Yesterday was day 16 of our raw food challenge and day 2 of LFRV. I had a paper due for my breastfeeding class today, so I did not get a chance to blog yesterday. But there are definitely a few things I'd like to mention about living a low-fat raw vegan lifestyle.
Alright, remember how I said a few posts back that the main concept of LFRV was to get 80% of your calories from simple carbohydrates (fruits), 10% from fats (avocado, coconut, oils), and 10% from proteins (nuts and seeds)...? So, that's a TON of fruit. I've been using Fitday.com to track our caloric intake, temporarily, in order to make sure we are eating enough calories to prevent low energy and lethargy. And I've quickly realized that we need to eat a WHOLE BUNCH MORE fruit than we originally anticipated. We've bought the fruit...and we're eating it. But here's some things to note for those interested in going LFRV:
1) You will be ravenous shortly after eating your huge fruit meal (because fruit, when eaten by itself, will digest very quickly).
2) No problem, you'll just eat more fruit, right?
3) Well, yes you should, however, it's simply not that easy to eat all that fruit if you're not used to it!! Yesterday, I thought I'd die if I had to eat one more ounce of sweet fruit! I wanted salt, vinegar, and hot sauce to counteract my sugar-abused tastebuds.
4) Keep at it, though. Eat those giant fruit meals (
following good food combining rules) and eventually your tastebuds will start craving all that delicious fruit sugar, your stomach will expand to fit all that bulk fiber and water, and your energy levels will soar. This is the theory of the 80-10-10 diet.
So how is it working for us so far? Like I said, it is difficult for us, at this moment, to consume such large amounts of sweet fruits. However, we are only on day 3 of our LFRV lifestyle, so we anticipate that this will get easier. Our energy levels are very good, though...and really, really
stable. I was worried about this. I thought if I ate too much fruit, my blood sugar would crash (like it used to do when I ate candy, cookies, chocolate, brownies, or cake), but this has not proven to be the case at all! Also, Nick and I are still steadily losing weight and our skin looks fantastic (especially Nick's...he's always had pretty nice skin, but now he has virtually no blemishes/blackheads/pimples/etc. at all!). I am loving this so far! :)
Breakfast: Green Goddess Smoothie. Only, this smoothie turned out BROWN instead of green because we used rainbow (mostly red) chard. Haha! We blended about 7 rainbow chard leaves, 2
ripe bananas, 2 ripe pears, about one cup of blueberries, and some fresh mint leaves out of our garden. And we each drank a whole pint of it each! It was absolutely delicious, but I'm bummed because I didn't get a photo of the dark brownish purplish earthy color. Next time! :)
Lunch: Banana-Heavy Sweet Fruits. Mmm...the custard-like texture and flavor of banana mixed with the nectar-sweet flavor of the mango and the slight tartness of the fresh blueberries made this one amazing lunch! Nick and I had one and a half bananas each, split the honey mango, and split about a cup of blueberries. Halfway through, though, I had to force myself to keep eating. I was full and my tongue said, 'No more sweet stuff!', but I knew I needed to finish to get enough calories for the day. So I finished it all, and it truly was delicious, and I was proud of myself for finishing. This non-fruit-eater is learning to love her fruits, though it is taking time and patience.
Dinner: Mmm...SUSHI!! Lots of sushi!! So we've been experimenting with rice substitutes to put in our sushi. You may remember that when we first had sushi two weeks ago, we used parsnip rice (fresh parsnip processed in the food processor). It made a lovely sushi, but definitely had a parsnip taste. Then, last week, we made our sushi with Raw Pecan and Swiss Chard Pate. It was very yummy, but far too rich for a sushi, and the pate overpowered all the other tastes and textures. So last night, we tried raw daikon (an asian radish) processed in the food processor as a sort of rice. And it wasn't
bad, but it wasn't good either. When processed up, the daikon smells a little funky...slightly like old cabbage...and the taste once again overpowered the rest of the flavors in the sushi. So, we rolled one more sushi roll each, and used plain ol' sweet clover (you can totally use alfalfa) sprouts as the 'rice bed'. And that, my friends, was absolutely perfect!! It made a very light, crisp, tasty sushi, and all the flavors (plus the tamari and wasabi, mmm...) blended very nicely together. We will keep experimenting, but so far, the sprouts take the cake! (The photo below is the sushi with the daikon 'rice'.)
Speaking of sprouts, here is an update on our sprout-growing experiment. So half the quinoa sprouted, and the other half didn't. The raw sesame seeds did not sprout. Both the quinoa and sesame attracted FRUIT FLIES. Majorly. We keep our windows open most days, and the little suckers would crawl right through the window screen and then into our sprout jars! I had to keep opening the lids to get them out, and then washing the sprouts. But finally, I gave up. I just couldn't handle the fruit flies anymore. And I just got really wigged out by the fact that there were probably fruit fly eggs in our quinoa and sesame seeds. So both went into the compost heap. :(
However, the green lentil sprouts grew like CRAZY and did not attract even a single fruit fly! So I harvested them yesterday and have two more batches starting now, and one batch of red lentils (they are split like split-peas, so they may not sprout, but what the heck, I'm trying it anyway).
I'll be back later tonight with today's meals! Gonna try to make it to the farmer's market between classes to get some fresh, local, yummy produce. Hope everyone has a great day!
