BUT YOU'RE BARELY SCRAPING BY!!!

Yeah. So I can't tell if I'm killing this adulthood stuff or if I'm barely getting by and messing up everything I can along the way. Somehow I decided that studying for the FE, a superhuman feat that I barely touched during the 2 months leading up to my exam, gave me license to blow off all other worldly responsibilities and deadlines.

Bad adult example #1: put off renewing my car registration until it was already 2 weeks late. (In my defense, I never received a renewal notice BECAUSE I NEVER UPDATED THE RESIDENCE ADDRESS).  Fun fact - the DMV will not tell you ANYTHING if you admit to not being the owner of the car and just being the driver. The insurance company, on the other hand, will tell you approximately 50% of the information you need if you start to cry and yell and bitch about the DMV while on the phone with them. Unfortunately, neither agency is really up-to-date with the latest information being paraded on their website, so 50% of the dirty details that you get by pulling teeth and having a breakdown while on the phone with them will be lies anyway.

Good adult solution #1: Wait sufficiently long to hope that the first person I talked to at the DMV has gone to lunch, call back, impersonate my mother and announce that I am traveling and therefore must have my daughter submit the registration form for me, and she is a shit show and is already 2 weeks behind on doing it. Note that I gave the DMV no other information than the same license plate number and a different first name, and suddenly everything I have to do is crystal clear and they walk me through the process of having "my daughter" renew the registration for me instead of saying "I'm sorry madam, we can't help you, your mother has to do everything." So basically I can do everything and supposedly it won't accrue any more late fees than it already has, so my stupidity has only cost me $52. What is $52 to a broke grad school student than a mere two nice sushi meals at a semi nice restaurant?!

Bad adult example #2: Wait until the last possible day that I can to get my graduation gown. Little did I realize this might not be the best strategy since apparently they do not have an endless supply of gowns in every size and have been known to run out.  At least I had the foresight to exacerbate this problem by not pre-ordering a gown!

Why did I not do any of this, you ask? Again, while "studying for the FE" I blew off even finding out how many dress-up items I need to wear on my body so that they let me into the auditorium to receive my diploma. (In case you're still wondering, the answer is 4).

Good adult solution #2: Show up at the bookstore without a plan, find out they still have my size, and not having preordered makes it easier for the employee because she doesn't have to look for my order on a form.

The other examples are less dramatic, but similarly involve running around and doing a thousand errands (by a thousand I mean two more, who are we kidding?!) at the last minute, if not after.

Soo… it all got done somehow, and it seems so haphazard, yet it did come together, and in this day and age, what more can we really ask for? Is it the journey or the eventual, 2 week delayed, $52 fined destination? And does anybody else really do this any better at this point?

Before I met you, did I write!

For some reason, my bike ride today reminded me of Alaska in a way more intense than anything else has reminded me about Alaska for a long time. Perhaps it was the evening light, which seemed practically eternal when cast by the sun's low angle. Maybe it was the smell of sweat mixed with sunscreen on my skin, or maybe the fact that I was just a little too tired, but enjoying the experience nonetheless.

Maybe it's because this month, one of the inner voices I always used to have has been coming back in a big way. The one that always made me feel so inspired, the one that finds strength in introspection, the one that goes crazy over vast landscapes.  THE VOICE THAT PUT POEMS IN MY HEAD. I had the shocking realization just last week that I stopped writing when I got back from Alaska. Let that sink in for a minute.

Sure, that artist's voice dominated when I was traveling, but in a different way.  Then, it made me what I diagnosed as idealistic, naive, and desperately spiritual, what with all the yoga and meditation that I thought would help me have an authentic experience and somehow make the wider world sphere.

And you know what? I've been doing yoga at least once a week for the past month and I feel like my brain has been swept clean with a broom. But I don't know if it's all the revelations I've had this past month that have made space for me to motivate myself to go to yoga, or if going to yoga has cleared up the space in my brain that allowed the revelations to enter.

After all, space is a landscape in two conceptually distinct ways, and we love and fear both of them. Literally, human beings are not evolved to live without large open spaces in our lives (think Peninsula rolling hills as you go on a pre-sunset bike ride), and these spaces are very powerful. Also, we need space in our minds, space from too much human interaction, space whist in our romantic endeavors in order to experience all those things that make us unique and loveable. But too much space from others makes us lonely and depressed, and too much space in our surroundings creates vertigo.

