Day 210

Thoughts: The RAW experience.

I have been 100% raw now for 12 days. I am participating in the 21 Day Cleanse with The Garden Diet creators. Before being entirely raw I ate majority raw with cooked meals every now and then.

During the first week of this 3-week Cleanse I've eaten a lot "cleaner", "lighter", and healthier than usual. I've taken in a great variety of fresh, raw, organic nutrients. I have experienced a new level of raw foods; all fresh foods and no dehydrated foods or powdered "superfoods".

I have been cleansing my cells with fruits and their juices, nourishing my cells with vegetables and greens, while providing nuts, keeping me from detoxing too fast, and to give me the calories to do work-outs, work on film set for 12 hours and have lots of energy.

Working out during this cleanse has helped me to detox without discomfort, to tone muscles, and to further squeeze out toxins via the lymphatic system.

Things I'm learning from eating only raw foods:
- I don't need as much food as I think I do
- It is OK to skip a meal
- Fruits are the cleansers, greens are the builders
- There is no such thing as breakfast, lunch or dinner - just different periods of the day in which I eat
- It is OK to just eat fruit for a meal
- It is OK to just drink a smoothie for a meal
- A grapefruit and orange juice is my favourite way to start the day - healthy - fresh - alive and sweet!
- A salad a day keeps the cravings away
- My taste for salt diminishes after only a few days of reducing my salt intake
- Keeping a food journal like this blog helps make me conscious of how I really eat
- Becoming conscious of how I really eat is a powerful tool for change
- I have to love myself to health, beating up on my self never works
- Healthy thoughts are just as important to full health as well as the foods I eat
- Each food has it's own vibration and serves to perform something individual in my body
- Eating only raw isn't as challenging as I thought it would be!
- That there is so much more for me to learn!
- It is so simple, clean, no pots and pans and hot kitchens needed!
- Raw food is more exciting than it sounded at first! There are so many delicious recipes I have discovered and with the assistance of Jinjee from the Garden Diet!

Raw food is more exciting that it sounded to me at first! There are so many delicious and creative recipes :)

I even found myself contemplating the design of fruit - like an avocado. How it is perfectly formed around the seed. And I wonder exactly how it grows from seed into fruition. It didn't just happen overnight, the avocado is a perfect and it created itself over and over again until it became a full avocado ready for picking. Then I automatically have a great appreciation for the fruit that is about to provide me with existence.

A friend of mine Lauryn has also been raw for the past week and shares her experience, "Well, put it this way- I'm starting week 2!! I've certainly learned alot about my body this week and I can't believe the changes that I have felt and seen. And I've learned that raw Brussels sprouts in salads are a really bad idea:)

I started off less than enthusiastic :) I'd just come down with a killer flu and thought it may not be 'the right time'. Off course that was just my mind making excuses (like my juicer breaking last week, turns out, I didn't juice a thing this week) and I reasoned that lots of fruit and veggie's could only be better for me than the pastas etc I'd normally eat. End of day one I was GLARING at the tv for all the ads of foods I couldn't eat. At this point I was just eating veggies. 2nd day I was so sick I took the day off work and decided to just tough it out. However by lunchtime I was feeling unbelievable! Still a little sniffly but my god - I just felt... Bright? Is the only way I can really describe it. More alive than I can ever remember feeling. And it's stayed with me. For ages I'd thought I was a little depressed just because I had no energy no matter what I did. Since Wednesday, I've been bouncing out of bed at 6am!

My skin is completely clear and has a ridiculous glow that everyone keeps commenting on. I'm wearing barely any makeup. And my eyes are clear, perfect white. Not bloodshot, I've lost 3kg doing nothing! And have had to start running the last few days just to burn the energy off so I can sleep at night:) A- mazing:) I realized by Thursday when I'd actually forgotten my lunch and was raiding the fruit basket at work:) that I haven't really eaten any fruit in years. I eat a ton of veggies but no fruit. I was over raw veggies at this point so bought a lot of fruit. That's pretty much what I've eaten the rest of this week. Fruit for breakfast and lunch, raw veggies for tea. Absolutely amazing. I think I'm going to keep this for most of my diet and just have one cooked meal a day - if I feel like it. I just can't explain the energy. I feel like I'm a light that's just been turned on. Don't want to lose that feeling ever again:)"

Lauryn Cartwright - one week raw foods

Visit:
www.theearthdiet.org
www.thegardendiet.com

Challenges: How Can I Live More Lovingly? Allowing my self to be expressed rather than my ego. Remembering that my life is not about me. Putting the 'me' aside.

Triumphs: Detox Tip from Eek:

"My best detox tip is BREATHING, breathe, breathe, feel joy, gratitude and compassion to fulfill your cells. Feel the sensation and after that see what food your body craves! And let go of fear, feel free and let your choices come from a source of love." www.thegardendiet.com

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: The juice of a big beautiful scrumptious grapefruit and orange! Some sesame seeds.

Lunch: 2 nectarines. A avocado with walnuts. Cherries mmm mmm.

Dinner: 2 avocados with walnuts. Yes was definitely craving the fats today :)

Loving the avocados!

Dessert: Cherries and strawberries!

Exercise: A gym workout doing weights, and then I played some racket ball, and walked back to my hotel. Working on set in the streets of Pittsburg - shooting exterior Squidman shots today ;)

155 days to go!!!

Photo from KC Confidental.