First Post

I figured this would be as good a title as any for my first post, so here goes. I'm currently on insulin and two different medications for type II diabetes, hypertension and severe acid reflux. After a little research I've decided to try a raw food diet. I had been interested in it some time ago but had never good beyond the curiosity stage.

I've been a quasi-vegetarian for the past 23-24 years. I was first introduced to a veggie lifestyle while on The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. During that 12 months I hated (or so I thought) every aspect of the vegetarian lifestyle and ate meat at every opportunity. When I returned home, I found that I missed the way this healthy diet made me feel so I began to investigate becoming a vegetarian. I started slow by first removing pork from my diet, and then beef. This took less than three months to accomplish. Next was the hard part, giving up poultry. It took about a year to completely remove poultry from my diet. During this time, I ate seafood, as did most of my friends who were vegetarians. I was very dogmatic during this period. Lecturing others and refusing to touch anything that had touched meat. I even gave up my beloved Oreos because at the time they were still made with animal lard. After about 5 years I became vegan.

I still ate honey but everything else was off of the table. I had traded milk for soy, ice cream for rice cream and never found a suitable replacement for cheese. (The vegan Parmesan was the only one that was palatable.) This phase lasted for about a year. It was difficult but a lot of fun learning all different things about food and cooking. It was funny because at the time people would say to me in a rather incredulous tone, "Well what can you eat?" Suggesting that life with out meat and animal products would leave a huge void in my food choices. The truth was, I never felt before that I had had so many options. I was introduced to foods and cooking techniques that I had never known existed. While I have never returned to the vegan lifestyle, I've considered it a number of times. An end result of the raw food diet might be renewed commitment to being a vegan again.

Over the next 15-17 years I'd gone back and forth to including poultry in my diet. I'd gone from a dogmatic position to one of more accepting that everything had cycles, including my diet. This past year I've sworn off poultry again and have been free of it since last September 2009 (the 8th if I remember right). Before that I had been eating poultry for about 3-4 years and during that time had seen my weight increase and a general feeling on being unwell. For the past two months I've altered my diet and have gone almost exclusively to whole grain, fresh foods ands limited my use of processed foods.

All of which brings me to today. Today I went shopping for many of the supplemental foods that will assist me with maintaining a raw food diet. At this point I'm only looking at it as a cleansing. I will start with one day on a few off, another day one, then a few more off. After that I will try two days straight, next I will take a few days off and then try a whole week (I'm not sure if they mean 5 or 7 days in their suggested week, but I will try seven.) I will then take a few days off and finally begin my 21 diet.

I'll post what I eat, how I feel; physically, mentally and emotionally for the next few months. I've never blogged before but I really felt that this would be a good time to start.

What do I hope to get out of all of this? A stronger body, mind and soul. I hope to drop a little bit of weight and most importantly, I want to start myself on a path to decrease and maybe even eliminate my need for my meds.

I am using three books as a guide to this change. The first one is:

There is a cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21 Day+ Program by Gabriel Cousens, MD

Raw Energy By Stephanie Tourles

The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw by Mark Reinfeld, Bo Rinaldi and Jennifer Murray.

and I've pulled a few recipes from the following website:

http://www.living-foods.com/recipes/

If you are currently living a raw life or have in the past, please drop me a message and let me know what did and did not work for you. Also let me know what resources you used.