Raw Vegan Diet - What's in my pantry?

Yesterday I bought for the first time Raw Vegan wraps, I checked online where to find them and I found out that my local health store had them so I went there and I bought 3 different types: one dry Raw Vegan wraps made with Spirulina and vegetables, two different types from the live organic brand – a new healthy restaurant that sells also products in various stores in the city – the wraps are one type with spinach and other ingredients and the second one with sundried tomatoes, contrary to the Spirulina ones, these wraps need to be stored in the fridge. I think they are handy to prepare a good snack to bring with me; I can use it with some dressing sauce like guacamole or tahini and mixed vegetables. I noticed that there was also one with coconut, maybe I could do a sort of crepes with that – but I didn't buy it yet, just wondering how they taste first and if I really like it then I'll experiment new flavours.

Before starting my Water Fast I frozen a lot of food, even sliced lemons, so I would not waste anything – well apart of half cucumber that I really could not save. I have already planned a defrosting time for all this food I frozen, well not for all really, I might need to go slowly in the process and maybe use some of the stuff for smoothies; in the past weeks I never prepared smoothies, not that I don't like them – quite the contrary – it's just my crazy idea that I feel I eat more food if drinking and not chewing. I also saw a YouTube video that was negatively commenting on drinking rather than chewing food, since the digestion can start in the mouth when we chew food, if we drink this doesn't really happen so we lose this important step for our digestive system, giving it extra work basically. Not sure if this theory is really true but somehow makes sense, maybe I could start with eating a small amount of solid food and then proceed with the smoothie. Too complicated though…

I'm thinking on buying a food processor, to make those dates dough that I've seen in many recipes, still dreaming about food and desserts! This coming Friday is Black Friday so I'm hoping to find good deals and buy a new food processor with a good price. I don't want to spend too much money but also I don't want to buy anything that will result on being useless. Talking about kitchen accessories I'm also thinking on buying a smaller wet container for my Vitamix, either the 32 or 48 ounces, not sure yet. Actually I've seen it the Vitamix Dry Container as well, but if I buy the food processor I think it will suffice for whatever dry food I need to process. The smaller Vitamix could be useful, I usually do small batches of food, since I'm cooking just for myself. Sometime I do bigger portions but for ice cream for instance, I really don't need any extra amount. At the moment I'll hold on all these purchases though, I'm spending too much money in food!

I'm also fully stocked on dry food; every time I see those Organic Pitted Dates at Winners I buy a little bag. I also have dry organic figs, organic raw almonds, organic raw cashews, organic cacao powder, shredded coconut, organic sundried tomatoes, and I even found the organic dry mulberries – I bought two bags since I don't find them often. I bought few days ago in Chinatown a couple of little bags of goji berries to mix in my salads or in any smoothies, I thought they will be with a lower fat content than any nut I can buy or eat and they're sweet. Yesterday I bought a bag of Raw Organic Kale green chips, made with kale and a mix of vegetables and spices; they're very low in calories and great for a quick snack. I got tempted and bought a bag of my favourite Raw Organic Chocolate macaroons, made with all Organic ingredients and coconut, the only thing I don't like tis the agave in it, but if I'm disciplined once in a while is not a big deal. I still have some white sesame seeds that I can use to make tahini, but I also want to buy just a small quantity of black sesame seeds, to use on top of my dishes, or to make black tahini who knows. Other seeds that I'm storing in the fridge are: chia seeds, hemp seeds, grounded chia seeds and Organic Flax seeds; I also have Raw Organic Almond flour, Coconut flour, Vegan Chocolate Protein powder and Spirulina powder. You would think that I should not shop for weeks now, but I'm always looking around and thinking of something that I miss and I need to buy it!

7-Day Water Fast - My updates on Day #4

Today is Day #4 of my 7-Day Water Fast and I'm happy to report that I've been in Ketosis since yesterday with large and moderate traces, good to know that I'm already burning fat and not muscle.

So far I'm doing ok, my weight this morning was 55.7Kg so it's going down with a good pace, but I would also say that the first few days are always good in terms of losses. Let's see by mid-week since I don't have too much to lose in my opinion, I'm hoping to reach the 53Kg by the end of the fast.

Sometimes I look my body in the mirror and I can see that I'm really out of shape, when I was running or going to the gym I had a completely different figure, it really hurts and I'm always thinking that I should go back to my gym routine once my fast is done. I have in my mind good intentions but I never feel the strengths to do it, I'm wondering if I'm exhausting my adrenals and feeling often tired and demotivated. I'm planning on taking some supplements for the adreno-fatigue once completed the Water Fast and refeeding process – maybe it will help.

