Day 8 - I'm getting the hang of this...

I feel like I'm getting the hang of things... granted, I'm still pretty bored with eating a very limited diet, but yesterday, what made the difference was adding the fresh juice. I've been feeling weak in the afternoon, but yesterday I finally got out my juicer and made some carrot/celery/apple juice and it was great! I think the vitamins and minerals in the juice went straight into my bloodstream and I felt better almost immediately - it was weird! So, I'm definitely going to make sure that I include at least 2 or 3 glasses of fresh juice every day!

Yesterday's food:

5 apples

4 bananas

Long hothouse cucumber

2 1/2 cups carrot/celery/apple juice (about 6 carrots, 4 stalks celery, 1 apple)

steamed cauliflower and sweet potato

herb tea with honey

Now, off to see the new "Star Trek" movie for Mother's Day with my son! :)

Day 8

I'm excited that I've made it through a week being raw! Granted, it's not the pure 100% that I had planned on, but I didn't expect the Crohn's flare-up to mess things up for me! The tiny bit of steamed veggies I'm getting is part of a raw foods healing program, and I am very limited on what I can eat right now since I need to be low-fiber to heal the ulcerated areas.

Today, I'm going to try juicing as well, because living on just apples and bananas isn't doing it for me right now. Can't wait until I get my green smoothies back; it's been two days since I've made them.

In fact, it was funny yesterday that my youngest son who is non-verbal and has severe autism is my "Iron Man" green smoothie boy! He is on a picture exchange communication system and he requested independently for me to make him a green smoothie yesterday! I thought that was so great! I am so happy that he loves them, as it gives me the chance to get those awesome greens in his diet!

So, I have released 6 pounds and am now at 206! Like Angela, I will have to celebrate with something special once I go below 200 lbs.!

Yesterday's food intake:

5 apples

Smoothie of 5 bananas and 4 dates, blended with water

Lightly steamed cauliflower and sweet potato

Herb tea with honey

Now off to peruse some juice recipes as I'm getting a bit bored with my limited food choices. That's not to say I don't enjoy a good mono meal of fruit, but I am going to have trouble if I have to do this for weeks on end!

Day 7 - One week raw!

Well, I made it! One week raw! Aside from a few bites of cooked sweet potato (prescribed by David Klein as part of the raw foods Crohn's/Colitis healing plan), I made it through eating out at restaurants and cooking for my family this week!

I'm also down 6 pounds! That's much more than I thought I would have lost this week, but I'm sure that my body is releasing a lot of junk, based on how I have been feeling. I'm also very proud of my raw buddy, Angela, who lost a whopping 9 pounds this week! Whee! We totally rawk!

I felt pretty lousy yesterday and even took a nap, which I rarely do. David's healing plan actually recommends that you go on complete rest when recovering from Crohn's, but that's not going to happen with the demands of my life. Still, it was nice to get the chance to rest a lot yesterday, thanks to my husband working from home.

I miss my green smoothies, but hopefully, a few weeks on fruits and juices will heal my gut to the point where I can add them back in again.

Food intake yesterday:

3 apples

4 bananas

3 more apples

few bites of steamed sweet potato

herb tea with honey

Today, I'm going to try to make some of the recommended juices since I'm feeling better. Yesterday, it just seemed like too much work to make juice.

I have my spinning group coming over tonight, so I may be challenged by the goodies everyone is bringing to share. Fortunately, I can make myself a big banana/date milkshake, and that will be my treat!

Day 6 - Crohn's Flare-up...

Well, yesterday started out okay... but by the afternoon, I was experiencing the familiar lower right abdominal pain...

I have mild Crohn's Disease, which was diagnosed last year with a colonoscopy. I have two inflamed areas near my ileum, which is what's causing the pain. I've been several months without significant discomfort (little episodes here and there), but yesterday what pretty bad, which was why I didn't blog last night... I was lying in bed with a hot pack on my stomach.

