The Purple Elephant Vs. Non-Vegan Foods...and The Winner is...

THE PURPLE ELEPHANT! :)


Now I can't say the Purple Elephant has had much of a fight really I mean both events- the birthday party and the charity dinner were already vegetarian in nature. I thought I'd be side stepping paneer (a kinda Indian cottage cheese) at the dinner but none was served...so really at both events I was just knocking out cake,cookies and ice cream really! And well all the questions as to why? Or the confused looks when I kept declining the treats...or at the charity event when someone insisted I try the chai that was all brewed up already milk included! I just explained that I had tried the chef's famous chai at a wedding that he served it at prior to this event and so tonight was having the plain old Lipton tea! Of course I was also ducking from cream in coffee and tea and the likes but at the dinner there was even non-dairy creamer!:) So I made it through...although now I'm wondering if I won on a technicality as was that non-dairy creamer truly vegan? And these are the dilemmas I always face as a vegetarian so just now seeing the new frontiers of that dilemma when being vegan! The way I deal with it though is I try my best not to but if I do well I can't really hold Father Time in an arm lock so I just say what's done is done and move on!

Now remember my point was not to cross the vegan line especially at those events where I knew semirawkindaraw would have been too tough to pull off...but on the whole I'm trying to eat less and mostly be semirawkindaraw...and stay away from lots of sugar and caffeine and junk foods. But I've been having sugary things and some caffeine once in a while as long as they've not been non-vegan. I've also been having some carbohydrates-a bit of rice, roti and bread and on one very rare occasion a bit of pasta. But really I only have them when I can't get my hands on enough fruits (raw) and veges (prepared semi-raw) and I need to have some additional calories to make it through my day.

So sadly no chocolate although I've just had a cup of my favourite Cadbury's cocoa mixed into only boiling water...no richness of loads of cream and sweet like I'm going to be having soon for Christmas! :)But still a slight taste of cocoa for my nerves! :) But yes 'the where I don't cross the line bit' is on being vegan hence the 'veganforsure' bit I've put into the title to describe my current eating habits.

And again rounding to the last week of this experiment in eating I can say it's easy to be vegan I can see it being done and it seems to be a healthier step past vegetarian for sure! Will I become vegan fully one day? Dunno...for now I am looking forward to Christmas treats-cake, ice cream, chocolates...my favourite richly made recipe for Cadbury's cocoa...but I'm sure with time and working at it one can find vegan treats that will substitute...and it does feel lighter...I can't say I miss the cheese...I have more been missing chocolate and cream in my tea, coffee, cocoa etc...in fact thus far I've not had black coffee as I don't like the bitterness of coffee much anyway...so have more been having the green tea with the occassional black tea too...I think there are some rainy cooler times I crave cheesy pizza or some mornings butter on my toast or a bowl of Quaker oats made warm with milk...but is it these things I'm craving or the need for warmth, comfort and joy?

Well my purple elephant just trumpeted! :)He's getting all excited and restless these last few days...dancing as if in the circus as he can't wait for the Advent calendar...you should see how quickly he was walking when I stepped almost 3.5 miles today! :)

Oh dear! He has just tickled my ears with his trunk to say that after seeing the film 2012 he is a bit anxious as he had a nightmare after seeing the film. In the nightmare he is one of the pair of Indian elephants that made it onto that Ark so he is a bit nervous about how he is going to interact with all the other African elephants that he figures survived in South Africa as according to the movie...it seems the flood did not hit most of Africa and in particular South Africa for sure. Also in the nightmare while on the Ark he recalls he had a cousin (elephant) that went from India to the zoo in South Africa and he is hoping to meet him still...so there will be three Indian elephants at least in the new world...the nightmare has been reoccurring for my purple elephant after seeing the film...and he also cries heavily in it as he had to part with the little mouse that is always at his feet...they chose two American rats instead...so he had to leave his Trinidadian one behind...and he always awakes from the nightmare when the female elephant those American scientists tagged him with starts to nag him out of his wits! LOL!

The Purple Elephant Vs Non-Vegan Foods!

It's just about ten days into my journey Semi-RawKindaRawVeganforsure and here is what I'm craving!:

-My cup of Cadbury's Cocoa made like on my Advent Calendar here
-Twinings Voyage Indian Chai au lait (with milk)
-Any cafe au lait (coffee with milk)
-Chocolate in every which way!
-Cheesy Pizza
-Hot Cheesy Pizza
-The Ultimate Hot Fudge Sundae (that really only exists in my imagination and even when non-vegan I can never really find! I think it is a symbolic thing for me...this supposed oasis of extreme satisfaction...hehe ...but I keep chasing after it . .only to find a mirage!)

