December 3, 2010

I'm still raw...and I hate it

I haven't posted for the last few days.  I'm still raw.  I hate it.  I've had several recipe disasters lately which has me feeling demotivated to keep going.  I can't tell you how awful it is to cook a meal for the kids, make a raw meal for me and hubby and then taste it and realize it's putrid...and then have to go back in the kitchen to try again.

The kitchen is my prison.  I spend so much time there right now.  I feel like the only thing I do, all day, is cook, "uncook" and wash dishes so I can do it all again in a couple hours.

Not to sound any more pathetic and whiny than I already do, but mealtimes are now a dreaded part of my day.  I have actually spent the last two dinner preps crying the entire time.  It's difficult to chop veggies with a sharp knife while tears are streaming down your face.  Try it sometime.  Okay, don't.  It's dangerous.

The thing I was most unprepared for was how the whole diet change would affect me emotionally.  Warm food calls to me, beckons me, mocks me and makes me sob. 
Warm food……

My husband is encouraging me to continue.  A part of me is grateful for that…..the other part is really angry.  I want him to say it’s okay to eat comforting, delicious food again.  I’m tired of eating weird tasting COLD food. 
I want a steak.

I’ve lost around 7 pounds.  That should encourage me.  It does.  Sort of.  I’ve resigned myself to not enjoying my food for the next three weeks.  In fact, I’m on a short of uncooking strike.  I’m eating salads and drinking smoothies.  All those fancy schmancy raw food recipes are just sitting on my counter gathering dust right now.  Too many failed recipes.  Too many ingredients wasted.

Have you ever noticed that most raw foodists are single?  Okay, some of them are married, but they only have a designer dog.  They’re not trying to prepare food for small children.  They’re not trying to maintain a home filled with small children.  Small children who need attention and who make messes.  Not that my children would ever make messes.  They would never take the entire bucket of Legos and dump it on the floor.   Okay, they might.  They did.

I need to go shopping tomorrow.  It’s a serious debate for me whether I buy another week’s worth of “raw food”.
 It cost over $230 last week. 
That’s over HALF of my monthly budget.
That’s a lot of money.
And did I mention it’s gross?

Thanks for listening. 
I will now go back to my normally scheduled happy mood.
After I eat a steak...
Maybe.

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the chuckle.... The blog title alone begged "come read me!" Can I give you permission to eat warm food? 'Cause I will, but only if you don't turn to steak :-). The money alone almost made me lose the breakfast that I haven't eaten yet. I'm happy about the weight loss, but I think you could do just as well eating foods everyone, including your children like, and doing 20-30 minutes of exercise a few times (or everyday if you're up to it) a week. We have a pretty breakfast, for lunch we eat what other people eat for dinner.... Pasta, baked sweet potatoes with black beans/corn/avocado, burritos etc., then our dinner is a small sandwich, mini muffins and smoothies, soup, or salad. Portion control and knowing where your calories are coming from are HUGE. Add that with a good amount of water and the body is happy! Stay away from the meats. We like our fish and rice (the Parmesan tilapia stuff you got us hooked on) and the occasional shrimp, but I just tried meat, I.e Turkey and ribs, this last week and my body is in pure revolt. My hands KILL and I'm ridiculously tired. Stick to raw foods that you like, as in ones y've recently tried and the good ol' salad, and smoothies, add in good broth based soups that are hearty with veggies and cut out the meat (we make your chicken noodle soup a lot... Minus the chicken and with half the broth so that it's more concentrated), have some yummy grains that are healthified (I get recipes from eatbetteramerica.com), and use free range eggs, beans, a little bit of good sea food, nuts, etc., to add some good protein in. Feel free to finish out your experiment, but I think if you can keep yourself from going crazy on a 'normal food diet' then I think you'd be just as golden. I wish I was there for you, but I can kick you from here if you want! Love you Heather! And sorry Abe.... I know you were looking forward to more raw food, but I like a good soup too! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Didn't you mention that you have a small dehydrator? I use mine to warm raw foods all the time. Up to 115 degrees is warm enough for me to feel the comfort of food. I live in a cold winter climate and warm foods are a must at times.

