Yes, Grasshopper...

Feeling fine today darlings, that is for sure! Life is grand! I had an epiphany yesterday and realized that sometimes I am just too uptight. I am too hard on myself and I over analyze everything. I just need to get over myself, seriously. All of this anal retentive worrying just isn't my style... So from here on out I am all about lightening up. Literally. My heavy thoughts and the attending heavy emotions are creating and enforcing the heaviness of my physical body. The ironic thing is that there is no need for it anymore. I am free to live however I choose. I am a grownup now. I am no longer under the oppressive heaviness that I experienced in my youth. I haven't actually been there in over 10 years. I was just emotionally stuck there, stuck in that perspective... I have been inadvertently reliving my past because I didn't know any better. It was all still too foggy, but when I began to live a more enlightened lifestyle the fog began to lift and I started to awaken and to remember, to get out of my own spiritual purgatory... It's actually a really cool experience (now that I am starting to understand what the hell is happening and I becoming am less afraid) And that, right there, is why I love raw food. It lifts the fog and lets us shine our true light. It lifts up our vibration and we begin to actualize our glorious human potential. The beauty and light that we begin to radiate comes from within. Raw food feeds the light and it begins to shine brighter and brighter. We begin to feel better and better and have more and more energy to... That is where I sometimes get confused. What am I supposed to do with all of this energy that I have all of a sudden? I would get all balled up and uptight because I didn't know what to do with myself. Now I do. I'm not supposed to do anything. I can do what ever I choose to do. I am free to do what ever I choose to do at the time. Isn't that fantastic? I am free. I made it. I am not "there" anymore. I am here now. It feels great.

Still Juicy...

I am still juice feasting though I have had a couple of challenges with it. The first challenge is that we were temporarily out of cash this week so I ended up doing more master cleanse drinks than juice and that didn't really work out too well. I would feel fine all day but by the evenings I was starving and couldn't resist the temptation of the cooked dinner that I made for the fam. I don't think that the master cleanse contains enough nutrition to keep me from feeling hungry. Green juice, on the other hand, makes me feel nourished and calm and happy. I am also a big fan of watermelon juice. There is a Jamaican guy who sells native watermelons on the side of the road right next to Lincoln's school! It is like a watermelon drive-thru! I am going to start buying them from him this week now that we have some money again... The other challenge that I have had is cooking and preparing the families cooked food. It is just torturous. The smells, the taste, the whole deal. It is like a heroin addict trying to kick his 20 year habit while preparing fixes for other junkies all day, every day. It sucks. So I have been really thinking and, honestly, praying about how I can be strong enough to resist this terrible temptation and finally heal from my lifelong crippling addiction to food. I have been over at least 100 scenarios in my mind about how I can continue to cook for my family and be successful as a juice feaster and ultimately as a raw foodist. This has been my challenge now for over two years and I am so tired of struggling with it. I really, really know in my heart that my true desire is to be healthy, vibrant, and free from constantly indulging in my addiction to cooked food. I know that living raw is my path to achieving this. I just feel that I need to be free to jump into and devote all of my energy to my chosen raw path without constantly having to go back to cooking everyday. I feel like I am trying to live in two worlds at once. It isn't fun. By last night I was ready to just give up the whole thing and throw in the towel and just try to accept a life of being fat and depressed. I was severely bummed out to say the least. Then Felix finally came home (he has been working 12 hour days for over a month straight) and I was discussing with him what he wanted for food this week as I was planning on going grocery shopping this morning. He announced that all he wants to eat is juice, smoothies, salads with avocado and raw Caesar dressing, an occasional piece of spouted bread, and some raw sweets of some sort. He said that the raw food I make is really delicious and that he has more energy when he doesn't eat any cooked food. He also admitted that he has been throwing out the cooked part of the lunches that I pack for him because he realized that he gets tired after he eats it. He said that he didn't want to tell me about throwing out the lunches because he knows how hard it is for me to constantly be dealing with cooked food when I am doing such a great job on my juice feast! HALLELUJAH!!! EUREKA!!! AMEN!!! And the best part of the whole thing is that I never even said a word to him about how I was struggling with cooking for him, etc... That means that this is a miracle, plain and simple. As far as cooking for Lincoln goes, I'm just not sure how to deal with that part yet. He already has a raw smoothie for breakfast and then I pack him a vegan/vegetarian/mostly organic lunch for school. That part is no big deal and he is very happy with his lunches even though they are different than the other kids who all eat the SAD. What to feed him for dinner is a little trickier... Right now he eats mostly grain based dinners like rice pasta and homemade sauce, rice and beans (though he usually picks out all of the beans...), pancakes, scrambled eggs and toast, veggie sandwiches on Ezekiel bread, potatoes, etc. It isn't really a big deal for me to make these foods for him usually but sometimes when I am feeling weak it is still a huge challenge. Plus, I know Lincoln would feel better if he would eat more raw, unprocessed food. Plus, he has quite the love affair with soy milk which we have to work on getting rid of... I'm just going to have to do the best I can to slowly improve his diet without him really noticing. If anyone out there has any ideas on how to do this I would love to hear your suggestions...

