in all of this, because when we experience stress our digestive system actually shuts down because our bodies go into full fight or flight mode, but that is a topic for another time.
Can you imagine what it must be like for our bodies when we start eating raw food? You must keep in mind that your body is the biggest workaholic you will ever come across and never, ever takes a break. I imagine that on the first day of raw food, all our little worker cells are busy gossiping like mad with each other.
"Can it be? Did you see that? OMW that was a carrot!" and so on. I imagine that the moment your body is over the shock of your new eating regime, it gets down to some serious work.
(Ask any new raw foodist about the second day runny tummy.) It gets rid of all the sludge that has been backed up for days, weeks, months and ... gosh I hope not so long back! And then, round about day 3 or 4, your body realises it has got time on it's hands. Because it's such a workaholic, it immediately starts fixing, repairing and healing. It fetches those pockets of fat surrounded toxins and throws them out. It has time to start working on those muscles and joints that have been aching. Those cells that have been riddled with all sorts of horrible things get a good scrubbing and a polish. All of these repairs, healing if you like, is exhausting. For you and your body.
So when you hit that I can't stay awake stage, do the sensible thing and go and sleep. Spread out, close the curtains, make sure you're warm and take the phone off the hook. Close your eyes and let your body do what it does best.
Wake me up for supper.

Avoid the Scale At All Costs!

I'm in my third day of totally raw and I am feeling great! So of course now is the perfect time to avoid the scale. I am really feeling good and you might think that it is too soon to have such a positive result, but that is exactly what it is like on raw food. Your energy levels soar and you start feeling 'lighter'. Not only physically lighter but more of a 'lightness of being'. That's not to say that you will totally avoid a detox reaction, but the severity will depend on the toxicity of your diet before going over to raw.  I'm hoping that because I did raw not so long ago, I'll manage to escape the detox.
I digress, let's go back to the scale. Or better yet, let's go right past the scale.
One of the most difficult things about a lifestyle change is that the results do not arrive instantly. Instant gratification issues make this difficult to deal with and I believe this is a very large part of why so many lifestyle changes are temporary.
Dieting is a classic example. The diet that you do today will only pay off next week. Perhaps only in two weeks time. And if you haven't been consistent in your efforts you could be looking at three or four weeks before you see a result.
So how do you tell somebody that they need to follow this regime and then in six months time they'll finally see what they have been working towards. "Stop smoking now. Every day you will crave that cigarette and you will feel miserable and bitter and twisted and deprived. But don't worry because in six months time you will feel great."
Oh really?
Don't look at the result you are wanting in six months time. Look at the result you are wanting today. It doesn't have to be a big result. If you normally sit behind a desk the entire day and today you took the stairs instead of the elevator, then you have done well.
So the thing to do is to avoid the scale at all costs. Ignore the measure of your success and work towards the feeling of your success!
I lie in bed in the morning, before I open my eyes, and I take inventory of how I am feeling. I count the number of aches and pains, I test the flexibility of each joint and then I check to see if I still remember who and where I am. An ache or two less and yes I know who I am and I'm feeling great! Let tomorrow worry about itself and I'll take care of today.
And if that scale's not careful, I'll stand on it!