Saturday I spent all day mostly in bed, except for a movie date that I had in the afternoon, so I did at least 1 hour walking that day. I really felt tired of doing anything, I didn't even want to go to the cinema, hoping my date will cancel for unforeseen reasons….but he didn't so I went. Before going though I decided to do an injection of Vitamin B12, since the Raw Vegan Diet is usually low in B12 and it could help in giving me energy. The injection itself was not pleasant, I had for the first time lots of blood coming out from the injection site, the needle was very small though, not sure what happened really, not a big issue anyway, it stopped in few seconds after that.

This time around I don't want to drink hot water, I'm satisfied with regular room temperature water, I do feel I'm not drinking enough though, I try on sipping here and there but at the end of the day it never gets up to 2.5L, I just can't make it!

Another thing I noticed that is different for this second Water Fast is my desire of eating; I'm looking to so many new Raw Vegan recipes on Pinterest and buying new Raw Vegan food. During my first 24-Day Water Fast I wasn't thinking much about food, at least not like this. Does concern me a bit really since I don't want to be addicted on food or gourmet recipes, I just want to live an healthy life with a good relationship with food, without being obsessed about eating or losing weight. I really hope I can achieve this goal once forever!

In my first day of 7-Day Water Fast - How am I?

My first Water Fast day is going well so far, right now I feel less hungry than before, I noticed that if I drink water I have the emptiness feeling that we always use to associate to the hunger – which is not, it's just the water rolling into my digestive system and finding its way down.

I went downstairs to buy a couple of bottle of vapour distilled water, it's not exactly pure distilled water but I think it's a good compromise while fasting, it also tastes really good.  One of the key component on being diligent during my Water Fast is finding some time to do things instead of having a meal, I have to say that I can always find something to buy instead of eating - but my 23 days Water Fast done in October really made me spent so much money that now I have to be more conscious on what I really need to buy!

The first 2/3 days of a Water Fast are never fun, especially knowing that I'm losing muscle – since I'm not into Ketosis yet. I should have switched to a low carb – low sugar regiment before starting the fast, but who does it? Yesterday I ate whatever I wanted, I didn't feel great with my stomach and my heart palpitations were raised almost the whole day, I have better willpower when avoiding food altogether than sticking with a specific meal plan. I wasn't always so bad, the large amount of Diets made me like this really.

I'm still the idea of doing my planned 10-Day Water Fast on December the 5^th, I like Water Fasting, I don't mind it – it really gives me a break from my obsessions, my fat, my cravings, my mind works better, I have more mental clarity, I feel confident I can manage my weight, I like the idea that my body is healing itself and I'm cleansing it. The reason why I want to do another Water Fast in 2/3 weeks from now is because I believe my body still needs to detox, to heal and I did not complete this process, it will require some time; I cannot achieve this goal without multiple extended Water Fasts. I'll be fasting often in the coming months, not sure yet the length of each fast, most likely a long one like my first, I would do only a couple of times in a year, spaced out with shorter Water Fast like 7/10 – Days total – less than that there's no point on doing it, my body gets into ketosis around 3/4 days into the fast so I need to burn fat or the Water Fast will just make me lose muscles and it's definitely not what I'm looking forward to.

I started my 7-Day Water Fast today

I started today my short 7-Day Water Fast; it's the second one that I'm doing so far. Since it's just the first day, actually first hours – I'm feeling hungry a bit at the moment – nothing crazy though.

I've not been feeling good in the past few days, not sure if was for the probiotic that I took or the ones I used to prepare my vegan-cheese, in any case my stomach really bothered me lately – I've been also eating a lot, so it might be just overwhelmed for all the food that I stuffed myself with, especially the peanut butter and cacao powder used with my fruits, not to mention the tons of dates I had with them. I really needed this Water Fast, to let my body heal and my digestive system to take a break.

My weight this morning was 58.5Kg, so basically I gained like 5lb in 4/5 days because of my cravings, I was doing so well and suddenly I got crazy dreaming about nuts and peanut butter and bananas, it takes so little to be off the wagon really, so I better be under Water Fast control until I'm back on track.

