Day 6 - Pre-Christmas Challenge

I'm still meeting my basic goals and did eat salad--twice--yesterday to meet yesterday's specific goal. If you haven't tried Mimi Kirk's raw caesar salad, I highly recommend it!!! Did end up drinking some pop while we were out. Ah well.

We are now at

I think I could use an espresso today. ;) I had a rough sleep. I'm trying to think of a challenge for the day and honestly, just making it through this day and making sure I eat raw this morning, do my exercises and yoga in the evening could be challenging enough. I am literally sitting here with a completely blank mind when I try to think of something extra to with which to challenge myself.

Actually, something's just come to mind: Don't give into temptations! When I'm tired like this, I'm most prone to turning to the chocolate chips or making other junk comfort foods. Oh, and white bread. While I've already had a no junk challenge day this week, I think today has to be another one for me. I can turn to green tea to wake me up a bit! But I am tired, so I need to try to plan ahead what I will eat or what we have in the house that I can eat for snack items: green smoothie, bananas, raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, grapes, frozen blueberries (mmm, you just let them melt a little bit and eat them still somewhat frozen), salad, carrots, broccoli (my tired self goes, "Ugh, it's not washed and cut, too much work")... A lot of foods I can choose! Whether I remember this later on or not is another matter. Water. Water's another important one--it's easy to forget to drink enough when you're tired and getting enough water can even wake you up a bit. All right, hopefully I've pre-thought enough to avoid giving into temptations.

Do you turn to foods you shouldn't when you're tired? What do you do when getting more sleep just isn't an option?

Mish Mash

It's been an interesting couple of days. I've had a few blog post ideas run through my head, but not the time or thought when I had the time to sit down and do them. I apologize in advance for the mix that will make up this post!


***

One thought I started having yesterday was about how, really, I've made so much progress with my family and their food consumption. Is it the perfection/ideal I would like it to be? Not even close. But I have realized that I've still nonetheless made progress with them. Some things I can think of:

• My husband used to take to work each day a Gatorade-sized bottle of those awful drink crystal beverages. I don't remember how it was done, but he now brings real juice (just juices, no added sugar or anything) with him.
• A year and a half ago, I had set the intention to have all processed foods out of the food I made my family--within 6 months. Um... that didn't happen. But it hit me just how far we have come. It used to be that most of our meals weren't really "homemade"--unless you call using a taco kit or Hamburger Helper truly homemade. We used to eat those Uncle Ben's and Lipton rice packets all the time (the ones with all kinds of stuff added into them) and more. Those kinds of things are barely eaten around here now. And I have some rice packets that have been sitting in the cupboard for many, many months. Nobody seems to want them.
• There are so many more fruits and vegetables in our fridge now. I don't know what our fridge used to be filled with, but it wasn't stuffed with fruits and vegetables!

There were some other things I was appreciating on Thursday, but they've escaped me at the moment. All to say that sometimes progress is slow, but it's okay: you still eventually get to where you want to be.

***

I had a serious sugar craving today. But not white sugar: fruit. It started yesterday. I didn't have what I needed to make green smoothies I like, so I didn't have a green smoothie. I can't really remember all that I ate yesterday, but I know I did not get as many raw fruits and vegetables as the rest of the week. I even ended up eating a thick pita as a snack last night. The result? I woke up feeling puffy, swollen. I don't like it. Especially since I could tell the chronic puffiness had finally been easing up with my increased intake of raw foods. This morning, I was craving fruit so badly, I pulled out what I found in the fridge: cherries, apples, pears, a peach and grapes. Although I did manage to eat a peach the other day without any reaction (I don't think I posted about that--it was the first peach I've eaten in years that I didn't react to), I wasn't able to eat an apple today without my tongue starting to itch badly. I only succeeded in eating a quarter of it. It didn't surprise me much given I felt puffy and was sneezing like crazy. My body was already feeling "toxic" and would likely react.. But that meant I shouldn't try to eat the peach nor the pears and I don't like cherries. So, grapes it was even though there weren't many. They satisfied me a bit, but not like my green smoothie. Or even just a banana. I then resorted to having a small bowl of gluten-free granola with almond milk.

For lunch, instead of doing raw, I decided to have some steamed carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. It was kind of strange: I did not feel satisfied after eating the cooked veggies as I did from eating my mini veggie wraps the other day.

I physically feel blah. Two days of not eating with a focus of raw fruits and veggies and a slightly increased grain intake and I feel blech. I just want a green smoothie in the morning! Fortunately, I did stop at the grocery store this afternoon just to get some fruit I love: strawberries, bananas and a cantaloupe. Tomorrow, back to predominantly raw! At least with this, I know what I'm pretty much going to want on our camping trip this summer: lots and lots of fruit and veggies. :D

This has really had me realize how quickly my body is adapting to an enjoying the raw fruits and veggies I've been eating. For probably over a week, my mornings and afternoons were probably about 75%-90% raw. Then the past two days, not even close. My body really does, like so many other people, better on raw. I didn't even have any meat during the day today nor at all yesterday nor the day before, but that change in raw food consumption... I'm feeling it. And the way I was craving fruits today, I started thinking that maybe the 80/10/10 might not be such a crazy idea for me after all. ;)