I’ve gotten quite a few emails from people asking how I’m doing after my 30-day raw trial.  I continued to lose weight for a week or so after the trial ended, but then I noticed the weight was starting to creep up on me again.  I think it was the bread and possibly the vegan cheese.  And there was a veggie lasagna in there too.  I recognize this pattern, so I know I have to nip this in the bud or I’m going to lose all the gains I made last year.  I lost 20 pounds last year, 6 of them from the 1-month raw trial.

I currently weigh 191 pounds and I want to weigh much closer to 140, so I’ve still got a ways to go.  Tonight I am consulting with a dietician friend whom I met when I was running my vegan magazine.  He’s the guy doctors send their patients to when the patient is at death’s door and needs to lose weight or get their diabetes under control or they’ll die.  John is strict, oh yes, very strict, but he knows how to get the job done.  To be honest I’m a little afraid of what he’s going to tell me to do, but I’m committed to doing it because I know it will work, and because designing my own diet has not worked for me in the past.  I need clear direction and boundaries.  I like that John is vegan but has done extensive work with raw diets, so he’s extremely well versed in both styles of eating.  If I remember correctly he advocates a mostly raw, low fat diet with some whole grains and beans in the mix.

I appreciate all the support I’ve received from my readers.  It’s nice to know people are rooting for me, and it helps with accountability.  I plan to continue to post periodic updates on my weight loss.  Since all of my blog posts automatically generate a thread in our forums for discussion, if you are also working on weight loss this year, feel free to post your progress when I post mine.  We can do this together and be supportive of each other.  You know, safety in numbers, accountability, and all that good stuff.   No judgment, no shame, just focused action on achieving a goal.  Here’s a toast to health and wellness in 2009!

Weight Loss
I started the trial on December 2 at 198.6 pounds and on January 1 I weighed 192.0 pounds for a net loss of 6.6 pounds.  Not too bad.  Considering I didn’t count calories or fat grams, it’s clear that just being raw was enough for me to lose weight.  Although I did expect to lose closer to 10-15 pounds, I shouldn’t have become attached to that expectation.  I should have simply kept myself open to how my body wanted to react.  Everyone is different.  I could have continued to modify the diet, but my desire was to add some cooked vegan food back into my diet.

Cooked Food Back in the Belly
I had an apple for breakfast around 10:30am.  At 11:30am I made some black bean vegetable soup and had about a cup of it instead of the two cups I put in my bowl.  It tasted okay but it didn’t have the intense flavor I was expecting.  That was interesting and unexpected.  I really expected it to taste amazing. 

We took the kids to see a movie and got them a small popcorn to share. Even though I could have had some, I just didn’t want it.  I figured it would taste good, but I just didn’t want to put it in my body.  Didn’t seem nourishing to me.  Steve brought some raw nuts to the movies and I didn’t want any of those either.  I was craving nothing.  Wanting nothing. When we got home I cut up my butternut squash and roasted the pieces with oil, salt and pepper.  It tasted okay but not nearly as exciting as it was when I was eating it before my trial.  What gives?  As I type this the squash is sitting like a lump of greasy coal in my gut.  I really hope nothing untoward happens to me digestively speaking.

Tonight for dinner I’m going to have a banana strawberry shake, which is something I’m actually looking forward to.  My intention at this point is to remain mostly raw.  Steve has cautioned me that staying “mostly” raw is harder than it sounds, as you can start to eat cooked food by default and before you know it, you’re 20% raw instead of your intended 80%.  I’ll have to see what happens and remain vigilant.

Will I Lose the Benefits of Raw?
I really hope I won’t lose the benefits I gained from being raw.  The increased intuition, the radiant skin, and the scale headed downward were the three main benefits.  My main goal continues to be weight loss and better health, so if I see myself trending the opposite direction I may go right back to 100% raw.  I was definitely getting used to it and starting to find some wonderful things to eat.

