The End of My Journey Semirawkindarawveganforsure!

On the last day semirawkindarawveganforsure my Purple Elephant is really kicking his padded feet up all in an uproar trumpeting and dancing for sure! He says he is hearing the music in his feet and elephants from all over the planet…purple and not so purple…Indian and African alike are sending messages to him through the vibrations felt in his feet! He is no longer having those nightmares after seeing the movie ‘2012’ and he is just all happy! You see the messages he is getting are about the start of the Advent calendar from tomorrow on all three of these blogs:

 Meady’s Musings
 UCP-Universal Collective Prayer
 Books and Films Corner

Also The Purple Elephant considers himself to be a winner! And it’s another reason why he is celebrating. Here are some thoughts from The Purple Elephant and me at the end of my journey semirawkindarawveganforsure! :

I went into this experiment to look at my relationship to food and in particular to embrace the loveliness of fruits and veges! It was part of a side experiment kinda getting off the tracks for a bit and going off on a small expedition with the Intent to take the lessons learnt from it back with me as I carry on with the main journey. It is why I went so strong and intensely into it for a short period. So now the trick is to incorporate these lessons or findings back into my normal life…however as in the past if I go all crazy in my eating again I will have to take myself into a corner and do this experiment all over again! But our society is so results oriented...so let me also tell you some results of the experiment then…

RESULTS

I did not go into this with the Intent of any specific results but just to see how I felt and what I happened to learn. Also as I’ve said on previous posts I do not weigh so I can’t scientifically tell you that result however I can unscientifically do so though! And I believe in combination with my eating habits and my stepping with the lovely steppy thingy…Purple Elephant at my side!




I’ve lost well within 5 to 10 pounds. I know this based on my own feel and perception of my body. The necklace I wear daily with a pendant (given as a gift in UCP from a fellow blogger) feels much looser around my neck…like now it hangs a bit longer down. Also I can see it on my face and in the look and fit of my clothes and the springiness of my step!

Also out of this experiment I’ve learnt how to eat like this and combine my stepping…this is an upping of the ante from previous such experiments as back then I just was getting accustomed to the drastic change in diet! But this time I walked quite a bit and The Purple Elephant and I are proud to announce that just over this last weekend we amassed 6 miles of walking- 3 miles on Sat and Sun respectively!


So to summarize in bullet form as the engineer in me breaks through the results/lessons learnt were:

1. Weight loss: 5 to 10 pounds
2. A better ability to incorporate daily exercise routine into this diet.
3. A better understanding of my relationship to food:
-the amount I need to eat to simply live
-the loveliness of the taste of fresh fruits and slightly cooked veges
-my need or lack of need for dairy products: I can perhaps live without
butter and cheese but I really miss my milk! And sometimes I crave
chocolates and ice cream.
4. The importance of drinking lots and lots of water! So coke please don’t steal that supply from the Indian farmers again…be reminded!


WAY FORWARD

Based on my findings I intend to:

1. Eat less from now on as I’ve found I was eating way more than I needed to…of course there will be the ups and downs (usually related to social events) and I won’t beat myself up over it! But perhaps try to walk more on those days.
2. Continue to eat fresh fruit and slightly cooked veges daily as they can really make up for a lot of my daily food intake without depriving myself in anyway i.e. no hungry feeling etc. Although now that I’m off the experiment I can eat other foods if I can’t get the fruits and veges but I have to keep remembering how good it was to eat them!
3. Start back dairy yes but minimize my use of butter and cheese. Also recall that if I could have had tea and coffee etc. without added evaporated milk for three weeks well I can skip it on some cups from time to time and still live! And if I could have done without chocolates and ice cream for three weeks surely I can have less of it when I do now!
4. I can do all of that and still try to walk 3 miles a day and if not at least 30 mins daily usually after dinner.

But remember what The Purple Elephant said to kick off this blog post!

Elephants world over are heralding the start of my Advent calendar here and on my other two blogs! So let’s get the party started…and yes there will be some fun ‘junk food’ on the calendar as there is simply no fun being a health buff all the time you see!

C’EST NOEL!

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

989D33JGPP2N

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...