    That being said, I read a great book by Stu Mittleman (Slow Burn). He's an ultra long distance runner. When he did his first ultra race (taking place over several days as I recall) his strategy was to run until he was exhausted, rest, repeat. However, he found that it didn't work. It took a wise mentor to help him step back and see what the successful runners were doing: create a sustainable pattern. They would run for 4 hours, for example, rest for an hour, repeat. They didn't run until exhausted (I would certainly be exhausted after 4 hours of running) because they knew recovery would be difficult. A consistent SUSTAINABLE pattern was key.

    I understand your desire to go raw and be healed and thin and happy but it's obviously not a sustainable pattern for you right now. How about a green smoothie breakfast, snack on veggies, big salads WITH your cooked food at lunch and dinner. Do what's sustainable and build from there.

    If you do make it 30 days raw is it really a success if you HATE the experience and HATE the food and break the bank doing it? When you hit the 30 day mark you're more likely to eat a lot more than one steak.

    But don't let yourself off the hook if this is something you really need to do for yourself. Only you can know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have to agree with the above posters, if you are not happy with what you are doing then it will not last and will deter you from keep eating the right things. I think stay on a highly raw diet, but keep it way simple. I think the raw foods that you spend a lot of time on making like cooked foods make you spend lots of money (like you said) and take up too much of your time when you are cooking different for your children (again like you mentioned).

    My advice would be stay raw for breakfast (smoothies, etc.), maybe an occasional cooked cereal like creamy buckwheat or steel cut oats. Snacks stay raw like cut up fruit or veggies. Lunch do big salads and I love to make a huge salad with cooked black beans mexican style (taco salad). Dinner do salad and veggie soup (there are so many options out there) Or you can roast some veggies (cut up and throw into oven) and eat a salad. All super easy and yummy and much quicker.

    Overall simplify things, don't try to make raw into something that is cooked, that is what is eating your time up. Ok for an occasional meal, but not all 3.

    Good luck and keep up the healthy eating and it will all work out the same in the end, you will feel better and your body will be healthier whether you stick with all raw or drop down to 80%. Cooked veggies will not throw you off your path to good health, I promise :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you internet friends! As I've gotten caught up my journey the last few days I've forgotten how important it is to SIMPLIFY and SUSTAIN. Sometimes I wonder if being physically healthy is worth the emotional sickness.

    Amy - I'm actually scared to use my dehydrator. I worry about plastics leaching into the food. And it doesn't have a temperature control so I don't know if it will get too hot and kill all the enzymes. Thank you so much for that example of the runner.

    Cherie - I almost threw up at the cash register and truly dread doing it again....if I do it again. Are you totally anti-meat now or just anti-gross-meat? We've really enjoyed the grass-fed beef and have noticed that it does in fact taste different and feel different in the body. WalMart (of all places) is selling range-free organic chicken now). I use 1 breast for a meal (split between 6 people). I can't find a good source for pork though so we don't eat it. I've read in several places that a lot of tilapia is now being raised by giving the fish extra hormones with actually change their sex! That scares the snot out of me. I don't need my boys eating fish with a ton of sex hormones in it...so we've stopped eating sea food unless I can make sure it is wild-caught. And that's hard to find in the middle of Texas!

