Fail to Plan or Plan to Fail

When I started this new way of eating on the first of January, I didn’t really have a specific plan or menu. I had a general idea and plan. But like my girlfriend last night said, "Everyone tells us what not to eat, but no one tells us what to eat." So the first couple of days of my diet, I kind of floundered around from meal to meal trying to figure out what to eat. To help others out, every two days, I plan to post what I ate and what exercise I did. And once a week I will post the results if any. About every other day, I plan to post other health-related articles. I can’t post actual recipes of what I ate unless it is my own creation, but I plan to soon post links to the books I got the recipes from.


1/3/07
Breakfast—Blueberry Smoothie

Snack--- Apple

Lunch—Batter from my herbed raw bread. I couldn’t resist! I can’t give the full recipe because it’s not mine--- but it had apples, pecans, flaxseed and about 7 other spices including garlic and onion which I love. It's Onion Herb bread, page 78 from Living in the Raw GourmetRaw bread sounds gross but it uses no flour or yeast and isn’t cooked but is dehydrated in an oven, the sun or dehydrator. The batter of this recipe tastes great, we’ll see how the bread tastes later. I made it into hand size patties like hamburgers to use as a base for future sandwiches instead of real bread. The fragrance of the spices in the bread is filling my house and smells so good even upstairs.

Dinner---2 Baja Cheeze Burritos with Taco nutmeat and red pepper corn salsa. From Pages 151, 154,164, and 189 of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes I will say that they took a little more effort to prepare than I would have expected for something called raw food, but well worth it! This is gourmet raw food after all. When I asked Ronnie how it looked, he said "Worthy to be served in any restaurant." When he tasted mine, he said, "It was bursting with flavor," and I agree. One burrito was more that filling, but I had made two so like a pig I ate them both because they tasted so good.

Snack--- 1 Raw Donut hole. Page 228 Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

1-4-08
Exercised 20 minutes on the rebounder.

Breakfast--- Blueberry Smoothie

Lunch--- 2 pieces of the raw Onion Herb bread I dehydrated yesterday. page 78 from Living in the Raw GourmetIt was so good. I didn’t need anything with it. Don’t let the name fool you, there is no flour, sugar, what or yeast in this bread. The main things are apples & flaxseeds. Lots of fiber and omega oils.

Dinner---1 Baja Cheeze Burritos with Taco nutmeat and red pepper corn salsa. From Pages 151, 154,164, and 189 of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

1-5-08
100 Crunches. Crunches are like half sit-ups

Breakfast--- Almond blueberry portage—raw. Page 36 Living in the Raw Gourmet I didn’t think it tasted great, but I didn’t use fresh coconut like the recipe suggested. It was quick and easy to make.

Lunch---Tuna on the raw herbed bread I made before, page 78 page 78 from Living in the Raw Gourmet. I didn’t choose tuna because I thought it was healthy or a good diet food. I chose it because it was easy. My husband was making one for himself on real bread and offered to make me one, I agreed as long as he put it on my raw bread.

Dinner--- 21/2 cups of my real ham, potato, cream and butter soup. Not the best choice for a diet, but it tasted good and was still around. I’d planned to eat a raw chili concoction. I had wanted to make it in the morning but got distracted. Turns out, this raw eating takes some planning, as the recipe needed to "marinate a few hours." I still had some of the left over burrito stuff that I really like but wanted to save it for lunch. Ronnie is already trying to figure out how to take those to work for munch as he likes them so much from the couple of bites that he had of mine.

Changes--- I noticed I haven't needed snacks the last few days. My new bathroom habits which I will spare you the details, are evidence that all the new fiber in my diet is cleaning me out. I have much more energy. As a matter of fact, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and started writing this at 6:13 a.m.. A big change from when I met Ronnie 41/2 years ago, I hadn’t gotten out of bed before 8:30 a.m. in many years. Lastly, five days into this new diet, I’ve noticed a significant change in my skin. I had beautiful, almost perfect skin in high school, but have had some acne from my 20’s through current 40’s. I’ve always said that it’s unfair to have pimples and gray hair at the same time! Anyway, I’ve had a couple of zits the last tow days, but the rest of my skin is brighter and smoother and softer. I think it’s because of all the healthy oils in my new healthy living diet. Many people say t hat they see changes in their skin after drinking alkaline water. But for me it’s taken the water and the diet..

I’m drinking lots of Alkaline Ionized water from my Melody Water Machine. I drink about 5-8 16 ounce glasses of water a day. It is high pH water and I’ve worked my way up to a number 3 setting which gets me about a 9 Ph. I cook with a number 4, which gives me about a 10 pH.
1.6.08
Breakfast--- Dehydrated raw fruit scones Page 75 Living in the Raw Gourmet broken up into pieces for a delicious cereal with almond milk. I’ll talk about the negative things about cow’s milk in another post.

Lunch---Went to El Torrito Restaurant. Took one bite of my favorite chips and was repulsed by the thick coating and taste of lard. Something that I’d never had the taste buds to discern before. I had their Mexican Caesar Salad, two glasses of Tropical ice tea sweetened with Stevia that I carry in my purse. Two vegetable enchiladas, ½ cup pinto beans, and 1 ½ tbs. sweet corn cake. The corn cake has sugar and butter, so that was the first actual sugar that I chose to eat in a week. The beans wouldn’t belong on an alkaverian diet. The cheese on the enchiladas wouldn’t belong on a Vegan diet and the cooking of the food wouldn’t belong on a raw diet. I will explain the differences between those styles of eating in a future post.

Dinner---Raw Chili and 3 spoons of salsa.
The raw chili was a totally new experience for me. As an American, I’m used to eating Chili, and most foods, cooked and warm. Even after I prepared it and let it marinate for a day and a half, I sat looking at it trying to buck up the fortitude to try the first bite. Cold chili sounded completely unappealing. I couldn’t even get my husband to taste it. With fear and trepidation, I took my first bite and was low and behold it was good, very good. Because I lacked so many ingredients from the original recipe, and had to improvise and over come, I will publish the modified version soon. I’ll tell you now that it had no meat or beans but rather carrots and lentils and lots of other great tasting fresh vegetables. The original recipe had celery and I will omit it in mine as it tasted out of place in the dish.