A Change in Direction...

After two weeks, I've decided to change my course slightly. This week was pretty rough in a few areas. Work has been crazy so that hasn't helped my stress levels at all. And then there's the food.... We used the dehydrator a lot this week. It's really nice and it works wonderfully. However, a majority of the food that we prepared in it, was nut and seed based. We made bread, burgers, and pizza crust that all had a lot of flax meal in them. Very rarely have I felt any worse than after eating these types of food. They make me absolutely nauseous. In fact, I took some pretty good pictures of the burgers and I don't even have the stomach to include them in here. They all tasted fine, but they did not make me feel fine. Maybe it's just my system and I don't have a good tolerance for large amounts of these foods. I also wonder, if a majority of my protein is coming from nuts and seeds, how much do I have to eat to meet my requirements? I am drinking a Vega smoothie daily, but I still need a lot of protein after that. I just feel gross. I never got that marvelous feeling that is supposed to come from a raw diet.

So, like I said, I've decided to make a change. I'm still going to be eating a large amount of raw fruits and vegetables. I'm just going to allow myself to eat whole and cooked foods. I guess you could say that I'm going to stick with an Engine 2 type of diet, with large amounts of fresh produce (For more information about this just Google "whole plant based diet", "Engine 2", "Caldwell Esslestyn", or "The China Study"). Oh and I'm going to continue with smoothies because I think that the Engine 2 idea that they are unhealthy is ridiculous. Basically, I'm not going to be eating processed foods with no nutritional value. I'm also going to be cutting oil down to a minimum. The raw diet allows for oil, but I just can't get on that bandwagon.

I also just got Brendan Brazier's new book, Thrive Foods. He doesn't necessarily call for a 100% raw diet, so there is a good mix of raw and cooked recipes in there. I'm really excited to try out the raw banana bread that is made in the dehydrator. It doesn't call for any nuts or seeds! I promise I'll take pictures of some of these recipes and actually post them.

I have accomplished a lot in the past two weeks, though. I've kicked my coffee and diet coke habit most importantly! I'm going to have to make sure to stay on track with this one. I know how easy it is to start up again. I also have no desire to eat fried and processed junk which were some of my biggest weaknesses before. I'm also craving kale and black eyed peas like you would not believe! If I had some in the house, I'd make it up right now and it's only 10am. So, I'd dare say that I did "reset" some things in my body.

Overall, I'm not disappointed with this experiment. I learned some things and I don't think that it's a failure. I'm just going to keep the fresh produce and add in other healthy plant based meals. I'll continue to post about this adventure but I'm not doing it for a set number of days. I'm trying to make that healthy lifestyle for myself so that I can continue to work on my food issues.