Tom’s Raw Foods Blog

Yesterday was a strange day for me. If you don’t believe me, go check out The Page That Was Supposed To Be A Post.

And I’d like to make one point extremely clear: I do NOT recommend that you simply eat cooked food because you feel like it. What I was trying to say is that if you slip up (or, as I do on occasion, DECIDE) to eat cooked food, don’t beat yourself up about it. Forgive yourself and eat raw food Now and in every future Now you encounter.

The occasional slip-up is OK, and if you need somebody to say it’s OK, I’m that person. I’ll forgive you, I’ll say it’s OK this time, just get back on the horse and start riding again. Just don’t make it a habit.

I kind of like the line that Jesus of Nazareth used: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more”. Except it isn’t really sin (OK, maybe it is if you take Genesis 1:29 literally) — except it is because it makes you feel bad.

Why feel bad about it? You did it, you can’t change it, so just renew your commitment and move forward.

The thing to keep in mind is that every relapse to cooked food is going to hurt you. You’ve worked hard to clean out your body and are on the road to optimizing it, and even one cooked meal is going to set you back. It’s going to take a while to clean out all of the gunk you put in your body from that meal. It takes about three days for the stuff to pass through your entire digestion track (that’s just a rough estimate), plus your body will have to get rid of any toxins that it stored in your body fat during the digestion process.

It’s kind of like one of my pastors used to say when talking about keeping your spirit pure and the need to stay away from influences that would drag you down (it really does apply here): If you put on a white glove and run it through a mud puddle, the mud doesn’t all “glove-y” and turn white, does it? Nope; the mud gets the nice, pristine, white glove all dirty. It contaminates it. So whether you want to keep your body or your soul / spirit clean (I encourage you to work on both), you need to stay away from the mud puddles.

It’s just that I won’t condemn you if you do mess up every once in a while.

Stay strong!

Smacznego,
Tom

I’ve been reviewing my blog posts over the past couple of months to see what I need to give you updates about. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• The Wake Up Every Day At The Same Time Experiment. I’ve decided to give up on that because it would involve going to bed around 8:30 PM every night. I get up at 4:00 AM on work days, which means I’d need to be in bed, on average, around 8:30 PM every night. That seriously cuts into family time, especially on my days off, and with small children, the few minutes I get at the end of the day with my wife after the children are asleep are precious. So I’ve decided to give up on this project — at least for now. It’s still something I’d like to do at some point in the future.
• Eating Something Fatty In The Middle Of The Day. I’m still thinking about this one and may give it a try. The main issue here is that I simply don’t eat much fat. If I do, I’ll usually eat it as an afterthought just before I go to bed (like a handful of raw nuts or a spoonful of raw almond butter). I still think it’s worth trying; however, I’m going to wait until my body finishes getting rid of the junk I put in it during my last “experiment” first. My main goal is to see the effect it has on my hunger and eating habits.
• Exercise. This is definitely the next phase of my new lifestyle. Right now it’s pretty much limited to walking and stretching. I was walking about four miles on my days off during the month of August and managed to sneak in 3-4 laps around a track on the days I worked (I have a great co-worker who also gives me great support — and who is also eating more fruit and walking himself. Go get ‘em, N.L.!). Among my mid-term goals are to study Roger’s exercise courses (I own several of them and will try to blog about them in an upcoming post) and develop one that will start the muscle building and toning process.
• Moving This Blog To Its Own Domain. Yes, I still want to do this, but need to come up with a good name for it first. I’d really like to find my own clever name for this diet and lifestyle (while giving proper credit, of course), and the business person / marketer in me wants to have some fun with this and make some money from all of this writing… So this is also in a holding pattern at the moment until the right idea comes to me (which it will).

So there it is. I think that’s all that I still have outstanding. Please leave a comment if I forgot something that you’ve been waiting for!

Smacznego,
Tom

I just wrote a really nice post about what I’m calling The 99% Raw Food Diet.

I was also updating my “About” page at the same time.

Of course, blog post ALSO became a page instead of a post.

So please take a few moments to click on the above link and read the Page that was supposed to be a Post.

Yes, I could change it, but I somehow suspect that it “happened” for a reason, so I’m going to leave it as it is, at least for now.

Smacznego,
Tom