With 5 days to go counting today it seems sure that we will complete this adventure. We didn't go into this planning a long colon cleanse, but it has been interesting. First, when they say you'll shrink your belly doing it they're right. I'm not sure there is anything more magical than the fact that the cleanse helps to flush things out. The goal in the book is that you would have a bowel movement shortly after each main meal (30 minutes). They say the first time through a lot of people could take 2 weeks to get there depending on your original diet. My diet must have been pretty good because I am not even a full 4 days into this and I am like a clock now. There is the proof I always needed that I'm not full of crap or at least not literally.
Pam remains at 10 pounds lost and I just jumped past with 10.5 pounds. That is obviously related to the cleanse and it's results. I'm actually chomping at the bit to get into the Dr. for my yearly checkup so I can see the difference in the lab results from last year. I have to wait until early March for that, and since I turn 50 in April I know he is going to send me off for a colonoscopy, but I still can't wait.
Here are some things to consider. 90% of the pesticides left on citrus fruit is in the peal. If you are planning to peal and eat your citrus buy whatever is cheapest, but if you plan to squeeze it into a drink or zest it for a recipe, or run it through a juicer buy organic. The last thing you want is concentrated pesticides in your juice or recipes. The same is true of cucumbers, squash, and anything else that grows above ground. If you don't buy organic peal it.
The cheapest place to buy organic salad greens, carrots, baby spinach, and apples is Costco. They don't have organic cucumbers or citrus. Trader Joe's has organic lemons and some other veggies. Fred Meyer has lots of other organic green such as Kale and Chard, cucumbers and squash. Since the peal of most vegetables carries a lot of nutrients it is worth any additional cost to reap all of the benefits.
I'll stop preaching after this last one. We vote for what is available and actually what is produced with our shopping dollars. When stores see the organics going faster they order more and the wholesalers do the same and at the end of the day the farmers that actually care about the quality and healthfulness of our food supply grow more and prosper which makes it more viable for the next organic farmer to begin and prosper.
Pesticide free food sounds good doesn't it? More later.....
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sludge: Part II
So sludge isn't something you have to develop a taste for. It sucks every time you drink it. Wah Wah Wah. Okay I'm all done feeling sorry for myself.
Today was another easy day - sludge not withstanding- on this little adventure. I am happy to say that Pam has passed me on the weight loss progress. She has now lost 10 pounds and I'm still stuck on 9. From where we really began about a year ago I still have her though as I have lost 61 pounds and she has lost 32. If you add those up it's a 6th or 7th grader. For the first year all we really did was eat better and exercise more.
For dinner tonight we made a basil and spinach pesto and tossed it on julienned zucchini "pasta" along with some broccoli salad. I would serve either of those to guests. They were both very good.
We still have another glass of sludge later, but that will end day 24 on this adventure. Six more days to go! For those of you wondering, the bottle of organic wine remains unopened. We were able to find a raw chocolate bar, but it was very nasty. Anyone want the rest?
Today was another easy day - sludge not withstanding- on this little adventure. I am happy to say that Pam has passed me on the weight loss progress. She has now lost 10 pounds and I'm still stuck on 9. From where we really began about a year ago I still have her though as I have lost 61 pounds and she has lost 32. If you add those up it's a 6th or 7th grader. For the first year all we really did was eat better and exercise more.
For dinner tonight we made a basil and spinach pesto and tossed it on julienned zucchini "pasta" along with some broccoli salad. I would serve either of those to guests. They were both very good.
We still have another glass of sludge later, but that will end day 24 on this adventure. Six more days to go! For those of you wondering, the bottle of organic wine remains unopened. We were able to find a raw chocolate bar, but it was very nasty. Anyone want the rest?
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Did You Know...
Any of you out there reading our blog that is looking for some weight loss or weight management tools should check out Livestrong.com . You are able to enter your current weight and age and height and it gives you a nice baseline for what you should target for calories. While it isn't as accurate as having a proper metabolic test done, it is free and at least a rough idea. You can also log your food and it will allow you to enter your own recipes. That is all FREE! If you want you can have sharing of stats with a friend or two so you can keep each other honest. Pretty cool stuff.
You can adapt very quickly to eating most of your veggies whole and uncooked. The hardest thing to get used to is the extra energy you get from them. I haven't even considered a nap since we started this adventure. That kills me a little since we haven't had any coffee or chocolate either.