I can see myself doing another 30 day trial in the future, or perhaps I’ll just naturally segue into raw full time.  There’s one thing I know for sure: raw ain’t so tough and it ain’t so bad.  If you had asked me about going raw at the beginning of 2008, when Steve was doing his 80-10-10 experiment, I would have been extremely resistant to the idea.  There’s no way I could imagine myself wanting or succeeding on the raw food diet.  It’s only through a trial that you can see the actual results.

If anything significant happens while I transition away from 100% raw, I’ll report on it.  Hopefully nothing bad will happen to me, but if it does I’ll be happy to share the gory details.  

Thanks again to everyone who sent me support and encouragement.  And a big thank you to the raw food community for setting a good example and making it easier on us newbies by sharing stories, information, and recipes.  You’re quite the trailblazers.

Weight Loss
Argh.  That’s all I have to say, so let me say it again.  Argh! 

This morning I weighed 193.0.  Been there for weeks.  I’m not exactly sure what the issue is, but clearly I’m not experiencing the weight just fall off of me like I hear other people talk about.  I could understand if I only had 10 pounds to lose, but with so much extra weight on me, I really thought it would slip away more easily.  Please don’t email me your theories.  I’ve heard them all, and I don’t believe any of them anymore.

Officially I’m down 5.6 pounds since the start of the trial.

The Gains
To be fair, even though I’m not losing weight, there have been some tremendous benefits of being raw.  Today we noticed how great my skin is looking.  It’s smoother, less porous, and there seems to be a glow.  The skin on the back of my arms which has been sort of rough and bumpy since puberty feels much softer.  And my psychic connection with Steve is so through the roof that I told him we have to find some kind of game show to go on where you have to guess what your partner answered.  We’d clean up for sure.  It would be a real shame to lose all of these things if I stop being raw.

The Losses
I desire hot food, especially in this cold weather.  I had a cold last week (caught it from Steve), and all I really wanted was some hot broth.  But I muddled through. 

Food preparation on the raw food diet is either ridiculously simple, like eating fruit or making a shake, or ridiculously involved like doing a ton of chopping, soaking, and dehydrating.  The more complicated foods taste really good and give me a sense of satiety that I don’t normally have, but the effort is more than I want to make at this point.  All through the trial I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to crack open a can of soup, or sprinkle some oil, salt and pepper on my butternut squash and let the oven do the rest.  The first two things I plan to eat on Thursday are black bean and vegetable soup, and that butternut squash I’ve been dreaming about.  I think it’s to my credit that I’m not going to rush out for pizza and French fries which is how I figured I’d end the trial back when I first started.

Blood Sugar
My blood sugar has been between 84 and 156 throughout the trial.  It was a little higher before the trial, with a range of probably 95 to 186, so there’s been some improvement there.

Raw Christmas Feast
This year we had a raw Christmas meal, and then Steve’s family came in from Los Angeles and we made them a gourmet raw feast!  If you had asked anytime in the year if I would be willing to have an all-raw Christmas meal I would have definitely said no.  But I was really excited and happy to be all raw for Christmas.  It was a wonderful experience, and I know Steve appreciated not having to stare at a Tofurkey and mashed potatoes.  For our gourmet feast we made these not-tuna pate nori rolls that were truly out of this world.  I definitely would make those again.  And Steve made a wonderful Blueberry Pie and a Banana Crème Pudding that were also amazing.  There is a lot to be said for the really tasty food on a raw diet.  Steve pointed out to me, however, that all the food we made for our feast was really high in fat and shouldn’t be eaten on a daily basis.  My hopes were dashed.

