It’s almost time to start winding down now.   Day 25 and only three days to go.  Here’s what I know will happen.  I will go deeper into the high raw life even studying raw foods.  I’m doing this for my health in that I want to lower the high cholesterol levels that have plagued me for decades. 

Except for a month in Spain when my cholesterol count came down to normal, I have always had to pay attention to this problem.  Doctors continually threaten to put me on drugs such as Lipitor but I refuse to do that; I’m more fearful of the side effects than the cholesterol.  When a doctor informed me that the liver can be negatively affected by statin drugs I was done with that concept. 

I mean come on, I asked the doctor how would I know if my liver was being affected by the drugs and his response was “Let me worry about that.”  Are you kidding?  Mess with the liver and you might as well kick it in.  The liver is the primary cleansing organ of the body.  If it’s not functioning well, you can’t expect to have much of a life. 

Instead, I’ve been taking an herbal supplement of Shuddaka Guggula which comes from India.  It’s been known to help drastically reduce cholesterol without side effects as it’s a natural substance and herb.  My new doctor (yep, dropped the old guy for a natural health oriented MD) was excited that I had taken this initiative, even asking me where I found this herb so she could share it with others.  So between the natural herbs, exercise and raw, vegan eating I expect only great results.  I’ll have to let you know as soon as I get a check-up.

For day 25 I decided to create a new salad dressing.  Funny thing, I didn’t want to actually eat the dressing, but just made it from carrots, nutritional yeast and a few seasonings.  Nutritional yeast has a cheesy type of taste and I’ve been wanting to use it for a long time.  It’s another new food to have as a newbie “high-raw” eater.  Tomorrow I’ll have my new salad dressing all ready to go.

But I did eat today. In fact, I probably ate too much even though it was raw.  You see, it’s possible to eat too much no matter what type of food you’re having.  It started with handfuls of grapes in the morning and a little piece of the still lingering carrot cake.  I probably really blew the raw diet thing by now so I’ll have to go back to being more careful about it.  For lunch, it was the kale and avocado salad from yesterday still left over. 

Dinner was a fabulous new recipe, a Tom Kha Soup.  I love Tom Kha Kha soups at Indian restaurants so it’s been a goal to try a recipe.  I used canned coconut milk so that wasn’t very raw.  I also added an organic tofu so hopefully it wasn’t a GMO product because the product will never say, especially after Californians voted down the proposition that would require this labeling.   Oh well, that’s another point.  

Back to the soup.  It also had fresh lemon grass, ginger, scallions, mushrooms and lime and lemon juice.  This will definitely be another favorite from this experience.  For my husband I added Spicy Italian Organic Sausage and piece of  roiled fish along with three hot peppers.  I’m finding that having non-raw eating person to feed is not too difficult with some creativity.  Wrapped the evening up with another handful of grapes and loads of water.  

A good day overall.  Oh, let me add that we spent an hour at the gym exercising which felt really wonderful.

 

I had a great walk this morning.  It was warm and just a bit breezy, perfect for a power walk.  For months I’ve been trying to keep the habit of getting up first thing in the morning, doing my Bible reading, drinking a green smoothie and maybe some other breakfast if I’m really hungry and then taking a walk.  If I dion’t get out there first thing in the morning it can often get skipped for the whole day.  Then I can decide to do more exercise later in the day.

I’ve been trying to work on a new book on healthy eating these past weeks.  It seemed thehat the direction was clear at first then I got myself confused by considering too many great ideas at once.  I figured I could write the end all and do all book or just get started with one idea and move from there.  Of course, I know better; I know to get the one idea and stick to it in order to get anything done.  I’m a certified creativity coach for goodness sake (among so many other certifications) so I know the routine of needing to get focused.  My mind goes to information on health and wellness while my heart goes to a detox cookbook type of product.  I’m enjoying this detox so much that I want to share this concept with others in the form of a book or ebook.  The main thing is to just get started.

Food wise, there was a great smoothie for breakfast.  I also juiced about half a bag of oranges.  There’s something special about freshly squeeze orange juice.  I haven’t’ done a lot of organie juice during his detox because of its sugar content but I did drink a few ounces of this after squeezing.  Also had a few bites of the carrot cake made on Thanksgiving.  For lunch I did the left-over routine using the leek and potato soup.  The soups just seems to taste better  on the second day.  A snack of raw almonds and raisins went with me during an afternoon shopping trip for a new vacuum and a wonderful surprise – a new Cuisinart Food Processor.  I used to have one literally decades ago, but just didn’t need it at the time.  Now I’m so ready to try new raw food recipes.  Honestly, I’m getting ready to work on setting up some live cooking classes which will be so wonderfully fun to do.

For dinner, I made a spicy warmed cauliflower with coconut oil and spices.  With that I put together a kale, avocado salad.  This is really one of my favorite new dishes form this detox.  YUM! Talk to you tomorrow.