Back in December we had
dinner with some friends, and we got to talking about our diet. That’s typical
because although we try our best to not be annoying and picky guests, we do
have some pretty strict food requirements.
Plant-based, whole-food,
low-oil, low-sodium, whole-grain – that’s a lot of hyphens. Usually if people
don’t know us, we just say we’re big salad lovers. A BIG salad, please, and
we’ll just eat a bowl of hyphens for dessert. Of course, if it’s a pot luck, I
tote along some menu items we can chomp on to our hearts’ healthy content.
These friends were totally
cool, and had dealt with their own health issues themselves. We happily dug
into the bowl of edamame and a lovely crudité tray, and then enjoyed a tasty bowl of
lentil soup. Fruit for dessert, along with some really edifying conversation,
and we called it a wonderful evening.
During the conversation about
food, I found myself telling our hostess how wonderful, fabulous, great,
awesome and energized I feel on a raw food diet. She didn’t bat an eye. She’s
had a life-threatening health scare, and she did alternative dietary treatments
along with conventional medicine. She's now doing great and is very inspiring.
As we drove away I thought -
Why would I tell someone there’s a way of eating that makes me feel better and
more energized and less prone to the inflammation issues I battle – and then
NOT choose to eat that way? I mentally checked off the answers:
· It’s really hard
· It’s really expensive
· It’s so much work
· It’s wintertime
That settled it - for a week or so.
But then I started tossing around the idea of going raw on January 1st. We don’t celebrate the holidays, so November and December munching for me gets
no worse than all the seasonal vegan treats at Trader Joe’s, plus a bit of
wintertime slothdom. So while I didn’t think of putting it off because of
holiday pressure, it just seemed easier to put it off...because being a raw
vegan is hard, it’s really expensive, it’s so much work and let’s not forget it
was wintertime.
It started with looking up some
recipes, and thinking about dusting off the dehydrator and getting out the
spiralizer, and before I knew it I went raw the last week of December, ahead of
schedule. I wasn’t super prepared, but I did it and have no regrets. So far.
The initial decision was to try it for a month
or so, to see how things progressed. Meniere's Syndrome,
has wreaked havoc on my left inner ear and hearing. I had a very depressing hearing test
that confirmed my fears – my left ear is just about totally shot. The good news
is that the hearing in my right ear is really good, excellent in fact. "Thank you right ear, you’re my hero. Left ear, What do I say, you can still hold an
earring and keep my hair tucked behind you, so don’t go away completely." My
hearing specialist, who has a doctorate in audiology, firmly believes there is
a strong connection with diet and hearing. She is very supportive of my efforts to protect
my right ear’s hearing with all reasonable practices.
What’s funny is I don’t even
“believe” in raw food eating, it just feels so incredibly good when I eat this
way I would be a fool to not keep it up. Tremendous amounts of fresh fruits and
vegetables, in their whole form, plus nuts and seeds and sprouted grains seems
to work well for me. I’ve tried this before, and the results were great, but just
never sustained it. Why? See the bulleted list above.
My hope is to not be a freak
about this, I already realized one of the salads I was picking up at Trader
Joe’s wasn’t even vegan, let alone raw vegan. We were somewhere and the only
salad option had quinoa in it, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Another salad we were served had garbanzo beans, and it was yummy. Coffee is still an occasional treat, although I’ve gone back to just tea in
the mornings. There's been some roasted nuts and bits of cooked foods, but by and
large, I’m buying large amounts of raw produce and products and eating only
that. Next up is finding a natural addition for smoothies to cover all the amino acid and nutritional bases.
So my month-long plan is now a
year-long goal. Challenges thrill me, I thrive on them. Next January I’ll
reassess and see if I felt there was any change in my inflammation issues. By
then I’ll know if feeling better on this eating plan is just in my head. Spring is just around the
corner with all the yummy spring and summer fruits and vegetables ripening. By
the time fall comes around, I’ll be totally in the groove and then it will be
just a few more months to go.
My challenge now?
· Not to look at this as hard, but as a doable challenge
· Find ways to make it cheaper
· Streamline the prep work
· Try not to dread next winter
One of the difficult parts of
this eating plan is the explaining it to others awkwardness. We
are in a congregation full of Moldovans,
many of whom experienced true food deprivations in their life. How do I begin
to explain, even if I could come up with the proper wording, why I am not eating cooked food? My trial run was dinner at our friend
Galina’s house. She loves to entertain. She serves cooked food. That food is
delicious. She goes to great lengths to adapt her thinking and her cooking to
accommodate our plant-based diet. What would she think if I only had salad on a
cold January evening? A salad I bought from Trader Joe’s? A cold, raw salad?
She didn’t bat an eye. She
didn’t look at me weird, or raise her eyebrows or purse her lips. She just
said, Wow, that sounds great! Well, actually she said in Romanian something
like “Bravo Jessikutsa!” You’ve just got to love friends who trust you to do
what’s best for your own body. Maybe this is terrible for me. Maybe it’s just a
waste of energy and money and time spent buying, washing and prepping
vegetables. But it’s only a year. I can’t do too much damage to myself in that
amount of time. Hopefully I’ll do some good.
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| One week of produce for the two of us |
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| Lots of leafy greens! |
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| A new tool, this makes veggie confetti. |
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| Now if only every McDonalds could become a Chopt |