I am feeling pretty good health-wise. I am not going to day that I feel great because I am still very tired and often cranky but that could also be due to all the emotional stuff and stress that I have been going through. I am losing weight but am not sure how much because I have banished the scale. It makes me too mental to weigh myself because I end up obsessing over it and weighing myself constantly. I figure that it is doing more harm than good so I am avoiding it. Plus I have been having my period this week and that didn't help either...

This has definitely been a serious and challenging journey so far, but I am looking forward to see what the rest of it brings now that I am more free of my cooked food demon. I think I might be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and for that I am very grateful...

Sista Barbara is also still juice feasting! She is doing great and her diabetes is healing! Hip Hip Horay! She drinks mostly green vegetable juice and some various melon juices. She is also a huge fan of coconut water which is "half orgasmic" as far as she is concerned... She also has added some raw cacao and spirulina to her supplement regime for added mineralization and because it tastes good. If she is overwhelmingly hungry in the evenings she eats some lettuce or spinach with some avocado or occaionally a banana. She is losing weight very quickly and is feeling great!

Love and lightbeams with blissful frequencies to you all, you darling humans you!

They say it's my birthday!

Today, I turn 32. Finally. For some reason, for the past year I have been telling everyone that asks me how old I am that I am 32. I don't know why. Maybe I was just subconsciously very excited to turn 32. It feels like this will be a very good year for me. I am actually starting to feel like a grown-up which is kind of nice but also sort of scary. As an Aries this is supposedly very normal as we are the eternal children of the zodiac. Anyhow, thanks to everyone for all of their birthday wishes, especially the darling Connie of the Naked Food Cafe who delighted me with a birthday post first thing this morning! It feels so great to be wished well by so many lovely human beings. Awww.

I have a bunch of big plans for this year (what's new?) and feel like I worked through a bunch of emotional stuff last year and am finally ready to start this year off fresh, composed, and determined. Maturity does have it's benefits.

And now for an update on my progress using the techniques demonstrated on the TLC television series "I can make you thin" with Paul McKenna. On last weeks episode, #2 of the series, we learned about dealing with emotional eating. I was looking forward to his advice on this topic since I have been noticing some good results using the techniques he presented on the first episode. I have been eating, on average, about one third of what I used to eat before I saw the show. I have also been slowly but surely becoming more in touch with my body's hunger and fullness signals which I now know I had absolutely no concept of previously. So on the emotional eating show we learned the Callahan Technique which is a tapping technique similar to EFT but simpler. I was kind of concerned about implementing the tapping technique because when I have done EFT in the past it has really brought up some intensely disturbing emotions that I have spent years repressing. Dealing with all of these repressed emotions is simply an exhausting and very uncomfortable experience. And frankly, I am scared to deal with it. But, even though I have been a little more emotionally up and down since I started using the Callahan tapping method, I would say that it is helping quite a bit. I have been able to avoid emotional/stress overeating quite a few times by doing a round or two of tapping. That is the upside. The difficult part is that by avoiding anesthetizing myself with food I still have to deal with my overwhelming emotions which, I am realizing, is just something I am going to have to learn how to do, hopefully happily. At least the tapping technique takes the edge off and I'm all for that. In general, the Callahan technique seems a little gentler to me than EFT. I do find both ways of tapping extremely effective and would definitely recommend them to anyone who in confronted by emotional or stress overeating. I am also noticing that when I take a minute to decide what I really want to eat I am often very surprised by my choices. I am increasingly choosing more and more raw foods voluntarily! Thank Goddess! For example, this past week I have been really digging celery sticks with a creamy raw dressing/dip that I made with sunflower seeds. I even made a list of all the things I could think of that I really, truly wanted to eat and they were all raw! In general, I am just thrilled about how natural this whole experience feels and I am truly grateful that the Universe blessed me with it.

Anyhow darlings, I'm going to leave you now with blessings of health, wealth, happiness and love. Thanks for caring and big love to you all!