Blueberry Cream Pie

My Plan for After the Trial
I’m definitely going to keep a lot of what I’ve discovered.  Greens, for one, I want to keep in the diet.  I’m going to switch to eating beans instead of nuts because I don’t think the nuts are working for me.  The beans will be high fiber, high protein, and low fat, which is what my body seems to do best on. I’m going to keep the fruit for sure.  And I’m going to continue eating lots of vegetables, some raw and some cooked.  I’ll probably add tofu and tempeh into the equation as well.  I intend to avoid overly processed, non-nutritive foods, and keep the diet more like a whole foods vegan diet with an emphasis on low fat, high fiber and high protein.  Steve also suggested I do a 30 day trial of going to the gym every day.  Usually I go 3-4 times a week.  Going every day seems very doable to me. 

It certainly has been an incredible experience.  I highly recommend the 30-day trial to test out theories you have about making changes in your life.  Knowing it’s “just for 30 days” makes nearly anything doable.  I know I’m better off for having gone raw.  I certainly understand Steve better, I’ve discovered how much I like raw foods, and there have been some incredible benefits.  I’ll do another post after my trial is over to report on any major changes I notice when going back to cooked food.  Maybe I’ll get sick like Steve did, or maybe nothing will happen.  We’ll see.  Thanks again to everyone who sent me support and encouragement.  And thanks for following along as I did the trial.

Lots of Advice
I have received about 60 emails from various people all with ideas to help me lose weight on this diet.  I can’t think of two people who told me to try the same thing.  Interesting, no?  My weight loss journey has been one of trying to develop my own authority over my own health, and I think all the advice is reflective of showing me that no one is an authority over my body except me, and that I need to find out what works for this body.  But I sincerely, deeply appreciate all the advice, support, and encouragement from everyone who has contacted me.  I am finding nuggets of wisdom in every email.  And a big thank you to everyone who has shared their personal journey of weight loss with me.  I am learning a lot.

Weight Loss
My weight was stalled for a while and then actually started going up.  Oh horror!  That really annoyed and discouraged me.  But I persevered.  I decided to stop eating so much fat.  I stopped eating olive oil and coconut oil altogether.  No more raw cheesecake either.  I continued to eat a little almondaise, and a little nut butter, and added avocado.  I also added more greens to my diet.  This morning I weighed 192.6 which is down a little from my last update.  So we’re looking at a net loss of 6 pounds.  Six pounds in 20 days.  That’s still better than how things were going for most of the year, so I’m going to stop complaining (at least a little).  But I am feeling like the raw diet is no better for weight loss than what I was doing before, where I was losing about a pound a week. 

Future Plans
After the 30-day trial on 100% raw I doubt I will continue doing 100% raw, however I still haven’t made a final decision.  I may do 80% raw, or I might go back to the low fat, high fiber, high protein diet I was on for most of the year.  But one thing this trial has definitely taught me is to keep trying something definitive (e.g. 30-day trials) until I find something that works.  As Steve is fond of saying, “The time is going to pass anyway” so I may as well keep on experimenting until I find the optimal diet for me and my body.

Psychic Abilities
Steve is walking around making the sign of the cross at me.  LOL, just kidding!  But seriously, we’re both being blown away by how much my psychic abilities have increased.  For the most part, we’re seeing the devil in the details.  Poor choice of words, but I like to shake people up occasionally.  I’m picking up on a lot more specific details than before.  As an example, before going raw during a reading I might pick up that a person was in an abusive marriage during their 20′s, but now with the increased psychic ability it’s more like, “You entered into an abusive marriage at the age of 22 and by 26 you’d had enough and got divorced.  Is this correct?”  So, more detail.  But it’s still the same information and it doesn’t really affect the flow of the reading to have the extra details.  It is more impressive though.  Even I’m impressed sometimes. 

Steve and I have noticed a significant increase in our telepathy.  Again, it’s the details.  The other day he was sitting on the couch and mentioned he had a strange dream about a bird.  I said, “It was a phoenix right?”  And he confirmed that it was.  As soon as he said it was a bird I saw a phoenix.  Another night I was sitting on the couch reading and I suddenly had the thought, “I wonder where Steve sees himself in 5 years.”  I went upstairs where Steve was taking a bath to find him meditating.  He said, “I’m doing a meditation where I talk to myself 5 years from now.”  It was trippy.  That sort of thing happens to us frequently, but right now it’s just at a new level.  I wonder what will happen once the raw trial is over.

