Today was Day 1 of my more or less spontaneous Raw Food Challenge, to roughly overlap with the 2-week Pilates challenge.
My only cheats were two cups of coffee and some soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Here's how it went down:
Breakfast: circa 6 AM, up so early to drive Devon to the airport. Salad with spinach, carrot, celery, avocado.
Mid morning snack: micro greens bar and an orange.
Lunch: 11 AM, salad with chickpeas, lettuce, red bell peppers, and other things I devoured in 2 seconds because I was ravenous; apple; cold processed ginger lemon drink.
Random I'm-sleepy snack: 12:30 PM, another granola bar and a couple of ginger carrot nori crackers.
Post-nap snack: 4 PM, orange and tablespoon of raw almond butter.
Pre-climbing I'm starving snack: 5 PM, Raw-volution bar and sliced cantaloupe (only $2 at a market in the Mission!)
Post-climbing snack: 7 PM, apple and plantain.
VERY late dinner: 9:50 PM, salmon and hamachi sashimi with avocado instead of rice.
Final snack: 11 PM, pumpkin seeds, cacao nibs, apple.
So I'm not sure if I was eating all day just because I was out and about or if the nature of the food affects the way you process it. You get full faster if you are eating a lot of produce, and I've heard that it takes more energy for the body to break it down. I started falling asleep a little after noon, and I'm not sure if this was related to getting no sleep or somehow related to the food as well. I also felt incredibly zoned right around 9:30 PM before I got some food, but I imagine that could happen even if I was eating cooked food and put off dinner. Overall, while I feel that I had to work harder to keep from being hungry and my body was talking to me more in terms of being fed, I would say that my blood sugar levels, if anything, stayed more constant and I had more of the fiber and roughage from the plants to tide me over in between meals.
I'm sure these patterns will become clearer as the week goes on!
Bottom line: I thought this would be much more of a struggle, but it appears that my main reason for eating cooked food is because I feel that I should eat cooked/warm food. I grew up hearing that it's not healthy not to eat cooked food, such as soups. Yes, soups may be healthy, but it is really liberating to eat everything I wanted all day without having to substitute something "boring" (AKA cooked) or "healthier" (instead of, say, a kind of nut.) I suppose the only more-or-less "unhealthy" thing I crave is ice cream.. homemade raw or cashew nut ice cream, anyone?
Also, I feel incredibly fresh, clean, and detoxed (not that I had that much to detox from.. multiple rounds of margaritas with my lovely Alaska friends last night..) You truly are what you eat!
My only cheats were two cups of coffee and some soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Here's how it went down:
Breakfast: circa 6 AM, up so early to drive Devon to the airport. Salad with spinach, carrot, celery, avocado.
Mid morning snack: micro greens bar and an orange.
Lunch: 11 AM, salad with chickpeas, lettuce, red bell peppers, and other things I devoured in 2 seconds because I was ravenous; apple; cold processed ginger lemon drink.
Random I'm-sleepy snack: 12:30 PM, another granola bar and a couple of ginger carrot nori crackers.
Post-nap snack: 4 PM, orange and tablespoon of raw almond butter.
Pre-climbing I'm starving snack: 5 PM, Raw-volution bar and sliced cantaloupe (only $2 at a market in the Mission!)
Post-climbing snack: 7 PM, apple and plantain.
VERY late dinner: 9:50 PM, salmon and hamachi sashimi with avocado instead of rice.
Final snack: 11 PM, pumpkin seeds, cacao nibs, apple.
So I'm not sure if I was eating all day just because I was out and about or if the nature of the food affects the way you process it. You get full faster if you are eating a lot of produce, and I've heard that it takes more energy for the body to break it down. I started falling asleep a little after noon, and I'm not sure if this was related to getting no sleep or somehow related to the food as well. I also felt incredibly zoned right around 9:30 PM before I got some food, but I imagine that could happen even if I was eating cooked food and put off dinner. Overall, while I feel that I had to work harder to keep from being hungry and my body was talking to me more in terms of being fed, I would say that my blood sugar levels, if anything, stayed more constant and I had more of the fiber and roughage from the plants to tide me over in between meals.
I'm sure these patterns will become clearer as the week goes on!
Bottom line: I thought this would be much more of a struggle, but it appears that my main reason for eating cooked food is because I feel that I should eat cooked/warm food. I grew up hearing that it's not healthy not to eat cooked food, such as soups. Yes, soups may be healthy, but it is really liberating to eat everything I wanted all day without having to substitute something "boring" (AKA cooked) or "healthier" (instead of, say, a kind of nut.) I suppose the only more-or-less "unhealthy" thing I crave is ice cream.. homemade raw or cashew nut ice cream, anyone?
Also, I feel incredibly fresh, clean, and detoxed (not that I had that much to detox from.. multiple rounds of margaritas with my lovely Alaska friends last night..) You truly are what you eat!
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