I am so happy an grateful now that I am easily and joyfully manifesting into my life:
-a smooth and joyful immigration processing experience for Felix and I.
-financial freedom and abundance.
-health, happiness, and harmony.
-the most beautiful and vibrant expression of life that this body can muster!
-emotional comfort, poise, and calm.
-serenity and grace.
-self confidence, presence, and highest consciousness.
-irie, irie, vibes...
-the ability to be a big time philanthropist.
-total mind/body/spirit healing.

The best citrus ever!

I just got back from the "farmers market" and ate the most delicious citrus fruit ever! The sign said it was called a satsuma and it looked like a larger version of a clementine but with warty skin. It still had leaves on it as it was so fresh from the tree. What a lovely thing it was, my little satsuma. Now I wish I had bought like 50 of them or something...

I'm feeling better by the day. Not like I'm on a raw high or anything but just not depressed as much and when feelings come up I try to recognise what they are and deal with them right away. I have a lot of old emotions to release so I'm trying my best not to shove them back down time and time again. Better out than in as far as I'm concerned. I am starting to form a theory about this whole depression thing... I think that it is just chronic emotional detox that we have no idea how to deal with because many of us are brought up under massive stress and in a spiritual void. Let's face it- we as humans don't live naturally or anywhere near how we were intended to. Depression is just one of the natural results of this. It's like when you see animals in the zoo who are lethargic and obviously bummed out. If they were living in their natural environment I'm guessing that they wouldn't be depressed. I know that if I had been born and raised and still lived naturally in tropical paradise, eating tropical fruit, and swimming in warm blue water daily I'd certainly be a hell of a lot happier.

Big loves and blessings to all of you darlings, whoever you are...

What a revelation!

I just have to tell you all that after writing my last post, I felt immediately better. I felt like by writing down all of my emotions and being truthful to myself and everyone else out there it freed me of the bad feelings that I was writing about. Like they left my body and went into my computer and onto my blog and then were gone from me. Wow! What a relief. And then when I read the beautiful comments that the post/I received I felt even better. I have always been afraid to express my negative emotions because I thought that it would make people uncomfortable and then they wouldn't like me. Much to my delight, that doesn't seem to be true at all! This has been a very poignant few days for me I must say... This must be what therapists are talking about when they go on and on about "releasing your emotions." I was always afraid that if I started letting all my negative feelings out they would never stop coming and it would literally kill me. I think that I am starting to understand that the opposite is what is actually true.

I am focusing on raw food. Period. I know that it is what works for me and I am not going to worry anymore if I am doing it right or not. If it's raw, it's fine with me.

Love and my deepest gratitude to you all...

With my head buried in the sand...

Wow. It has been very difficult for me to come back here, to my own blog, after my last post... I am finally really realizing how deep this whole obesity/food addiction/emotional pain all goes. How one thing totally leads to another... The pain of my past is trapped in my fat. I haven't wanted to believe that this is true because it means that all those years of abuse, emotional torture, and abandonment are still with me. I have spent 20 years stuffing down the truth of who I am and how I got this way. I haven't wanted to admit how bad it all was. But now, I realize that if I want to become the vision of myself as a totally healthy and vibrant being that I have in my minds eye than all of the horrible memories, visions, and feelings that I couldn't deal with as a child must be dealt with now. And the scariest part of it all is the anger that I have been suppressing my whole life. I feel like a bomb that is ready to explode and the only way to keep it from blowing is to bury it under a bunch of heavy, deadening food. I overeat to suppress my own overwhelming emotions from the past and the present. I can tell the exact moment when all the cooked food has left my system because an electrical feeling comes over my body and I begin to feel lighter, happier, and more confident. But then, within a few days, after I have lost a few pounds, these overwhelming emotions come up and I have to deal with them one way or another. And, honestly, I really don't know how to do that. As the hyper-sensitive and spiritually gifted child of an emotionally aloof (and often just emotionally absent) and completely dysfunctional family I have few of the skills needed to process feelings. I feel, as ever, alone and unprepared for the task at hand. I would just be so much simpler if everyone would have at least tried to be nice to each other so I wouldn't be standing here alone, crying, trying to clean up everyone else's shit. Sorry for whining. I really do try not to be such a wimp.

I have fooled around long enough...