Like Tereza and Tomas, I maintain that vertigo is not the fear of falling, but the fear of our desire to fall - so we need the open spaces, yet we live in constant fear of getting sucked into them. Quoting a "Women of Dartmouth" speaker - "Of course I think about death in that 'Are you ever driving and think you could just not turn here' way." And when climbing, why are we afraid of falling? The falling itself is fine. It is the decision to fall (or lack of decision) that is terrifying, and the aftermath can be quite gnarly. Back to Alaska, when one of our teachers said that he had horizontal vertigo in Antarctica - the landscape was so identical that if he started off running in one direction, he would never find his way back to the base.

My relationship with open space has always been clear and uncomplicated. My relationship of emotional space, on the other hand, has been playing a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with all the other things going on in my life.  Rebuilding that relationship has been one hell of a ride, and it's been so interesting and rewarding to watch it coming together this past month.

After I spent the winter feeling like everything around me was happening to me without my control, this spring it feels like everything is coming together with my control and I can take an active role in it. There are years that ask questions, and years that are answers. The year whose first anniversary it is on May 20th is definitely a year that was an answer!! 

In Four Years' Time

I had an inadvertently intense over-coffee conversation this week. Not only did it almost make me late for class, but it made me completely unprepared to sit in class. Yes, how could I sit there and blink and nod and pay attention when I really needed to be sitting under a tree, doing my best Buddha impression while trying to process the heaviness of information had had just been bestowed on me? Bestowed by someone pretty damn qualified, to say the least.

It's been a pensive couple of months, actually a pensive year.

It's been a hard year, hard year for love

Some really good conversations have come out of it, and I think the underlying question that we all probe at is this:

How can we define self-actualization for ourselves, and what life events have influenced us to settle upon that particular definition?

On that subject, I will leave you with 2 pearls of wisdom that are both in code.

1) Flowers grow from shit.
2) You are probably a lot stronger than you think, and if you think you're weak, maybe you're lucky!

The implications of changing your mind in a world without time travel.

Today on the list of things that crowd my brain instead of null pointer references and expression trees is the validity of a question you can ask.

Rilke said that you should live the questions, and eventually live your way into the answer.

But what if one day you realize* that you weren't asking the right questions all along?
(*By "realize" here I can only mean decide. So no, I don't come to some big realization that the answers and goals I have been so far living towards are somehow wrong. I simply decide to change my mind. After all, a girl can change her mind even more often than she changes her shoes, whose supply is not infinite, and you will eventually have to come across a pair you have already worn. No, changing your mind is free, especially if it is that time of the month, or if that time of the month is looming sometime in the vague future, or it if you are stressed, or if it is Tuesday - you catch my drift.)

So you decide one day that the questions you have been trying to answer weren't the right questions to ask after all. Is there a way to go back, retroactively, and live your way into an answer you were never aiming for?

I still believe that when you ask a question, at some point you will come to realize that you have had the answer all along. But I think that comes from struggling with that question, being open to cues in your environment that would help you answer that question, and structuring your choices based on who you were at the time. Then, if, putting it bluntly, you decide that you have made a mistake, by asking one "what if" question and attempting to live your way into that answer, when really, you should have been asking, "what if NOT," there is NO way to go back and relive that alternate path!

Because you can really only project "what if" questions into the future, and after you live it, realize that it is the only way it could have been. That is the only way to handle "what if'ing" without being extremely, unnecessarily cruel to yourself. OF COURSE it couldn't have been different, if it is the way it is! If things were different, nothing would be the way that it is now, so NOTHING could have been different.

Therefore, if you think that you asked an incorrect question in the past, all you can really do is decide which question you want to project into the future. 

On growing up.

I had a sort of mental health day today. It went like skipping class so I could attend to the ten much more pressing things I had to do that were continually put off in favor of problem sets that had actual DEADLINES. Oh, priorities. I wanted to clear my to-do list but realized that the really pressing things weren't even on the whiteboard because I haven't had time to put them down. Well, it's done now!

Anyway, a relaxing morning and bike-free afternoon is putting me in a thoughtful mood. I am watching people around me make the transition to adulthood in a way that feels so alien and light years away, yet the fact that people my age are having these profound milestones with careers and families means that at some point, it is waiting for me too. Maybe that is what being an adult is - being continuously thrown off equilibrium as the people in your life disperse more and more with respect to where they are in their lives. (I am totally picturing a spreading plume when I write the word disperse.) Anyway, while I can delay growing up by living in a grad dorm and avoiding children and gainful employment, I thought that I would be older when I KNEW other people who were "adults."

