Raw Diet Day 4

I finished off my last tin of tomatoes at breakfast this morning, and also got to the last two slices of bread. I will treat this as an omen and switch to a raw breakfast, given that the raw lunches seem to be working at the moment. I can't bring myself to give up my bacon and eggs yet - but I will have them accompanied by something like raw cabbage. I think I will have to be a bit creative here. I am getting to quite like raw cabbage but it may be a bit too much to have it for breakfast and dinner. Today has been interesting. I have done my usual raw food lunch and basically forgotten all about eating the rest of the day. Just as I was about to go home when one of my workmates asked me to get her a bar of chocolate to get her through working late. When I handed it over she quite naturally offered me a piece. I found that I really did not want it, even though this 5.30pm and I hadn't eaten a thing since lunchtime. I found the idea of something as sweet as chocolate in my mouth quite unappealing. Bear in mind I was tucking into and thoroughly enjoying a jam donut and home made cakes just a few days before. I won't read too much into this as I am still a long way from even getting onto a serious raw diet yet, but I do find it interesting that I seem to be losing my sugar cravings. I had better qualify that by saying that I tend not to crave sugar that much anyway, so I it may not have anything like that effect on someone else, and it may just be a flook for me. Got home to a huge, and I mean huge plate of chicken and rice. I have a bit of a problem when it comes to leaving food once it has been served up so I faithfully chomped through the lot. Although I didn't get indigestion or anything, I did find it hard to sleep. I now weigh 13 stone 8 and a quarter. I think the first firm conclusion that I can draw is that incorporating large amounts of raw food into a conventional diet does not lead to an immediate weight loss. I am feeling a bit more energetic, but not a huge amount and it might well be psychological. I am ready to up the ante and make my diet still more raw....

Raw Diet Day 3

Started the day with bacon and eggs with toast. I am beginning to get impatient now, given my good results so far. I think I will soon switch to bacon and eggs with raw cabbage instead of toast and tomatoes. I think the raw diet is associated with veganism but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work with meat as well. Unfortunately the day itself was not really a real raw food success. My colleague who bakes delicious cakes brought some in to celebrate her birthday. And after work I went to see some old workmates and ended up with a KFC and chips for my evening meal. Having said that, I don't think I ate as many chips as I normally would have done. My weight now stands at 13 stone 11lbs which I think is the heaviest I have ever been in my life. (I am six foot if you are interested, so even this doesn't really represent a problem weight in itself.) Things are going to have to get a bit more serious with this diet if I am going to get anything out of it.

Raw Diet Day 2 (Continued)

20:10 update. Just finished a very enjoyable plate of salmon and chips with a bit of rocket salad. Current weight 13 stone 9 and three quarter ounces. Mental state good, energy level above average.

Raw Diet Day 1 - post mortem

After lunch I became absorbed in my job and didn't give my diet a second thought. But on the way home in the car it occurred to me that I had not had a mid-afternoon craving for a snack as I often do. I generally put these down to boredom anyway, so it could just be that my work was a bit more interesting than usual. It could be a coincedence, but I also managed to get a bit more done than I do most afternoons, which tend to be my lowest ebb of the way energy-wise. The other thing I noticed was that I still wasn't particularly hungry when I got home. I wasn't full though, because as soon as I tucked into my evening meal I had no problem polishing it off. It was a particularly big one because we had a large batch of rather old potatoes to eat up. With some chicken in my wife's rather nice creamy sauce and a side salad it was very enjoyable. Conclusions? Well yesterday was far from a raw food day. In fact I probably ate a bit more cooked food than normal what with the donut and the large evening meal. I did nonetheless think that I got some benefit from what was in effect a fairly small raw food snack on top of a conventional diet. I am going to stick to my initial plan of simply adding raw foods at lunchtime for the first week to see if there really is any noticeable effect and how consistent it is. I am not too concerned about my weight. I am 13 stone 5 and three quarter pounds as of today. But I am a scientist and I like measuring things, so I will keep track of my weight as this trial progresses.

Raw Diet Day 1 - Just after lunch

My main blog is beginning to get some serious traffic now. In the last couple of weeks I have never been below 40 visits a day and I have had one over a 100. I have responded by lavishing attention on it in a way I have never done before, but now I need to get back to my other blogs. None of these are getting any visits beyond the odd random one. I somehow need to get more energy from somewhere to keep them going. Well I guess we would all like a bit more energy so I was surprised to find a reference on Steve Pavlina's blog that his raw food diet was giving him so much energy that he was finding the surplus to be a problem. Steve is an interesting and prolific blogger on a wide range of subjects most of which have to do with personal growth, interpreted in the broadest possible sense of the word. One of his interests is diet and he often mentions that he is a vegan. Most people would regard that as a fairly extreme way to eat. But his latest diet is one step beyond that. Last January he ran a thirty day trial of a raw food diet. Since then he has apparently been keeping it up with some lapses. I don't want to steal his thunder and he takes these things a lot further than I think I am ever likely to do so if you are interested you will find a lot of detail on his experiences on his website. As I said, Steve Pavlina is a vegan and also has a reasonably unconventional lifestyle as he supports himself pretty much via income from his blog. Like most people I have a day job. I also have what I think is a pretty conventional diet. I eat meat, fried food, drink tea, consume alcohol and I like the odd cake. I probably eat fewer sweets than most poeple, but I make up for this with a conscientious committment to barbeque flavoured Mini-Cheddars. I have a bag of these most days. Two sometimes when I am bored. Another unusual feature of my eating habits is that I have a cooked breakfast with bacon, eggs toast and tomatoes most mornings. I don't think it would be possible for me to get up one day a become a vegan. It might even be medically unwise to unilaterally impose something so radical on my digestive system without warning. However, I do like the idea of more energy and I am aware that there probably is room for improvement in what I eat. So following Steve's cue I am going to adopt a new eating regime and document my experience with it on a day to day basis. My approach is going to be that I am going to try and incorporate a large amount of raw food into my daily intake. I am going to build it up over time, and I am going to continue eating conventially at least some of the time. However, this is an experiment so I might vary what I am doing over the duration. This morning I tucked into a hearty cooked breakfast consiting of a fried egg, two rashers of locally grown bacon (absolutely delicious!) some tinned tomatoes and toast all washed down with a cup of tea. At tea time in the morning I enjoyed a jam donut to help celebrate a colleague's birthday. As I was rather conscious of what I was eating I eat the apple I had brought for lunch straight away afterwards to sort of clear my mouth of sugar. Lunchtime represents my first raw food meal. Some raw cabbage, a few cauliflower florets and a couple of carrots. I then ate an enormous banana, and settled down to blog about it. How do I feel? Well no surge of energy yet. I will say though that the meal was a lot more satisfying than I imagined it would be and I am certainly not craving my normal savoury biscuit treat I usually have about now.