OK kids! No more messing around for me. I have now been raw conscious for over two years and am at the exact weight I was when I first discovered raw foodism... This is only due to my constant backsliding and getting on and off the "wagon" innumerable times in this two year period. I have lost (and regained) the same 10-30 lbs. at least 10 times. Well, I have had enough of all that. I'm back with the Raw Food Boot camp crew at Carlene Jones' amazing new Rawk Village. I am currently participating in a 4 day fruit only challenge which will hopefully help to peel off the newest 5 lbs. of holiday chub that has recently attached itself firmly to my ass... And yes, it is 100% pure cooked vegan chub. I will be documenting my food intake and weight loss here for a while at least until this whole 100% low fat raw thing becomes second nature which will, with any luck, happen sooner rather than later... It has been an eye opener for me to realize that I gain weight just as easily eating cooked vegan food as I do eating SAD/vegetarian. I don't get as depressed eating vegan though. It seems like when I eat veggie/SAD I am depressed, binge, and gain weight. When I eat cooked vegan I also gain weight and binge, but I am not as depressed. When I eat high fat raw I don't really lose any weight and I have massive cravings for cooked food but I feel really happy and well. And when I eat low-fat raw I lose weight really quickly, feel great (almost so great I don't even know what to do with myself), have almost no cravings and definitely no depression. I actually find myself on such a raw high that I freak my own self right out. But, I am going to have to get used to it because low-fat 100% raw is what works best for the weight loss and that is what I am all about right now. I have sincerely had it with being fat.

Hope you all had a great holiday and wishing you the best in the new year.

Good News!

I listed on Ft. Lauderdale Freecycle that we have 4 papaya and 4 mango trees (little, sapling trees that volunteered from our compost pile) to give away. And guess what- the response was HUGE! I had about 20 responses in less than 8 hours! I didn't think that anyone would be interested in them because we have seen so few people here in South Florida who seem to do any gardening at all... Which, BTW, I find very strange as the weather is fantastic even if the soil is kind of sandy... I think that the huge response from so many who wanted to "adopt" out little baby trees is such a great indicator that people still do value home grown fruits!

We generally just throw all of our compost items- mostly just raw fruit and veg scraps-into what could be loosely described as a compost pile and guess what, so many gorgeous little plants just spring up from where we threw the scraps. Felix, (who is the one who can actually identify the baby plants) and I have decided that from now on we will pot up the little plants and give them away for a very small donation (just to pay for the pots, soil, and water)from time to time. It feels great to pass on these little gems to such happy gardeners.

A strange thing is happening to me, I am naturally craving more raw foods. It seems like since I have taken the "be 100% raw or else" pressure off myself I am now automatically choosing to eat more raw... In my honest opinion, after 2 years of "struggling" to be a "raw fooder", the key to getting all raw is staying vegan, and offering yourself more and more fresh, raw choices that you genuinely desire because they are delicious and you actually like to eat them more than your old cooked food standbys! I realize now that any time I eat any animal products, and especially dairy!, it seems to instigate a binge and also make me ultra, ultra emotional and very angry... Funny thing is that when I was trying to "be strong" and stay "100% raw" and "conquer my cooked food addictions" whenever I fell off "the wagon" it was always for something containing cheese and usually white flour, things which I hadn't eaten with any regularity for quite a long time BEFORE I ever even attempted to become a "raw fooder"... I really applaud all of the raw teachers who advocate a gentle transition from cooked to raw, especially for those "aspiring rawists" with eating disorders or even mild dysfunctional behaviors regarding food. For me, as soon as I heard about raw food I thought, this is the cure I have been looking for! I believed, because I was led to believe, that if I was able to completely give up all cooked food I would be healed of my obesity and food issues forever. And since giving up eating meat had been so easy for me, I just figured that abstaining from cooked food would be just as easy... Boy was I wrong about that one... So if you are having a hard time being a "perfect" raw fooder, just know that you are not alone and to try being gentle with yourself. You are perfect, whole, and magnificent, just the way you are right here, right now. And I commend anyone who has even the slightest interest or motivation to accept responsibility for their own health. Blessings on your own, very personal, raw journey...

Peaceful, easy feeling...

