Cleansing, as in some degree of eventually not eating constantly?

 Food, Health and Fighting: The Raw Food Experiment 1/14/2008

Ok, first the bad news. When I signed on to “go raw” (and vegan) for a month I thought the deal was that I’d have to switch all my meals to raw meals -being prepared by Cousin’s IV- and that was one thing.

I was actually fine with that in concept since I had already sampled some of their dishes and was satisfied with the taste and substance. There was a Sunday night meeting each week, I knew, and I figured they’d just be giving us tips on how to prepare raw things for ourselves and explaining the science behind things.

It was with that notion in mind that I headed to Cousin’s last night. But I soon realized that one side effect of not actually reading into things myself is that I don’t always know what’s going on.

You see, it’s true that I’ll be getting the “live box” meals from Cousin’s but that’s not all there’s to this “detox” diet. There’s also a “cleanse.”

Honestly, beyond an occasional shower and washing my hands before eating I am pretty unfamiliar with “cleanses.” Given that I’m pretty ignorant all around and in this area in particular I’ll get to the guts of what hit me hard in learning that we’d be cleansing: At some point in the month, we’ll be eating less. And then with seven days left we’ll be fasting.

Just when I had sort of come to terms with going a month without cheese I now realize there will be some time that I’ll have to come to terms with not eating much at all. Medically, there doesn’t seem to be any risk of not getting enough calories as even the “fasting” period contains as much fresh juices and herbs as we can put in, but still…I don’t know.

There was one time I chose to eat a pizza in front of the computer while reading and I got so engrossed in the material that a half hour later I realized I hadn’t finished the entire pizza. There was one slice sitting there unattended, I realized, for what must have been fifteen minutes.

As I have been known to eat in my sleep, that incident was probably the closest thing I’ve ever done to fasting for any period of time.

The Good News

So yes, I’m a bit scared about the fact that at some point I may be called upon to fast but there’s a pleasantly surprising silver lining to all this. I went to a dinner lecture at Cousin’s on Saturday night (more on that soon coming) and then started the program last night.

And after two all you can buffets (from the back to back lectures) and two meals in to this new day and I can say to anyone with assurance that the food made at Cousin’s IV is unbelievably good tasting. Good, period.

Many of us are used to putting qualifiers before descriptions of “healthy food” we eat. It’s really a case of low expectations coupled with good intentions.

That was pretty good for a fake hamburger, not bad for a vegan cheese cake,  we might remember saying at best between curled-lip bites.

Now everything at Cousin’s is raw, vegan and mostly if not all organic. And everything I’ve had so far (at least twenty different items at each buffet and several more in my own live box so far) tastes very good. Not for raw food, not for meatless food. It’s just delicious food.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this so far. I mean I had pretty high expectations taste wise going in because I was familiar with Chef Mehmet Ak’s work from year’s past.

Chef Mehmet was the owner and chef of quite a few Cousin’s locations here in Chicago and my family and I had frequented some of his locations over the years for some time in the past. The environment was comfortable and elegant, the prices nice and most importantly, the food fantastic.

It was just great Turkish/Mediterranean food. When I learned that Chef Mehmet had switched to raw and vegan, I thought, “huh, that can’t be too bad. After all, I know this guy can cook up a storm. “

I’d rather try the product from a great chef who later learned to prepare healthy food than that of a healthy person who doesn’t know how to cook. My expectations were high but the food is even better than I thought.

It ain’t bad to look at either. I’ve got photos of dishes coming up soon so everyone can get a feel for the stuff I’m eating from day to day.

Day 1

Every morning as a part of this program we are to do a few things including some quiet meditation (a nice passage from Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16 worked well for me today), and the spaced out drinking of ten herb pills. These things are from the Ejuva cleanse.

After giving that some time to chill out in my stomach I gave some simple exercises a shot for first time in over a week. I have bronchitis and am on antibiotics (wrapping that up today) and have tried to take it easy lately. I ate a banana and then did a couple push ups and leg exercises for rehabbing my injured knee and headed down to the fridge.

I pulled out some “sushi” wraps, tossed in some avocado from my spinach salad and another bit of this green cilantro salad, and a dessert of a raw chocolate pie and headed back up to read the latest on the presidential races. It was all very tasty. And filling.

That’s something that I’m pretty concerned with. I got a question on the mma.tv underground forum from our friend Ron asking why I’m doing this. Is it weight loss? He’s met me before and knows that my bean pole physique can probably not handle losing any muscle.

I’m not trying to lose weight. I want to basically try and put highly alkaline foods into my body and see what happens. Chef Mehmet says he works out every day and he certainly seems full of energy. He told the group last night that he just did the cleanse and he looked far from weak or too light.

Plus, the whole thing is all you can eat so I’m definitely going to try and avoid losing weight. The truth is I’ve been starting to get all sorts of pains after I eat and I think it’s because a. I eat too much at a time and b. maybe some of the meals (or a lot of them) are not too good for me.

I think it’s possible that eating better, drinking more water and sleeping more might help me be less sickly, rehab my knee and get me back into training. Not to mention the fact that I’m not too keen on getting any lifestyle diseases. I want to see what this stuff can do towards that end.

Since my breakfast I’ve eaten an apple and done a little more exercise. Feeling full and pretty good. I’ve gotten a bunch more questions already and I thank everyone for them.

I’m going to try and address some of them in each post. One of the big ones has to do with people just wanting to know what I’m eating. So I’ve already gotten some photos and I’ll be putting them up soon. For now, please enjoy photos of my herb kit and me. The herb kit is in a box. I’m in a confused and nervous state thinking about eventually fasting.

  

 

My herbs. Boy that’s a lot of pills!

 

Peanuts isn’t doing the cleanse. But she’s already on an almost all organic diet. Her sun dress is organic hemp as well.

Holding my herbs thinking about how I’m going to have to fast at some point