100 Squats a Day 30-Day Challenge

Hi!  I'm still here!  Things have been a little crazy lately, and honestly, I just haven't felt like blogging.  To update everyone regarding my previous post, I did indeed pass my NARM!  I am now a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM).  And not only did I pass my NARM, I kicked its butt with a score of 89!  Not too bad, eh?

In less happy news, I had to re-home my dog, Panda "Ru" Bear.  To keep a long story short, he bit my 14-month-old daughter in the ear and drew blood.  This was not a case of "toddler tormenting the dog", either.  She was eating a banana, he wanted her banana, she wouldn't give it to him, and he attacked her.  She was absolutely terrified, and her ear was bruised and bleeding (it's mostly all healed now--yay breastmilk and salt water for wound cleaning!).  He's always been aggressive with children, growling and baring teeth, but never like this. :-(  I found him a forever home with a wonderful couple who has two other little dogs and a few cats, and he is settling in nicely.  I can't really explain with words how much I miss him.  He's been a part of my life for almost 8 years.  He stayed by my side and comforted me while I went through some pretty difficult times.  He was my baby.  But he simply couldn't live here anymore...the risk was too great.  I've wanted to write a blog post about feeling emotions while eating a low fat raw vegan diet...because man, there's no hiding from them when you don't drug yourself with fat-laden, difficult to digest foods.  But, losing him is still too painful at the moment.  Maybe another time.

As far as our move to Sarasota...well, it is absolutely incredible here.  We LOVE it!  After a couple weeks of cold weather, the sunshine is back and warm on the skin.  I've been gardening a lot lately, and my plants seem quite happy (which is a nice change from every other garden I've had).  My little raised bed has romaine lettuce, kale, baby spinach, oregano, basil, grape tomato, zucchini, and scallions.  And a little over a week ago, my husband and I went to a friend's hobby banana garden, dug up a bunch of finger banana "pups", and I transplanted 9 of them in our yard.  One of them isn't gonna make it, but the other 8 are growing like champs!  Then, a couple days ago, a wonderful friend of mine (who is going to be hiking the Appalachian Trail with her partner--powered by a plant-based diet!) gifted us with some beautiful plants including a 3-year-old "Lemon Zest" mango tree, a 1-year-old avocado tree, 2 baby mamey sapote saplings, and some cilantro and microgreens.  Overflowing with green abundance! :-)

Anyway, on to the squats!  Ted Carr, a high carb raw vegan athlete, has challenged THE WORLD to do 100 squats a day for 30 days!  The newest challenge began today, April 1st, and Nick and I decided to go for it.  We took photos of each other before we began our squats, and will be taking a profile photo every day for 30 days so we can create a progression video at the end of our challenge.  We are really stoked about this!  I've watched the body changes that other squatters have experienced and needless to say, some of them are absolutely phenomenal.  I've been walking for about 45 minutes daily since moving here to Sarasota, and Nick has started attending yoga 4-5 days per week.  But this is the first high-intensity workout that either of us have done, so even though it's exciting, it's a little scary, too!

April 1, 2013
Day 1 of 100 Squats a Day 30-Day Challenge

Missy's Before Photos
Scale this morning says 117 lbs (5'1.5").










Nick's Before Photos. Scale this morning says 175 lbs.







 

So how'd we do?  Did we make it?  Did we do all 100?  Or did we collapse into a crying puddle after 40 squats? 

Well, we did it!  And neither of us did too bad!  Nick's time today was 3:12 and mine was 3:38.  It was HARD.  Man.  It was hard.  I had to take a couple breaks.  My legs felt like rubber afterwards, but the soreness didn't set in until later in the evening.  I feel like tomorrow is going to be way harder than today, but I'm determined to do it.

At the end of the week, Nick and I will be filming videos of our squatting to share on the 100 Squats a Day Facebook page to get helpful tips and critiquing on our form.  I'll also be blogging about our progress weekly.  And at the end of the 30 days, I'll post our new photos and stats, and share the progression video. 

On the food side of things, I'm going overt-fat-free for the next 30 days to help re-balance my candida levels, and Nick is doing it for a week or two to support me until I can look at avocado and tahini without salivating.  Because of both this and the intensity of squatting, we're going to have to majorly amp up our caloric intake.  We'll probably both be shooting for 3500 calories per day from ripe, sweet fruity carbohydrates.  That's a lot of mangoes, folks.  Mmm... :-)

So what exactly does a high carb raw vegan eat?

I've received a few requests to document what we eat in a typical day. Now, for those of you who have been considering experimenting with a low fat high carb raw vegan diet, I don't want you to be turned off by the slight monotony of what we eat. I absolutely love the way we eat. I love not worrying about what we're going to make. I love not taking an hour to decide on dinner, an hour to cook it, a brief moment to devour it, and an hour cleaning up. This is actually the fourth time we've gone raw, and so I believe we've finally discovered a way of eating that is satisfying to our tastebuds, our schedule, and our wallet. This is what works for us, but it is NOT the only way to live this lifestyle.  