I have cleaned and applied Feng Shui principles to my office/laundry room and I feel so much better! This area of my house is the wealth or love/relationships area of the house (depending on who you ask) so it was vitally important for me to fix it up and make it pretty. Well don't you just know- we woke up this morning to a man calling Felix about a very good job from an old friend of his! And then I found a person on freecycle who is GIVING AWAY FOR FREE an entire house-full of beautiful furniture! I am waiting to hear back from him about the stuff but it would be great to have a couple of new end tables, plant stands, coffee table, etc. And- we have had our 1995 Isuzu Rodeo parked in our backyard since March of 2006... It was looking pretty ghetto and seriously detracting from the nice gardens Felix just put in. So yesterday Harry,the car magician, came over and had the truck running and moved from the backyard to the front driveway in less than 5 minutes and all it cost was $20! Hallelujah! And the truck is actually running really nicely even though we were told by a few people, not Harry the car magician, that it was only good for the junkyard... Yippee! So to all of you out there who are Feng Shui curious- try it! It works miraculously! I have used it, to a varying extent, for 10 years now and am convinced of its power and effectiveness! Try it you won't be sorry...

I am really happy with my diet these past few days. I have been 60-70% raw and all vegan except for honey and 2 eggs a couple days ago. I haven't been eating any cow dairy at all, and I have noticed a big difference in my vitality level and haven't had any bad moods. I have typically been eating: a cup of chai with honey and vanilla soymilk in the morning when I wake up, a few hours later a homemade hummus-avocado-tomato-sprout mountain sandwich on Ezekial sesame bread, at around 2 pm I make us a raw cacao-maca mylkshake and we sit on the front porch and moan and smile while we drink it, then for dinner I usually make a lowish fat combo of beans/tons of veggies/starchy veggie or grain and a big, raw salad with raw dressing. We also have been making a green juice about every other day. I am noticing that when I don't eat all fruit meals my mood is much more stable and I don't get that massive "high", which is good. So far, this seems to be the best diet I have been on for some time as far as keeping my depression at bay AND keeping my mood stable-ish at least. My digestion is also much more happy than when I eat really nut-heavy meals. I have not been binging at all and think this has a lot to do with not feeling deprived and stressed out about my diet. I am just eating what sounds good and healthy for me at the moment. Being stressed out the whole time I am trying my hardest to be 100% raw seems to be less healthy for my body than being %70 percent raw with a stable mood and happy, optimistic outlook. Besides, I am still losing weight, about 2-3 lbs. per week.

Love to you all and big, fat blessings!

Peeling the onion...

Just so you all know- I Love Jesus, too, just in my own special way. I just re-read my last post and realized that it could have been considered a little off-putting... So, I apologise for that.

Anyhow, I have been about 60-70% raw and mostly vegan, my weight is stable and coming off very slowly, and I am relatively happy and even optimistic. I am loving the green juice and Lincoln has been such a lovely juicer operator, even if he won't actually drink the juice when he is done making it...

I am a fire dragon (according to Chinese astrology and most people who know me even a little) and usually have pretty strong defences (like hard, protective dragon scales) and am also considered quite aggressive (note the fire blazing from my mouth and nostrils) BUT I am also (underneath my impressive serpent scale armour) actually extremely sentimental, overly sentimental... When I eat only raw foods, I literally feel raw, as in "stripped of skin and with the underlying flesh exposed, sensitive because of this" just like according to Oxford American Dictionary definition 6 of "raw"... You know, like when you have an injury, like a skinned knee, and you take the band-aide off and the wind blows on the boo-boo, how sensitive it feels? Well, that is how my whole being feels when I am all raw. I am so emotional and sentimental and feeling like I have been struck by lightning. It feels like giving a really intense Reiki treatment all the time... I honestly am not sure how to function, day to day, with that level of feeling and raw energy blasting through me. Everything just seems to be too much! I mean, I was considered to be an "overly sensitive child" even when I was on the "worst diet ever"...

So, I am doing the best I can. I am happy with myself and achieving balance in my life. I am not suffering and I am satisfied.

One love and all blessings to you, too...

Celebrating two years of raw conciousness...

