Raw for a Day

I've been doing a lot of reading about the benefit of raw food. There are a lot of claims about what a raw diet can do for a person. A true raw diet is also vegan, and I'm not ready to give up chicken, eggs, or dairy.

So I decided to go raw for one day as an experiment. How would I feel? Would I feel hungry or deprived? How much extra prep will it take? I live-blogged the day so I could keep track of what I was eating and how I was feeling.

I woke up on my designated raw day feeling ready to tackle the challenge. I was up at 5:30 am to work out. I had the the typical bags under my eyes. My energy was a 7 on a scale of 10. I'm a morning person, so that's typical for me. And even though I'm on a break from the scale for the month of August, I did weigh myself because I'm curious as to how this would affect my weight.

After my workout, I made breakfast: a green smoothie made with 1 cup almond milk, 1.5 large bananas, and about 3 cups of spinach, plus some ice to make it thick. Yum!

I debated whether to have coffee or not, since it's not officially raw. But I did have a cup of half- caff after breakfast to ward off a headache.

I felt good during the morning and wasn't thinking about food. I had a snack of one medium peach, 12 almonds, and 4 dates.

By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was cranky and hungry. Don't know if the crankiness was related to the hunger or to my daughter being a pill. When we got home from our playtime, I made a big kale salad. I do mean big! This is a serving bowl! I took about 4 cups of kale, massaged on some olive oil and salt.

Then a made a pate` of sorts with 1/2 cup almonds, 1/2 walnuts, 1 T lemon juice, 1/4 of a large onion, 2 small carrots, a little salt, some dried parsley, and a dash of garlic powder. I processed that all in the food processor until it had a crumbled meat texture and piled it on my salad. I didn't eat all of the nut mixture, saved about 1/4 cup for another time. It was a delicious and filling salad.

Because of the onions and garlic, I needed something sweet to cleanse my palate, so I had a handful of grapes to top off my lunch.

I had a case of the afternoon sleepies, which is normal for me lately. I usually have a cup of coffee or even make an iced coffee with almond milk and Ovaltine. So I had a few sips of half-caff left over from this morning and a bowl full of grapes.

I would be interested to find out if that afternoon slump would be remedied if I followed a raw diet for a longer period.

Dinner was easy-peasy. This was my main concern, because I don't like making multiple meals to suit everyone's tastes. Ladybug (4 years old) had leftovers. Hubby and I had zucchini "pasta" with raw tomato sauce. The sauce was a bit like salsa, except with the hot peppers or cilantro. I need to find a different recipe if I try it again. Not that it wasn't good, just needs tweaking. I had a few bell pepper strips on the side for sweetness.

Here's the fun part of this post, gastrointestinal issues. I eat quite a lot of dietary fiber on a daily basis. But I think there was a lot of additional fiber that I wasn't used to. By dinner time, I was a bit gassy and bloated. That's definitely a short-term problem to deal with. But my advice to anyone who wants to dabble with a raw food diet, be warned that dramatically increasing your fiber intake in a short period of time will have those effects.

I skipped my usual bedtime snack because I just wasn't hungry. Other than leading into lunch, I didn't experienced any hunger today. I definitely didn't feel deprived today. I think preparation and having a plan really helped. I knew what I would be eating, so I wasn't tempted to reach for anything not raw.

I slept well, and woke up feeling refreshed from a good night's sleep. I did step on the scale again and was down 2.8 lbs, which tells me that my body will respond well to a raw diet for weight loss. I don't know that I could totally give up grains, eggs, and cheese, though.  But this was definitely a good experiment. I might try this again, I might even do this on a weekly basis.