And it’s here! Day 7 of Going Raw

One week. I survived a week!

Well, it is still a little premature to say it, since there are a few more hours left for the day, but I think I can safely say that these hours should pass without me faltering on the diet.

One week of raw food. 21 meals of uncooked food. Nothing heated above 115F, and since I don’t have a dehydrator that meant only room temperature food. But I survived and live to tell!

The basic principle of eating raw is to consume a diet of primarily (or exclusively) un-cooked whole plant food (75-100% of the time). The diet is centered around fruits, vegetables, nuts (in moderation), and seeds (in moderation), nothing cooked above 115F. While you can choose to be only 75% raw, I thought since I am doing it for a week, I would go completely raw.

This is the first time I have ever tried a crazy diet idea and seen it to full completion.

After my triathlon, I was looking for another challenge to focus my energy on, and thought the idea of going raw for a week seemed challenging enough. Plus I had heard of the benefits of people going raw, besides the obvious weight loss, people see an increase in one’s energy, vitality, and normalize weight problems. Raw foods also aid in firmer, youthful skin, radiant appearance, stronger nails and hair, something I was in desperate need of. Of course a week of this diet is not enough to see all the above changes, but I hope that with this one week cleanse/detoxification, I would try include more raw food in my regular diet.

I started the month of October with a gluten free and sugar free diet, which I will continue through the whole month of October. Bottomline of all this dieting is that I want to lose weight! Along with the gluten and sugar free diet, I plan to follow my regular exercise routine of running, cycling, gymming and yoga. But this week when I went raw, I did not exercise too hard, practicing just yoga breathing exercises and a few light yoga asanas. Since I wasn’t taking in too many calories, I did not want to overdo with the exercising just to quit on the diet because I was on the verge of fainting!

Since October 1st, I have managed to lose a little more than 2 kgs (about 5 pounds). It might not seem too much, but I am happy with it because honestly I wasn’t going for a drastic decrease in my weight. Besides the weight loss, I feel my stomach has gone flatter and an overall reduction in inches all across my body. I also see a nice glow on my skin and hope that being sugar free this month would help in keeping my skin clear.

And since I still plan to be on a GF and sugar free diet this whole month, I am hoping the transition from raw food to regular food would be more sensibly smooth, without me jumping on cakes and cookies tomorrow!

I will keep you up to date with how the rest of this month goes, and whether I achieved my goal weight for this month.

For my last day I made this raw corn chowder. I was a little scared of this recipe (like all other raw recipes), but it actually wasn’t too bad. It’s more of a hot weather soup- since its supposed to be served cold (like all raw food!), but you wouldn’t mind it. In fact I can’t think of having this hot. With the chowder I made a mixed green salad as well.

It was the perfect end to a hard week. I am already looking forward to tomorrow. In fact I have been so anxious for tomorrow that I got up at 6.40 in the morning today and thought it was already Monday. When I saw V still sleeping, I woke him telling him that he is late for work. He just stared at me and said, breaking my day-dream where finally I was putting hot food in my mouth, that it’s Sunday and went back to sleep.

Anyway tomorrow is just a few hours away and I have decided my menu. I break the diet with a GF khaman dhokla for breakfast. For lunch I will have chicken stew and appam and end the day with probably a cheese omelet for dinner ( I am a fan of breakfast for dinner).

For now, here is another raw recipe.

RAW CORN CHOWDER

Adapted from here