Today’s highlight was doing a phone consultation with raw food coach Roger Haeske. I booked this consulting appointment with him before starting this raw trial. It was a great call, and I got some helpful tips on how to improve the way I’m eating, especially how to prepare simpler meals that require less prep time. After the consultation we talked about a variety of other topics, like search engine rankings and internet marketing — it turns out we have a good deal in common beyond our health interests, since we both run online businesses geared towards helping people grow.

Roger recorded the consultation and sent me an MP3 of it afterwards. I asked if he’d be OK with me sharing it publicly, and he thought that would be great. The consultation is focused on my own practical challenges in going raw, but it might be of interest to those readers who want to learn more about the mindset of someone who’s been eating raw for years. Roger gave me some useful insights, so I’ll be making some tweaks to how I eat henceforth. He shaved a lot of time off my learning curve.

I’ll listen to the recording over the weekend and will probably post it next week. I may summarize some of the key points for those who don’t want to listen to the whole thing. It’s 61 minutes long.

Now for the diet update…

Last night I didn’t go to bed until 11:30pm, since I just wasn’t tired until then. I woke up at 4:57am, so I slept only 5-1/2 hours. I went to the gym and did 30 minutes on the elliptical. It was a pretty normal workout, nothing special. Afterwards I walked around the track for 30 minutes. I don’t normally do that, but for some reason I really enjoyed walking around in circles for a while. I mostly zoned out while listening to Depeche Mode’s Ultra album on my iPod.

Fortunately my headache was gone when I woke up this morning, but I still had intermittent headaches throughout the day. They weren’t severe though. I’ve also been sneezing every now and then.

In the morning I had periods of mild anxiety followed by stretches where I felt very serene. I found it a bit hard to concentrate today. I was physically energetic but mentally foggy. It reminds me of my polyphasic sleep adaptation period in some ways.

I also felt very itchy at times, getting sudden intense itches on different parts of my body, especially my back, legs, and shoulders. I’ve been experiencing that for about 2-3 days now.

Today I felt very chilled, and it wasn’t from eating anything cold. I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, and a pullover, and I still felt cold even when it was 74 degrees in my office. I’ve heard that cold sensitivity is common among people who go raw. I checked my body temp, and it was 98.7 F (normal).

Weight Loss

The scale this morning showed 183.0, the same as yesterday. I’m still down 3.0 pounds since January 1st.

Pre-breakfast

On my way to the gym, I ate a Fuji apple (216g).

112 calories, 0.4g fat, 30g carb, 0.6g protein

Breakfast

I decided to eat simpler meals today, so for breakfast I made this.

1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (404g), mango (200g), mixed greens (44g), 3/4 cup water
2. blueberries (242g)

638 calories, 3g fat, 163g carb, 8g protein

This was fast and easy to prepare and eat. I started making green smoothies with 2 bananas, but I made this one with 4 of them. That adds about 200 calories without increasing the volume too much.

One of the challenges of this diet is making sure I get enough calories in each meal before I get too full. Most of the time I eat until I’m stuffed.

Lunch

I made these lettuce wraps for lunch, another quick and easy dish.

1. romaine lettuce (250g)
2. filling: avocado (178g), 2 diced tomatoes (320g), lime juice (20g), 2 stalks chopped celery (76g)

413 calories, 29g fat, 40g carb, 10g protein

I mashed the avocado with a fork, mixed in the other ingredients, and spread it onto the romaine leaves. This was a decent meal, but I used too much lime juice. It also tasted like it needed a little salt. And it wasn’t really enough calories for me.

Afternoon Snack

A couple hours after lunch I got hungry again, so I made another green smoothie: 4 bananas (394g), mixed greens (44g), blueberries (80g), 1 cup water.

407 calories, 2g fat, 104g carb, 6g protein

I’m digging these green smoothies. I can see they’ll easily become a staple on this diet, and there are many ways to vary them. It’s a great way to get some calories and green veggies at the same time. I feel pretty good after drinking one of these too. I can make one in a few minutes and take it to my office to drink.

A couple people asked me about the “mixed greens” I’m using. Specifically it’s the Organic Spring Mix from Earthbound Farms. It’s sold at Costco and Whole Foods in a big plastic tub. Costco sells it for $4 per pound. The ingredients are: organic baby lettuces (red & green romaine, red & green oak leaf, red leaf, lollo rosa, tango), organic red & green chard, organic mizuna, organic arugula, organic mache, organic frisee, organic radicchio. I often bought this before going raw, since it makes a great salad by itself. It comes pre-washed too.

Just before dinner I decided to try making my first blended salad. I wasn’t sure I’d like it, so I made a very small batch: 1 tomato (154g), cucumber (70g), celery (16g), romaine lettuce (64g). Just put everything in a high-speed blender, and blend it.

51 calories, 0.6g fat, 11g carb, 3g protein

It tasted a little bit like gazpacho. I didn’t particularly like it though. I gave my daughter a taste, and she said, “Blah!” I may need to experiment to find a blended salad I enjoy, since this can be an easy way to eat more veggies.

Dinner

I ate dinner at 7pm. Since I already had my fat for the day at lunch (avocado), this needed to be a fat-free meal, aside from the incidental fat in the fruit of course.

1. smoothie: 2 bananas (180g), blackberries (194g), 1 cup water.
2. diced mango (518g)

580 calories, 3g fat, 148g carb, 7g protein

This blackberry smoothie was too seedy. The sweet, juicy mango made the smoothie seem bland by comparison. This was a filling meal though.

Daily Summary

2202 calories, 37g fat, 496g carb, 35g protein

196mg sodium, 90g fiber, 310g sugar

14% of calories from fat, 6% from protein, 81% from carbs

All good numbers. Obviously I’m getting plenty of fiber on this diet. 🙂

I had some cravings for cooked food today. When I came downstairs after showering, the house smelled of tofu scramble and toast. Tofu scramble is made with crumbled tofu and various spices. It basically looks like scrambled eggs, although it tastes very different. It looked really tasty on the kids’ plates.

I also had some strong salt cravings around lunch time. When I saw the Celtic sea salt on the counter, I wanted to eat some. Maybe I should eat more celery, which is high in sodium. Today’s sodium intake was less than half of yesterday’s, not even 200mg. And to think I used to find it challenging to keep my sodium intake under 2,000mg per day…

This evening I feel fidgety and unsettled. It definitely feels like I’m experiencing withdrawal from something. I’m still craving something salty to eat, even though I’m not really hungry.

26 days to go. The part of me that would love a veggie burger isn’t too happy about that right now, but I’m not about to quit.

One of the reasons I’m adhering to such strict rules for this trial is so that if I decide to stay raw after the trial, I can relax the rules while still eating only raw foods. This should make the diet seem a lot more abundant than it is now. I remember after I ended my first 30-day raw trial, I felt such an incredible appreciation for the abundance of the (cooked) vegan diet.