But let's step back and take a look at that word for a minute. There are so many times this year when I had the sinking realization that this is it,

I am more or less on my own,
I have been doing the feeding myself and cleaning up after myself, making good life decisions (debatable), and not being a total shit show for a few years now. I've had laundry, bills, chores, to-do lists, safe and dangerous situations to choose between, vitamins to take and sunscreen to apply. Yet despite that fact, I am still a complete and utter SHIT SHOW.

But guess what?! So is everyone else. That's right, everyone who is doing this in-your-20's thing doesn't have a single clue. And I'm starting to understand that it doesn't really get better in your 30's either. No, there is no milestone in life when suddenly, you wake up on top of your shit.

When I was in grade school (ok, and college), being 20 sounded so OLD. There were things I put off thinking about because I knew I would have to think about them "in my 20's." Wearing business professional clothes. Worrying about wrinkles. Not painting your nails different colors. But none of that happened!

Let me reiterate.

Nobody around us has a single clue.

YOU NEVER REALLY FIGURE IT OUT. Well, maybe your whole life will flash before you until you die, but until then, I am never going to wake up one morning with a career, family, and picket fence lined up and with the knowledge that this is the life I have been working towards.

No, like Rilke said, you spend your whole way living the questions, hoping that someday, you will live your way into the answers.

This book will change your life even if you don't let it.
(Side note: I stumbled upon it in a small shop in New Hope, PA, on a sunny day when I planned neither to buy a prom dress or be introduced to a whole new world of poetry, introspection, and revelation. Every time I read this book, I learn something new about life and myself.)

Except you never get the answers in real time! But every once in a while, you look back and realize that YOU HAD THE ANSWERS ALL ALONG, just not in a way that you could have processed or understood at that time.

I remember struggling with a really tough life decision a couple of years ago, calling my mom, and her saying "I think you already have all the information that you need to make this decision. You just need to think about it."

This freaks me out because we are so profoundly underestimating our potential. Whatever answers you need, whatever you are struggling to extract from life, you already possess.  It's kind of like.. you can see something coming, but only in retrospect. When you look back, all those silly things that weren't signs and didn't mean anything are suddenly signs to whatever event followed. So I wonder if they really exist, or if our brain constructs them after the fact? Kind of like a dream that your brain paints right before you wake up to illustrate a noise that you hear when waking up.

*~*~*~*~*

I need to stop right now and conserve whatever brain power remains to find out why my dimensionless time data is not matching the scale of the Fischer function.

In summary:
-All adults are shit shows
-You never figure anything out.
-But that's only because you already know everything (you just can't use it at the time.)

Good night!!!

I've been here before.

Almost exactly 6 years ago. When running stops being a sport, a way to see the world, take a break, get away, and becomes something so much MORE:

Suddenly it's a tangible manifestation of the Earth's love for you through your contact with the dirt.
And I loved you every mile you drove away.
Your sneakers are actually hugging you through your feet.

But this time around there is nothing painful, no bruised knees, no sacrifices, no give-and-take that I have to endure when negotiating my daily run.
(knockonwood)

Thank you feet, thank you songs coming on the iPod at just the right time, thank you two extra miles that flew by. Maybe I will run a marathon this week (just not all in one day!)

So tonight, we are young.

Ohh hey I've been back in the States for exactly 6 months. In 4 days, the alleged "golden year" is coming to a close and I can honestly say it has probably been the best so far. I spent 50% of it traveling the world to come back to a whirlwind of grad school acceptances, visiting friends, exploring America's national parks, and settling down for a new beginning in San Francisco.

On the plane flying back to the States, I made a list of the things I did while traveling. It is a ridiculous, hilarious list, more full of bucket to-do's and funny once-in-a-lifetime opportunities than concrete realizations of wisdom (that is what my Corbett writings were devoted to, burning the midnight oil with Tulsi and looking back on the first part of the experience.) It would be interesting to make a list of new events that entered my life over the past 6 months, then compare the two lists. Sometimes I feel like life has only been more ridiculous in San Francisco, when I came back to feeling "in my element" and embracing my role as the kind of person that stuff just HAPPENS to, you know?