Juicing is likely the easiest and tastiest way a person could lose weight while still maintaining the vitamins and minerals you need. Our midmorning juice has 160 or so calories but it has 3-4 carrots, 1/2 a beet, 1/2 a lemon or lime, 1/2 inch of ginger root, 1/2 a cucumber, and 1/2 a green apple PER SERVING! I guessing that accounts for at least 3 of your veggie and fruit servings a day. The only down side is the initial cost of a machine ($230 or so), but you get hooked and when you start adjusting and creating on your own you can't be stopped.
Enough of the FYIs. This "fiber shake" from our book should honestly be called sludge or runny mud pie or something like that. Man this stuff is funky. Not only does it taste like dirt, it has a very funky mouth feel to go along with it. Yuck. Luckily we just need to drink it 4 times a day. I know! 4 times a day! Other than that the colon cleanse it going along swimmingly.
We actually went out for lunch at the Top of Tacoma. RELAX, we had a garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette on the side and water. Raw Raw Raw.
I have become the king of the green salad this month including everything I can think of like mandarin slices, blueberries and apples just to name a few. We probably have eaten 3 times the avocado we were eating before as well. I keep making my raw broccoli salad with a different twist every time. This one is a lemon and lime vinaigrette with curry which is tasty.
OK. Enough about us. Back to your lives. More soon.
You can adapt very quickly to eating most of your veggies whole and uncooked. The hardest thing to get used to is the extra energy you get from them. I haven't even considered a nap since we started this adventure. That kills me a little since we haven't had any coffee or chocolate either.
Juicing is likely the easiest and tastiest way a person could lose weight while still maintaining the vitamins and minerals you need. Our midmorning juice has 160 or so calories but it has 3-4 carrots, 1/2 a beet, 1/2 a lemon or lime, 1/2 inch of ginger root, 1/2 a cucumber, and 1/2 a green apple PER SERVING! I guessing that accounts for at least 3 of your veggie and fruit servings a day. The only down side is the initial cost of a machine ($230 or so), but you get hooked and when you start adjusting and creating on your own you can't be stopped.
Enough of the FYIs. This "fiber shake" from our book should honestly be called sludge or runny mud pie or something like that. Man this stuff is funky. Not only does it taste like dirt, it has a very funky mouth feel to go along with it. Yuck. Luckily we just need to drink it 4 times a day. I know! 4 times a day! Other than that the colon cleanse it going along swimmingly.
We actually went out for lunch at the Top of Tacoma. RELAX, we had a garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette on the side and water. Raw Raw Raw.
I have become the king of the green salad this month including everything I can think of like mandarin slices, blueberries and apples just to name a few. We probably have eaten 3 times the avocado we were eating before as well. I keep making my raw broccoli salad with a different twist every time. This one is a lemon and lime vinaigrette with curry which is tasty.
OK. Enough about us. Back to your lives. More soon.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Icky Stuff...or the last week
So with just over a week left to go in our raw food month Pam has lost 8 pounds and I have lost 9. Pam has kicked up her workout schedule to match her recommendations from the metabolic testing we did, with a rest day Friday and Sundays. I am lagging a little with a pulled muscle in my back that seems to be getting a little better. Our BP's and resting heart rates remain in the same range as when we started. Neither of us has had any side-effects to report. We're really feeling surprisingly good! That may change next week.
I guess I should have hidden the detox and cleanse book from Pam. She read a little too much and found that they recommend beginning their cleanses with a colon cleanse. Relax! There aren't any scary things involved as far as I can tell. We just need to add 4 fiber drinks per day made from ground flax seed, bentonite clay, ground psyllium seed and activated charcoal mixed with water or juice. We also add a probiotic supplement twice a day and an herbal cleanse capsule once a day. Other than that we swap out our granola for breakfast with a veggie juice. This happens for a week. The result is supposed to be a more efficient digestive system which is meant to supply you with more energy and less sickness along with aiding in weight loss goals.
There's nothing like going out with a bang! Wish us luck.