Today's Friday and I'm back in the office, I took care of most of my food – my fridge is empty now, I have left only a couple of apples and pears, and 4 big mangoes. They are not ripe yet, once I can see that they're good I'll chop everything and dispose in the freezer with the rest of the stuff. The other day I prepared an amazing marinara sauce with my tomatoes, it came out in two jars and I froze them directly. My freezer is full now, I guess the only thing I won't be able to freeze are some cucumber slides left in the fridge, oh well I will throw them out today, I don't like frozen cucumber, even in the smoothies it tastes awful anyway.

One thing I have done with the huge amount of carrots that I have is shredding them all, I washed and peeled the whole bad and I shredded with a cheese grater that I have, I want to use them for a carrots cake, once I'm done with this water fast. But I promised myself I should be good on doing too many gourmet recipes and stick with max once a week, otherwise it's easy for me to get caught in this vicious circle of cooking and eating. I should eat more mono-ingredient meals, more watery food as well as good smoothies; for some reasons I believe I would eat more drinking but I have to give it a try and start to learn on understanding my body on when I'm really hungry without eating on a schedule. It will help for sure to keep my weight under control.

Taking care of my Fruits & Vegetables - Getting ready for my 7-Day Water Fast

Today I just want to give few updates on how I am doing with my Raw Vegan Diet and my cravings. I'm working from home today so it is generally bad when I do it, because it's just me and my kitchen temptations. I love cooking and I always look forward to find a new gourmet recipe that I want to try, new flavours to taste and so on. So in short I ate like a pig all day basically.

Since I planned to start a 7-day Water Fast very soon, I wanted to be sure I will not waste any of the food that I bought in the past few days, so I started to organize all my fruits and vegetables. Let's face it fruits are very easy to freeze comparable vegetables. So I cut all the ripe fruits and stored in the freezer, so they can be ready to thaw or to use in any smoothie, at the end anything that is frozen does not expire and can be used any time in the future – I'm sure I will have plenty of opportunities, so I'm not worried when I can freeze produce. For the vegetables it's a little be tricky, I had to do a sort of preparation, especially for the tomatoes that I really don't feel confident on just freeze them like a do with the blueberries. To avoid wasting my Roma tomatoes I prepared my first delicious Marinara sauce; I found an easy recipe on Pinterest and turned out very tasty. I used the Roma tomatoes, some extra sweet cherry tomatoes and my organic sundried tomatoes (with no oil). At the end I filled 2 containers that could be used for my zucchini noodles in the future, plus is a very low fat sauce and I like low fat so far.

For the huge amount of carrots that I have a had a different solutions, I saw a recipe of a Raw Vegan carrots cake that I would like to try so I shredded all my carrots and stored in plastic bags in the freezer, so they're ready for the recipe once I'm good on doing it, the only thing I regret of not doing is taking note on how much carrots I had in each bag, I should have weighted and labelled each of them so I had an easier way using it during the recipe execution, oh well I guess I will figured out once I'm doing it the cake.

The 2 odd zucchini that I bought at China Town the other day I just washed and put them in a bag, I didn't want to do noodles really, I might just use them for sauces or something like that, to make the sauce creamer as I do with regular zucchini sometimes. I do have also some chopped carrots and zucchini in the freezer as well, I can always use for smoothies or other blended recipes done with the Vitamix, if I thaw them in the fridge for a couple of days I'm sure they'll be ok….hopefully.

Today I prepared for the first time the vegetable wraps that I always see on those Raw Vegan recipes, I had a bunch of organic red Swiss Chard and I used my veggie-cheese with some carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini noodles, it was delicious! It is really not easy to eat them since they were falling apart but overall the taste was great, I might not do often though, not because they're complicated to do it but just for the general mess while eating, well unless I improve my skills as wraps-eater.

I still need to take care of some of the fruits left behind; I have mangoes, apples, pears, bananas and three persimmons. Once they're ripe enough I'll chop everything and freeze, ok maybe I'll eat a couple of apples or bananas before then. The persimmons are in season right now and although I always hated this fruit growing up, I wanted to give them a second chance this time and use it for my pumpkin pie recipe. I might cut them and freeze for now though since I'm not planning to do any pie before I complete my 7-Day Water Fast; maybe I'll prepare a good pie to bring for my Christmas dinner invitations, let's see – this year will be a challenge eating Raw Vegan in an Italian dinner family setup!

Raw Vegan Diet - Fats make you fat!