But the Purple elephant has so far been winning...I've had some transgressions but as I said I've never crossed the vegan line thus far! And for those watching my pounds for me I feel I'm losing some as I can see it in my neck and face...they seem smaller...and amazingly I feel so grand...I feel lighter in a way and very energy filled...so abuzz! :) Yesterday I walked a little over 2 miles and I could have kept on but I had to manage my time to get to bed for work the next day so I had to wrap up...you see sometimes we have the desire to exercise but no time...that fictional 4th dimension that others especially corporations bind us by! :)

Speaking of him...Father Time...I will be doing some metaphysical talks soon to get those talks on stream again...and look for that Advent calendar again as soon as Dec 1st hits on all three of my blogs! :) My intent behind that is to give you a new and surprise blog post every day (if I can keep up). I hope the blog posts will be just as lovely as if you were eating one extraordinarily tasty chocolate each day plucked from an actual Advent calendar...

So yep back to The Purple Elephant versus Non-Vegan foods...I now realise that apart from the charity dinner on Saturday there is a friend's birthday tomorrow and I might have to surprise her (if she is not reading this blog) with a call and perhaps who knows ...and on Friday a birthday party for a family member! So...it's three days in a row back to back of The Purple Elephant VS Non-Vegan foods!

Will my Purple Elephant win?

Tune in to find out...

One Week Into My Journey Semi-raw Kinda Raw Vegan for Sure-Here are some thoughts on which I gnaw!

I’ve spent my last two blogs telling you about what I’ve been eating. However just over a week into the journey I want to share with you some of my thoughts instead. Not really about how my body is feeling or what I’m thinking about the whole journey as it unfolds but just to pause instead for a moment and ask… WHY?

You see I kinda jokingly said it here and there and you can pick it up in my older blogs about last year’s journey but here is where I get serious…for once! You see here on my musings I kinda behave all footloose and fancy free dancing about everybody …you see my bhakti (love) yogic dance from over on my sister blog UCP-Universal Collective Prayer has been really getting the better of me more and more these days…that’s the reason why. So every thing is a dance for me you see! Of course it is very pleasing to me but I also wish to communicate here you see! And even over on UCP there are the times like here when I announced I was going to look at some gyan (knowledge) yoga and stuff too man so here it is the gyan yogic scoop on my current journey…scholarly hat on as I try to be like the character Owl from Winnie the Pooh instead of Pooh! As I think Pooh is a bhakti yogi and Owl a gyan yogi. So here it is me going all gyan yogini on ya!:

MOTIVATION BEHIND IT

This will still sound funny but it really was the teeth for me! I don’t know if the teeth are like some really important marker for the rest of the body like how some people say they check you hair and analyze it and can from that say what your general health status is? But ever since I’ve been on the journey even in the first few hours of Day 1 my teeth stopped feeling this kinda subtly irritating effect. It feels like the equivalent to when there is this slightly buzzing high frequency noise somewhere out there you but you can’t quite pick up where it is coming from…well that was how my teeth were equivalently feeling. And now they are at rest…so calm…

Also it was the desire to savour loads of fresh fruit and to celebrate vegetables. Seriously…on my first journey I got the idea after having an apple one morning about how lovely it must be to drink the water just at the surface of the apple that was slightly flavoured by the apple. I’m a big apple lover (it even makes up a big part of my fav perfume!) and on my good normal days I try to have at least one a morning! So I genuinely like fruits! But in the case of the vegetables I still don’t like to eat them just raw like that hence is why my journey is semi-raw kinda raw and vegan for sure. So I like to slightly cook the veges really it’s like more just warming then up a bit too. Also last year I was inspired by a fellow blogger’s journey into full raw although I can’t see myself there any time soon. But her creations really look delicious but seem to take a lot of time to prepare. I told her if she opened such a restaurant or started catering I’d be a customer for sure!

But these stints I’m on are my way of experimenting…finding out a bit more about this…taking some life notes…a lot like my experiment in UCP…where over there on that blog I try to explore this thing I call UCP-Universal Collective Prayer.

Hey that’s what life should be…exploring for me…everyone is an explorer not just me and not just those people on Nat Geo! So I see it as my responsibility to explore find out have all these lovely little journeys…like I explained on this blog…to me this is why we are here on earth!

