One Week Into The Transition

It has already been a week since I started my transition. And I must say I'm feeling good, no real detox syndromes what so ever! So what have I been up to during this first week?

First of all I discovered – to my great satisfaction – that there is a gym-person hidden deep down inside me, which is pretty amusing. Yes, I went to the gym, did some dancing and even went to my first-ever meditational yoga class. I really need to start working on that one and hopefully I'll be able to concentrate a lot better in no time.

I won't hide that there were also some difficult moments throughout the week. For example ignoring the bad old habit of eating bread when I'm at work. It's not easy just because it's right there under my nose and I always used to nibble on it a bit. Freshly baked baguette still smells good and tempting, plus my hand is so used to reaching out for it. So I thought about the fact that all the ingredients in that bread are quite useless to my body anyway and had some nuts and fruit in stead. Plus I read an interesting article on how we tend to crave more of the aliments that are already fermenting in our system. For example the yeast that we consume from bread needs to feed off yeast and quick sugars in order to sustain itself inside our body. That is why the more you eat it the more you "need" it. Have you ever noticed that you can not stop after just a tiny bit of bread, that you want one more slice and then one more? So we are no longer in charge of our needs, it's the yeast inside us. Same thing for coffee and many other things. (source) Sounds a good enough reason for me to stop craving!

The second difficulty sometimes comes up in the evenings when I find myself all alone and deprived of communication. I do have many internet sites to read from and many podcasts to listen to on the raw subjects, as well as countless recipes to try out... But no (vegan) friends who could even remotely relate to the subject and with whom I could share my little joys and rants. In stead I feel that I'll have to justify my choices or that I'll annoy my omnivorous friends with my incomprehensible raw stories. I now realize how important it really is to have a community of raw people for support.

This lonely feeling obviously makes me grab for food and crave for something sweet. So one evening I improvised this really quick and easy desert by taking some ground almonds and a bit of walnuts and mixing them with about the same volume of soaked soft dates (the recipes usually advise using date paste, but I added a couple of prunes in stead), then rolling the dough-like mixture in almond powder in order to avoid stickiness. That makes a pretty nice sugar- and fat-free desert.

During this week I've seen, heard and read a lot of new and interesting things. For example I watched the documentary "Crazy Sexy Cancer" where the young and beautiful Kris Carr fights cancer with raw food.

I also heard a very interesting interview with Philip Mcluskey on the We Like it Raw podcast about how he lost over 60kg, avoiding a gastric bypass surgery, by switching to a raw food diet. Check out the before and after photos on his website, he's rather a hotty.

Right now I'm reading a book called "The Raw Foods Bible" by Dr Craig B Sommers and it is fascinating – filled with interesting and useful material that I would like to share on this blog. So coming up soon...