My experience so far, with my Raw Vegan Diet has been good; the only thing I complain to myself is the introduction of nuts and seeds in my everyday food. Nuts especially have a high fat content, and I noticed that as soon as I started to eat them, my weight went up immediately, not to mention the cravings that I started to have, dreaming about my banana ice-cream with insane amount of peanut butter powder! I guess I underestimate myself thinking I could resist to the temptations. I did partially to be fair, but not last night. I believe I ate 20 dates with almond milk, 10 dried figs and 2 chia seeds pudding in cacao powder, not to mention my huge salad with tahini and guacamole dressing! All the food I had caused me a sharp pain on the left side of my abdomen and huge belly that I still have. The Binge Eater that is in me is back in "shape", somebody please save me from the dark side of my inner self!

I felt very depressed after and I went to bed, I was having purging thoughts, thinking to go to the gym at 5:00 AM and then again this afternoon to the Body Attack class, also having second thoughts on when to start my next Water Fast. So I started to put some of my food in the freezer, so I can start my Water Fast sooner and I don't have to throw away anything. This afternoon I planned to chop some vegetables and freeze them too, as well of some of the fruit that is already ripe.

My plan originally was to start my second Fast on December 5^th, but I want to get rid of these cravings as soon as possible, so I might start sooner. I feel sick today, I had way too much food; my body doesn't like it at all. I just had my breakfast, and although I split in two parts the amount of fruits that I was supposed to eat this morning, I also had the last chia seeds pudding that was in the fridge and I brought with me the little macaroons with pecans and dates that I bought yesterday at the supermarket, just so I can share with people here and I won't eat them all without shame.

It's been a couple of days that my bowel movements are not anymore the same as before, I think is because of the fat content that I'm eating, it's true that doesn’t help digestion and makes feel you like crap, I have the proofs really.

If you are looking for a Raw Vegan Diet that will help you maintaining weight and makes you feel good: avoid as hell FATS!! Fats are not your friends in a Raw Vegan Diet – unless you are trying to gain weight. That's why is called: HCLF Diet, High Carbs Low Fat Diet. I cannot believe what a big difference I personally experienced introducing fats, especially nuts really. For things like seeds or avocados, I didn't have much problems, neither cravings really – but nuts became a nightmare. Every time I was going to a store I was repeating to myself not to buy any type of nuts whatsoever, but for some reasons I was leaving the store full of almonds, walnuts and cashews, unbelievable the Binge Eater that plans the binges again, I hate myself sometimes.

Why Raw Vegan?

I want to give a brief explanation on why I decided to choose a Raw Vegan Diet rather than Vegetarian or Vegan. Since I was around 20 years old I started to be vegetarian, growing up in Italy is really hard avoiding cheese and mozzarella products, which I absolutely adore by the way. I lasted something like 15 years or so, with some exceptions here and there along the way. Since I moved to Canada I started having issues with my weight and my health in general – tell me about the North America food please!

My diet changed so I started to eat most of the chicken meats and any type of sea food, with exceptions more often than generic episodes. But my weight problems increased drastically, not only I wasn't able to manage my weight anymore, I had an eating disorder, I was taking tons of supplements, injections, anything that could help me heal from my insane food obsession. I was taking drugs thinking that could help me with my addiction but maybe it was the opposite results.

So I thought many times to go back on my vegetarian lifestyle, mostly because I love animals and I never felt "right" on eating them, but again being vegetarian I thought doesn't make any sense. I would still eat animal derived products, so still helping this cruel market doing whatever is doing and eating products that in any case will enable killing animals. Not to mention all the hormones given to animals and their food that I would be exposed to. So I thought ok maybe I could be vegan, but this option sounded non-sense to me as well. Maybe there are some extents on being Vegan that are ok, but where do you draw the line? I mean an Oreo cookie is Vegan, should I be ok with that? No, this was not what I was looking for; I wanted to start a diet that I could enjoy what Mother Nature gives us, just like it is; no processed food in any form.

The answer for me was only one: Raw Vegan Diet, nothing that comes from a box, no oil, no salt, no caffeine, no pops, nothing coming from animals or fish, no supplements, no sugar, no artificial sweetener, no grains, no Stevia, no starch, very small amount of fat, nothing that's been fried, boiled, baked or processed in anyway at high temperatures – that could potentially destroy what are the natural benefits of the food itself. This Diet so far is keeping under control my cravings, this alone is the best benefit I could ever ask to a diet, and I know I often overeat but I don't feel miserable, my weight is doing fine so far, I have 2/3 bowel movements a day, I feel happy eating what I eat, I love the food, I don't feel on diet for the first time since I don't know how long. Do I miss anything? Probably I miss a warm pizza sometimes, a warm soup; I will miss my grandma pasta recipe but nothing that will ever make me regret what I'm doing for my health.