Day 1 and 2 - In the bag!

Monday was quite possibly the hardest day of the week to start a fully raw diet but we managed to muddle through it.  For those of you on snapchat you can follow cliffa74 to get a glimpse of what it was like.

Menu for Day 1:

Lemon water - 32 oz drink first thing

Breakfast:  Orange juice - 32 oz of orange juice from the juicer 

Lunch: Banana "nice cream" with raspberry&strawberry puree

Dinner:  appetizer of 3 mangos and 1/2 a pineapple

Salad was 2 pounds of greens (kale and romaine) and a quart and a half of this mix: yellow and red bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, purple cabbage and an avocado.  Dressing was avocado, orange juice and fresh herbs

The water first thing in the morning felt great!  Surprisingly the orange juice lasted until 11ish.  I didn't think it would make it that long.  I did a work out that morning of 30 minutes strength training and felt great throughout.  The kids wanted to have a picnic for lunch so it was crazy getting their lunch ready and blending 7 frozen bananas and raspberries and strawberries into a puree.  Half way through I realized the recipe was for 2 people so I had to split it before I blended Cliff's portion.  My mind started racing thinking "did I do that for all of the recipes?  Did I just buy double what I needed for the week?"  Wouldn't that be a happy mistake but no, only for this recipe.  Maybe a few others but whatever.  Now I know how to read a recipe.  Moving on.  It made for a delicious lunch and I felt like I was cheating :)

Worked out again at 5 on the Arc trainer.  Had enough "juice" to get through it but not with mighty power.  Really didn't want to be late for dinner...

Speaking of dinner.  It was a complete disaster.  I started chopping at 6:30.  Cliff got home at 6:45 and immediately started helping.  Between kids asking for juice, dinner, play with me, read me a book it was 7:30 before we finished making the salads and appetizers.  It took an hour to eat it.  Seriously an hour!  Now it's 8:30, I have already thrown in the towel.  No way I can finish that salad.  I ate the appetizer and 1/3 of the salad.  Cliff was still chewing at 8:50 when I had to start getting the kids ready for bed.  The kitchen looked like Iron Chef had just finished a competition.  I still had to juice the breakfast for the next morning.  Noah and Adelyn helped after they got jammies on.  Then Cliff threw in the towel.  He had put salad dressing all over his so we had to throw his leftovers out :(.  10:30 I was finally done cleaning the kitchen.  Bear in mind most of this has to be hand washed since you use it again in the morning.  

So how did it feel?  All in all the meals were very filling and lasted until the next meal.  No cravings so far.  Missed coffee but not for the caffeine.  I have been off caffeine for a while now.  I just missed the warm cup in the morning.

Day 2 - today was already better.  Lessons learned and all.

Menu:
Lemon Cucumber water

Breakfast:  Soulshine juice - romaine, cucumber, celery, kale, honeycrisp apples

Lunch:  Asian salad (my leftover salad from last night + spinach, romaine, snap peas and broccoli) with Orange ginger dressing (orange juice, ginger, pistachios, sesame seeds)

Dinner:  appetizer of 2 mangos and Banana Celery smoothie (yep just banana and celery)

I know the juice does not sound good.  I have had versions of this juice that did not end well however the honeycrisp apples in this blend was really good!  The flavor was strong enough to overcome the celery enough to where you knew it was there but only by a hint.  And it felt great!  I did my workout at home this morning and powered through it.  Was ready for lunch at 11:30.  I took the left over salad from last night and split it with Cliff then added spinach, broccoli, snap peas and a head of romaine.  Yes it was still a large salad but not near as big as last night.  The best part?  The dressing was AMAZING!  I love the ginger dressing at japanese steak houses and this one was JUST LIKE IT!  But raw and legal for my 21 day challenge!!!  I was singing the "I'm so happy" song in my head when I tasted it.  Since I go to work (at my desk) at noon I was able to sit long enough to finish the WHOLE thing!  Yes it took an hour.  Good news is that it lasted through until 6:30 for dinner.  

You would THINK that a Banana Celery smoothie would be nasty and that's kinda what I was thinking but it was surprisingly delicious.  Lots of bananas in this so it hides the celery well.  

What I have learned so far:

1. Read the recipes really well before you shop
2. Chop everything once for 3 days worth of salads at a time (or whenever you have the most time in your schedule) and store them in large quart sized mason jars.  More pics to come on facebook.
3. Juice everything you can for a 2 day period at once so you are only cleaning the juicer once.  Read ahead in your recipes as some calls for fresh orange juice...
4. Move the meals around on your schedule until it works for you.  For me a salad at night with all that is involved is not going to work for me.  Too much to do.  Smoothie at night is great.  Problem solved!
5. Get as much as you can in bulk from the Farmer's market and Costco/Sams.  Go to the grocery store for the small batch items that doesn't make sense to bulk up on.  I'm considering tweaking the menu to only include things I can buy in bulk for cheaper.  I'll figure all that out for week 2 so stay tuned.
6. DON'T QUIT!  If it's not working well find out what it is and tweak.  If you have a strong enough reason for doing this you will keep with it.  If you don't, you will cave easily.  If you spent over $200 on fruits and veggies then you at least owe it to yourself and your budget to finish the week out...

And if you are wondering, my system is getting a good cleansing.  Olaf says it best:  "all good things, all good things".  If you have ever considered going raw temporarily or full time just hang in with me and I'll pave the way so you will know what to expect.  I'm posting on facebook and instagram and Cliff is posting on snapchat.  I might too if I ever figure out how to work the dumb thing!