BREAKFAST:
For breakfast, both Nick and I drink two quarts of a fruit smoothie (usually around 6 large bananas, 5 medjool dates, and 2 cups of frozen mango, pineapple, & cherries, about 1200 calories)...each.  Yes, you heard that right...2 quarts of smoothie EACH.  Ariana drinks about 14 oz of the same smoothie (usually about 1 large banana, 1-2 medjool dates, and 1/2 cup frozen fruit) for breakfast in addition to breastfeeding every 1-2 hours during the day and through the night.  As you can see from the photo below, one of us usually drinks our smoothie right out of the blender so we don't have extra quart jars to wash.  Simplicity at its finest!




Our chunky munchkin after finishing her breakfast smoothie.




LUNCH:
For lunch, Nick, Ariana, and I have...the exact same thing as breakfast!  Remember, there are many ways to live the high carb raw vegan lifestyle, but after experimenting with raw recipes and complicated fruit dishes, two smoothies per day is simply the easiest way for us to get our carbohydrate calories in. 





DINNER:
For dinner, we each eat our own giant salad.  A typical salad for me would consist of 1 head of romaine lettuce (a large head, not just the romaine heart that come three in a bag), 3 large zucchinis spiralized into noodles, a couple tomatoes, some celery, a few diced green onions, and whatever other veggies look tasty at the moment.  We top our salads with a blended dressing.  Mine is usually fresh herbs, the juice of one lemon, the juice of one orange, and 1/2 cup hemp seeds.  Nick's is usually 2 tablespoons of tahini mixed with the juice of one lemon.  No salt.  No oil.  We finish dinner feeling satisfied and light...not so stuffed and full that we need to lay down and sleep it off.





Ariana enjoys a whole avocado, a medium tomato, zucchini noodles, and the juice of an orange for dinner.  She loves it!





...So is this all we ever eat?  Just two smoothies and a big salad?  No, not always.  We snack on fruits like apples, oranges, kiwis, fresh berries, exotic bananas (mmm...ladyfingers...), and whatever other fruits appeal to us.  But our staple food, at the moment, is bananas.  Lots, and lots, and lots of bananas.  Why bananas?  Bananas are calorie-dense, high carbohydrate, rich in vitamins and minerals, delicious (when ripe!), and cheap.  We buy our bananas in bulk for around $23 for a 40 pound case.  We buy at least two cases per week on different days so we always have some bananas ripening.  Running out of ripe bananas is something we can't afford to let happen.  If we do happen to plan poorly and run out of ripe bananas (we do not eat bananas unless they are covered in brown spots), our fallback is medjool dates.




What we use as a staple fruit changes seasonally.  In the spring, we feast on delicious mangoes.  In summer, much of our day is spent diving face-first into ginormous watermelons.  In fall, we're back to bananas and dates, and in winter, if we can find good citrus, we spend hours juicing oranges.  Sometimes we get adventurous and buy the weirdest tropical fruits we can find...like the jackfruit we bought at our local Indian market the other day.  So amazingly delicious!








And sometimes we do spice things up a little bit by creating an extravagant low fat high carb raw vegan gourmet dish.  It's rare because it takes a lot of work and time, and as busy parents, we'd rather spend that time with our daughter.  But every once in a while it's nice to have something a little different.  Last night, for example, we had raw vegan burritos, courtesy of Kristina Carillo-Bucaram over at Fully Raw/Rawfully Organic!  They were delicious and different...and very time consuming...just what we needed to remind ourselves that simple is usually better but change can be nice, too. :-)










I hope you enjoyed a peek into our daily menu!  After reading this post, you are probably wondering...but why so much?  Why so much food?  Why so many calories?  Why so many carbohydrates?  WHY SO MUCH FRUIT?!  This lifestyle is definitely one of ABUNDANCE not restriction, and those are very valid questions, my friends!  Stay tuned for the answers in a future post.  For now, I'm off to dream about sapodillas and ataulfo mangoes.  Mmm...good-night.

LFRV, HCRV, HCCV...wait, what's with all the abbreviations??

Whew!  What a wild couple of years it's been!  So much has happened in the past two years.  So many changes...some good, some not so good.  And a few were so incredibly life-changing that they led me to start writing in this blog again...and so here I am.

April 4, 2011
Nick (my boyfriend of about one and a half years at the time) and I decide to take a 30-day Raw Vegan Challenge.  I had already been lacto-ovo vegetarian since October of 2003 and had dabbled in raw foods that first year of being vegetarian.  Nick was not vegetarian, had no intentions of going vegetarian, but was spontaneous and up for an adventure.  So I created this blog to document our journey and we stopped cooking the next day!  The challenge was life-altering.  Nick shed 30 pounds and healed his chronic severe stomach issues.  I lost 15 pounds and felt years of brain-fog float out of my life forever.  After the 30 days were over, we decided to stay vegan for life and stay on the raw food path for the time being.

