I’ve combined days 16 and 17 into one post because I have fallen behind in updates over the weekend. I had a pretty busy weekend and hardly had much time even to eat very much raw food. That really didn’t bother me too much because I have gotten so bored with eating raw that not eating much seemed like a great idea.

I have to admit – I cheated on Friday and ate a burger. I justified it for various reasons but none of them are very good excuses. I allowed myself to cheat on the diet for Friday. I also went to a party and drank alcohol on Friday evening. I didn’t drink it with any extra sugar or pop for mix, I drank gin with fruit juice. The weekend was a lot of fun except for the fact that I cheated on the diet. I am not getting mad at myself for it or anything like that. I’m using it as a learning experience. A radical change in diet like what I am doing is really hard to stick to. For most people not eating meat for 2 weeks is a great feat in itself, let alone eating only raw food for 30. I also decided to be honest about it and share it here on the blog. The idea was to share my experience here openly and honestly and the temptation to cheat on a diet like this is very real. I’m not going to hide the fact that I cheated. If you are planning on doing a trial like this you now know that cheating will be very tempting. As good as I was doing, I still cheated. Hopefully I can keep it to only that one incident. I hope this post serves as a warning to all those considering attempting a 30 day raw food challenge – resisting those temptations every time is hard!

When I ate that burger I realized that it didn’t really taste very good at all. Actually it was kind of gross, but good in a sick way. It was definitely a lot quicker and easier than making a big salad or chopping up a bunch of fruit but I’m not sure that the convenience made up for the lack of anything even remotely healthy in the food.

After eating the burger it was less than an hour and a half before I decided it was a good time to have a nap. I’m sure it was the food that made me tired because I hadn’t had any less sleep on Friday than I have on any other day during this trial. I thought I would lay down for an hour or two but it ended up being a 6 hour ‘nap’. When I woke up I felt groggy and disappointed in myself. Both for having cheated and for having slept away most of the free time I had that day. I realize that eating that burger cost me a lot in terms of potential productivity for that day. I could almost blame that burger for me not getting day 16 and 17s posts finished on time.

Other than the extra sleep and grogginess I didn’t experience any other adverse effects from eating the burger. Since eating that burger I have returned to the raw food diet and intend to stick it out until day 31. I am, however, modifying the rules for the remainder of the trial. I am now going to allow myself to eat a few more things to add more variety to my diet so that I don’t end up cheating again.

For the rest of this trial I will allow myself to eat the following in small quantities to allow for variety:

  • Salad dressings – dressings without too many preservatives and that are mostly raw ingredients
  • Small amounts of dairy – such as a dressing with small amounts of sour cream or cheese
  • Organic flax crackers/chips – I saw some at the organic market that looked decent. Since I don’t have a dehydrator of my own, I think that allowing myself to eat this will add some variety. I made some raw salsa that I would like to eat and I think I’ll use a bag of those organic flax chips to scoop it up.

I think that if I had the proper appliances for this experiment that things would go a lot smoother. I don’t have a food processor, a dehydrator, a juicer, or even a proper blender. All I have is a magic bullet (which is a piece of crap, don’t buy one). All of those appliances are very dear to most raw foodists. The use of those appliances allows for a lot more options when coming up with meal plans. If I had a dehydrator I could make my own flax crackers and dried fruit among many other things. If I had a juicer or a proper blender I could avoid a lot of the chewing that I’ve been complaining about and pack a lot more fruit into a big tasty smoothie instead of spending 2 hours eating 3 pounds of fruit.

If anyone knows where to get a used vitamix that’s in good shape, please let me know! I want one really bad!

I didn’t keep very good track of what I ate over the weekend. I know that I ate at least 3 large salads with hemp seeds and spinach added. I ate nearly an entire fruit tray from Costco. And I ate a bunch of fruit as snacks. Day 16 and 17 kind of blurred together since I didn’t take the time to write down what I was eating and it’s now been 3 and a half days since then.

Everything has been pretty normal feeling for the last few days. No more detox, and average in pretty much all areas.

I’ll be posting day 18′s post in an hour or two since I recorded what I ate throughout the day again. It’s now the beginning of day 19. I’m almost 2/3 of the way through the trial and I’ve got to admit that I’m looking forward to being able to eat whatever I want again. The guys at work had a big box of donuts on the table in the lunch room last night and it was awfully hard not to cheat (again). I think the only thing that stopped me was the fact that so many people were watching and I would have never heard the end of it if I ate one.

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