Blood Sugar
A lot of people are wondering if all the fruit I’m eating is negatively affecting my blood sugar.  It doesn’t appear to be.  My blood sugar is very stable in the morning which is when I eat fruit for breakfast.  I haven’t noticed a problem at all.  I think this might fly in the face of what diabetes educators will tell you, but what can I say except that my experiences must differ from others.  I stopped having the blood sugar crashes in the afternoon.  I think my body adjusted.  I haven’t been checking the blood sugar as often as I probably should, so for these last 10 days I’m going to do more of that.

What My Guides Have to Say
A lot of people write asking what my spirit guides have to say about my health, weight loss goals, and the raw diet.  They are enjoying watching me accept responsibility for my health.  They have no desire to step in and tell me what I should do as that would defeat the lesson of me learning to have authority over my health.  This is my journey, my trial, and I’m content to sink or swim on my own authority.

The Family
The kids are definitely enjoying more raw food in their diets.  For this I am supremely grateful I did this trial.  Our daughter, Emily, is especially open to trying all these new foods.  She adores my Lydia’s crackers and likes to eat them with almondaise and cucumber, just like me.  She’s also eating more salad with avocado.  Both kids have increased their intake of fruit as I often make a big fruit shake in the evening that we share, and they’re eating fruit in the morning too.  I put spinach in the smoothies and they don’t seem to mind.  No matter what happens at the end of this trial, I want to see to it that the kids are eating healthier foods.  My daughter’s teacher commented during our parent/teacher conference that Emily’s lunches are the healthiest of all the kids, and that she is amazed at what Emily will eat while the other kids are eating Lunchables, Cheetos, and Twinkies.  I often send the kids to school with clementines, sprouted pumpkin seeds, fresh fruit, and tamari almonds.

Steve has been very supportive, of course.  I expected we would do a lot more food preparation together but that hasn’t happened.  Our busy schedules still make that difficult.  In this house you sort of throw things together and eat them in your office while continuing to work.  He’s also been sick this past week so that affected how much time we spent together eating.  Steve taught me how to make a good avocado “dressing” for my salad.  That has helped me considerably to eat more greens.

I had to laugh last weekend when we went to a buffet and I sat there with just a plate of fruit and a plate of salad.  Usually my plate is a little more carb-loaded (bagel, potatoes, and cereal).  I can’t say it was worth $18, but it was an interesting outing.  And I wasn’t sleepy after eating at the buffet which is often what happened in the past.

One thing that has surprised me is that I’m not having the cravings for cooked food like I thought I would.  Around day 8 or 9 I did.  I wanted pizza, a veggie burger, and the ever-addictive french fries.  But as time went on, that went away.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy those things, but focusing on the new raw foods I’m eating has been just dandy and I’m not jonesing for the other foods.  So we’ll just have to wait and see what happens at day 30.  Onward ho!

Health is an area of my life I simply have not mastered.  For many years I was very annoyed even owning a body.  It’s so high maintenance.  You gotta feed it, bathe it, and exercise it or it starts to break down on you.  I was much more comfortable ignoring my body and spending all my energy in the ether or upper chakras.  I know this is common among Lightworkers who just want to be spiritual without being grounded, and I certainly fell into this group.  But as my body did begin to break down I started having to pay attention to it.

Last year, in December, my doctor informed me I was diabetic.  Not terribly so, my numbers weren’t that high, but enough to officially be termed diabetic.  This sent me scrambling for information and a cure.  As a vegan, I couldn’t really go on the standard American Diabetes Association diet, so I found Dr. Neal Barnard’s book about reversing diabetes.  He’s a vegan M.D. and president of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine.  I started exercising, and I altered my diet, basically going on a low fat, high protein, high fiber diet.  After nearly a year, I lost about 15 pounds and I saw significant improvement in blood sugar (for those in the know, my A1C went from 7.3 to 6.3).  But recently it’s been much harder to lose weight doing the same thing.