Before Going Raw Vegan

After 30 Days of Raw Vegan

May 4, 2011
I blame the raw food.  To this day, I seriously blame the raw food.  On May 4th, after having charted my cycles for many years, I had my first ever "Hmm...shouldn't my period be here by now?" and bought a pregnancy test that day.  It was positive.  I was pregnant.  I was pregnant!!  Trying to convey the tsunami-like emotions crashing through my brain that day would take a whole other blog post, so I'll just say that my sweet girl was very, very wanted and very, very early.  I still had another year left of midwifery school, and gosh darn it, I had just finally started getting my body into the shape I had always wanted it to be!  But underneath the doubts, fear, and apprehension, there was so, so much joy.  I was going to have a baby with the most kind-hearted, amazing man I had ever met.  I was going to be a mother.

Two weeks later...
I got a horrible gum infection at the site of my bottom right wisdom tooth.  Many years ago, when my chipmunk-faced classmates were returning to school after having their wisdom teeth extracted, I sent out a desperate plea-like prayer to the universe that I would have plenty of room for all four of my wisdom teeth.  I was terrified of dentists (along with bees, aliens, and the apocalypse), and would rather suffer crooked teeth than face an extraction.  So imagine my delight when all four of my wisdom teeth grew in when I was in my early 20's!  Fast forward to the middle of May 2011, and I was singing a different tune.  The infection came out of nowhere.  It was most likely due to pregnancy hormones softening my gums and my lack of flossing (oops).  I couldn't chew food and completely lost my appetite.  I took strong echinacea tincture, padded my tooth and gum with fresh plantain poultices, and tried to rest.  It got worse and worse.  I tried to drink raw soups with lots of garlic and lemon.  I lost about 5 pounds in one week.  The pain was so severe.  I eventually resorted to antibiotics and the infection cleared within days.

When I was able to chew again, I had severe food aversions to pretty much everything except pineapple and plain boiled potatoes.  I cried the first time I ate a potato.  I had desperately wanted to continue on my raw foods path while pregnant, but it just wasn't happening.  The thought of raw foods, even previously cherished fruits, was absolutely sickening.  We started cooking.  Throughout my pregnancy, I ate a diet of whole grains, vegetables, some legumes, and fruits.  We were new to vegan cooking and used lots of olive oil.  I gained 35 pounds during my pregnancy...not too bad, but I had low energy, hip pain, and restless leg syndrome.  Looking back, I should have supplemented because I simply was not getting enough fresh foods, including green leafy veggies.  Other than the mild discomforts, though, it was an amazing pregnancy.  Hearing my baby's heartbeat with my fetoscope and feeling her movement inside my body were simply indescribable experiences.

June 25, 2012
I married the love of my life!  We had a beautiful outdoor ceremony on Vilano Beach in St. Augustine, Florida and a vegetarian reception at my mother- and father-in-law's house.  Nick and I feasted on baked vegan eggplant, spaghetti marinara, salad, and a delicious vegan carrot cake.  It was a wonderful day! We flew to Costa Rica for our honeymoon the very next morning.


January 12, 2012
I birthed my baby girl on my bed at home!  See the blog post below this one for Ariana's birth story!


March 2012
Ariana started showing signs of colic in the middle of the night, so I immediately cut all cooked foods and allergy-inducing foods out of my diet.  I went 100% low fat high carb raw vegan (80-10-10 style), and her symptoms disappeared overnight.  Nick joined me about 2 weeks later, and together we were HCRV/LFRV for about 4 months.  We started including low fat cooked vegan foods into our diets when finances wouldn't allow us to continue 100% raw.  We both felt the effects of cooked foods (digestive imbalances, mood swings, low energy, skin breakouts) after so many months of eating raw and vowed that once finances were more stable, we'd go back for good.  


August 25, 2012
I graduated from The Florida School of Traditional Midwifery.  After three intense years of schooling, I was finally done...with the academic portion, anyway.  I still had/have some clinicals to do (4 births left!!), and will take my NARM Written Examination on February 20th in Orlando, Florida.


And this leads us to...

January 6, 2013, aka, TODAY!!
Today, my friends, is our last day of eating cooked food!  We are using up whatever is left in our cupboards and fridge (potatoes, collards, sweet potatoes, a little bit of brown rice, and some soy milk) and preparing for our first day back to 100% high carb low fat raw vegan TOMORROW!!!  Can you tell I'm excited?  I wish I could explain how amazing I feel when eating this way.  The clarity of mind is incredible, I shed water weight immediately (we do not use table salt), my skin clears up, my energy levels go through the roof, I have more patience, I sleep more soundly.  The benefits are too numerous to document them all here so I will save that for a future blog post.

Anyway, we have almost a full case of ripe bananas, and I'll be making some low fat raw vegan pie tarts tonight to get us ready for tomorrow.  Tomorrow evening is also grocery day, so we'll be picking up some citrus, greens, pineapple, fresh herbs, and a few bags of frozen fruits.  We'll also be ordering a case of fresh dates from Shields Date Garden.  Yum!!

So what's this blog going to be about, you ask?  My answer to you is...an experiment!  An experiment to determine how on earth I can manage to combine raw food and nutrition with midwifery, homebirth, and parenting with a little bit of gardening and yoga thrown in the mix.  I'll scatter some raw vegan food porn in there as well, along with some beautiful pictures of my family and the beautiful Florida beaches.  Click Subscribe...you know you want to.