And even though I have been back in the States just as long as I was abroad, I am STILL uncovering details of how the trip has changed me. All good, so far!

I feel so blessed to realize how precious, good, and important something is even while I am living it. Never again will life be so wide open and full of opportunities, waiting to be shaped and begging to be enjoyed like an endless waterfall on a scorching hot desert day.

On the radio, we heard November rain.

Ohh hey blog. There is something about throwing a full-time job in the mix that results in having zero time to write.

Not the most important thing that's happened is.. I am still realizing how profoundly changed I came back from my 6-month stint out of the country. I am observing character traits in myself that I have to work on toning down, while before I left, I lacked these character traits completely and wanted to work to develop them.

For example:
-Patience
-Being more open, fair to people, generous with my feelings
-Ability to be busy without being exhausted
-But at the same time.. doing something MEANINGFULLY useless with your free time.

I guess because I have significantly less free time (more or less working four jobs, thank goodness three of them don't add up to any significant hours), any me time I have is just so much more energizing because I have to draw the same benefits from it.

Like hanging out on the floor right now, listening to Mademoiselle Spektor on repeat, drinking a Thursday beer and not really thinking about packing for Tahoe. About getting into the parking lot at 11 PM and hiking in 2 miles to an appropriate campsite spot..
Yep, adventures only get better when you are busier.

So this is actually the first time I worked in an office full time. Before it was all lab or the silly pool. I kind of love it. For anyone who knows about my intense love affair with the great out of doors, this should be surprising. But it's so much more stable and safe than the POOL. And apparently, I am fine with barely moving before 2 PM. If you stay in your PJ's until 2, that is lazy. If you sit at your desk doing work, that is dedication. (Ohh hey study habit insight for grad school.)

But it's good to keep in mind that there is a huge, incredible, amazing world out there that is so much more REAL than your cubicle, people with more tangible problems, living more satisfying lives, and everything you do for most desk jobs is kind of.. not real. A made up virtual religion like math.

I guess that is motivation to do something that is "real" long term. No dropping things off clouds for me?

Lazy Friday Musings of a Fellow San Franciscan

Today is probably the most pathetic excuse for a summer day since I moved here. Yeah mid July. According to the weather prediction, it is 61 (even though the high is 57), and I think I have to subtract at least 4 degrees to account for the freezing wind that constantly blows down my street, assaulting my non-insulated apartment.  Either way, for a former New Englander it is pathetic that I wore my long spandex bottoms and a fleece (!) lined spandex top when I went for my run. I brought that top exclusively for snow camping trips, and it is the second time I wore it running. If this was New Hampshire and 20 degrees colder, I would be reveling in the fact that it is sub freezing and be sporting shorts and a T-shirt for my run.

Despite the fact that all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and cuddle with a nalgene of boiled water (I REFUSE to turn on the heat in the middle of the day on July 13! I will not be defeated!), I actually had such a wonderful run bobbing along to Russian pop that I ventured past the Presidio St. underpass bridge for the first time since I moved here. That is, excluding any drunk runs I went on, possibly in the dark, when I got hopelessly lost and did not know when I was, but I don't remember those/they don't count.

If you have ever driven with me, you know the motivating power of really good Russian pop (and "good" in this sentence can only mean "bad.")

Now I am sitting in the lovely Velo Rouge Cafe on the corner that serves delicious chai, but that has a hopelessly horrible vibe if you are trying to get any real work done. Seeing as how it's Friday and I have probably had the most pathetic workweek, I decided that I can dedicate the rest of my afternoon to blogging instead of pretending that I am going to solve this fluid mechanics problem before my hair turns gray.

It's a good thing I wake up early, because I did not do one productive thing after lunch all week.
Monday: drove an hour to meet with my advisor in the morning, so clearly it's OK to relax and shop in the afternoon.
Tuesday: did mind numbing research database compilation all morning (that could have probably been automated if I was slightly more creative) and accepted the fact that if I made no further progress between 12 and 2, I should just give up for the day. This was followed by a pang of guilt when I returned from the climbing gym in the evening, and I diligently worked until I got the required task done and sent off for review.
Wednesday: had a wonderfully productive morning where I caught up with 3 friends on Gchat, applied for about 5 jobs, and even did something research related. After lunch, decided I needed to dedicate my time to getting ready for meeting Brynne at 6 PM. Brynne is my friend, so it's important to be well prepared.
Thursday: sick day, obviously did not do any work.
Today: I woke up at a whopping 5 AM and jumped right into a programming tutorial in my online course catalog. This was followed by an entire morning of fluid mechanics, but as I already mentioned, it is Friday, so it is best to relax after lunch in preparation for the weekend.
Besides, I might start a temp job very soon, and then I will be very busy going to the office for 40 hours a week on top of research, fluid mechanics, and online software courses, so no reason to exert myself until it becomes necessary.