When I apply the principle of Truth to my health situation, I have to admit that things are not as I’d like them to be.  I don’t want to be on a roller coaster of losing and gaining weight and struggling anymore.  I want a definitive change, and I want my health back.  And I know the only way that’s going to happen is if I apply a little power, authority, and courage to my situation.  So many people have helped me and encouraged me this past year, so a big thank you goes out to everyone who has sent loving thoughts and encouragement to me.

For those of you wondering what my guides have to say about my health, as you can imagine they are concerned, and have indicated to me that part of doing my spiritual work on this planet involves having a body to do it in.  I know I will be called upon to speak, educate, and share what I know, so I want the stamina to be able to do that.  I’ve read for many people who are very spiritual and also overweight or unhealthy, and believe me, I know how hard it is to plug into the body and give it the same time and attention you want to give to your guides, angels, and higher self.  But it’s necessary.  It’s a total package.  When one part of the system fails, they all do.  So before I end up with a major health crisis, I want to take care of this.

So why raw?  I don’t know if going raw is the answer for me, but I know if I don’t try it then I’ll never know.  As Steve has mentioned many times, trying something for 30 days will give you enough information to know if it’s working for you.  Because Steve has been raw for a while I know it will be much easier for me.  I’m already surrounded by abundantly healthy foods, excellent cookbooks, and the encouragement and support of a loving spouse.

I began my raw trial Tuesday, December 2, so I will complete the trial on December 31, just in time for the new year.  I’m not adhering to a specific regimen like 80-10-10 or high fat, etc.  I’m not a fan of the higher fat foods, but I will eat some of them like nuts, avocado, coconut, and oil.  I think adding the greens will have the most significant benefit for me.  During the trial I will be monitoring my weight, blood sugar, overall health, and emotional well-being.  I’m not sure what sort of detox I’ll experience but I’m prepared to deal with it however I have to.  I will also continue exercising, which for me is usually one hour on the ellipitcal machine, and I want to add some weight lifting into the mix as well.

Tuesday morning my starting weight for this trial was 198.6.  My goal weight is something closer to 140-150 pounds.  If anyone wants to do the official calculation, I’m 39 years old and 5’9″ tall.  I don’t expect to lose 50 pounds this month, of course, but I do expect to see significant weight loss.  This morning I weighed 195.0 which has to be some sort of fluke or something.  I’ll be curious to see what my weight is on Thursday.  I’ve already seen blood sugar numbers lower than I have all year, so it will be interesting to see if that continues as well.

I’ll be curious to see if being raw increases my psychic abilities.  When Steve did his juice feast his psychic abilities definitely increased.  I’ve only been raw a day and a half and already I’ve noticed that our telepathy has been kicked into high gear.  Earlier today I was looking at a glass and bowl in my office and thinking, “I wish Steve would come along and take those to the kitchen for me,” and a minute or so later he came in and said, “I heard you.  You have some dishes you want me to take into the kitchen for you, don’t you?”  It was trippy.  We’ve been doing that all day to each other.  That would be so interesting if that continued or increased.

I’m not planning to blog about my trial every day like Steve did, but I will make regular entries so you can check my progress.  Part of the success of this trial for me will be accountability.  It’s really important to me to succeed at this, and knowing that thousands of people might be watching my progress is good motivation.

I don’t know what I’ll do at the end of the 30-day trial, but I don’t really have to decide in advance.  So we’ll see how it goes, see what my results are, and go from there.  I finally feel like I’m a vibrational match for good health.  Right now I feel like a million bucks because I finally feel like I have the strength to make significant, dramatic, and positive changes in my health habits.  Wish me luck!