Yesterday was Day 2. Yes, I made it through another day of 100% raw foods — and learned a lot on the way.
Today is Day 3; I’ve “sabotaged” myself so that I’ll successfully complete the day. More on that in a bit.
First, about yesterday. The day started out great, but towards the end of the day, I was feeling kind of lethargic. Part of it could be attributed to the fact that I’m working a midnight shift, but I discovered after I returned home that there was another reason: I didn’t eat enough.
Roger Haeske took a look at my food log over at FitDay.com and told me that he didn’t think I was getting enough calories, especially for somebody my size (6 foot 3 inches, or about 185 centimeters). I know that I’m far above my optimum weight and that I’ll lose a lot of weight as a result of this switch, but I feel like I’m eating constantly and I’m definitely never hungry. The reason my caloric intake is so low right now, according to Roger (and it makes sense to me), is that the fruits and vegetables are packed full of the kind of fiber your body can really use. As a result, it’s making me feel full on fewer calories.
Roger recommended that I try to increase my calorie intake; bananas are a good choice. I’m trying to do that.
But getting back to this morning (when my shift ended), I forced myself to eat half of an avocado. I didn’t want to but knew that my fat intake for the day was much lower than it should be. Almost instantly the lethargic feeling left (although I was still plenty tired).
Today I’m going to eat my avocado half a lot earlier, with what I call my “second meal”. I’m eating half of my vegetables now and will eat the other half later; when I eat the second half of my vegetables, I’ll eat the avocado shortly afterwards. I want to wait about 30 minutes or so to give the other vegetables a good head start on digestion, though. I’m pretty sure that the resources needed to digest an avocado are different than the resources needed to digest the rest of the vegetables.
I’m also working another mid shift tonight and the only foods I’ve taken with me are raw foods. While I do have access to a 24 hour convenience store, there’s isn’t a single speck of raw food in the place, and the rest of the stuff doesn’t appeal to me.
My wife made a vegetable soup today (she stole some of my spinach and carrots. Thief!). It did smell good and I thought about having a bowl, but not all that seriously.
So what happened to the six step transition to an all-raw diet? Well, the urge was “there” the other day to try an all-raw day. I made it through that day and just decided to keep going. I still reserve the right to revert, but right now I don’t want to! I’m losing weight and feeling good (and am fitting into clothes I haven’t worn for years), so I’ll keep going for now.
Some challenges await me. I’ll be traveling (probably) in a couple of weeks; it should be interesting to see how a transcontinental flight and a few nights in a hotel does for me. I’ll need some help with this, of course, and am going to do some research in Roger’s forum to see how others have handled this.
Smacznego!
–Tom
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