I hope that was Bridget Jones-esque for you.

Now, even though it is freezing, I would not technically label what I am wearing as "clothes." I don't mean to offend anyone, but any skin tight , black, stretchy bottoms garment that precisely shows off the shape of your ass is STILL not considered pants. Good thing they are underarmour brand and at least offer some compression, so it is an improved idealized version of my ass you are seeing. Since showering after my run was clearly out of the question, I figured that I should keep my running attire on as a visible excuse and apology for the sweaty, greasy-haired chic look I have going. Of course, since I changed into flip flops, I probably just look moderately ridiculous - but if everybody else in here trying to do work is really just people watching like I suspect they are, I know they all saw me zoom by at the end of my run ten minutes earlier.

Let's talk about you. How was your latest run? How is the weather wherever you are influencing what you are doing for the day? 

What do YOUR recent Google searches say about you?

Check it out. I am athletic, I use public transport, my friend broke his toe, I can't spell "wilderness" nor do I know the meaning of "concurrently," and I am hopeless when it comes to MATLAB.

But seriously, MATLAB. Handles? Children? It's bad enough when I'm driving on the highway and see those Cloud billboards on which I don't understand a single word, yet I know they have nothing to do with those white condensed fluffy things that engulf San Francisco. Now I also have to work with an array of words whose elementary-school dictionary meaning is suddenly devoid of any tangible, comfortable connection.

I wonder if using words that *very* vaguely relate to their original meaning is better than making up a whole new language. In the second case, it would appear to an outsider that you were speaking another language, and in the first case, it would appear that you were just loopy.

What do YOU think?!

Five Years Time

Recovering from a wonderful Tahoe weekend: sunburned, starving despite having eaten everything non-raw that I own(ed), semi-permanent tree sap tattoo on my leg, room is in shambles, I am good as out of hair conditioner, incredibly behind on my research, and oh so happy. Ah, to be young.

On Wisdom and Time

I feel that.. perhaps my travels have granted me the ability to step outside of myself ever so slightly to examine events present or past in my life. After having actually exited my American life and returning as a completely different person, I had the experience of attempting to reintegrate myself with this time-capsule preserved life as an outsider who was living and breathing my identity during and before my absence.

Now I find at times that I still take advantage of this outsider's perspective and get a clearheaded evaluation in situations when we are tempted to lie to ourselves. And I just feel that due to the common threads that link humanity, the world has so much more simplicity we are not always noticing during our day-to-day lives. Simplicity means lack of worry, simplicity means applying a mental equation system to see things as they are and not in a cloudy, wanna-be way.

But I find that with greater life experiences, simplicity also means a straighter-shot arrow weeding through the lots of ways that we imagine things could be and separating out the way that we have come to learn they really are.

Anyway, I wish time moved in a different way sometimes, maybe not so linearly, so I would have the chance to sort through all these thoughts and still in some parallel way get done what I should have gotten done while sorting through these thoughts.

i beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer...
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Let's take it one step further.. how can living this question make me a better person and inject meaning and love into everything else I do in my life? 

How to Sleep Better and Yoga Musings

1. Don't get into bed thinking about things that are going to make you want to jump around and giggle.

2. Don't stay up until the wee hours of morning making cashew milk (recipe here.)

Towards the end of yoga today I got in a really weird funk that consisted of a bad mood I could sense was unrelated to anything going on in my life (for a summary of my life, see #1 above.) I thought it might have to do with the moodiness that comes with eating raw food again, even though I had rice for lunch. Then I thought it might be some weird detox from all the twists we did in yoga. Also I thought my body may be sensing that I am more into Pilates than Yoga and perhaps this is my last yoga class? Which didn't seem true but I was trying to figure out why I felt so uncomfortable, melancholy, and.. nostalgic? Little kid like?