I guess I should have hidden the detox and cleanse book from Pam. She read a little too much and found that they recommend beginning their cleanses with a colon cleanse. Relax! There aren't any scary things involved as far as I can tell. We just need to add 4 fiber drinks per day made from ground flax seed, bentonite clay, ground psyllium seed and activated charcoal mixed with water or juice. We also add a probiotic supplement twice a day and an herbal cleanse capsule once a day. Other than that we swap out our granola for breakfast with a veggie juice. This happens for a week. The result is supposed to be a more efficient digestive system which is meant to supply you with more energy and less sickness along with aiding in weight loss goals.
There's nothing like going out with a bang! Wish us luck.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thoughts Over Halfway Through
This little project has been interesting so far. Our goals remain the same, and we will likely carry raw on as a pre-dinner program - meaning that we will eat raw until dinner and then eat a reasonable dinner. I also think we will likely eat even less animal protein than before. The other thing we will continue is to have at least one juice everyday.
What we know now that we didn't know before is not deeply profound and likely not even worthy of publishing here, but here we go anyway.
Vegetable juice mixes taste great and give you a nice, sustained pop of energy while taking care of your appetite. A 1 or 2 day juice fast is doable, but it is better if you do it away from home or when there is nothing else to eat around. Our Saturday fast was cheated by each of us with a salad - Pam for lunch and me for dinner. I never said we were perfect.
There aren't a plethora of great raw food recipes that don't require a dehydrator, and many of them involve several days of prep time to either soak (and even sprout in some cases) nuts and seeds or to dehydrate things. Luckily, I am a little bit free form in the kitchen or I'd be bored to death on their recipes by now.
Just because the recipe says you can make brown rice by soaking it for 24-36 hours it ain't necessarily so. I soaked mine for 4 days and gave up and cooked it this morning rather than waste it. We'll only mix veggies with it once it is cooled to preserve the rawness of them.
If you surf the web long enough you can justify lots of exceptions to the hard fast "raw rules." There are people who justify coffee and we found one that says organic wine is OK. WE HAVE A BOTTLE OF ORGANIC WINE! It is on the wine rack upstairs, but we haven't opened it yet. Yet being the operative word of that sentence.
Blender marinara is OK, but there are 100 times the scientific sources that agree that cooked tomatoes provide you with many more antioxidants than raw so I cook my tomato sauces and then cool them prior to adding veggies.
We have each lost another .5 lb since the last time we reported so Pam is minus 7.5 and I am minus 8.5. I think I've blabbered on enough for today so enjoy your MLK day and we'll post again soon.
Oh, yesterday for dinner I made "Not Really Chili." It was pretty good and very spicy.
What we know now that we didn't know before is not deeply profound and likely not even worthy of publishing here, but here we go anyway.
Vegetable juice mixes taste great and give you a nice, sustained pop of energy while taking care of your appetite. A 1 or 2 day juice fast is doable, but it is better if you do it away from home or when there is nothing else to eat around. Our Saturday fast was cheated by each of us with a salad - Pam for lunch and me for dinner. I never said we were perfect.
There aren't a plethora of great raw food recipes that don't require a dehydrator, and many of them involve several days of prep time to either soak (and even sprout in some cases) nuts and seeds or to dehydrate things. Luckily, I am a little bit free form in the kitchen or I'd be bored to death on their recipes by now.
Just because the recipe says you can make brown rice by soaking it for 24-36 hours it ain't necessarily so. I soaked mine for 4 days and gave up and cooked it this morning rather than waste it. We'll only mix veggies with it once it is cooled to preserve the rawness of them.
If you surf the web long enough you can justify lots of exceptions to the hard fast "raw rules." There are people who justify coffee and we found one that says organic wine is OK. WE HAVE A BOTTLE OF ORGANIC WINE! It is on the wine rack upstairs, but we haven't opened it yet. Yet being the operative word of that sentence.
Blender marinara is OK, but there are 100 times the scientific sources that agree that cooked tomatoes provide you with many more antioxidants than raw so I cook my tomato sauces and then cool them prior to adding veggies.
We have each lost another .5 lb since the last time we reported so Pam is minus 7.5 and I am minus 8.5. I think I've blabbered on enough for today so enjoy your MLK day and we'll post again soon.
Oh, yesterday for dinner I made "Not Really Chili." It was pretty good and very spicy.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Half Way Through!
