Final Week as Raw Foodies - Results and what we learned

At the close of the 21st day of our raw food challenge I have to admit I feel a little lost.  I feel like I need to be chopping something or juicing my breakfast.  My kitchen should still be turned upside down because it is, after all, only 9:30.  The kids should be up helping me because I can't juice and get them ready for bed at the same time.  And yet, I'm sitting on the couch, kids in bed 45 minutes ago.  I can hear Cliff in the kitchen dishing out the Caribbean Black beans and rice dish that we are eating for lunch next week.  I have no idea what dinner will be.  Maybe that's why I feel lost.  I don't have a PLAN past lunch.  Uncool.

So what all changed over the last 21 days?  

• Remember the annoying knee pain I had?  Last week was the first week I could climb stairs without it bothering me... like AT ALL!  
• I started waking up at 4:30 last week.  At first I thought it was a very bad thing and I needed to force myself back to sleep.  That worked once but the rest of the times I really was not tired.  My body is not under the same stress from the foods I'm eating so I can go with less sleep.  Hmm think of all that I can get done before 7am!!
• The salads at fast food restaurants now look very puney.  I managed to be able to eat larger salads which is good in that they will then last for 5 hours before I get hungry again.
• I found I can survive, thrive even, on less food.  I can make a meal out of a bunch of fruit and a handful of nuts and seriously not die of hunger.  Food for the road!

Tips and tricks we learned:

• Shop at the Farmer's Market!!  Even if you don't have a huge amount, it's still a better selection and cheaper than Walmart.  If you do want to buy in bulk make it something you can juice like oranges or apples.  Mangoes, for example are a minimum of $1-1.25/each at the store.  At the Farmer's market I got a case of 15 for $12.  They were super sweet and lasted longer.  Oranges?  You can get a whole case of 50-60 for $20.
• When juicing apples, it can get expensive.  If it calls for apples with a strong or tart flavor like honeycrisp or pink lady go instead with a mix of granny smith and golden delicious.  It gives the strong apple flavor with half the cost.  If you don't like any tartness at all just eliminate the granny smith.
• When juicing WEAR AN APRON.  It will splash on your shirt every time.
• Get on youtube and watch how to properly cut a pineapple and mango.  Saves a ton of time.
• Got left over celery from a recipe?  You know, the puney stalks in the middle.  Save them for a juice.  Also the outside romaine leaves that are too limp for the salad?  Throw it in a juice.  Check out the recipes from Week 1 to make the Soulshine juice using these ingredients.

Do you have to go raw for the best health?

Nope.  Although eating this way does feel great a majority of the time, part of the reason is we are eating no processed foods.  We are flooding our bodies with tons of good nutrients at every meal and that's a good thing.  For someone who is sick, adding in juices to drink with your meals or making smoothies for breakfast can give you instant access to amazing micronutrients that can help fight for you.  However studies have not shown that it's superior to eating other whole food plant based diets.  You can listen to Dr Michael Gregor explain it better than I can here.  

So why do a raw food diet?  And how long do you have to stay with it?

The benefits we found most useful were these:  the first week was a detoxing period.  Toxins flushed out, bad bacteria replaced with healthy bacteria.  The second week it was a replacement of cravings.  With the good bacteria in place your body starts to crave the things you are eating.  It REALLY DOES happen this way!  The gut determines what you crave, seriously!  The third week it was more of a habit forming, mental switch that helped us see where we could continue parts of what we were doing into our lives post challenge.  When you commit this long to eating clean you don't really want to go out and eat crap the next day.  The standards for what you put in your body get a little higher.  Or they should, otherwise you just wasted a lot of money!  This is the point I wanted to get to in my journey.  If I ever get stuck in a rut again mentally at least I know where to turn.  So if you want to detox naturally, turn off your cravings or switch your mental switch to better health it's something to consider.

Can it ward off the common cold?

Sadly that answer is no.  I started getting a cold the end of last week.  I was hoping it was just a huge flareup of allergies but it lasted 4 days.  Granted, I was highly functional but it still kicked my butt.  I know, it made no sense to me either.

So for a mom who has many jobs, this challenge was a great deal of stress.  Overall, it was worth it and I'm not opposed to doing a 3 day raw food stint each month to keep focused.  It will be pretty seamless this time seeing as how we have all the resources in place.

The Results??  I know that's why you clicked on here :)  

Denise - down a total of 7 pounds and 11 inches

Cliff - down a total of 15 pounds and he didn't measure

The weight loss was not the primary goal but it is nice.  The mental focus on better health, the clean feeling, less pain in my body, that's what I was looking for.  Now we can continue on our whole food plant based lifestyle with more recipes and flexibility than we had before.  Thanks for hanging in there with us.  I will post our additional recipes shortly and will keep posting as we learn more about incredible health.