Anyway I got done and came out and saw Meagan and we had a nice chat and I decided that I probably needed some cooked food to balance out my mood. Well, later I found out (by one part inference, one part intuition) what was causing my bad mood and it was pretty wild. Anyway, once it was done I felt fine getting a living platter at Source because my mood was raw-food-unrelated! 

12:14 AM - do you know what that means? Time to make cashew milk :) 

The best kind of Friday

It's a sprint through the sprinklers kind of Friday.

In GGP, right as Lake of Silver Bells comes on, and I remember the dream I had last night,
about two encounters
(or was it two dreams, each about one encounter? the world may never know)
with someone I know used to know,
(who shares the name of a Colorado van driver)
in Asia.

So my iPod asks me,
"What have you learned?"

I think I know.
The dream was familiar but... different.
You are different.
I am the same?
No, I am very different. That's what I've learned.

What else?

Risks.

People change, so is that the risk?
Trust is the risk.
Do I trust that you will change or that you will stay the same?
That depends on how much I change.
Oh hey - the more things stay the same, you know, the more they stay the same.

BUT....

YOU are not the van driver.
I think?!

But just a little bit.
Unless I am wrong and you are not the van driver AT ALL.
Time will tell.

You're like a squirrel in the middle of the road - halfway there but don't know which way to go.
I am in the middle of the road with nowhere everywhere ANYWHERE to go!
The road is endless infinite beautiful.

No diet = no puns today

I woke up this morning and simply could not stand the idea of being a cashew-milk eating, caffeine-shunning hippie so I brewed up some java and ate the most satisfyingly processes protein bar of my life (with a banana, OK.)

I will definitely go back at some point - I just brought up my dehydrator to make raw bread! And I don't think it's worth the time and investment to throw in a piece of raw bread on your cooked sandwich - strictly unscientifically speaking, you won't get any of the benefits of an all-raw detox and it's kind of silly to put in the money and the effort to have raw bread with, say, an egg.

What I WILL do with all the time I will save chewing is move all these entries over to a new nutrition-focused blog, and make this blog back into one of a more personal nature. Comment if there are ANY food related issues you are curious about! (Toxins in raw peanuts and what exactly it means to be "USDA organic" are high on the list.)

Namaste!

Raw Detox Diet: LOGISTICS

Things to consider if you want to try the raw diet!

TIME: Surprisingly, it takes much longer to "cook" raw food, whether you are doing extra chopping, blending, soaking, dehydrating, the list goes on.. If you are soaking anything, keep in mind you may need to start the night before.

You will also need to schedule extra time to chew and go to the toilet (no pictures, sorry.) If this is going to be an issue because of your workplace etc., try a weekend cleanse.

MONEY: Ways to save money on produce are PYO's, farmers' markets, buying large quantities of one thing that is on sale. Ways to spend money are weird things you can't really pronounce from the natural foods store. Something for every size wallet!

ORGANIC: IMO, if you are eating a lot of produce, if you eat the peel it should ALL be organic. One of my older neighbors tried to get into a debate with me about whether we should trust the USDA's labels, since he doesn't even trust the San Francisco Fire Department. I am at pains to draw the parallel. If this controversy piques your interest, drop me a comment and I will gladly look into it.

BODY TEMPERATURE: Oh hey feeling like you're going through menopause prematurely (or again). Being cold was definitely more uncomfortable than being warm, but I would notice hot flashes if I walked into a hot room or if I was exercising. Just today, so much blood rushed to my head during Pilates class that my face was beet red for the entire class - kind of like beer glow. Ways to deal with this: get a blanket, eat more, bail.

STATE OF MIND: When I was all raw, I noticed that I was more stressed out and perhaps more depressed for no reason. Maybe I only noticed this because mid whining about something that seemed SO IMPORTANT, my mother told me to go eat a sandwich. When I added a cooked meal, I noticed such an incredible feeling of well-being and happiness after the cooked meal. Maybe this diet will make you slightly bipolar. I did not notice any mood swings today; on the contrary, I was eyebrows-to-the-sky excited all day. I think eating raw may take whatever you are already feeling and amplify it. Recall that colors were brighter for me and I was more into my music. I also cried when reading The Giver; while this is definitely more emotional than I would normally get, I welcomed the ability to live the book so intensely. You will feel like you were leading An Overcooked Life before!