I'm back in action. We left Connecticut last Monday at 10 am. and almost immediately stopped to a dead halt in NYC on the delightful (not) Cross-Bronx expressway for two hours because an oil truck spilled its cargo all the way across I-95... Lincoln had a meltdown in the backseat because he didn't want to pee in a bottle, not that I would have either, but he finally did and then settled down and we were moving southward once again a short while later. That night we stopped at a Hampton Inn in Selma, NC at around midnight after 14 hours in the car. We specifically stopped at the Hampton Inn because on their advertisements they state that they have very comfortable beds with cotton linens and lovely cotton duvet covers. I really dislike synthetic fibers anywhere near my skin and especially cannot abide those plasticized motel blankets... So the Hampton Inn lies! Their beds and linens are not any more comfortable than any other crappy hotel I have ever stayed in! Just FYI... The next morning we were up and ready to go at about 8 am. and decided to hit the hotel breakfast bar before we started driving. So bagels, cream cheese, pasteurized OJ, and tea with half and half later we hit the road. I knew that it wasn't ideal to eat that food but figured that I wouldn't be such a big deal. I started to get anxious about 4 hours later and we had barely even hit South Carolina, by Georgia me and Felix were arguing, and after a Subway sandwich in north Florida (veggie on whole wheat with pepperjack cheese and mayo) I was crying, nearly hysterical and downright miserable... We finally made it home at 10:30 pm on Tuesday night. I drove the whole way. The first thing I did when we got home was clean the refrigerator from top to bottom, inside and out, sterilization style. Then I plugged it an and nothing... It was dead. We ended up at the pancake house, you know, the international one, at about 1 am eating nasty omelets while Felix and I had a "serious discussion about the future of our relationship"... The next morning I went to two home depots and the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and finally bought a fridge, on credit..., and drove it home myself in the giant rented home depot truck... I then proceeded to go grocery shopping at two stores braving the day before Thanksgiving crowds. Unbelievably, I felt pretty good. I put all the groceries away and went to sleep. The next day, Thanksgiving day, was a nightmare and is now sort of a disgusting blur. I was totally exhausted, the house was still not all cleaned up and I had dinner to make, a cooked vegan dinner. I do not know why I didn't just give up and go to bed. Me and Felix fought all day and then made up and then finally ate dinner at 6 pm. I didn't even eat very much although it tasted great if I do say so myself. By 10 pm I was in the throes of such stomach pains and gastric distress that I cannot even think of it without breaking out in a sweat. The sickness lasted until Sunday, yesterday morning. Then, last night Lincoln started throwing up at 11 pm and didn't stop until 6 this morning. We had to clean the path from his bed to the bathroom about 4 times and I am still doing all the laundry. So needless to say we are wiped out and a little more than exhausted. So if you were wondering where I have been, now you know. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving the moral of the story is- Never go on a road trip without a cooler full of enough delicious raw food to last the entire trip and then some. I wouldn't wish my experience on my worst enemy. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully well rested and maybe even back to my usually optimistic and happy self. After all, the sun is shining, it is 80 degrees, and we have coconuts and plenty of papayas growing in the jungle formerly known as our back yard garden... Peace y'all and one love.

Tomorrow is another day...

I wasn't hungry yesterday, but I think I made up for it today... Geez.

Today I ingested:
2/3 bottle of Kombucha
a not so great mango
deeeelicious creamy green pepper soup...
juice of 2 heavenly tangerines
4 handfuls of popcorn... I don't know why.
vanilla tea with honey
raw applesauce (delicious, but I made it too sweet...)
maple vanilla tea with honey
broccoli and tomatoes with lemon and olive oil
a few bites of baked rice pasta casserole (slippery slope is right... whoa Nelly!)
banana almond smoothie

I have been coughing like crazy but I don't feel really feel sick . Maybe it is another strange detox symptom to add to my list. I'm sort of downish today though so I'm going to have another cup of tea and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Embodiments of Love...

Today I wasn't too hungry so I ate/drank:
water with EmergenC vitamin packet
vanilla tea with honey
small Cacao Cashew smoothie... Yum, Yum, Yum...
2/3 of a lara bar
1/2 of an avocado
2 mugs of warm miso broth
a few sips of ginger Kombucha

I might eat more later but also might not...

Me, Linc, and Felix took a wonderful walk at the Pequotsepos Nature Center, in Mystic CT, today and it made me feel great! I didn't get winded at all and was walking quite fast. I feel like I might just be able to sleep well tonight after such nice, relaxing exercise. By the way, my recent difficulty sleeping isn't due to the raw diet. I have recently quit a habit which I have had for some time that was quite sedating and I think that is what is causing the wakey wakey... I think, all together, I feel the best and most stable I have ever felt in my whole life. My rawness feels "real" now and not just like I am practising. I am comfortable with my ability to make raw food that I appreciate as much as my former cooked food favorites. I have also been able to make a limited amount of simple cooked food for my family and it hasn't really tempted me too badly. I just keep reminding myself that cooked food eating is a very slippery slope for me and that I don't choose to feel depressed and lethargic anymore. This has helped a lot. I'm feeling rather mature in my choices and strangely in control of myself. It finally feels good to be me. My guru, which I have had since before birth (he kind of comes along with being born into my family) calls human beings "embodiments of love". I love this and am beginning to feel this way about all of us, too. Raw food and purity of the physical body is an amazing thing for me to experience, even at the beginning level which I am currently at. I am feeling bright and optimistic about my future and the future of our planet. Love and blessings to all of you, embodiments of love that you are!

