Just got back from Easter dinner with the family here, and it was nearly entirely a cooked meal. Tomorrow, when I wake up, I will have a raw green smoothie and continue to eat raw for… who knows how long?

If you read about the raw food movement, it is hard not to find it attractive. These are people who claim to have boundless energy, youthful glows, blissful sleep, satiety, weight loss, you name it. A lot of people hit the immediate hurdle of “no cooked food,” and stop right there. Well, that’s not true, most people actually have something to say against it.

Like being vegan, being raw isn’t benign, because you are challenging the food choices of everyone you talk to when you mention it. This isn’t true, of course, as I really don’t care what other people do. I will only try this for me, write about it here, share the good and bad (expect caffeine headaches early this week), and then live with this information however it suits me.

The family reaction has largely been opposed to it, mainly turning it into what food they’ll have to make for me now, etc., although I live alone nowhere near most of them. So, it is completely silly to worry about such a thing. If I’m still raw when that becomes an issue, then I will be so into raw food by then, I’ll be the one preparing meals for everybody.

I am willing to take diet advice from anyone not taking any diet-related medications… Anyone? Hello? Jeez, talk about clearing a room…

Anyway… Will I be 100 percent raw starting tomorrow? Well, yes, but for how long… who knows? Did I just eat my last cooked meal? That seems unlikely, but I’m in no position to say.

I do know that my diet is way too acidic, and that I wanted to focus on my alkalinity more. (I am conscious that most people don’t ponder their alkalinity, btw). The more I read about alkalinity, the more I noticed there was a lot of raw references, that merely eating raw sort of took the guesswork out of alkalinity.

And I’ve always been interested in raw cooking… and by raw cooking, I do not mean raw restaurant food. I don’t want oily, fatty, rich dishes, which often seemed to be the case when I tried eating out raw (which only sounds like a porn title). I have a lot of nuts here, but I anticipate them playing a sidekick role at best.

I think the biggest hurdle to eating raw is being associated with the raw food movement. The more you read, the more the raw diet cures HIV, cancer, bad skin, and every known ailment. Having read these books, I do have to caution myself not to expect my left elbow, which I broke in the 6th grade, to finally heal properly now that I’m about to eat raw. So, the bar is set so high as to the power of the diet, it does make you question whether the boundless energy, and everything else is true.

The good part is… it is going to be a healthy diet. I will be eating more greens and fresh produce than I have been. And I’m not committed to it. If I’m not liking it, and not feeling any of the upside, then I’ll take whatever recipes I scored in the process, and go back to tweaking my vegan diet more. Not on Wednesday, but you know, at some point, I can make that call…

The raw food stuff also requires discipline, structure, and scheduling, so it is also dovetailing with me finally getting back to my writing, which needs all of the same things, as well. So, raw flax seed crackers that take 12 hours to dehydrate will just be an easy thing to build into my schedule.

And, if I’m potentially moving back east this year, the writing and diet need to get into high gear before New York anyway.

So, I will be writing things here pretty often, probably more in the beginning, and just sharing what I’m learning, feeling, thinking and doing. Unlike the recent detox diet of a year ago or somesuch, which was the same boring thing over and over, and didn’t lend itself to regular updates, the raw food thing should be different, as it is a new adventure.

The last time I was going raw, it was junk food raw at best. I remember getting a lot of raw “products” and truffle oil(?) and stuff that has no connection to my view of raw food this time around.

And, the upside is… if I stick with the raw thing, moving is even easier, since I can sell all my pots and pans.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 9:18 pm and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.