VITAMINS: I stopped taking vitamins within 2 days of this diet because I felt like I did not need them. Definitely do not take A or E because you can overdose on these. If you are going all raw, B complex every other day or so can be nice since you can only get B12 from animal products (and if you are eating raw fish, I doubt that fish munched on dirt to bring you your B vitamins). No need to take Vitamin C - see TIME part above. (If you don't understand this reference, go take a double dose of vitamin C and wait half an hour. I am not responsible for anything bad that may come as a result of this.)

ENERGY: When I was all raw, coffee was unnecessary, but I got incredibly exhausted around 4 PM. I think digesting all that is hard work! Solutions: nap, eat more, cheat and eat cooked. I think drinking a hot cup of tea with non-raw honey is a good way to get some energy back if you don't feel like going all out for a cooked meal. If you are doing this for a cleanse, that has virtually no calories (unless you're REALLY into the honey.)

COFFEE: Don't do it. Just try! I have been a daily user for almost 8 years, and I have no qualms telling you to try to go off it.

Speaking of not coffee, I'm going to hit the sack and add a second part if I think of more logistics tomorrow. If there's anything I missed that you're curious about, feel free to comment!

Suparatri.

How To: Try a Raw Detox Diet!

A couple of readers have asked me how to get started on a raw cleanse with the intention of weight loss, so I will walk you through my initial detox week with emphasis on weight loss benefits.

If you thought that going raw simply means putting the frying pan away for a couple of days and munching on cold foods, boy, have you got a think coming. Aside from fresh produce, most things that you can buy at a store are NOT raw. By definition, raw food has not been heated above approximately 114 degrees F (this cutoff varies) to keep the enzymes in food from denaturing.

Some foods you may think/hope are raw, but aren't:

Peanut butter made from "Roasted Peanuts" is NOT RAW because the peanuts have been roasted. Nuts are only considered raw if it is specified on the package. You can get them at natural food stores. I have been staying away from raw peanuts because of aflatoxin, but this has to be verified. Raw almond butter is pretty easy to find. You can even get raw walnuts at Safeway.

Dairy is NOT RAW unless it is unpasteurized and specifies "raw" on the label. Be careful with this!

Sugar, honey, spices, vinegar, olive oil is not raw. Olives have been cured and are not raw.

Coffee and tea are HOT and are not raw. I believe that the process of making these out of the plant involves heating them above 118 F, so don't think you can cheat by munching on the espresso beans or making ice tea with teabags.

Dehydrated legumes in bulk food bins: I am not sure if chickpeas and other bulk beans that you can buy at a Whole Foods or natural foods market are raw. I soaked my chickpeas from Whole Foods for 4 days, waiting for long tails to pop up, but apparently the sprouts are very small (see image here.) I will update you when I soak my second batch.

Weight Loss:

If you are going for 5 days tops, you can probably make it eating almost exclusively produce, with some nuts thrown in to get your fats. Produce actually has a lot of protein if you are eating enough of it, so you don't need to worry about eating a ton of nuts to get your protein.

Some key players:

-Spinach, kale, other greens: iron and PROTEIN :) Note that greens have ridiculously few calories, so eating any amount of them to make it count will make you feel super full. Pace yourself.

-Bananas and mangos: fairly calorie dense fruits. Apparently a lot of raw foodists eat bananas like there's no tomorrow. I can't really eat a lot of fruit or I start feeling sick from all the sugar. Maybe you can adjust to this if you push through, but I am still living my life, and I don't intend to spend a week of it nauseous.

-Avocados: if you can get your hands on these, you are set. I have been eating an avocado approximately every day on this diet.

-Coconut oil: since it is apparently AWESOME and helps you lose weight. It is also clearly more calorie dense than lettuce, so it will help you fill up without feeling bloated. Pop a half a tablespoon into your blended creations.

-Whatever else is ORGANIC and on SALE :)



Sample "recipes":


If you think that not heating your food means saving time, you have a second big think coming. You can ingest calories much more effectively if you make smoothies or juices, rather than chewing everything, because you will be so hungry that you will swallow food before the 20 recommended chews per bite, leading to an unhappy tummy. If you want to get really fancy, you can soak, sprout, dehydrate, the options are many!

-Spinach Banana Smoothie: This is one of my favorites. Blend a banana, a bunch of spinach, some cilantro or parsley, lemon juice and/or rind, cayenne (my cheat). Put blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries into it to make a "soup" and eat with 3-4 celery sticks instead of spoons, biting off the celery each time you scoop with it.

