Going "fresh"

Recently I had the misfortune of being very ill for several days, after eating some icecream. I am not very tolerant of sugar, or dairy or wheat - so icecream is not a good choice for me... but when the rest of the family were hoeing into it... and it looked so yummy, it was hard to resist.

Well I ended up in bed for 4 days. I was completely miserable and I promised myself that when I got well, I would be more careful with my health and what I consume.

The crazy thing about my body is that sometimes I can eat contrabaned foods and be fine and then at other times I have an outrageous reaction, like the one mentioned above. Maybe it has to do with the moon, maybe it has to do with too many pollutants in the air on any given day, who knows?!!

What I have committed to however is that from now on I am going to be dairy free and almost sugar and wheat free. I am still allowing myself a plain biscuit in the evenings with a cup of tea - my final vice. Ive started feeling really good.

I have found that just by virtue of how much those products have permiated almost all precessed foods in our society, that my diet has been mostly restricted to fresh produce. So I decided to take the next step in the challenge . I have a couple of friends that have a complete raw diet, but this is far to extreme for me. So while I am still allowed to cook stuff, most of my diet is now fresh products.

It is amazing how easy the diet has been. I thought going sugar free would be difficult, but when most of my food is fresh, I find that I dont crave those other things. In fact I am eating a lot less, just because the variety is much smaller and so when I go to eat something out of habit I tend to look at the food and think "do I really want MORE of that?" I usually only say yes if Im actually hungry

One other thing that has been a surprise is that I am drinking more. Drinking smoothies, soy milk, juices and home made broths. And water, lots of water. When I go to the cupboard and feel like a little something and nothing takes my fancy, I grab a glass of water and that works a treat. Im realising that, in the past, I used to eat when I was actually just thirsty.

It is exciting to be in this place. When I looked at a raw food diet several months ago I thought "I could never do that" ... I didnt realise that I could take up an adapted option that would work so well for me. Yippeee.

But it is early days. So we will just have to see how things go.