As day 4 of my 30 days raw experiment comes to a close I find myself feeling pretty great. I had another good night. I felt energized and motivated for most of the night. I didn’t notice any particular detoxification side effects at all today. I even felt like I had extra energy for a brief period.

I started my day eating 2 apples and a pear. I did feel lightly gassy after eating these but I think that was probably because apples are largely air by volume. I wrote an article a few months back about the benefits of apples, if you’d like to read it click here. The gassy feeling went away about as quick as it arrived. It lasted maybe an hour at most.

A while later I ate 125g of fresh blueberries. These were yummy but I didn’t really feel like I had eaten much so I pulled out the bag of carrots and the container of dip I made yesterday. After eating a few handfuls of carrots I wasn’t hungry anymore. I began feeling fairly energized around this point. I was clear headed it seemed, but my attention was directed inside instead of out. I felt like I was kind of ‘lost’ at work today in a physical sense. I kind of felt like I wasn’t paying enough attention to my surroundings or to the people around me through most of the day. I would be having a conversation with a coworker and then suddenly realize I had no idea what they were talking about anymore because my mind had drifted off to La-La Land.

Although I wasn’t all that aware in a physical sense I felt quite sharp in a different way. I had a lot of stuff going on in my head all night. I was able to focus my thoughts quite well and had a lot of great ‘idea’ moments, but I wasn’t able to focus well on my immediate surroundings. I don’t mean I was stumbling around running into things with drool though, I was ‘there’ but I just felt like my attention would keep drifting to other things. Those things were largely more important than the physical job I was doing anyway so I guess it wasn’t really a bad thing although it did feel kind of strange.

For lunch I made five more ‘taco’s’ or ‘wraps’ with romaine lettuce leaves, cucumbers, broccoli slaw mix, and the rest of the dip that I made yesterday. This caught the attention of my coworkers who seemed sort of interested but still weirded out by the whole ‘raw food diet’ thing. They mostly made comments like “oh that looks like it might be pretty good… if it had chicken”. And they were right, it would have been pretty good with chicken! (sorry to offend any of you strict raw foodists or vegans out there) I might actually try these with chicken when I return to cooked food after the trial to see how it tastes.

A while later I munched on some more carrots and dip, one of my coworkers was curious and had a little taste of the dip, he said it wasn’t too bad but agreed that it was a little heavy on the cilantro. I also ate like 200g dried pineapple/mango/papaya with lime. The dried fruit tasted extremely sweet to me today, almost too sweet.

On my next break I ate a whole 1lb container of strawberries. These were also very delish. The thing I like about this diet is I can sit down and eat entire containers of berries and not even feel bad about it! You can eat so much food on this diet that I think it would be great for someone who wants to lose weight but is addicted to the actual act of eating and not the food itself. I’m fairly certain you could eat raw food all day long and I still shed those extra pounds.

Before leaving work I munched down some more carrots and dip. I would wager I ate about 1lb or more of carrots today. I felt full most of the night and at one point I even felt like doing some pushups or chinups or something since I felt like I had so much energy.

The feeling I’m getting from eating all raw foods so far is surprisingly one of strength. I think that a person on this diet could be very strong and energetic. I don’t think you could get very ‘big’ on this diet if you’re a weight trainer or body builder, but I think that someone on this diet would definitely be stronger than someone of comparable size who gets about the same amount of exercise. My teeth even feel strong for some reason, but don’t ask me how teeth can feel strong because I don’t know! :)

Some of the guys at work last night said that I looked like I was depressed, wasting away, and that my eyes were sunken in. I’m pretty sure they were only saying that for kicks unless raw food also causes the mind to trick itself into thinking it looks normal when its really depressed and wasting away with eyes sunken in. :P I feel good, I look fine, and my eyes are not sunken in as far as I can tell, so I guess I want some of whatever they’re having. (the drugs, not the food)

Since I got home from work I ate 1 mini banana, a small handful of soaked almonds, a handful of pistachios, 2 slices of fresh pineapple, a mandarin, 2 small tomatoes, and I made a salad with 300g broccoli slaw, one large yellow bell pepper, 3 celery stalks, 1 chili pepper, and fresh lime juice with an italian herb paste for flavor. :) No more hungries.

Broccoli Pepper Lime Salad

Broccoli Pepper Lime Salad

I weigh in today at 160lbs even. A net loss of 8lbs in 4 days. I expect to remain around this weight, possibly lose 5-8 more pounds by the end of the 30 days. The initial drop in weight is probably just the difference in how much food stays in your body when eating cooked meats compared to raw fruits and veggies.

Oh, and I dropped the kids off at the pool 3 times today and everything went real smooth. ;)

Related articles

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]