Day 5: I went to the doctor today. It’s official. I’ve lost 4 lbs. I am beyond thrilled. I do have a small cyst in my right arm pit. I can’t see it but I can feel it. It was bothering me this morning but now I don’t feel it. I get these sometimes when I’m getting sick. That means this is part of the detox. Other than that, I feel absolutely fine. No headache. I got up this morning after 6 hours of sleep. This is unusual for me. Raw foodists often say they need less sleep. It seems to be true. I’ll have to keep you posted.

I ate my typical breakfast smoothie this morning. Now I’m eating guacomole. I made it the same way as I did the other day. I was asked about how much of this you can eat. Believe it or not, if you mash up one avocado, it makes a lot of guacomole. I know that one avocado in slices looks like nothing. Try making guac with one avocado and you’ll see that it’s really a lot of food. If you ate the biggest avocado you could find, it would be about 300 calories. Avocados are high in fat but it’s the good kind of fat. You need this to keep your hair, skin, and nails looking great. So until tomorrow, eat up!

Day 3: This was a hard day. I had a horrible headache all day. I dealt with it but it wasn’t easy. I had a smoothie in morning. It had almond milk, banana, frozen blueberries, maca powder, bee pollen, kale, and stevia. By the time lunch rolled around, I was in pain. I knew there had to be more to this detox thing than bad breath. For lunch I had the rest of the guacomole from dinner the night before. I went to the gym and tried to run on the treadmill. This didn’t work out. I ended up walking for 2 miles. The thing is that it’s hard to know if this was because of the raw diet or because I hadn’t been to the gym in two weeks. I’m normally extremely good about exercising but the last 2 weeks were crazy for me. When I got home, I had almond milk and a banana. Dinner was also difficult because I went to my dad’s apartment. I ended up roasting chicken for him. It was weird not eating it but I was ok. I gave him raw zuccini with it and I had the same thing. I also ate a container of honeydew melon. By the time I got home, I was too tired to blog.

Day 4: Today has been better so far. I slept very deeply but getting up was really hard. There was a terrible storm last night. The thunder kept me up. Then I really slept. Once I was up, I was ok. I had the same smoothie as the one in day 3 but I had frozen rasberries instead of blueberries. I weighed myself. I lost 3 lbs! I’m thrilled. I no longer had a headache. Fast forward to late afternoon. I’m not feeling as good. I don’t have a headache but my throat is bothering me a bit. I have that “I’m getting sick feeling”. Lisa told me that I might get flu-like symptons. I just had another smoothie. The breakfast smoothie but with the blueberries and no banana. I’m not sure what I’m going to eat later. I have a couple of avocados left so I’ll probably end up making more guacomole. I’m not feeling perfect but I can say that I don’t feel at all hungry or deprived. These symptons could be a lot worse. I felt horrible when I started drinking smoothies a couple of months ago. Apparently, kale is hard to digest when you’re not used to it. My guess is that since I’ve been eating this kind of thing for a couple of months, I’m not getting many of the other symptons that people get (involving the bathroom). I don’t think that it would be a good idea for someone to go straight to raw unless they already have a lot of fruit and vegetables in their diet. This is definitely something the average person should ease into. Until tomorrow…

I wrote a looong post, my computer froze, and poof gone. I’m not loving that. I’m going to have to give the bare basics now because I want an accurate record of what occured and I don’t want to have to do three days in one. Here goes.

Day 1: I went to sleep very late the night before day 1. I ended up skipping breakfast so I could make it to class. I went to lunch at Alice Tully Hall with my friend Janet. I didn’t tell her about the challenge because I want to see if I can appear normal to others who don’t know what I’m doing. It turns out that Alice Tully pretty much has nothing a raw foodist can eat. You have to be careful with salad dressing because it might not be raw. I ended up eating two peaches. They looked delicious but they were hard and tasteless. I ate them anyway because I had to eat something. I assumed I’d be hungry later but I wasn’t. I had a remarkable amount of energy. No afternoon food coma.

For dinner I went with Lisa to Pure Food and Wine on Irving Place. It’s a raw food restaurant. This has become our Saturday night ritual when she’s in town. First I had asparagus sushi rolls. Instead of rice, they use jicama. For my main course, I had turnip carpaccio with truffles and cream pea sauce. It was excellent. The portions at this place are miniscule but I felt very satisfied and full of energy. Lisa told me during dinner that I have a green aura. This could mean that raw food causes mind rot. She’s a very happy and calm person so I’ll take my chances. I slept pretty well that night.

Day 2: Today I made a smoothie for breakfast. I eat these regularly. I made it with kale, green/chocolate protein powder, bee pollen, frozen blueberries, maca powder, bee pollen, almond milk, stevia, and a plantain. The plantain was from a food experiment that didn’t work out. Normally I would use a banana but I ran out.

Lunch was another smoothie. I went with Lisa and group to a health food restaurant on 55th and 8th. It’s a store with a cafe in the back. It wasn’t much on ambiance but it had great choices for a raw foodist. I had an amazing smoothie. It had greens powder, maca powder, cacao powder, hemp seed milk, gogi berries, cinnamon, and almond butter. It was really good. I had a remarkable amount of energy for the rest of class. I even walked home which I never do. I’m normally too exhausted after class to do anything.

After I got home, I decided to rest for an hour. I knew I wanted to do a few things later and I wanted to make sure I had the energy. When I got up, I was STARVING. I was going to eat some nuts but, oddly enough, the hungry feeling went away after about 20 minutes. Then came the big question. What was I going to have for dinner. I ended up doing some food shopping with all of my new found energy. I ran into a friend on the way to the supermarket. I was promptly informed that my breath smelled like something crawled into my mouth and died. I guess that’s detox sympton number one. At least I look and feel fine. Things certainly could be worse. I guess I’ll have to do my best to avoid anyone human for the rest of the week. When I got home from my excursion, I made guacomole. I made it with avocado, red onion, jalapeno pepper, lime, and sea salt. I have to say that it was amazing. It’s almost 11PM and I feel great.

So far, so good. Keep your fingers crossed. Usually day three through five are when things get tough. Let the good times roll. Until tomorrow…