I'm back!

Been all raw for a few days now and am feeling much better... I had been eating mostly cooked food for the past couple weeks and my depression came back full force and with a vengeance (along with 15 pounds...) I have had a really rough time of it and feel like I have been to hell and back. I was so down, so low and then just decided that I'd had enough and went back to raw. By the morning of the second day all traces of the sadness/depression had left me. Every time this happens I am amazed... So here I am and raw I intend to remain. Eating cooked food just isn't worth it.

Today I enjoyed:
iced chai with raw almond milk
vanilla tea with raw honey
mango/date/almond milk smoothie (WOW! this was a lovely thing!)
apple, Asian pear, avocado, pecans, raisins (snacked on these all afternoon)
green soup with walnuts, spinach, red pepper and tomato (another good creation)

I have decided to document my food intake here daily as well as any observations...
Love and blessings to you all!

Birthday cake blues...

So I made it seven whole blissful 100% raw days and was feeling great, high and happy. Then I ate a piece of Felix's cooked birthday cake and that was all she wrote... (this is not the first time that I have been derailed by a birthday cake...)I feel like such an ass. Just when I start making some real progress, I go and blow it. So, I have been struggling to get back to raw and it isn't really working, plus it is the new moon and that is a tough time of the month for me, too. But, I was reading about his new moon in Virgo and it is supposed to be a great time for me to begin healing my health/weight issues. Speaking of that, why do people automatically assume that just because someone is obese they are ill. I am very, very heavy, over 120 lbs. overweight, BUT- I haven't been sick or to the doctor (except for chilbirth and a lyme tick bite) in nearly 10 YEARS!!!! My blood pressure is fine. I don't have diabetes. I have no digestion or gynecological issues. In short if you were to give me a physical and didn't know my weight you would consider me to be extremely healthy. I am just fat. And, by the way, I only lost like one pound during my stellar 100% week. So I ordered Dr. Doug's 80/10/10 book and am going to see what I think of that... I have an intuitive feeling that my liver is not happy digesting all the fat that I have been eating. We shall see.

Sunday, Sunny Sunday!

So I bought "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen" by Ani Phyo and I think it is really great. I am inspired by her fresh, simple recipes and love the blurbs she includes about green living. Also, Ani seems to be mostly interested in making food that tastes divine as opposed to spouting any sort of raw "dogma". If it is raw it seems to be cool with her! I also love how she leaves the fiber in all of her recipes. No more straining nutmilk! I have been making many of the recipes and find them to be very delicious and satisfying. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in raw food, newbie or long-timer.
Things are moving right along on the construction project downstairs. We are having a little bit of a hard time rounding up the required workers for the required payment... Everything is more expensive in CT. In Florida we were amongst Felix's friends who are always there to help each other out. It is definately not that way in CT. Oh well. Life is beautiful, regardless. Still Connecticut is so very uptight and oh, so, New England... I feel the tropics calling... I hear the drumbeats... I smell the flowers and coconuts... We will just have to see what happens now won't we! Gotta love the raw liberation!
Peace, love and all blessings!

What?

I really do try, in this blog at least, not to dwell on my ridiculous behavior regarding food. Today, I will digress... I mean, seriously, I ate Carvel Ice Cream Cake! It was a three year old friends birthday party (Happy Birthday Beauty Queen!) and I just had to have a piece of cake... Now I know that any "normal" person who happened to be reading this blog would be like "Whatever lady, just get over it! It's just a piece of cake! You were at a birthday party for heavens sake!" Yeah, yeah, I know! But, you see, I DON'T WANT CARVEL ICE CREAM CAKE IN MY LIFE ANYMORE WHAT-SO-EVER! Why does disgusting, chemical laden, loaded with refined sugar, skanky non-food even appeal to me? Am I punishing myself? Am I rewarding myself by poisoning myself? Is my body suicidal? I have such a strong desire to be a total raw vegan, that means NO COOKED FOOD, never mind nasty crap non-food. I really am devoted to my health and spirituality and also to the health of the planet, so why is this so difficult? Ever day when I wake up I intend to be all raw, all healthy, all day but by 4 pm (or even before if I have had a stressful day) I am into the cooked food and feeling like a loser again! By 10pm I am plotting my raw-strategy for the next day! It is total obsessive weirdness... And so here I am, sitting at the computer, pouring my heart out to you with a belly full of heavy, not-digesting food that I made for the rest of the family for dinner but managed to eat a hearty portion of my own damn self! I often fantasize about how my days would go if I had my dream life, imagining myself doing yoga in the early morning sunshine, juicing and preparing divine living foods and enjoying them, beautifully presented, sitting at the table eating with a knife and fork like a human, giving myself mud baths in the summer sunshine, meditating, teaching Lincoln to chant (which he is actually really good at naturally, it seems) teaching and serving others on their own paths to wellness... Truthfully, the only thing stopping me from doing any of this is myself and it has got to stop! I really have no other obstacles to my dream life other than my own self. I feel so ungrateful for not making the most of my abundant blessings in life. I think it is time to get out the EFT technique again. I toyed with it this past winter and was having remarkable results and I think that it just freaked me out and I stopped doing it, not knowing how to handle my new found peace and calmness. It was unnerving, severely. Sometimes I think that it is just because I have been seriously overweight for my whole life, or at least since my parents got divorced when I was seven, and I just don't know what to expect out of life in a slim body. It is like I am hiding from myself or something.