I think what triggered it was, ironically, raw foods. You see, the SAD diet, devoid of fiber, doesn't irritate your intestines because there's nothing to scrape against the walls of your digestive tract. I think I flared up yesterday because I've been cleaning out my intestinal tract this week, and the fiber is too irritating to the areas in my ileum that are ulcerated.

Yesterday, I had 2 quarts of green smoothie with a lot of fiber, particularly from the kale. I started feeling ill about mid-afternoon, when the fiber started to pass through my system. I tried having a young coconut (water and meat) thinking that would be mild, but the pain increased. I even tried a few bites of cooked sweet potato, but it tasted awful to me, so I didn't eat it.

Last year, after my initial diagnosis, I had ordered David Klein's "Self-Healing Colitis and Crohn's," which is basically a raw foods approach to healing this condition. His book recommends basically a fructarian diet to heal your intestines. In the healing phase of his program, raw veggies, some fruits (like citrus and other acid fruits), nuts, and fats are avoided, and you eat mostly sweet fruits with some juices and steamed veggies, if desired. I thought that because I hadn't been experiencing a lot of pain for the past several months that I could skip this and just go directly on to an unrestricted raw foods diet. My body told me otherwise.

So, this means for now, no green smoothies, no salads - just fruits (no peels) and juices and lightly steamed squash or sweet potatoes. I'm going to try to just do the fruits and juices and avoid the steamed veggies, unless I really need to. I will do the healing phase of his program for at least another week, and will then probably start the healing juice phase over a weekend, as I need to rest while I do this. The juices obviously put no stress on the digestive tract at all and can accelerate healing.

David healed himself from ulcerative colitis and has helped a lot of people heal their colitis and Crohn's too. He has an impressive list of testimonials from doctors as well that his program works, so I'm going to go for it. Luckily, I love fruit!

I am probably going to call him for a consult, as I have some questions about when I can add green smoothies and other blended foods back into my diet. Meanwhile, I'll continue to make the green smoothies for my youngest son who has autism, because he loves them, and they are the only greens he gets in his diet, due to his rigidity around trying certain foods.

So, this will be my path for a while. Luckily, the solution is still raw foods, and I will obviously lose weight, but I would not have chosen something so restrictive to start, but I have to heal my gut for fear it will turn into something worse.

My food for yesterday:

Breakfast: green tea, 1 banana

Mid-morning: 2 quarts of green smoothie (oranges, bananas, several leaves of kale, bee pollen, coconut butter)

Early afternoon: 1 1/2 apple

Mid-afternoon: Cherry cashew Pure bar

Dinner: young Thai coconut, water and "meat"

a few bites of cooked sweet potato (because at this point, I was willing to try anything)

Evening: Sleepytime Wellness tea with honey

So far, my pain is less today, but all I have had is water and a few apples (peeled). I'm willing to do whatever it takes to heal, so it's going to be an interesting several months ahead...

Day 5

Ahh... it's been a long day! I woke up this morning congested, which I'm assuming might have something to do with detox and my body moving stuff around. Really tired today as well and I'm pretty pooped right now. But... I am feeling really good overall. I am really trying to tune in to my body and eat just when I'm hungry. I'm pretty much "grazing" all day, but I think this works well because it keeps my blood sugar consistent.

I was excited to see that I'm now at 207.9, which means I'm down 4 pounds! Woo hoo! I don't plan on weighing myself on a daily basis throughout this journey, but this week, psychologically, I think it helps to see my weight going down! I am guessing that it will not keep up at this rate, nor would I expect it to, as rapid weight loss isn't healthy. Hopefully, my body is making an initial purge (hey, how much do toxins weigh anyway?) and then my weight loss will stabilize at a healthy rate.

I took my older son to his autism social skills group this evening and they had a party, as it was the last meeting for this year. There was all kinds of junk there, and I just watched and spun on my drop spindle as the plates of cookies, brownies and other assorted SAD garbage was passed around. The only bright spot was one mom had just returned from Kuwait on a trip and brought fresh honey dates! So... I had something I could snack on, and they were yummy!

