road to raw

about a month ago, on my way up to one of my yoga intensive weekends, as I was eating cooking dough and driving up i-15, my sister called me. she wanted me to do this raw food cleanse with her. . . huge pause on my end of the phone. now, when i think of raw food, i think of a certain thanksgiving where my aunt made almost all raw food and everyone there was like, "what? this is NOT thanksgiving food." The pies were weird, the crackers were bendy. basically, not a good first impression. BUT i decided to do it anyway . . .

. . . fast forward a month later. i’ve lost about 10 lbs, just by changing my diet. i still exercise, but don’t feel that guilty if i don’t every day. when i do work out, it’s usually around half hour, unless i’m doing yoga. i feel so healthy. i eat a lot of fruits and veggies. i did the raw thing for about 3 weeks, which included a juice feast (like a fast, but you drink a lot of juice that you must juice yourself.) i didn’t love the juice feast, but did it for 4 days. now, i would say that I eat about 60% raw and the rest pretty close to vegetarian. i don’t want to say that i am vegetarian because i feel ike that labels and restricts me.

the interesting point i want to emphasize is how my view of food changed drastically. i used to have STRONG sugar cravings and usually NEEDED some type of sugar after each meal. now i really don’t. i do occasionally, but I tend to fill that craving with something more healthy then a handful of chocolate chips. i know i had a least a mild case of candida, most people in America have it and don’t even know it. it was causing me to be addicted to sugar. another thing that i thought was an interesting side effect was the way i felt about meat. i used to love meat and planned my meals around it. now after being more aware of what i am putting into my body, and seeing clips from “food inc,” i am more meat averse, unless it is the good grass fed, true free range stuff.

resources that have helped me along this journey are:

-www.roadtoraw.com: the website that hosted the raw food clease and had amazing videos and support.

-www.therawalicious.com: an amazing blog with so many how to videos and great ideas for total health. i want to be this girl's friend!

-www.greensmoothiegirl.com: loved her site and have used it for yummy, healthy recipes. i have a green smoothie almost every morning now.

-“the kind diet” by Alicia Silverstone: a lot of great recipes

-www.bountifulbaskets.org: amazing food co-op that allows me to get lots of fruits and veggies for great prices. pictured above.

-my sister amy: it was so good to have someone to call anytime i was craving something or wanted to talk about how we both were progressing, or other totally gross things that only sisters share, or when i stepped on the scale and it was lower than i thought it would be and when i fit into my thin jeans.

i didn’t mean to make this post so long, but i haven’t really written about this transformation at all. i have learned so much about my body, the food i eat and so many other amazing nutritional things. a month ago, if i read this, i would have probably thrown up all over this post and told whoever wrote it that there was no way i was going to even try to get healthy this way. so don’t judge too quickly. go to one of those websites, and if you are feeling adventurous, sign up for the roadtoraw.com cleanse. it will change your life. i promise.

also, am considering doing more health related posts that have to do with my discoveries . . . so stay tuned. :)

have an amazing day!