Must be in the stars...

Man, oh man, it seems like today was a day for serious conversations... Mine came out ok in the end, but was definately highly-charged emotionally. Glad to let it all out though. I feel fresher and cleaner in a way. Like I can really move forward now. Bless the whole experience. And bless my wonderful Mother. She is truly the best. I must have had some good karma to get her for a Mom.

And to the other darling friends of mine who had a not-so-pretty serious conversation of their own, I send you massive love and healing vibes. Peace be with you.

I ate nothing cooked today and am very pleased with myself. Even with all of my emotional turmoil, I was still able to resist a few serious cravings. And I did not overeat as a way to cope with the stress. This is a tremendous accomplishment for me. And it wasn't even that difficult.

Maybe there is light at the end of the tunell.

This picture is in honor of our garden, lovingly tended by Felix. Love, Love, Love...

Emotionally hijacked...

Wow... I have got to get a handle on myself. It seems like every time plans change, money gets tight, I have a disagreement, or any other little thing happens, I just lose it. My emotions just take over and off we go on some sort of stress-hormone induced bad trip. To put it bluntly- it sucks. I feel all out of sorts. I get all down in the dumps and internalize whatever is going on, making it all my fault and concluding that basically I just plain can't cut the mustard. Why do I feel like it is OK to be so mean to myself? And why do I feel like it is my God-given duty to save everyone else from themselves? I mean, I consciously know that everyone has the right to make whatever decisions they choose to make. You know, it's called "free will." Sometimes I seriously wonder if there isn't actually something hormonally wrong with me besides being a drama queen of the first degree.

The biggest problem with this whole messy scene, this emotional derailment, is the effect that it has on my lifestyle choices. It immediately sends me into punish- yourself-because-you-don't-deserve-anything-good mode. Ridiculous. And all because things get tough or somebody lets me down, or even because I let myself down. I start to crave all sorts of things that are really really really terrible for me including (but not exclusively)- fast food flesh burgers, deep fried death food, drugs of any and all kinds (even ones I have never done before, at least not in this lifetime), angry confrontations, toxic thought patterns, coffee, sugar, sugar, ice creamy products, bread, and maybe even more sugar. Now, I *usually* don't give in and indulge in these things. But- the worst part of it is that now to go along with the bad feelings I am having, I have these wicked cravings to deal with as well. And of course, I feel like an idiot for craving these things in the first place. It is exhausting. I just want it to stop. Now, don't get me wrong, when I am eating a predominately cooked diet this whole scene is much worse and I go even further off the deep end, usually culminating in deep, dark depression and hopelessness. Now that I am raw or "rawer", I am able to reign it in somewhat. Actually, now that I think about it, this whole emotional dementia thing is one of the reasons that I came to be raw in the first place. I guess what I am really wanting is to have enough spiritual faith and clarity that I don't emotionally react to such a degree every time something challenging comes up. I also would like to stop feeling so wounded and wronged all the time. I mean all that crap happened a long time ago, why should it still be such a huge part of who I am?

All I know for sure is that I am feeling better and better the longer I am raw and caring for myself regardless of my rides on the emotional roller coaster. I guess I should just be happy with this. I should just choose to allow myself to be satisfied and stop constantly reaching for perfection. Perfection that my conscious mind knows doesn't even exist. Perfection that my spirit knows cannot not exist. You get my drift? No. Me either... Ah well, tomorrow will be a better day, I hope.

I guess I'll just go and count my blessings, or something.

One love to you all until tomorrow.