I'll write more tomorrow, but wanted to log in my food intake for today:

Breakfast: green tea, 1 banana

Mid-morning: 1 1/2 quarts of green smoothie (oranges, bananas, kale, bee pollen, coconut butter)

(I was not hungry for lunch... the green smoothie held me until mid-afternoon!)

Mid-afternoon: 2 apples, 1 banana, 1 lemon Lara bar

Dinner: huge salad of 1 head of romaine, cucumber, and 1/2 avo

Snack: a few honey dates - yum!

I notice that I'm eating a lot of the same foods. I am actually not bored by that! I really love my daily green smoothies; they tend to be pretty much the same fruits, but I change the greens every day. Previously when I was raw, I think I focused too much on exotic recipes and a lot of dehydrator foods. This time around, I am feeling that simpler, local foods are what I want to make the bulk of my food intake. This is not to say that I don't want to try some fun dehydrator foods, but I'm not going hunting for expensive, imported tropical fruits, nor do I have the time to create a lot of dehydrator dishes. Fortunately, we're entering the summer season and to me, nothing is better than all the fresh fruits and veggies to look forward to!

That said, though, a little variety in the foods I eat is probably a good idea, so tomorrow, I will go through some of my raw un-cookbooks and see if I can try some new recipes!

This weekend, I will (hopefully, weather permitting!), doing some work in the garden. My husband kindly built me raised beds last year, but unfortunately, my garden didn't do well for some reason. So, I'm hoping for a better gardening experience this year! Even though I started with organic soil blend and compost in my raised beds, the plants all died. This year, I am adding more organic compost and manure to make the soil nice and rich.

I will be planting a lot of tomatoes (nothing better than a fresh vine-ripened tomato!), cucumbers, strawberries, melons, peppers, asparagus, artichokes, basil, zucchini, string beans, and probably some eggplant as well. I didn't get started early enough to get some greens planted, but I saved my broccoli rabe seeds from the plants that came up as volunteers this winter, and will sow those in the fall, along with other greens. I will also probably put in some raspberries (we already have wild blackberries).

I obviously won't get to everything this weekend... I'll be happy if I'm able to add the compost and manure to the beds to mellow for a couple of weeks, then will pick up some plants and seeds and get things going!

Day 4

Much better day today... still have a bit of a lingering headache, but I think I'm on the tail end of caffeine detox. Yay!

Busy day and not much time to post right now, so I'll keep it simple:

Breakfast: 1 banana, a few sips of green tea

Mid-morning: Pure bar (chocolate brownie)

Lunch: 1 quart green smoothie (oranges, bananas, spinach, bee pollen, coconut butter)

Mid-afternoon: 1 banana, fruit salad (1 banana, 1 c. strawberries, 1 apple), raw kombucha drink, and another banana (I really seemed to be into bananas today!)

Dinner: Huge salad of romaine, cucumbers, 1/2 avocado

Evening: Sleepytime Wellness tea with honey

Angela mentioned this on her blog, and I'll do the same... I "met" this lovely lady on Ravelry (www.ravelry.com - knitting, crocheting, spinning online community) when she posted to the Raw and Living Foods forum there that she was starting raw foods within days of my starting 100% raw. We're going to be "accountability partners" to support each other through this journey. So nice to have a friend to do this with - I'm looking forward to amazing results for both of us!

Lesson learned today: Drink more water! Even with drinking green smoothies and kombucha, I know that I'm not getting enough water! Still need to work on finding a quiet time to meditate. Those two will be priorities tomorrow!

Day 3... Eating out is hard!

Day 3 has gone pretty well, with the exception my continuing caffeine withdrawal headache and going out to dinner tonight with my family. You don't think about how hard it is to get a decent raw foods meal at a restaurant until you try.

We had planned to go to Fresh Choice, only to find that the location listed on the website wasn't there. (Weird that they wouldn't have updated their website if the restaurant was closed.) So... where to go when everyone is starving? After driving around, we ended up at Marie Callender's, but all the regular salad choices on the menu were heavy on the meat, fatty dressings, and cheese, so I chose the salad bar. Big mistake. Yes, they had some cut-up lettuce that may have been fresh at some point, and a few raw veggies, but the rest was cooked food (bacon, croutons, soups, muffins) - something that pre-raw wouldn't have bugged me, but when you're starving... well, it was disappointing and frustrating to say the least.

