Monday, September 07, 2009

Manage My Muffin Top Monday - Week 1 Raw Food Recap

Sunday marked one week since Matthew and I decided to try out an all (90%) raw food diet and I can honestly say I've had some seriously positive results.

We weighed and measured outselves Sunday morning and decided to re-weigh, measure every Sunday to chart our progress and in the past week I've lost 5lbs. That puts me at a total weight loss of 13 pounds since June, when I started actively trying to lose weight. I'd lost 17 pounds on the first round of Operation Muffin Top(ple) then gained 9 of those back. So with the 5 I lost last week I'm 3 pounds short of the original 17 pounds I'd lost at the start of my weight loss adventure. I've also lost half an inch on my waist in the last week!

Other positives on the raw food diet -



~> I no longer feel full or bloated after eating

~> My body tells me when it's had enough so I don't eat until I feel uncomfortable, I just eat until I feel done eating

~> I'm not starving again a few hours after I eat, which happened often with cooked foods.

~> I've been sleeping like a ROCK, which is possibly a combination of the new diet and this stress tamer tea Matthew bought, that we've started drinking a hot cup of each night before bed. Either way, it's a new improvement that I'm super happy about.

~> This one is gross, but my eliminations are softer and less frequent. For as long as I can remember I've been the poster child for regularity. 3 times a day every day, morning, noon and night. I don't know about you but I just really hate going poo, there's simply nothing enjoyable about the experience. SO being able to go less but not feel backed up is just wonderful to me.



We've been trying to figure out exactly how we want to structure our new eating lifestyle and are bouncing back and forth between all raw, with the exception of fish and brown rice, or just vegetarian with limited cooked foods and I can't speak for Matthew but I had an experience this weekend that pretty much cinched it for me.

Sunday afternoon we were out running errands and decided to go to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. I had a taco salad - beans, rice, lettuce, tomato and cheese in a crispy fried flour bowl, and Matthew had a tostada, bean burrito and cheese fajita. All vegetarian friendly except for the cheese - well depending on what kind of vegetarian you are that is - and mostly all raw except for the beans, rice and tortillas, none of which are technically *bad* for you.

The food was fantastic and we stopped eating once we started getting that full feeling, but within minutes of finishing our meal we both felt like crap. Our stomachs felt heavy and bloated and I felt almost instantly fatigued and achy all over. I honestly didn't think eating some rice, beans and a flour tortilla shell would be that bad, but it seems my body adapted really quickly to all fresh raw food and did not like detouring back into it's previous style of eating. Seafood seems to be the one exception my stomach is willing to make to the cooked rule and we had some FABULOUS pre-seasoned boiled shrimp from Winn-Dixie yesterday for lunch.

My next goal is to get a food dehydrator so I can start making some of the incredible looking raw food recipes I've found online. For those of you who are all "OMG I couldn't live without bread, or chips".. well you can make those things yourself with the dehydrator and they're not "cooked" enough to leach out the nutrients and enzymes you get from eating them raw. I found a recipe for home made corn chips and salsa that I can't wait to try!

As for expenses - eating raw really hasn't cost any more than the way we used to eat. Yea fruits and vegetables are expensive, but if that's basically all you're buying then you still have the money you would be spending on meat, bread, and other processed foods so it really kind of evens out.

All this talk about food has made me hungry and it's lunch time so I'm going to eat!



Until next week... Eat Healthy and be Happy!

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