This "Raw Food Thing"...

With every successful raw day, I am liking this way of living more and more. I know it is only day six, but I can feel something growing in me, and I really like it. I'm researching this way of living, and it is also common sense. Foods were never meant to be eaten cooked. Cooking, preserving (canning), and eventually freezing were all ways to extend shelf life (by killing or stopping the growth of bacteria) when foods were scarce. After we left our hunter/gatherer lifestyles and started cultivating our foods, we needed ways to preserve the excess. And cooking was born. Yet, deep inside my mind, instinct tells me that raw foods are what we were biologically designed to eat.

I feel like I am going through a mild detox/withdrawal. As a lacto-ovo vegetarian of over seven and a half years, my diet was pretty decent. I bought as many organic dairy products and produce as I could afford. Eggs were always free-range, but not always organic. I tried to eat something green and fresh every day. I wasn't a big fan of fruit...I preferred chocolate, brownies, cakes, and cookies to fruit. Quinoa was a staple grain. I ate a LOT of vegetables...but these were always heavily laden with fats, albeit good fats from coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil...but fats nonetheless. So, my diet wasn't all that bad. But it wasn't that good, either. And I have noticed a few detox/withdrawal symptoms these last couple days: irritability, sleepiness, and very mild stomach upset. All three of these have been short-lived and cured with either talking, taking a nap, and drinking more water. I do believe that these symptoms are mostly related to my addiction to processed sugar. I wonder how long it will take for my body to say, "Hey, I don't need that nasty stuff anymore."

The positive effects so far have been much more noticeable: more energy, greater self-esteem, determination, peeing more often (I believe I was previously living in a constant state of dehydration), a more beautiful outlook on life...and hope. How can just changing my diet lead to so many positive emotional changes? And after only six days??

Truly, I can only speculate on how I will be feeling, physically and mentally, after a whole month of eating nothing but fresh, raw, living foods. Nick is at work right now, so I can't ask him to comment on this, but I can tell you that I've noticed an increase in energy and spark in him that I've never seen before.

This is exciting, challenging, and a little intimidating. What if I finish this 30-day raw food adventure...and then decide to keep going? For another month? For six months? A year? Or more...? What will I look like? What will I be doing differently? How can food affect our lives so greatly? I want to shout this from the rooftops!! RAW FOOD IS PURE FOOD AND IT IS AMAZING!!!!!!