So, I tried to pick the lettuce that looked the least wilted, some raw broccoli and cucumber slices and tried to not look too forlorn while the rest of the family hunkered into their pasta, french fries and corn bread. Sigh. I finally had to ask the waiter for some Caesar dressing to make the salad edible. I know it probably wasn't raw, but after being out all day at my spinning lesson and famished, I decided that it wasn't going to kill me to dip my fork into a little commercial salad dressing on the side.

Good things that happened today:

I weighed myself this morning and I'm at 208.9 - down 3.1 pounds! I am wondering if it's water being released, because I don't expect to lose that quickly. I'll take it, though! :)

Great spinning lesson with my lovely 80-year old spinning teacher, who is a shepherdess and raises Shetland sheep. She wants me to enter my handspun yarn in the county fair, so I think I will do that! I bought one of her fleeces from the shearing in March and am trying to decide if I'll try to wash and process the fleece myself or send it off to be prepared for me.

What I ate today:

Breakfast: green tea and some water (was not hungry)

Mid-morning: 1 quart of green smoothie with oranges, bananas, salad burnet (amazing herb that tastes like cucumber - I'm so glad I planted it!), bee pollen, and coconut butter.

(Skipped lunch due to spinning lesson that went longer than I anticipated - bad idea, because I wasn't prepared with any kind of snack to take with me so came home 3 hours later extremely hungry.)

Mid-afternoon: 1 banana, fruit salad (1 banana, 1 c. strawberries, 1 apple)

Dinner: selection of semi-fresh cut-up lettuces, broccoli and cucumber with about 1 T. of commercial Caesar dressing

I think I deserve a "mudslide" for dessert - an Alissa Cohen recipe of soaked almonds, frozen bananas and dates... tastes like a thick milkshake... I will add a little raw cacao! Absolutely delish!

Lessons learned today: I need to do some research about what local restaurants serve in terms of healthy foods (salads) so that I'm more prepared next time. I need to make sure I have snacks available and ready so that I don't put myself in the position of being ravenously hungry when things don't go according to plan (running late, healthy foods not available, etc.).

Day 2

Well, my second day went really well... have had a pretty nasty headache most of the day, but I think that's detox coming off coffee.

Today:

1 cup green tea

fruit salad of 1/2 c. strawberries, 1 banana, 1 apple

1 1/2 quarts green smoothie (orange, kale, banana, bee pollen, coconut butter)

2 carob fudge balls (Alissa Cohen's recipe)

another cup of green tea

1/4 c. spicy walnut taco meat (ala StarFire on Raw Food Talk site) on romaine leaves with guacamole, salsa and a drizzle of cashew sour cream on top

herb tea with honey

Hoping my detox headache will be better by Monday! Now, off to cruise new recipes to try! :)

How Day 1 went...

As mentioned in my previous post, I went "cold turkey" back to a 100% raw foods diet yesterday. I may be "cheating" just a little with caffeine... instead of the usual 2 cups of coffee with cream and sugar, I am allowing myself to transition more slowly off of caffeine by drinking green tea. Previous detox from caffeine withdrawal has given me mind-numbing headaches, and with two special needs kids, I can't be out of commission. I will slowly transition off of all caffeine, but right now, need to take it slow.

What I ate yesterday:

Breakfast: 1 cup of green tea, fruit salad (1 mango, 1 c. strawberries, 1 banana)

Mid-morning: 1 quart of green smoothie (2 oranges, 3 large frozen bananas, 1 T. bee pollen, 2 T. Artisana coconut butter, 2 handfuls of baby organic spinach, water to blend) - shared with my youngest son, who just loves green smoothies! :)

Mid-day: (had a headache and wasn't sure what I wanted to eat) 1 cup of green tea, 1 Pure bar (chocolate brownie)

Mid-afternoon: 2 bananas

Dinner: huge salad of one head of romaine and 1/2 avocado drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Evening: 1 cup of "Sleepytime Wellness" herb tea with some raw honey, 1 banana

Regaining control... back to raw foods and health!

