Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Two weeks on a raw diet

I got a book out from the library on eating raw. It was all about detoxing and losing weight by not eating anything that's been processed. The whole point is to only eat foods that naturally occur in nature and therefore are easy to digest. If food is easy to digest then your body knows exactly what to do with the food in terms of using all the necessary protein and enzymes and then quickly expel it into waste.

If your body cannot use the food you put into your body it stores it as fat. According to the author waste equals weight. Waste food is stuff that has no nutrition. Things with chemicals in them and even things like milk and cheese.

So basically you are safe to eat fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and that's about it. You can eat other stuff like beans, butter, cream and bread but they are not the main things you should eat.

It was strongly recommended that you purchase a juicer. Not just any kind of juicer, it needed to be a masticating juicer instead of a centrifugal one. Well, sadly where I live they don't sell masticating juicers in stores. I would need to buy one online.

The point of a juicer is to be able to quickly and easily consume lot's of dark leafy vegetables without all the extra fiber which is harder to digest. It's a lot less work just sticking all the veggies into a juicer as chopping a massive amount of vegetables and then spending ages chewing it all is a very tiring process.

Well, after two weeks I was a few pounds lighter but I was suffering a lot of nasty cravings. I needed to eat a piece of toast with butter and honey at night before going to bed as I felt hungry. I felt hungry a lot. I ate fresh fruit for breakfast, a salad for lunch and then I would cook something for supper. Otherwise my boyfriend was unhappy with supper. He thinks I'm a great cook because I actually cook.

I own about 20 vegetarian cook books and so I have made about a hundred different dishes. Out of those about a dozen or so have been very well received by many people. So people call me a great cook. It's not very exciting to have a salad for supper when you are used to gourmet cooking.

Raw is a very difficult lifestyle choice. It's awesome, and healthy. There is no doubt about that. I made some rather tasty raw desserts. Most raw desserts consist of nuts, dates, agave nectar, lemon juice, fruit, coconut, cocoa. Not necessarily all together, but usually a combination of those things will get you pies, cookies, puddings, energy bars. They are very tasty and actually healthy. I made some raw vegan brownies one day and they were pretty good.

I just don't particularly like fruit all that much. I mean, I like fruit salads and smoothies. I enjoy bananas when they are yellow and firm but without brown spots. I just don't feel a wonderful sense of satisfaction eating fruit. I can't really get past how much I like cake and pastries. There is no substitute for cupcakes. There are many yummy treats to had on a raw diet. But there is no cake or pastry.

I bought a book from Chapters on raw food. I wasn't able to make one of the recipes because they all called for dehydraters. The recipes were also super time consuming and fiddly to make. So I didn't make any of them and returned the book.

It's really hard to eat healthy and still enjoy food. It's really hard to find a healthy balance between getting enough fruit and vegetables but then to also enjoy treats like cake, cookies, ice cream, pastries, french fries, pizza and other unhealthy, fattening stuff.

There really aren't many vegetarian cook books that cater to a dieting lifestyle. Again, it's easy to cook up a healthy meal, it's just really really hard to make it look good and taste good. I like restaurants and the feeling that I'm having something really special, exotic and exciting for supper. As a vegetarian living in Montreal I am limited to only a handful of restaurants to choose from. Most vegetarian restaurants are Asian. Then there are Italian restaurants that have a few items on the menu that don't have meat. But there isn't a single restaurant that serves up international vegetarian food fresh. Commensal is the closest, but it's a buffet. Which means that the food isn't cooked up fresh, nor is it usually hot. Also, the price is based on how much your plate weighs so you always feel paranoid to fill up your plate as you could end up paying $40 if you aren't careful. $40 bucks for food that isn't fresh or hot is a bit of a rip off. Also their desserts are often dry and stale.

It would be nice if their was a place that had nice decor, affordable food, good house wine, and a wide variety of items on the menu from all over the world. Like if was in sections...African, North American, Indian, Middle Eastern, Italian, Greek, Spanish. As well as misc. vegan and or raw options. That would be cool.

So because I can't go out for a gourmet meal that doesn't involve curry or pasta that's hot and fresh, I have to create the gourmet meal here at home. Sadly, I haven't found a raw cook book yet that has amazing gourmet recipes.

I suppose I will have to keep looking. I will also have to get a juicer, just so I can at least be healthier and manage the weight a bit better. I'm sure it won't taste great, but I guess you can't indulge in culinary greatness every minute of the day. That would be too close to what paradise would be like that!