Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?
Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:
Below, you will find a copy of the journal I kept during my transition into, and my first year of, a 100% raw, vegan diet. Some of it is quite personal, but I still wanted to share it with all of you. We may never meet in person, but I feel we are all connected in this world.I want to share my story with you, in hopes that you may learn something about yourself by reading about my journey into the raw lifestyle. Perhaps you'll be inspired (that's my wish), or learn to not make similar mistakes.
The journal begins in July of 2006 and continues into October 2007. If you are interested in reading something from the beginning, please use the archive feature at the right side of this page. If a month has more than one page worth of entries, there will be a "previous entries" link at the bottom of the page to view the rest of the entries for that month.
I have not edited my entries at all. Any entries that were originally marked private have been made public (with the exception of one that included personal information about people other than myself). Even though the entries are old, you are still welcome to add comments or ask questions. We will be notified of any comments that are left.
Again, I hope that I am in some way able to offer something positive to your life by sharing my personal Going Raw Journal.
Lots of love and peace to all of you,
Wendi
XOXOXO
I'm raw and that's that. There's no more thinking about it, planning about it. It's just my life now. It all seems to have fallen into place so perfectly and well. I'm not thinking about cooked food as I'm wondering what I'm going to eat. I think somewhere inside, however, my subconscious wants me to remember that I'm eating differently than I used to eat. I have been having dreams about eating bread. In the first dream I was eating it, realized after I was already chewing it, that I was raw and this bread wasn't raw. I continued to eat it, anyway. In the other two dreams I was just eating it, not remembering that I was raw. It was strange to wake up remembering that I was eating bread. Does this mean that subconsciously I'm craving it? I really don't feel that I am, but there's obviously something going on if I'm dreaming about it. I sometimes think it's because I'm not focusing on the foods I'm eating being raw, I'm just eating them. Maybe subconsciously I'm afraid that if I'm not focusing on it, I'll accidentally eat something that's cooked. I don't know.
Anyway, I feel great. I'm giving myself permission in just about all the areas of my life to just do what I want to be doing. I set goals for myself, but I'm not harsh with myself if I don't meet them. Eventually I'll get there, if that's really where I want to be (that's what my recent thinking is, anyway). I feel free, or something. I feel really good most days.
Here's the raw pizza pic from last week. I think I forget to mention that I included red peppers that I had chopped and frozen during the summer. Their taste on the pizza was fabulous! I really liked the tomato sauce that I created, as well, for the flavor on the pizza. It was very yummy.
Original Comments
Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.
On January 12, 2007, wrote:
I'm posting this recipe here for my dear friend, M, who is always an inspiration to me. She's the one who got me completely into eating raw foods a few years ago, and for that I am ever thankful!?
Tomato Soup
2 tomatoes (fresh or frozen--which is what I used)
I took two recipes and blended them together, altering some of the ingredients and the amounts, to come up with a mock chicken salad. I never had real chicken salad, but I do remember what mayonnaise tastes like and this had that kind of flavor to it. It was yummy! I think Matt Amsden is a genius when it comes to putting things together. The sauce was completely from his book, only altered slightly. Everyone enjoyed it, including my daughter's best friend. The "chicken"--which was nothing like chicken at all--came from soaked almonds, some sesame and sunflower seeds, ground up with added scallions and celery. It was yummy. :-)
We ate out the other day and it was okay. I didn't like paying the price for the salad I had, even though it was tasty. It wasn't organic, that's for sure, and the olive oil wasn't raw, I'm sure. I've also eaten some stone ground mustard that has apple cider vinegar in it, and I'm not sure if that's considered raw, or not. I wish there was an easy way to know what is and what isn't raw when it comes to things like that.
Things have been going well. :-)
Things are continuing to go well. I think I haven't felt like writing because this is my more quiet time of the year. Everything is moving along well in my life, however, and I am enjoying my raw lifestyle. We eat a lot of salads, the coconut shakes, and many times fresh veggie juices or some nut/seed creation. I think I'd like to experiment with making some different kinds of crackers, but I haven't felt like actually doing the work to make them! lol
Anyway, eating raw is just a part of life, as I said in earlier posts. It's not a big deal anymore and maybe that's why I don't feel as compelled to write here as much anymore, also. I fell like I'm at a time when I just need to appreciate the lull that my brain is giving me--not thinking too much about things and just going with the flow--because I'm sure this won't last. Perhaps this is my resting time, before I jump up to begin something big. Who knows. For now, however, all is going well. :-)
I'm still 100% raw. My family was asking me about certain foods...don't I miss them, will I cave in and eat them some day, etc. I said that if I want to eat something, I'll do it after my full year of being raw. I'm only giving myself the one year, so I can do it without a problem. Maybe if I said this is it for all the rest of my life I might be struggling? Of course, in the back of my mind I want to renew the yearly raw plan, but for now I just take this first year and go with it.
The nuts and seeds are really starting to slow me down. They take too long for my body to digest and I don't get hungry for anything when I eat the nuts/seeds. I ordered a sprouter, so that I can start relying on sprouts for my protein. I told a friend it would be ironic if the sprouts make all the difference in how I feel, since I named my journal "sprouting alive". So far I just am not feeling that tremendous amount of energy that everyone says they get on raw foods. Sure, I have more energy than before I was eating raw, but I still have a general feeling of tiredness that kind of blankets my days. It probably comes from the iron and B12 deficiencies, maybe even from the thyroid problem that I said I wouldn't take medicine to balance. I have been taking B12 supplements just about every day for almost a month, now. I notice that my tongue is a healthier pink/red and my lips have a bit more color in them. I don't know if these changes (which seem healthy to me) are from the B12 or the all raw diet, however. I am not going to add any other supplements until after my next bloodwork is done. When I was doing the combination of supplements it was causing too many problems with my heart.
So, I'm waiting for the sprouter and I'm really looking forward to sprouting and eating the little powerful seedlings as soon as possible. We purchased some sprouts at the health food store, but I really like the idea of growing my own without disinfectants (or whatever it is they have to use on them in order to sell them).