[elainevdw]

I got kind of a late start yesterday with my raw diet, so I didn't even have breakfast until noon. Normally, such a late start in the day makes me hungry all day long, but I was surprised at the end of the day to realize that not only was I not craving every edible item in my apartment, but that I was more awake and alert than normal.

I was also surprised at how filling a blended "soup" of veggies and fruit could be. However, in the future, I think I'll reserve some chunks of fruits and veggies to mix in with the blended portion, because I like having more texture in my "soup."

The kitchen item that saved the day was a salad spinner -- a $25 piece of equipment that I've wanted for years but never bothered getting! I had two mock ceasar salads yesterday, the dressing made basically out of raw, soaked cashews with lemon juice and garlic.

One weird thing I found was that on one level I wasn't hungry, but on another level I was. I wonder if the not-hungry feeling was a physical feeling, and the hungry feeling was an emotional feeling.

At the end of the day, I kind of fell off the wagon. I wanted something warm and toasty so bad that I had two pieces of toast spread with PB, wheat germ, and honey, and two more pieces of bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic. (Normally, just one of any of those items would do me over.) I also drank more hot tea; a lot of the time, I eat hot food to warm myself up, but that's not really an option now.

PS, Is hot tea considered "raw"? It's not like I'm eating the leaves!

This morning, I weighed exactly the same as I did the morning before -- which is interesting, because normally I'd show a slight weight gain from eating all that bread right before bedtime!

I slept really well. I've been having these wild dreams with detailed plotlines since I started eating raw, but I wonder if that's because it's the weekend and I can sleep in?

Oh, and I really like the concept of soaking nuts. I like raw nuts much better when they're soaked.

Today, I'm going to try this raw almond vanilla ice cream. It's great being able to make my own "milk," because I'm lactose intolerant. Right now, I'm buying juice because I don't have a juicer, but the smoothies make up for buying tons of juice.

Another interesting thing I've noticed, compared to when I've gone vegan, is that my stomach hasn't been cramping up, nor has my body gotten gassey... if that's TMI, I'm sorry, but that was a personal side effect of going vegan that I wasn't prepared for! And in the raw diet, it's not an issue at all.

Oh, another great thing about the raw diet -- everything was so easy to make! No dish took longer than 10 minutes, and there was no way for me to screw it up. You should have seen my vegan cooking experiments. They turned out, well, pretty bad. I even put all the wrong herbs in the salad dressing, and it was still edilbe!