So, now we are a little better than half way through our raw food month and we are still going strong. Pam was even able to resist Lasagna made with homemade pasta at her wine club gathering last night - opting instead for an extra juice for dinner. At this halfway point we miss our red wine, chocolate, coffee, and popcorn, but strangely we aren't ready to kill for some chicken. I would like some of the recipes better cooked, and after the first marinara from the blender I turned to science where you will find that tomatoes are better for you cooked, and cooked and then cooled the sauce prior to building our lasagna.
Learning how to make "meat" out of soaked nuts is not a skill I would have thought I'd need, but it turns out it's mostly like making chicken and turkey taste like meatballs, etc anyway. The "chorizo" from the other day was really good sprinkled on a salad like taco salad.
A regular day I eat granola for breakfast with some blueberries and almond milk. I have a juice for a snack mid-morning, a big salad for lunch, some fruit for mid-afternoon , and either a big salad or what we report on the blog for dinner. Tonight we had a corn chowder with avocado made with almond milk. Pam's day is a little granola with almond milk prior to heading out the door then at work she has a small bowl of quinoa and oatmeal with dried fruit, half of her juice mid-morning and the rest mid-afternoon, and for lunch a salad of spinach and mixed greens along with an apple or orange.
We are still stuck on 7 lbs lost for Pam and 8 for me, and while that is great and everything we are going to juice fast tomorrow for a little kick start off of the plateau. BP's and heart rates remain the same.
Learning how to make "meat" out of soaked nuts is not a skill I would have thought I'd need, but it turns out it's mostly like making chicken and turkey taste like meatballs, etc anyway. The "chorizo" from the other day was really good sprinkled on a salad like taco salad.
A regular day I eat granola for breakfast with some blueberries and almond milk. I have a juice for a snack mid-morning, a big salad for lunch, some fruit for mid-afternoon , and either a big salad or what we report on the blog for dinner. Tonight we had a corn chowder with avocado made with almond milk. Pam's day is a little granola with almond milk prior to heading out the door then at work she has a small bowl of quinoa and oatmeal with dried fruit, half of her juice mid-morning and the rest mid-afternoon, and for lunch a salad of spinach and mixed greens along with an apple or orange.
We are still stuck on 7 lbs lost for Pam and 8 for me, and while that is great and everything we are going to juice fast tomorrow for a little kick start off of the plateau. BP's and heart rates remain the same.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
A Paullian Raw Invention
I figured it was about time I got off my butt and made up a recipe or two in this raw food adventure so here we go. Tonight I made Soft Tacos with Chorizo, Chunky Guacamole, and Tomatoes and "Hot not Cole" Slaw. The "meat" for the tacos is soaked ground walnuts spiced with my homemade chili powder, paprika, cumin and garlic salt mixed with a little olive oil and processed in the food processor until it is a taco meat like consistency. The taco shell is a large romaine leaf, and I shouldn't have to tell you how to make guacamole. It's like chicken soup - everyone has their own recipe.
The slaw is red cabbage and some red onion with a spicy vinaigrette. Pam tells me that she enjoyed it and I can't be trusted to give an honest opinion, but I liked it as well.
One more pound a piece today which is 8 for me and 7 for Pam. We'll do BPs and stuff tomorrow as it will mark the end of week two on this adventure.
I have been looking at raw recipe websites and it seems to me that there isn't a lot of great "cooking" in the raw world. Lots of nuts pates and not a lot of whole veggie stuff. I am determined to strike a blow for foodies everywhere before I am done with this.
We are not planning on going raw for ever, nor is Pam planning on growing her leg hair and changing her name to Sunny Girl, but we will be adding more raw veggie sides into our after adventure daily diet. We both feel great and energetic with no odd side effects so far.
More tomorrow.....
The slaw is red cabbage and some red onion with a spicy vinaigrette. Pam tells me that she enjoyed it and I can't be trusted to give an honest opinion, but I liked it as well.
I have been looking at raw recipe websites and it seems to me that there isn't a lot of great "cooking" in the raw world. Lots of nuts pates and not a lot of whole veggie stuff. I am determined to strike a blow for foodies everywhere before I am done with this.
We are not planning on going raw for ever, nor is Pam planning on growing her leg hair and changing her name to Sunny Girl, but we will be adding more raw veggie sides into our after adventure daily diet. We both feel great and energetic with no odd side effects so far.
More tomorrow.....
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