The reason I’ve decided to get all gyan yoga on my readers is because one of them commenting on Facebook thought I was on ‘a diet’ and that I’m not. I know it must have led to a bit of awkwardness for her… as I really am not a very slim person especially not by fashionista standards but then most people aren’t! But also I can by medical standards lose some too…although I’ve not weighed in years! So yep I can do with losing pounds but I’m not on ‘a diet’ of course I allow myself in these periods to drop pounds if I do but I just enjoy it. So I’m writing this to also let her know that for sure she doesn’t need to be on a diet especially not on a Special K one! OMG! Hmmm...maybe she should be reading the beautiful Sarah Maria's book?

Now, if I was already very slim like this other friend who went fully raw well then I’d have to be careful to maintain enough calories not to drop weight but in my case I let it drop if it does…but it is just a useful byproduct of this journey. Hence my point is my intent is not to lose weight here but to explore a way of eating that I find can be more healthy and peaceful in many ways. Of course in exploring it I will get closer to my healthy weight range too because having a healthy weight and muscular tone etc is well part of being healthy hence the word healthy in ‘healthy weight’ so…so be it! It’s the same with my stepping and my pedometer …if I walk consistently and don’t over do it on the eating yes I will lose weight and build muscle and tone to some extent…but I walk to be healthier not to be a particular weight, shape or size. To me fat people are just as beautiful as scrawny people as beautiful as tall people as short and so too are people who are ‘just right’. But there is no ‘just right’…although there is a right fit for us all…I guess like how Goldilocks did…always in threes…one porridge too hot…one too cold…one just right…one bed too hard…one too soft and one just right! But it’s just about being me…I recall my theme songs: primary and sub-primary here! ...'I am the One and Only' by Chesny Hawks and 'Wonder' by Natalie Merchant...

So that’s it for the WHY??? really but here is just something too that I think overlaps into the whole healthy …in an overall way kinda thing. Apart from being healthy physically well…I guess here I’m getting all Deepak Chopra on ya …woo hoo!...the whole mind, body, spirit wellness thing. But it’s absolutely true really but you have to find it and discover it on your own. Like I’m already all happy dancing on my UCP blog so I guess that covers mind and spirit in a kinda way along with all the reading and general daily life experiments…like Winnie the Pooh …I think, think, think…on this blog as well. So I perhaps have the mind and spirit thing going on so it leaves the body for work…but you see the whole mind, body, spirit thing is suppose to combine just like all the yogic pathways to well give you something…BALANCE or HAPPINESS! SAMADHI even! ??? But really it doesn’t…none of it can really make you happy you know…happiness to me comes from just being really…it’s a lot like when I asked the question on Intent…Would You Choose Pain Over Non-Existence? And in that gyan yogic discussion the conclusion was that I should…just be…So I’m just being…however I am…But the think about the human spirit and nature is we then want to interact with other spirits you see and that is how we blend universally but here is where my other little gyan yogic discussion comes up…socialization and eating:

SOCIALIZATION

Some people say you must never eat alone…I do it all the time but hey I’m never alone really but I’ll leave that discussion for UCP. But in the gyan yogic sense I’m discussing here…two feet on the ground…us human beings need to interact with each other. One of the most important times it seems for doing this is over a meal. And when one is eating semi-raw kinda raw vegan for sure! Well one has to decline many a lunch/dinner invitation unless one can find something to eat at the restaurant or home of invite. And when it is just a brief experimentation well it’s tough to explain. Maybe I’ll just have to send them to this blog or let them look at my rumbly tumbly Pooh tummy and think…yea it’s a diet!:) I’ve been able to handle being vegetarian and teetotaller too all my life and work around it although even that sometimes depending on the other being can get all weird. I mean some people in some places and cultures still don’t get the whole vegetarian thing even! But it is generally well accepted and engrained here in Trinidad. So it’s no biggie…and I’ve had my whole life and family support to learn about that one…not to mention a whole religion behind me and a line of ancestors too!

But for raw for sure it would be tough! Is why I told my eating raw blogger friend a future business opportunity awaits her! You see and I know this is no big mystery I’m here to reveal but people who have busy lifestyles eat out a lot and they need places to get the food! I’ve been looking at my new follower on Twitter’s advice-RawfoodRepair that you should pack something. But really it’s not the same when you want to network and socialize…in fact I am in a must attend event on Sat where my veganess is going to be heavily threatened…it is why I said Semi-Raw Kinda Raw Vegan for Sure! As I figured I can at least stand up to the vegan bit for all of the three weeks…but I didn’t realize I had this charity dinner thing on during the period…but I realize that it is good too that this is going to be the case now…as this will be my ultimate challenge…being out and about in a setting like this to see how I’ll pan out…I hope I come out of it still vegan for sure! Look out to see how I fare my friends! Hmmm...will my purple elephant win? Tune in to find out... :)

Day 2 into Day 3 on My Journey Semi-Raw, Kinda Raw…Vegan for Sure!

