Day 20 - Nathan

Noteworthy beverages:

This morning, I threw an orange, a banana, and a glacier-load of ice into the Vita-Mix, and ended up with a slushi. How can it be so right, when it feels so wrong?



There is absolutely no way my German heritage will allow my defiant body to cut off its supplyline of good beer. I'm not throwing it down every day by the gallon load, but I'm having it here and there. As a compromise, I've been experimenting with organic beers, and this one stands out as a good, hoppy brew:



Radish Sprouts:

Today, I harvested our jar full of radish sprouts, and I plan on throwing them into some sushi this afternoon. Kelly's grandma is a radish enthusiast, so I'm hoping she's impressed. They taste identical to full-blown radishes.

Here's what they looked like in the jar:



After pulling them out, I went through the process of de-hulling them, getting rid of the brown outer coats that have fallen away. A good instructional is available here.



This is the final product:



The final sushi product. Spicy!:

Please tell your children to leave the blog now:

At the risk of being a weightloss exhibitionist, I want to archive the fact that I've lost some weight since my diet change. The pictures below were taken on the cruise we took about a week before starting the raw diet. The last photo was taken today.

Bulbous Common North American Sea Monster:

A shot of Cozumellian tequila getting in my belly:

15 pounds lighter. I apologize that what has been seen cannot be unseen:

-Nathan

Day 16 - Nathan, halfway there

The first week or so of this transition was rough. Even though I admittedly haven't been 100% raw, I've been very close. During that first week, I had headaches, I couldn't focus, and I was crabby all the time. I was convinced that my body probably just wasn't made for this diet. I have a rabbit metabolism, and I was 6'3", 215 pounds-ish a little over two weeks ago.

We went to the gym yesterday and I weighed myself for the first time since changing my diet. A neighbor had mentioned that I looked thinner and younger, and I was starting to buy the narcissistic hype, but I figured I'd look down and see that I'd lost a few pounds. I was wrong. I weigh 199.5 pounds now. That's something close to FIFTEEN pounds lost in the last few weeks.


Keep in mind, I haven't been going to the gym regularly because I've worried my energy level would be down, but I did my normal routine and I hadn't lost any of my strength. I felt great on the way home. It's odd, because Kelly and I aren't sure where I lost all the weight from. Maybe from my fat head, but more likely from my stomach. My stomach was out of control, sort of starting to hang sideways when I reclined in bed. It doesn't appear to be acting as a fleshy pendulum anymore.

I've been a little paranoid that I'd shrink and not look like a moderately big, strong guy anymore. I'm sure this fear traces back to my "chicken legs" high school experience, pre-hormone-shift and pre-firefighting. I don't want to become that tall, thin guy, crammed into a tight sweater, passively reading play manuscripts at a coffee house. But I seem to be the same guy still, just trimmed of some body fat.

I suppose I can probably jump higher now. Maybe I can jump TOO high. Maybe it's not even safe to jump anymore. What an interesting problem to hypothetically have.

Alright, I'm in the zone, and I'm super pumped that Kelly got me to do this diet. I feel like that kid who's convinced he can run faster on the day that he first puts on his new tennis shoes.

Recent food: Today, I'm eating this eggless egg salad on some bread we made in the dehydrator last night. We'll post the recipe when we determine whether it's something we want to recommend. After the gym last night, I whipped together some of that raw sushi, and it was fantastic. I'm going to start prepping the almond pate so I can just bring the ingredients to work and make them there.

-Nathan

Day 10: Necessity is the Mother of Starvation

It's true: necessity is the mother of starvation. The more you NEED, the less you HAVE, and if you don't have enough, you'll starve. That's iron-clad logic right there.

That seemed to be my early experience here, but I'm no longer starving, I'm settled into a diet that's keeping me generally content, and I think I'll survive this thirty days.

Basically, I'm starting each morning with a smoothie, snacking on something early (carrots and raw hummus today), having a veggie burger or something substantial for lunch, and randomly making something for dinner, depending on how I feel.

A few days ago, when I nearly had a raw food psychiatric meltdown, I ranted to Kelly at 1:00 a.m about how absurdly extreme this diet is. I was getting flashbacks of my time in seminary, back when I used to be abnormally gung-ho about moral superiority, straining to high-five the stratospheric hand of God. I get that feeling whenever I'm being obsessive about something, and it creeps me out. It gives me the willies, as Joseph Heller would say.

Also, this supposedly natural, breath-of-fresh-air diet was causing me to do a lot of weird things: consider the fact that I now harness the power of two galloping horses in my blender, and I've got a plastic box that dehydrates food at low temperatures, allowing me to make fake hamburgers.

Alright, these ranty feelings passed after my morning smoothie the next day, and I realized I'm pretty happy with the bad weight I'm dropping, and I feel pretty good now. I don't know that the lightning gods are coursing through my unprocessed veins or anything, but I'm eating less crap than I used to and I'm settling into a routine that's not killing me.

In the future, I'll continue to post new food experiments. For now, thank you for allowing me to recline on this leather e-couch. Our hour is up. I'll pay your secretary.

-Nathan