Rawchel

Okay, I admit it: I fell behind on my blog… already. As usual, my schedule has been crazy: I’m taking two summer school classes, I’m the Campus and Local News Editor for the Orlando Independent (an up-and-coming, student-run UCF newspaper), and I’m starting an internship with the Mike Smith for Congress campaign, not to mention hammering out the details for next semester and planning for the GRE/grad school applications. I think my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to planning my activities!

Despite the overscheduled craziness, I have not fallen too far off track in my new dietary endeavor. Last weekend I ate more cooked food than I would have liked (i.e., less than two out of every three meals was raw), but I didn’t beat myself up about it. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Besides, I learned a valuable lesson from it: too much cooked food makes me feel crappy. I get stomachaches, I feel bloated, I’m lethargic, and I keep eating even when I’m not hungry – it’s not pretty. When I eat raw food, I feel incredibly light and energized, digestion is easy, and I stop eating when I am satiated. Not only that, but I rarely have cravings, even for dessert! This revelation has inspired me to up the ante, so this week I am aiming for a max of 4 cooked meals. I am interested to see what kind of additional benefits it will bring! Overall, I would say that this experiment is going very well and I can now easily imagine this becoming a permanent lifestyle change.

I purchased a new uncookbook, RAWvolution by Matt Amsden. I have yet to make anything from it, although I have chosen several meals from it to make this week. If the pictures are any indication, though, the food should be beautiful and delicious! I have made more recipes from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. Verdict: ehhh… For more information, read my upcoming blog post/book review.

I have also discovered a wonderful service provided by the Orange County Library System: you can go to their website, search through the catalog, and request that books of your choice be delivered to your home. How much does such a convenient service cost, you ask? NOTHING. That’s right, it’s free. Now maybe I’m oblivious and all libraries offer such services, but I think this is amazing. This is such a time/energy/gas/money saver! So far I have checked out: Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko, The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose, and Raw by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein (plus a few yoga DVDs, of course!). I have also purchased The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe, which I am told is the Bible of raw foodism. I’m about halfway through The Raw Food Detox Diet, and I think it is a decent book for someone who comes from a SAD lifestyle. It is geared toward a mainstream audience (which I appreciate), but doesn’t provide much information for people who already eat a fairly healthy diet. I have learned a lot about food combining (which is complicated!), but she also gives a lot of advice without providing any explanation. I’m sure this was to shorten the book, but I prefer to know why I’m supposed to do something. I also found it odd that she recommends Splenda as a sugar substitute. It just doesn’t seem to jive with the rest of her philosophy. I recommend this book for people who need a diet overhaul and want a more moderate approach to raw foodism, but if you’re already pretty healthy, then it won’t give you much groundbreaking information. I’ve also flipped through Raw, which is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. This is to be expected, I suppose, coming from a top chef like Charlier Trotter. I am not even going to attempt any of the recipes – they are complicated and lengthy – but it would make a lovely book for the coffee table. If you want some of this five-star, gourmet raw food, check out Roxanne’s in California!

Speaking of raw restaurants, there is some exciting news for Central Florida: we are getting our own raw restaurant! Talk about good timing. Matthew Kenney, co-author of Raw Food Real World and one of the leading raw chefs in the country, is opening up Café 118 in Winter Park. (FYI: the “118″ means 118 degrees, which is commonly believed to be the highest temperature you can heat foot before the enzymes are killed.) It should be opening later this month; for more information, check out www.cafe118.com.

As a final note: you may have noticed the little box at the top right of the site. I have decided to track my weight, energy, focus, mood, strength, and exercise to get a better sense of how raw food affects me on a day-to-day basis. I am tracking weight just to see if there is a general upward or downward trend, or if my weight remains fairly stable (I know that weight is not the best indicator of “size,” but it’s the best I can do). Energy, focus, and strength will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being really poor and 10 being amazing. Prior to eating raw food, my energy and focus were usually pretty low and my strength varied daily. I hope to see some progress on all three fronts. Mood will sum up, in one word, how I felt that day. Of course, we go through many moods everyday so this will be hard to do, but it will help me track if I am generally happy or not. Exercise will help me keep track of my daily physical activity, which is directly connected to energy and strength. I will be able to produce monthly reports based on these status updates, which will allow me to see if raw food is helping me or not from a non-scientific statistical perspective. Feel free to check out the box to see how I am doing!

P.S. I would just like to give props to my fellow raw foodist, Chelsea Ritter-Soronen! She is out fighting the good fight with Greenpeace Czech Republic by tree-sitting in the newly-founded state of Peaceland. For more information, check out their site: http://www.peaceland.cz/.