Raw Food Diet – Day 30

Today was good overall. No problems to report aside from continued dry skin and itchiness.

Now that the trial has officially ended, it almost feels like a graduation. This has definitely been the most challenging 30-day trial I’ve done to date, but I can’t say I’m sad to see it end. I’m looking forward to eating something — anything — other than fruit tomorrow. I feel like I’ve eaten enough bananas to last a year!

As a side effect of logging this experiment, apparently I also did a 30-day trial of blogging every single day. Consequently, my web traffic hit a new high. Lucky for me my webhost recently announced they’ve permanently upgraded all the accounts — for free. Now I’ve got a juicy 2TB/month of bandwidth available (previously 1.5TB). Incidentally, ServInt has been a fantastic web host, and I highly recommend them if your site has outgrown a basic shared hosting account. StevePavlina.com has always been hosted by them, over 3 years now… and a while before that with my games business. That’s probably the longest I’ve ever stayed with a single host.

Urine pH

I ran several pH tests on my urine throughout the day with some pH strips. The results varied with each test, but they always ranged between 7.4 and 8.0. A pH of 7.0 is neutral, greater than 7.0 is alkaline, and less than 7.0 is acidic. I didn’t bother to do any pH tests before this trial, so I can’t tell if there’s been a long-term change, but at least for today it’s definitely on the alkaline side.

I read that most non-vegetarians have acidic urine, which supposedly increases the risk of kidney stones as well as a few other maladies. Of course you can also run into problems if your urine is too alkaline.

If you want to test your own urine, you should be able to find some pH strips at a local drug/vitamin store. They’re fairly inexpensive.

Blood Pressure

Today’s blood pressure reading was the lowest of the whole trial: 110/65.

Weight Loss

My weight dropped 0.4 pounds to 178.0. Net weight loss is 8.0 pounds in 29 days. I’ll do a final weigh-in tomorrow morning before breakfast to get the official 30-day result.

Breakfast

Raw food diet day 30 breakfast

  1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (662g), spinach (102g), 1 cup water
  2. blueberries (264g)
  3. blackberries (114g)

812 calories, 4g fat, 204g carb, 14g protein

Morning Snack

1 small watermelon (908g)

272 calories, 1g fat, 69g carb, 6g protein

Lunch

Raw food diet day 30 lunch

  1. salad: mixed greens (158g), cucumber (76g), grape tomatoes (120g), avocado (38g), lime juice (22g)
  2. fresh juice made from carrots, apple, Asian pear, celery, lime (24 fl oz)

387 calories, 7g fat, 81g carb, 8g protein

Afternoon Snack

green smoothie: 4 bananas (494g), spinach (106g), 1 cup water

464 calories, 2g fat, 117g carb, 8g protein

Dinner

Raw food diet day 30 dinner

  1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (416g), spinach (112g), 1 cup water
  2. 5 clementines (386g)

577 calories, 2g fat, 146g carb, 11g protein

Evening Snack

3 clementines (240g)

113 calories, 0.4g fat, 29g carb, 2g protein

Daily Summary

2626 calories, 17g fat, 644g carb, 49g protein

585mg sodium, 82g fiber, 382g sugar

5% of calories from fat, 7% from protein, 88% from carbs

Whew!

I’ll write up a postmortem/summary of this experiment with my final thoughts. Be patient, since it may take more than a day before it’s ready to post. I have quite a lot of info to review. In retrospect it feels a little strange having a complete food record of everything I ate for the past 30 days posted on the Internet. Quite a number of people emailed me to say they’ve been eating more fruit since I started — the photos made them start craving it.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day, since I do intend to eat cooked food once again. I’m not sure what I’ll eat yet. Last time I came off a raw food diet, cooked food tasted dead and lifeless to me the first day, but it didn’t make me sick or tired or cause any noticeable problems. I’ll have to remind myself to eat much less food. I imagine that scarfing down eight pounds of cooked food in a day would be a bit much.

I’m really looking forward to writing about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with food. 🙂