I’m having some internet connectivity issues at home so as much as I wanted to make this a daily update if possible…that has made it just so much harder! Although I really don’t think I need to tell my readers every single day what goes into my mouth or how I feel. But I do want to generally share my experiences on the journey with you…so here it goes…

At the end of Day 1 into Day 2 I was feeling not hungry amazingly but very calm! And my teeth really feel so much nicer some how! Well I always feel that when I have the soda drinks they irritate and somehow well excuse my engineering term...but I feel it somehow corrodes them! So the teeth are no longer howling at me!

My main accomplishment for Day 2 was I was able to have a cup of Twinings Green Tea just with hot water! No sugar or Splenda or any sugar subs galore! I did hear on the radio driving home that there is Stevia and agave nectar (and you can read about that in a friend and fellow bloggers rec. as well in the comment for Mondays’ blog) …and on the radio the man said I should be looking for long chain sugar subs! Well I went without so there!

So here is what went into my mouth…

DAY 2

-three bananas
(I had 2 and a friend having bananas also for breakfast gave me one more so there 2 became 3! Hmm…fraternizing with fellow fruit eaters has its perks)
-two black plums
-two apples
-one cup of Twinings Green Tea (no sugar or cream!)
-one bowl of yellow dhal
-one very large cob of corn boiled in water flavoured with salt and hot peppers
(It was the hard in grain so even boiled it could have been raw)
-16 ozs of Ocean Spray Cran Raspberry Light juice
(Yea it had the Splenda! But it’s more and more looking like a long term solution for those teeth!)

And here’s the news! Yesterday afternoon when I went to the grocers to stock up on more fruit at the back of my mind was a very special kind of tea. It was mentioned to me by my friend and fellow Deliciously Divine Café member (where we virtually sit and shoot the breeze usually over many cups of tea!)- Noreen! Here is that tea!

Now I saw lots of tea on sale at the local Trini grocer quite a few green teas and many organic some even from the UK. But I couldn’t find the tea that my Irish friend Noreen recommended to me! But it did have this offering from Sir Thomas Lipton that I figured I’d give a whirl since I like the flavour of orange in my tea:


Im currently having a cup on my Day 3 semi-raw vegan for sure and it’s quite fine I’d say! So here it is what’s in my mouth so far just at around mid morning on Day 3…

DAY 3

-two bananas
(no fruit friend this morning sadly)
-one black plum
-one apple
-one cup of Lipton Green Tea naturally flavoured (so the pack says) with Orange, Passion Fruit and Jasmine! (no sugar or cream!)

Looking fwd to more! I think my 'Purple Elephant' is dancing forward quite nicely you see! :) Even dancing 1.5 miles yesterday again!

Semi-Raw Yet Again!

It's the first time this year I'm trying a semi-raw kinda raw but vegan for sure diet but if you've been reading me since last year you might recall my similar adventures in eating last year around the same time. Perhaps a year is what it takes to come back to this place but I've decided to give it another whirl. It was suppose to be all November long but I was ill planned for the challenge last week. Although I did generally eat way less last week and lots of vegetable soup only lunches...so I guess I was prepping for this! In case it is also not recalled I've always been vegetarian so my transitionary journey is never as drastic although apart from cutting out the dairy I try to cut back on junk and eat less as a whole. Even last week just like how I felt last year...you get to realise just how little food you really need to live and how much you need water! I'm also saying goodbye to Coke Zero and/or Coke Light and all of the Coca Cola company well except perhaps their Dasani for this! And even today my teeth feel better already! And in the past it was my teeth that prompted me on the journey!

This time around the economics of not buying lunch all three week journey long has dawned on me for the first time! And let's just say if I keep up like this for the rest of November I stand to save a pretty penny...somewhere in the US$100+ range! However the loss of socialization opportunities over meals shared is not ever easy and it's yet another dynamic to eating raw you see!

So here it is!Today is my first day back semi-raw kinda raw again and this is what into my mouth went in the order it went in too!:

-two bananas
-one apple
-a cup of Twinings green tea sweetened with one packet of Splenda (no cream although I usually drink evaporated milk in my tea and I'm thinking tomorrow I can try to drop the sweetener altogether!)
-one more apple
-one black plum
-one more cup of Twinings green tea
-one head of broccoli and six large white mushrooms sauteed
(only very lightly for warmth really just like I did in the past) in one teaspoon of olive oil with a handful of assorted nuts tossed in...seasoned with a dash of salt and some chilli pepper seeds.
-one bowl of dhal (the yellow kind) made thin (the way i like it)and the dhal mashed up
-16 oz of OceanSpray Cran raspberry Light (i.e. also partially sweetened with Splenda and supposedly free of artificially added stuff otherwise)
-lots of water throughout the day!

