things have come half circle.

Ah. A full 6 months after my last posting, I have returned.

I called into work today and spent the majority of it sleeping in/lying around, hence the low food intake. I'm not too worried, I had lots of rich food this weekend from Caravan of Dreams (delicious flax chips and hummus) as well as half a bag of Cheezy Almonds (I recently ordered 1/2 dozen bags from Living Nutz and am trying desperately to ration them out, haha!), so my lack of hunger is probably just balancing out those indulgences.

Today's Intake (so far):

breakfast:
1L orange juice
1 mango
0.5L water

lunch: (munched on over the course of a couple hours)
4 bananas

dinner:
4 cups grapes
a few grape tomatoes
12 almonds
1/3 of tomorrow's lunch salad: 1 bunch kale, 1 avocado, 1/2 cucumber, 1 pint tomatoes, 2tsp EVOO, salt & pepper


Total: 1641 calories, 34g fiber
81 carbohydrates/6 protein/13 fat




I've been frustrated with the choices I've been making over the past half-year. I found that even though I started out eating a vegan diet with a high intake of raw fruits and vegetables, things gradually slid back to the point where I was eating vegan & vegetarian junk food (white italian baguettes, anyone?) and even dairy, among other unmentionables. I couldn't just draw up "reasonable" or "moderate" cooked vegetarian dietary guidelines and just stay within them (ie, x percentage raw, y percentage cooked). For months I struggled to change my eating habits -- I attempted 100% raw several times, tried a whole foods vegan diet, juiced, tried a SAD vegetarian diet where I just counted calories...the list goes on. The only positive aspect that I can really note from the past half year is that the emotional binging stopped. Also, even though I was eating crap at times, I generally only ate until I was full and was conscious of portion sizes.

My food choices began to take an emotional toll on me. Not only did I know the damage I was doing to my body, it was impossible to ignore. I'd put on about 15lb over the course of 6 months, was constantly bloated, tired, irritable, and had basically lost hope of ever being on a raw vegan diet again...or pooping on a regular basis.

I've found that over the past week or so, I've had NO trouble staying raw and haven't experienced ANY cravings whatsoever for wheat or cooked starches. At first I was just grateful for the turn of events, until I did some thinking/random reading and realized it wasn't coincidental at all. In my past 100% endeavors, despite drinking green juices and intaking lots of kale salads, I was still craving cooked grains -- particularly rice. The problem with these attempts (not only within the last 6 months, but throughout the two years I've been on this journey), is that I wasn't consuming enough calories or carbohydrates!

In the past, I'd been so focused on getting in enough greens (salads) and the fullness that eating raw vegan comfort foods (onion bread, flax crackers, pates, nuts, etc) offered. Fruit didn't give me a full feeling immediately and wound up slipping by the wayside. Since I wasn't eating the carbohydrates, I wound up craving the cooked carbs. I ate more fatty heavy things to try to fill that, and the cycle continued, eventually resulting in a cooked-carb binge.

I have a less than desirable grocery situation, and over the past week or so, its been cold and I've been too lazy to go to Manhattan or Park Slope regularly. As a result, the majority of my intake has been OJ (1-2L/day) and bananas; two things that are cheap & local to me, and that I also don't mind buying if not organic. I've also been drinking celery/apple juices (both organic), since Whole Foods isn't too much of a stretch for me. Salads have been simple (tomatoes, avocado, lemon juice, some type of green requiring minimal preparation, salt & pepper) because I've really just been too lazy to even deal with olive oil if I'm already hacking open an avocado.

I'm feel so fortunate and grateful to have figured this out when I did! I am going to enter my daily intake into some type of carbohydrate/fat/calorie tracking system on a regular basis now. I'm not striving for 80/10/10 but I do need to make sure that I am taking in sufficient calories (at least 1500-1600/day?). I'd also like to keep the fat under 20%.