-Guacamole with orange pepper chips: Combine a lot of avocado with much less chopped garlic, cilantro, and lemon juice. Scoop with orange bell pepper (or any other color, orange peppers are just the cheapest) instead of chips!

-My cashew milk recipe: After doing some research, I came up with this recipe:
 1/2 cup cashews
 2 cups water
 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
 some coconut oil
 some RAW honey (or agave if you are vegan)

Soak cashews for at least an hour and rinse. Combine all ingredients in blender. This will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. You can dilute the cashews farther if you want this to be more calorie dense.

Serving suggestion: stir the milk before pouring because cashews tend to separate slightly from the water.  Fill up a bowl with some raw granola (I like Living Intentions Chia Ginger Superfood Cereal) and add fresh berries if you like!


COMING UP SOON: Some logistics and things to consider, as in, advice for YOU!

Weekend W-RAW-up

For lunch on Friday, I had another spinach banana smoothie (SURPRISE!), as well as a piece of toast with an egg on it.

Here's my spinach and banana smoothie:

I don't have a picture of the egg, but just picture an egg with a halo around it and you get the picture. That was the most divine egg I had ever tasted. Perfectly cooked with coconut oil instead of olive, silky and smooth, it tasted like sheer perfection. I swear it made my vision even sharper than all the raw nutrition I had been consuming all week.

Dinner involved a ham and cheese panini, but it must not have been enough, because I was FREEZING all night.

Saturday involved some raw "cereal" for breakfast, a burger for lunch, and a burrito for dinner. I felt great! I was so much warmer, happier, more energetic. I've decided that two raw meals and one cooked meal every day is a good long-term balance that I can happily maintain.  My taste buds would be happy eating raw all the time, but in my opinion, the side effects are a sign that something is wrong and not just a "detox period."

Anyway, if a detox period of indefinite duration includes:

-Ridiculous moodiness;
-Afternoon lack of energy (this never happens to me);
-Simultaneous hypothermia and hot flashes a.k.a. "sensitivity to hot and cold";
-Gnarly dry skin and breakouts,

Then I don't think that I want to live my life in a transitional detox state!

Benefits to 2 raw/1 cooked:

-I kind of don't drink coffee anymore. HOW can this happen and WHAT is the world coming to?! I have been happily hooked on the brown IV drip since I was sixteen, and I have never voluntarily bypassed my morning cup and still felt great and alert.
-You basically get to eat whatever you want all the time. When you are eating raw, chewing is like a second job. As soon as I finish with a meal, I am looking for my next snack. This is what hunters and gatherers must have felt like! I'm sure that foraging for the cheapest avocado in the Mission is no less straightforward than discerning among edible and lethally poisonous plants while dodging tiger attacks or arrows from neighboring tribes.
-And when you get to your cooked meal, you STILL get to eat whatever you want because no way are you not starving after eating raw for the past 18 hours.
-Morning vitality and great endurance minus dry skin, shivering, or mood swings. Please tell me what there is not to love. NOTHING, I say! The RAW-volution is here! 

B-RAW-Kfast Day 5

So, I woke up this morning determined to eat something cooked but ended up eating raw because it's all that there was in my house and convenient. I just wanted a bowl of cereal, and all I had was raw sprouted granola and cashews to make milk. (Well, I didn't even make milk because Dean was still sleeping and I don't know who would want to be woken up to the sound of cashews stick blending at the crack of dawn on a Friday morning.)

So instead, I mushed up a banana and some ginger juice and used that as the "base" for my granola, with blackberries and raspberries thrown in.

Yum?

I was feeling a little weird this morning. That is why I wanted to switch back to cooked.  By weird, I mean kind of shaky and strung out. In a physical, not emotional way. I woke up feeling happy because I decided that I could eat whatever I wanted. Currently I am drinking hot non-raw tea with non-raw orange clover honey.

Whether I eat cooked or raw for the rest of the day, I will try to make the meals themselves be more like "cooked" meals. (Example: raw cereal with raw milk instead of a fruit puree for breakfast).

My skin is still incredibly dry, so I put olive butter all over my face this morning. Ingesting a tablespoon of olive oil probably may have done just as well. Also, I took a B vitamin since I figured I may be running low on B 12, and that seemed to help me feel better.