And that was it for me! And amazingly I was also able to do some walking after dinner too so I've walked about 1.5 miles in all today! That's something I want to focus on this time too...getting in some exercise despite eating like this! :)

So happy day one went this well for me! :) Wish me well to continue on with my purple elephant marching forward please! :)

By the way I check how much I walk with my lovely steppy thingy! i.e. my Omron pedometer! See it below...

Here I Go Raw Again!- or as I learnt the last time around Semi-Raw might be a better term for it!

Photo by Tyron Waterman 2006

This is just to let all my readers know that since my last days raw...I had gone on a very, very meandering path again and things had just gotten too out of hand yet again! The chocolates, the ice cream...mmmmm...just all the decadent treats were really more than a girl should eat! So I figured I had to come back again to the beginning and start all over again so 'Here we are, here we are, here we are again! :) I think from my last adventure raw and me calling it then 70% raw what I can say is I've learnt that the more smart sounding word to define my current eating approach might be semi-raw. So Hoorah! Hoorah!...Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah! Here I go again...semi-raw! It took a lot to get back to this day as I kept putting it off about a week now...so it really is with a Hippy Hippy Hooray! that I say from now until Christmas Day I will be semi-raw again!:) YAY!

YAY! I've Made It Through My First Week Raw!

Photo by Meady's Musings Production

The reason I put up the above pic to commemorate my first week raw is cause it's gone by just like that like a little snail crawling! And no it's not cause I've been eating raw snails as some may have thought!

I've not really been hungry this first week raw by 70% or semi-raw or whatever I might be labeled...kinda raw even? Neither do I think I've lost any significant weight so far. However it has made me realize how little we really need to eat and how much we eat just to fill up space. I had always known bout the filling up space part but I never realized how much so...like how much more what we eat can be reduced if we are more conscious of it. How really little we need to eat to survive! I've always been the one to get the eight glasses of water in per day but this raw experience so far has made me realize just how much water our body needs. I think our bodies must need way more water than food! I think it goes with being raw though perhaps as I saw Elspeth's advice to me to get enough water perhaps 3 litres a day! I dont know if I've been drinking 3 litres but I've been trying to keep hydrated as much as possible. Sometimes I get tired to chew another apple but I never can have enough water!

Being raw isn't half bad though. Although there are times I sure wish I could eat a big, full, fancy meal like earlier this evening...I was sure missing food! And it didn't help that my mother has been consistently making dhalpuris ...next big session since I've gone raw! But then by the time I got to eating my two small bowls of yellow dhal today and some left over water melon and paw paw from the fridge and a few nuts I snacked on in between I was quite filled!Makes you realize how much the need to have this big dreamed up meal in my head was not a real need of my body but perhaps more a projection of my mind's idea of what my body needed...maya...it's all illusion!

I don't know if I lost any weight but I'm not doing this to lose weight although I need to lose some. But this experiment is not about weight loss. I feel much lighter and my breathing is very much like how it gets when I'm exercising regularly...I've not been exercising this week and don't plan to until the end of the three weeks only cause I'm not sure if I know what I'm doing well enough in terms of the raw stuff cause I figure even with the nuts I'm not getting more than 1000 calories a day but then I'd have lost weight although I don't weigh myself so I don't know for sure. Anyway it might not be the best for me, not exercising but in terms of the experiment this way I have only one variable. Cause I've not been exercising for a while now as I was involved in several additional activities outside of work for the past two months prior to this that made my available time for exercise much less than normal and I decided to just catch up when those things were done. So to exercise and become raw would have been two changes so two variables would have entered into the experiment. So I plan to restart exercise post raw.

But back to the health effects of my rawism. Yep I feel much lighter in a way if only in spirit and there is so much less weighing down on my digestive system I guess. I really do feel like how a car's engine must react to being given unleaded gas finally when it was built for that and was being filled up with leaded gas instead! All my fuel injectors are now unclogged of lead! So breathing is that much easier! I'm also decaffeinated now and I think this must be the reason or just the foods I'm eating as a whole but I also feel so much more at peace and restful and also able to sit and meditate even more now. I feel more still is what it is and more centered so I can just sit still in silence for much longer more easily I find.

And yes folks my not so pearly whites that were the ones who guided me to be raw...well they are feeling so much better! Poor things aren't being corroded anymore and they are so at peace with themselves now :)

So it may not be easy being raw but it's good being raw so far! Two more snailing forward weeks to go!