Raw Week: Day 1
/
Day 1 of RAWWWWWWWWW! Heh. :)
This is what my food diary for the day looked like:
7.30am: Hot Water + juice from 1/2 Lemon
9.30am: Breakfast = Raw Chia-Oat Porridge. (I usually eat breakfast shortly after the hot water and lemon, but had an early meeting at work today, so I brought my breakfast to work)
- 1tbsp Chia + 1/3 cup Oats soaked overnight in coconut milk*
- Add hemp seeds and sprinkle of raw granola on top before eating.
*The coconut milk I used for soaking was one specifically for drinking. It's not the same as the creamy kind you use in cooking. I found this at Planet Organic in London, but guess what? I put in a request with Vegabond Deli, and the store owner is excited to bring these into Amsterdam. Thanks, Babet. You rock!
12pm = Green smoothie.
- Spinach, celery, 1/2 avocado, basil, ginger, 1/2 lemon juice, milled flax seeds*, hemp protein powder, acai powder, maca powder.
* With flax seeds, you'll get the omega-3 benefits only when it's been milled (ground into a meal), not when it's left whole. Best is if you grind them fresh, but if you're buying pre-milled flax, do NOT buy them if they're in a see-through package. Grinding seeds and nuts causes them to release their oils which are unstable - they react quickly with heat, light and oxygen and basically become oxidised free radicals, destroying any good in them. If you need the convenience of pre-milled flax, only buy from a reputable company like Linwoods - their flax is cold-milled and packaged in opaque bags, reducing the oxidative damage to it (but who knows if the transporters have left the cartons of milled flax out in the hot carpark. Haha.) And store it in the fridge after opening!
- Supplements:
Tomorrow I'll explain a little bit more about the supplements I'm taking and why. These don't necessarily relate to this cleanse I'm doing, as they're supplements I'd take anyway even if I wasn't doing this raw week. Basically - they're tailored to my individual need.
2pm: Lunch. Thai-style raw kelp noodles (made the night before and brought to work).
- Spiralized zucchini, carrots, red peppers, spinach, tossed in a sauce made of tahini and red curry paste (original recipe called for almond butter instead of tahini - but I feel the sesame in tahini is more "Asian").
Recipe from Judita Wignall's "Raw & Simple" cookbook (highly recommended purchase!) Basically tastes kinda sorta like Pad Thai, but the raw version. :)
4pm: Snack. Home-made almond brittle.
- Sprouted/ soaked almonds chopped and blended with maple syrup and fennel seed, and dehydrated to a brittle.
Recipe from Amy Levin of Ooosha's ebook, "Raw Fermentation". (made this last week).
I need treats during the day, and conscious of keeping to low-GL + high protein treats to maintain blood-sugar levels. However, I figured a little sugar-hit of almond brittle as a reward every now and again is JUST FINE. ;)
7.25pm: Snack. Handful of black grapes.
Left the office late at 8.30pm, and should usually be having dinner by this time.
9.35pm: Dinner. Chipotle-sunflower seed wraps. Original recipe from Judita Wignall's "Raw & Simple" cookbook, titled "Chipotle Not Chicken Salad Wraps". With a side of kimchi I fermented from last week.
- Soaked sunflower seeds (started soaking this morning, before leaving for work) blended to a pate, then mixed with chipotle smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, apple cider vinegar, red onions, cherry tomatoes, chopped celery and avocado.
The original recipe called for wrapping this up in a giant collard leaf but since I couldn't find that, I figured rice paper wraps would work just fine too. Now I realize that while rice paper wraps are used in lots of raw recipes, it isn't technically 100% raw. WHAAAAAAAT. KWA KWA KWA.
Haha. In order to dry it, they steam it. Since it's only steamed for 30sec, fine, screw it I'll go with that. The wraps made up like 5% of my meal tonight anyway. ;p
Eating at this time is waaaaay too late for dinner, and I should have made a short and simple salad, but I wanted to get ahead of my day tomorrow by prepping tomorrow's lunch, tonight. So I figured leftovers from tonight's dinner can be tomorrow's lunch. Boom. Now I've got all these not totally 100% raw rice paper rolls wrapped and prepped for lunch. Awesome. By the way, these look terrible as I'm crap at wrapping rice paper rolls. They taste better than they look!
-----
THOUGHTS ON DAY 1:
So far so good. I haven't had coffee in 2 days and haven't got the requisite caffeine detox headache I usually get whenever I've gone on a coffee detox. I find that I'm lingering around people drinking coffee coz I'm just sniffing up the smell of coffee goodness. HOW SAD? :)
The times I've been having meals at aren't my usual mealtimes. I just got stuck in meeting after meeting, which pretty much messed with when I'd have my next meal. And ending work late today meant having a super late dinner. Later than ideal, really. But you do what you can.
A good friend of mine (read: a total meathead meat-lover) is also doing a diet change-up at the same time I'm going raw, "just coz". And she's going vegan for a week. WELL DONE, INKY SON! :) I think her effort is super admirable since she's got no other reason for doing it other than just coz she wanted to. We went health food shopping at the Vegabond Deli today, and it was really funny how she was like "OK. Tell me what to buy and I'll buy it." Very cute! (especially if you know her, and what a meat-lover she is) :)
Where am I going with this? I guess it all starts with the intention. If you're really curious about something, or want to go on a bit of a health kick, or try a brand new way of cooking/ making food, just to mix things up a little, it's possible. It may be a freaking pain-in-the-butt mission to do it, but all it takes is a bit more planning. I haven't got my meal-planning down at all, and that's something I'd like to get better at. (eg. My friend Inky has pretty much planned out her entire vegan week of meals already. Wah.)
I just got good at day 1, and now starting to freak out about the rest of my week coz it's a blank in the menu planning department. Especially since it's a particularly busy period at work for me. So this is gonna be interesting... It's basically planning, planning, planning.
I'm spent. Catch you tomorrow for Day 2's update. :)
