Raw Food Diet - 30 Day 'No Fat' Trial - Day 16Today is day 16 of my raw food diet trial. My weight was up again slightly this morning, and is now at 123.4 making my total weight loss for this raw food diet trial 1.6 pounds. I slept very badly last night and so did Jaye, we were waking each other up with all the tossing and turning and ups and downs to the bathroom. I felt fine this morning, but scratchy morning eyes are becoming the norm. We were discussing last night how my sister Melissa is having big cravings now that she has moved to a low fat raw food diet, as opposed to high fat, and Jaye asked: 'what fats was she having anyway?' 'Olives, oil soaked and salted sundried tomatoes and avocadoes' I replied. 'It's not the reduced fats that are causing the cravings, it's the reduced salt!' he said. And something clicked. Of course it's the salt. Everything about what I've been craving during this raw food diet trial is a craving for salt and other excitotoxins! It isn't the cooked food, or the fats. It is the spices that go with them! You don't eat avo by itself! You salt and spice it first. Whenever I had avo on a salad I added some salt and got that 'Ah' feeling like the itch just got scratched, and then I wanted more. Fats by themselves are quite bland. It's the salt that excites! Just before I started this raw food diet trial I was lying at home on a Thursday night, the beginning of the weekend for us, and I was extremely unhappy. I had just had a massive banana smoothie but I was DYING for something else. Something like olives, sundried tomatoes and avocado (salted and spiced of course). We didn't have any of that at home and I was too lazy to go out and brave the crazy mall supermarket to get some. So I just lay there whining. Eventually Jaye got fed up with me and told me to chop up some cucumbers and eat them with some salt. After complaining that THAT wasn't what I wanted, I wanted OLIVES I eventually got up and had some cucumber with salt. Well. That was it. That was the craving. It was not very exciting eating salt on a cucumber. Nevertheless it was what I was craving. The next day I went and ate some highly salted and oil soaked artichokes, olives and sundried tomatoes and made myself sick. I felt like I'd just spent the day drinking alcohol in the sun. I fasted for the rest of the day as I was too sick to eat anything, and I suffered the after effects of that for a few days. Contrary to some opinions, a craving does not signal a 'need' of the body. Due to addictions we are so out of touch with our bodies signals. We think we 'need' alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, excitotoxins, meat, dairy etc. This is all addiction, and in fact signals that we definitely DO NOT need it. So that is what is going on with me, and Jaye and my sister. We are coming off some addictions and while we do so, we just want that addictive stuff. But isn't salt good for us? No! It isn't! Sodium that is naturally occurring in all whole natural raw fruits and vegetables, especially celery, is good for us. But any added sodium in the form of refined salts, condiments, processed foods and spices leads to high blood pressure and strokes. Even if your diet is otherwise healthy, added salt can still cause a stroke, relatively easily. One tablespoon of soy sauce adds 900mg of sodium to your diet. The recommended amount of sodium is 2000mg per day. This is actually super high, and just like a lot of the recommended daily allowances, does not apply to people who truly want to be healthy. It is only 'average' healthy, which for most people, if you look at averages, means you will almost certainly die of some disease or other. If you eat any processed foods you will see your daily sodium shoot through the roof. Restaurant food is always spiced to the eyeballs so that will lead to very high levels of sodium too, if you're not careful. This dehydrates the cells, over stresses the kidneys and makes you look old before your time. Bad Hair Day I had flat roots and frizzy ends and didn't look too fantastic today. I am not using any styling products as that would defeat the purpose of going without shampoo. I think I may have to tie my hair up for a couple of days until it balances out, if that actually happens. It may be a little early in the game for me to forego shampoo, but I'm going to give it a good try. Food We had slim pickings in the flat this morning as we needed to go shopping yesterday and didn't. I blended a whole watermelon and took the liter and a half of juice with me to work. It was very nice but I felt a bit weird after drinking it. Almost a little spacey. I was thinking that it was probably the speed that I got it down. It would probably take me a good while to eat a whole watermelon, but to drink one only took about a minute. I was pretty hungry and thirsty and just downed it. I think maybe it was a little too fast for my body and I just felt….weird. I don't know how else to describe it. For lunch I had another celery and date salad, and later on 10 dates as a snack. 
I was starving all day as that was just not enough food. When I got home Jaye made a delicious cabbage salad with spinach (50g), a purple baby cabbage and a dressing made from half a mango and half an orange. It was divine! We followed that up with a thick and spicy soup, made with 2 mangos, 3 tomatoes, 3x medium stalks of celery and a handful of coriander all blended up in the Vitamix. 
Exercise Last night I just did a short workout which was some squats and lunges, pushups and abs, and then tonight I did a full workout which kicked my ass. I downloaded an old Cindy Crawford workout from 1992, called Shape Your Body. It is a GREAT workout. It actually consists of 3 workouts which you can do on alternating days. I did the first one tonight and it was all these kicks and lunges and butt crunchers followed by pushups, chest press, fly's, skull crushers, bent over rows, upright rows, and it ended off with a punishing ab workout. I totally enjoyed it! I have 10 days of work left and then I am free forever! Yay! At the moment I am unable to get to gym during the week as the gym doesn't open early enough in the morning for me to get there and then get to work on time, and in the evenings the gym is PACKED! So I just go on weekends and work out at home during the week. I have a treadmill and some weights and of course various home DVD workouts for variation. Conclusions Aside from being hungry all day, today was a great day. I felt really positive and happy. My totals were: Calories 1433, Fat 6.4g, Carbohydrate 361.5g, Dietary Fiber 42.3g, Protein 25.7 and Sodium 396.8mg. Percentage totals were: Carbohydrate 90%, Protein 6%, Fat 4%.
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