Chips

Do you have any idea how many commercials there are for chips? Like one every 5 minutes!!!!

On the evening of day 3 I am literally choosing to stay at the office instead of going home simply because I can't bare the thought of turning on the TV and seeing another commercial for food I can't have. I plan on timing my arrival at home to right when Benny gets there so I don't have to be alone with my insanity and the growing urge to BBQ the dog.

Day 2

Day 2:

Yesterday wasn’t so bad. I literally ate a whole cabbage by myself and was still hungry. It’s amazing how often I am hungry now. In order to keep my blood sugar normal I am basically eating constantly. I didn’t miss protein or carbs very much because I had my gross high fiber high protein toast in the morning and had beans with lunch. Basically I ate a recipe for bloating yesterday with cabbage and beans galore. Oh yes and I drank 2 gallons of water. I am officially “cleansing”.

We both got home and made dinner and cleaned the kitchen and chatted the whole time. We watched a documentary and were getting ready for bed when all of the sudden the lack of carbs or something created craziness and within seconds we were screaming at each other and both had headaches. When you deprive your body of carbs….It gets pissed. We went to bed and both passed out.

Today was similar. Basically eating obnoxious amounts of vegetables and trying to stay ahead of the headache. Both of us are having weird senses, Benny swears he tastes metal???? When I got home Benny had been busy making dinner. He made AMAZING homeade hummus and we allowed ourselves to each have a whole grain pita. He also made vegan lasagna… It would have been better with cheese. Anyway after dinner I insisted that we head to Jimbos and find some sort of raw dessert. We found some really yummy stuff. Raw cookies for instance which are more like a ball of mashed up dates and raw nuts rolled in coconut. But tonight it was the best thing I had eaten in …. Well two days.

This is also day number two of no smoking for me so I think I should get extra credit. That was what I said as I snatched the last raw cookie.

Raw-ish

Negotiations:

I had a feeling when Benny agreed so easily to this raw food thing that he would reconsider. During our weekend of debauchery we finally got down to the business of discussing what it meant to go raw. The discussion soon turned into a negotiation. Benny has been doing weight watchers and has had success having lost 15 pounds. So he feels like he has found the magic bullet and doesn’t want to tempt fate by going rogue and doing this raw thing. I on the other hand have to be honest with myself and consider that I am an absolute carb loving wine drinking smoker who is useless prior to his morning cup of coffee. If I just stop all of those things it could lead to a meltdown and possible jail time. So I decided that instead of following someone else’s raw detox plan that we would simply create our own William and Benny friendly raw-ish detox.
Here are the rules:
The main goal is to eat things that are not processed. No ingredients that you do not recognize as “food” and nothing white.
As much raw vegetables as possible however grilling and lightly cooking is fine.
I will be allowed to have toast for breakfast however it has to be whole grain. I found bread from a bakery in Oceanside that is high in protein and fiber and has no preservatives.
I will be allowed one cup of coffee first thing in the morning and I can use organic milk from a free range dairy.
No meat.
We can have beans but we have to buy them dry and make them from scratch. We will also make hummus with chickpeas instead of buying it so we can control what is in it.
We can eat brown rice but like the beans we buy it dry and make it old school.
No alcohol :(
No cheese
Nothing fried
Salad dressings are to be all natural with the before mentioned ingredient rule.
No cigarettes ….. This is the big one of course for me. I have promised to begin a “gaba” regimen and will be using natural tabs from the health food store to get thru cravings.
Basically we will be vegetarians. I see now that I will need to change the name of this plan from “Raw” to “vegetarian” although we will primarily be eating raw. We have also purchased a simple whole body cleanse that we start on day one (tomorrow). It’s basically a bunch of herbs that are supposed to start a process of riding our body of toxins.
The plan is that we do this thru September… Benny will be making vegetarian recipes and I will be posting them with photos here on the blog. We can do this!

RAW

More than ten years ago I joined in with a couple friends to do a “cleanse”. I was young and already really thin and hardly ate anyway but I saw it as an opportunity to lose weight and finally be perfect. It was a huge disaster….
Within two days I was having a breakdown from lack of carbs and caffeine. In retrospect we had been so unprepared and hadn’t really researched raw recipes and things that could make our life easier. We had actually paid hundreds of dollars for this “cleanse” so quitting felt like the ultimate failure. However after about a week I caved and stood in front of my friends crying and admitted defeat. Ever since then I thought there is no way I would ever even consider doing something so ridiculous ever again… Until now.
Now I am 35 and live in the suburbs with my partner. We are a robust food loving couple that revels in a good bottle of wine (or two) and loves to eat well. Neither of us waste time and energy worrying about fitting into skinny jeans however I do miss the days of having only one chin and I confess that the smoking has become a demon that I no longer take lightly. So in an effort to clean up our life and hopefully extend it we have begun to make some changes in our home. We got rid of the TV in our living room and cancelled the cable in the bedroom. We now read, watch movies, and of course cook amazing meals. This felt like a positive step in the right direction and so far has been a relatively easy transition. I also got rid of the super comfy patio chairs in an effort to make my smoking retreat less comfortable and instead make space for Benny to paint. Now I simply stand out there and smoke while missing those wonderful chairs…
Recently while wandering thru Jimbos (the health food store) I came across this whole display of raw foods. It was a refrigerated case with things like raw tortilla chips! WHAT?!?!?! If they had those back when we attempted the cleanse I totally could have done it. SO it got me thinking. What if Benny and I commit to eating raw for a month? We could seek out recipes and make it fun. Jimbos even has raw entrees in their deli case, we could totally do this. So over a bottle of wine I brought up the idea to Benny as I lit a cigarette. Surprisingly he said yes. So we’re on! I intend to spend the next few days preparing and researching so we can get started in the next week. I also plan on blogging about how wonderful and exciting the experience is as we go thru it. (He said sarcastically)… Look I know this is going to suck and we will probably kill each other after the first week… But think about how entertaining that will be for you the reader :) stay tuned…..