I wanted to fast the whole month of January, but I ended up getting sick of not eating on the 28, and dug into the gorgeous pomello that was waiting in my fridge. It didn’t help that my roommate had broken his fast days earlier! Since then, overall, I’ve been doing really well, staying very organic, unprocessed, vegan, and although far from 100%, very fresh-foody indeed!

Two types of cooked food I have been enjoying without guilt are 1) my root veggie and bean/lentil stew, which, although indeed slightly difficult to digest, is very nourishing, and 2) Japanese style kimchi nabe, using all organic goodies which have been rather expensive, but well worth it. These two recipes been eaten every second day or so since I broke my fast. I am now back into the morning green smoothies, salads, and yes! Low and behold: a few dehydrator recipes: flax crackers and raw cookies! Yum! The down side is that all these nuts and seeds are indeed high in fat. MUST be careful. I am also into making raw chocolates, what with Valentine’s day coming and all. On the upside, I’ve been cycling every day, hoping to keep the calories at bay.

I think my calorie management efforts are working actually. I recently got a bit of software for my iphone called loseit, which I highly recommend. You input your food and exercise and it gives you a nutritional breakdown. It’s also easy to use!

My roommate escaped work at lunch and we headed down to the station to an upscale grocery store to stock up on fresh fruits and veggies. We broke our fast right there, with fresh watermelon and melon. Yum! I made some goodies later on, and did not intend to have any rich foods or salt, but ended up doing so in the end so as not to waste aging avocados and fresh (but salted) wakame, as well as some pickle-type things in the fridge. I’m afraid I was brought up with that “don’t you dare waste food” mentality, so I have a hard time throwing out stuff that I am better off not eating.

All the food was delicious, and my stomach and gut are doing just fine (although making lots of noises), but it’s a bit sad that you feel a bit down afterward; fasting puts you on a “higher vibration,” so whenever you eat again, no matter how healthy, you tend to feel low. The same sort of thing happens to me when I eat cooked foods now after maintaining a very raw diet for several days.

I still have an “Internal Cleansing Kit” from Blessed Herbs that I bought last year, but never started. I’ve been putting it off because it involves a lot of pills and potions that you take 4-5 times a day over the course of 3 weeks. I think now would be a good time to do this, after having finished with the colon cleanse and fast. You can eat on this cleanse, and I would assume a raw diet would make it even more effective.

I went to physio today for treatment for my shoulder injury, and also managed to see the doctor, as the clinic wasn’t busy. (I hardly waited - last time I wanted to see the doctor for a checkup there was a 2-hour wait, on a weekday. I don’t wait very well…) While I had him there I decided to ask him about my knee, which is still dodgy since I pulled and slightly tore my lateral meniscus while training for a marathon many, many moons ago (which I sadly never did accomplish - I pulled my knee less than 3 weeks before race day, on what would have been my longest time, at around the 30km mark. Amazing how things change - I don’t think I could run 2km now without collapsing!). The doctor said it would be a good idea to take an X-ray, and I acquiesced. Shock: I have osteoarthritis! Bone spurs have appeared on top of my right tibia bone, and the doctor figures my body probably generated them in order to protect my lateral meniscus. That sort of makes sense, as my pain as been of a very different nature in recent years. Pain? Yes, I guess I often am in pain, though dull. It’s funny how people can actually get used to and accept pain, to the point where they think it’s normal. The doctor recommends that I do physio, have hyaluronan injections (pricy) if it gets incredibly painful (probably not), and (sob sob) shed some weight. Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it! At least my shoulder seems to be getting better.

Today I had:

watermelon
melon
green tea
papaya
green salad with wakame, fresh hijiki (not the seaweed apparently)
cucumber with fresh tomato sauce (some salt in the oil-based dried tomatoes)
chocolate pudding with coconut (yes, this was over the top for break day!)