A Raw Week

This blog was started on July 7, just so you know.

Today is the last day of a raw food week my sister convinced me to join her on. It didn’t take much convincing: it sounded like a great idea – eat super healthy for a week, just cut out cooking and a few precooked things (bread, chips).Not a big deal. You’ll feel great, said the articles, lose weight, be extra healthy. Basically, your life will change. Well, they got that right. I am never doing something this ridiculous again.

Here’s how it went:

Day one: feeling optimistic and excited; enjoying guacamole with carrot sticks and cucumber. A few unpleasant stomach side effects beginning. A headache (could be unrelated). Started a list on my kitchen cupboard of every item eaten – feel proud of all the healthy things on the list and excited to add to it.

Day two: positive beginning, guacamole still tasty. By afternoon stomach definitely not happy (and firmly letting me know). Lettuce wraps with raw hummous for supper. Afterwards nauseous at the thought of carrots. Don’t finish adding to the list. Go to sleep thinking murderous thoughts towards Rach.

Day three: Feeling good! Anything is better than day two. Enjoyed fruit and yoghurt smoothy for lunch. Rach comes to stay – she is going through my day two symptoms. I express sympathy but feel slightly superior that I am through the rough patch. (God laughs at my superiority: He knows day four to six holds). Eat lettuce wraps for lunch – much better today and my work colleagues look impressed by my wraps.

Day four: Not as good as day three. Broccoli salad for lunch – raw broccoli is not wonderful. Decide to try making a cold carrot ginger soup recipe I found on a raw food website. Waste a perfectly good avocado in carrot ginger soup. Force a bowl of carrot ginger soup down, heavily diluted with yogurt. Save the rest for Rach later who is on the can’t-look-at-vegetables-even-if-they-look-like-baby-food stage and is eating muesli.

Day five: The day is fine (but closer to day two feeling than day three) until around five. Then craving for bread/crackers/chips/fried anything sets in. AND horror of horrors: guacamole beginning to taste… plain and not enjoyable! Things have become serious. Depressed. Want real food. Rach and I decide that six days is basically a week and since I’m leaving for a school trip on day seven we may as well end on day six and enjoy a celebratory supper.

Day six: It’s a Saturday but we are marking entrance exams at school. People have brought muffins and cake and biscuits (and 2 apples for me, how sweet). Rach and I both not feeling so bad, but think it is probably psychological since we are at the end. We are kind of disappointed that we do not feel physically different, i.e. better – the articles lied. What was the point? I buy a spring roll for my celebratory supper… am disappointed – think I had built it up too much in my head all week, no spring roll could live up to that. But am happy. Afterwards I eat chips. Life is good.

Overall: I believe, just like we should wear glasses if we need them, we need to accept the progress humankind has made over the centuries as a gift from God. We may have started eating raw, but my goodness, we have evolved and moved on! If anyone is ever tempted: don’t do it. It’s really not worth day two, four, five and six. Trust me.