Day 1: Doning the Hair Shirt

I awoke with a New Year’s headache today to the gorgeous smell of fresh coffee and the tantalizing scent of homemade rosemary breakfast potatoes, lovingly prepared by my husband for my kids.

“Mmmm!” said my nose.

“Nooooooooo!” screamed my head, already grasping at any straws to try to keep me from reverting to my erstwhile complacent ways by indulging the thought of such a lovely breakfast.

My heart sank into a deep, dark chasm of dread, as I realized that this was the very moment that I had decided to don, for 90 full days, the irksome hair shirt of the simple raw food “natural hygiene” diet (aka the 80/10/10 diet), hoping through such loathsome penance to one day be forgiven of my litany of sins. I gave my heart a gentle pep talk in words reminiscent of both Spongebob and famed raw fooder David Wolfe: “Today is is the best day ever! Today we’re doing something much greater than eating potatoes and drinking coffee!” Indeed, today I begin the arduous chore of proving to myself that I can do the impossible. Fun.

Oh, sure, as most people attempting raw food diets, I have in my possession boatloads of physical annoyances, illnesses, aches, pains, stresses, weaknesses, fears – you name it, read on tomorrow – that I would be delighted to have POOF! …disappear instantly. But I’ve tried over many years (about nine to be exact) to stick to raw food diets for such health reasons and it never worked, seeming like self-inflicted eternal misery and damnation.

This time my reasoning is only secondarily related to health issues. This time I just want the pure experience of doing it. Yes, just to do the impossible, to prove to myself that I can.

I was so inspired by a quote I heard of Matt Hoover, the Season 2 winner on Biggest Loser who lost 157 pounds and went on to compete in the Ironman competition:

“There’s something about pushing yourself beyond your limits that people need to do once in their life. They need to take the chance one time to see what they really can do. And once you do it, you’re never the same.”

I immediately knew that just such an attitude would be the key I’d been looking for all these years.

The plan:
• Cut out everything under the sun.
• Add back fruits and greens, and small amounts of nuts and seeds.
• Continue for 90 days.

Fun!

Here's my theme song for Day 1:




Now, if you don't speak Romanian you need not worry, because the lyrics of this song have absolutely nothing to do with raw food diets, determination, winning, nada. The operative parts of the song, which makes it my theme song for Day 1 is the enthusiastic, over the top "la la lai" part that I hope to be able to achieve internally after 90 days of this. The other relevant piece is the fact that they're probably the first Romanian-speaking band to get on to Top of the Pops in England (which takes some chutzpah). Plus, it's a catchy dance song, and I hope to incorporate more music into my life over the coming weeks.

Why 90 days? I’ve followed this simple raw thing for about 21 days straight before. It feels great on the one level, but the cravings are SE-VERE. 21 days is nowhere near enough time to overcome these cravings and get over the rough patches. I’ll probably be a mad fiend for some time. (Read all about it!) 90 days should also give me a pretty good idea of whether a life without cheese is possible. Oh, and also it will tell me whether this diet makes any headway in reversing any of my physical complaints.

During this process plan to share with you some of my heretical stance of raw food issues, such as:

• Why I hate raw fooders in groups.
• Why I really really really wish everyone would just shut up about the Pottenger’s cats experiment.

I used to feel bad about such heretical stances, like I lacked true faith or like I was “in denial”, but now I feel certain there must be others out there who feel the same, or even people who have no interest in raw foods that just want to laugh along with me. Kids, let’s make this fun!
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Things I really wanted to eat today but didn’t:
Goldfish crackers
Breakfast potatoes
Coffee
Cheese
Bread
Whatever that is that my husband is cooking for his dinner right now.

Here’s what I ate instead:
Breakfast: just over 2 cups of grapefruit juice (from 5 Rio Star juicing grapefruits)
Lunch: Smoothie of 2 bananas, 1 mango, head of romaine
Dinner: smoothie of 3 bananas, piece of romaine, 1.5 asian pears (this was a sickly sweet concoction); 4 more bananas a few minutes later, just because I felt I hadn’t eaten enough for the day.
According to Nutridiary.com this day’s intake was about 1230 calories (I need more, but need more fruit), 92% carbs, 5% protein, 3% fat.

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Day 1 Stats
126.2 pounds
28.5% body fat
49.4% hydration level (yikes, I’m practically dead!)
4.6 pounds of bone
Biological age: 28 (that's a thing that pops up on my scale, not my real age, which is 38! I think it refers to your ratio of weight, body fat, etc.)

Measurements:
I thought about not posting these, but then I thought, “Now what could someone possibly do with my measurements? Make a wax replica and stick pins in it? Buy me some new clothes unexpectedly?” I decided I was just being uptight, but decided not to post them for now anyway, just because. I’ll post losses in the update section though, when I get to that.