    Crystal - My husband would agree with you. He keeps asking, "Why do they keep trying to make it like cooked food?" That is the most time consuming part of it, and most disappointing. It DOESN'T taste like cooked food. I really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just gross meat :-). Having chickens and thinking of the work it would take to process them reminds me everyday that eating meat sparingly makes a whole lot of sense! Like seriously, we only have it a couple times a year. We figure we'd rather spend the big bucks and have the good stuff a few times then play with the hormone ridden sickly animals meat that's processed at a ridiculously high rate. Nathan's talked about making a tradition of buying nice grass fed steaks for Christmas etc. We bought a free range turkey forThanksgiving but ended up going out of town. So we'll use that later. Speaking of which, Nathan's had terrible skin issues since we've been back, almost acne like, and the only thing that he did differently was having turkey at thanksgiving. He was off meat for 4 months before that with no issues and looked and felt better than ever. I don't normally cook meat here anyway but he likes to eat it whe he goes ou and he was deployed, so he wanted to see if he could resist eating meat on his own... He believed my quirks before, but now even mores :-). I mostly stick to good stocks and omit meat. Granted a little wouldn't kill us, especially if it's the good stuff, but I like to keep things simple and all the recipes I use taste the same to me sans the meat anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Heather, sorry you're having such a hard time! I think I would be crying, too. It sounds so tough, I've never even done it 100% for 24 hours!

    I have two ideas that might help. Maybe you should throw out the fancy, expensive meals and just have salads and smoothies (that's what I'm doing). Or if you're really despearate, you could do the "raw until dinner" thing I read about on someone's blog. Smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch and then something reasonable for dinner. I would, however, stay away completely from all meat, sugar, white rice/flour, dairy and eggs, hydrogenated fats, soda, etc. until the end of the cleanse. Just an idea.

    I'm proud of you for going this long!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love the honesty! I've been thinking more about raw since you started this, but I know I would hate it too.
    Maybe 80/20...

    ReplyDelete
  8. I know exactly what you are talking about! I've dabbled quite a bit with the raw diet over the past few years, I know about the disappointing recipes and waste of precious ingredients! I especially hated it when the author gave this wonderful description of the recipe and it turns out awful. And I swear it's not my palate, I have a pretty hardcore palate now. I agree, most of the supposedly successful raw people are single, or no children! Although I think there is a lot of deception and leaving going on in the raw world. It's just not natural or sustainable, imo. But if you want to stick to it I totally get the appeal. btdt. Add in a few cups of very warm herbal tea.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have to say that I cried the entire first two weeks I went all raw. Then, I got irritable and angry because I was eating cold celery and avocado soup and my family was eating ciabatta bread and warm soup.

    I, too, spent all my waking hours in the kitchen, only to find out the "CHIKUN" is not anything like "chicken" (more like soggy walnuts with seasoning...), and "Rawvioli" which I spent hours making was so disgusting even the dog wouldn't touch it. And it was so expensive.

    But, STICK WITH IT! This will pass and you will hit an inspiration where you can really make raw foods that taste good and are more simple. I feel that if you are trying to heal, 100% raw for at least 30 days is necessary. I went raw 60 days and lost 60 pounds, and it stayed off. Not only did I lose weight, it changed how I felt about food.

    I also think much of what you are feeling is the anxiety and depression that come when you cut out an addiction. Most of us, are, sadly, addicted to the Standard American Diet. After 30 days raw, you will be able to see very clearly what cooked foods you want back in your life (and a good grass fed steak on salad is wonderful every once in a while!)...

    The cost does go down after you get used to using produce as a staple. Our family has been about 80% raw for nearly 7 years, and even now sometimes it's a challenge, but the benefits have been absolutely amazing!

    You have actually been an inspiration to me, as you gave me the courage to do all raw for the past two days. I can't wait for another raw day tomorrow! I am trying to go for 2 weeks, and then, hopefully beyond.

    Keep it up, especially your recipes and critiques. They help us all quite a bit...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh my gosh.... I sooo know exactly how you feel... I did raw for several months... and then gave up... then I went on a 7 day diva detox.. and incorporated raw into the sad diet.... for example.. id do raw for breakfast and lunch... and snack time.. and then do a healty.. but cooked dinner.... MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!! Good luck and hang in there... but most importantly... listen to your body.. it will tell you what it wants and needs... =) Im off to read more of your blog and to subscribe by email..hehehe

    ReplyDelete