I recommitted to raw foods yesterday, May 1, 2009. I am tired of struggling with my weight. I have tried Weight Watchers, but it's just not working for me this time. I was 100% raw a couple of years ago for about 3 months straight, and I felt so great! I lost 30 pounds during that time as well.

Why back to raw foods? Earlier this week, I happened upon a YouTube video by a young man named Philip McCluskey www.youtube.com/watch. He also has a website: www.lovingraw.com. He has not only achieved a dramatic weight loss through raw foods, but if you listen to him, he just seems so peaceful as well. I wrote to him and this was his replied with very kind words of encouragement, which I appreciate very much.

Dear Mary,

Thank you for writing, and thank you for your kind words. Sounds wonderful, I say go for it. I didn't have anyone to support me in the beginning either.... I didnt even know anyone that was vegetarian. lol

Sometimes putting yourself out there and blogging can help keep you accountable, and really encourage you to press on when you might have quit before. You can even email it to friends (brave move) if you want to really put the pressure on. What I found that is that it can be a wonderful cascading effect as you start to lose more weight, it encourages you, then you want to keep going by sheer motivation.

I believe in you. Go for it!

With Purpose,

Philip McCluskey
www.lovingraw.com

I am also inspired by the success of an amazing lady whom I first "met" through Raw Food Talk, Morn Cremeens - www.mornc.com/index.html. Her website/blog detailing her journey with raw foods and weight loss has made me realize that making a chronicle of my experience will not only help to keep me on track, but to perhaps give someone else hope.

And finally, there is Angela Stokes from the UK, who literally transformed herself through weight loss with raw foods www.rawreform.com/content/view/17/30/.

There are others who inspire me as well, but these three exceptional souls are the spark behind my quest for health and wholeness with raw foods. When I think of how we were created, to me, eating foods in their purest state seems to me to be what was part of the divine design.

So, Philip, Morn, and others... I'm going for it. I'm making myself vulnerable by posting pictures of myself that make me uncomfortable. I will be challenged daily by having to still cook food for my family, who do not want to join me at this time, and a very busy lifestyle with two children with autism (one high-functioning, one severely affected), so time for exercise and self-nurturing is hard to come by, but I will continue striving toward my goal.

Not to be morbid, but I'm turning 50 this year. My youngest son has severe autism and will require lifetime care. I want to be the one to care for him, as long as I can. I pray that by turning to a healthy lifestyle, I can return my body to vibrant health and be able to enjoy my next 50 years on this earth, God-willing. I know that I have to make positive changes to my lifestyle now.

They say that midlife is a new beginning. I pray that this is my second chance, to recreate my life to what I want it to look like for Part 2 of my existance.


Starting weight on May 1, 2009: 212 lbs.
Height: 5'2"

Starting measurements:

Bust: 45"
Under bust: 39.5"
Waist: 41"
Hips: 50"
Butt: 54"
Right thigh: 30"
Left thigh: 30"
Right upper arm: 14.5"
Left upper arm: 14.5"
Right calf: 16.25"
Left calf: 16.25"
Right wrist: 6"

Goals for this month:

• eat 100% raw every day
• start exercising, either walking or exercise video
• meditate 10 minutes per day

Current health challenges:

• osteoarthritis in right thumb and wrist
• fibromyalgia
• mild Crohn's Disease
• overall joint pain and muscle achiness
• large vision-obscuring "floater" in left eye
• low energy
• frequent headaches

I'm mentioning all the challenges so that I can monitor progress and improvement in my physical condition by changing my diet to whole, raw foods.

I will update with a new photo and measurements at the start of each month, as well as chronicle my daily food intake, and experiences associated on my journey.

Wish me luck! Any supportive messages and comments are very much appreciated! :)