Raw Food Diet - 30 Day 'No Fat' Trial - Day 17So this is day 17 of my no fat raw food diet trial and all is good. My weight was down half a pound this morning at 123 pounds so I have lost 2 pounds since the start of this raw food diet trial. Sleep I have been reading some interesting things about sleep. I have always felt that the less sleep I need the better. I thought that if I sleep less that means I can get more done and am therefore a more productive, more worthwhile person. Well, now I'm wondering. Does it make you more productive, or are you just pushing your adrenals to the limit, leading to unhealthy lifestyle habits in an attempt to compensate? Apparently the amount of sleep you need is whatever is enough. It varies. You should sleep until you don't need to sleep any more. If that is 12 hours, brilliant. Athletes need more sleep as their body is undergoing more repair work. So for them even sleeping 16 hours in a night is not uncommon. I have been getting by on around 7 hours a night and it hasn't been enough. And in my mind I have been aiming at an ideal where I only need 5 or 6 hours a night. I guess the question is why? Why do we feel guilty if we sleep well? What is so important to accomplish that we need to push ourselves so hard? If you're living life to the full, eating well and exercising vigorously and getting lots of fresh air and natural sunlight on a daily basis, then the hours you're awake will be so much more productive anyway, there is no need to cut into your night time hours. I was reading the posts by Durianrider on the 30 Bananas a Day site and he sleeps 12 hours a night. He does an incredible amount of exercise every day and lives every moment to the full. I certainly wouldn't look at him and regard him as an underachiever because he sleeps too much! He is a superachiever and a fabulous inspiration. The best thing of course would be to sleep until you wake up naturally and not use an alarm clock. However, I love the feeling of getting up early, hitting the gym and then being home all showered and fresh with the whole day ahead of me. So I think that I need to start getting to bed much earlier. In nature there would be no artificial light, so living in nature we would naturally sleep for all the hours that it was dark. In equatorial regions where human health thrives the most, there are usually twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. So 12 hours might be optimal! Just because humans migrated to all areas of the world doesn't change what is optimal for us and when we follow the path that nature intended, we thrive. Anyone can 'get by' living sub-optimally, but if we want to thrive then we need to do better. Have a look at this chart showing our body clocks and what takes place during different times of the day and night. Melatonin production begins at 9pm, and we should ideally be asleep by then. My problem is that Jaye usually only gets home about 7:30 or 8:00pm and then we still usually eat something, and then want to hang out together for a bit so we stretch the evening out. Stuck in a cage As I delve more into the raw food diet and lifestyle I am increasingly excited that I will soon be self-employed. Working in an office is just an unnatural way to live. I spend most of my time in a climate controlled cage flooded with artificial light and ventilated with artificial air, where it is always winter and I am not even aware that there is a bright beautiful sun shining outside. Sure, once I'm self employed I'll still be spending a lot of time indoors as the heat in Dubai can get oppressive, but I feel I will be able to balance that with a lot more time outdoors. These days I try and pack all my outdoor life into the weekends and we hit the beach, ride our bikes etc. But being outside daily for a good portion of time is also essential to overall health and well-being. I am not saying that if you work in an office you can't achieve this. Of course you can. You can get up early and go for a run or cycle outdoors. You can take a lunch break and go and sit outside. You can go for a walk in the early evening. It's just me that hasn't done it. My excuse is that I leave too early and get home too late. This is a part of my life that I am going to really enjoy focusing on once I'm free. I'm thinking early morning bike rides to gym, swims in the ocean and yoga on the grass, every day. Hair Update I tied my hair up today. It is long past the point where I would usually have washed it. I read today that the hair needs to undergo a detox of its own as all the products that we use on it contain various glues and binders etc which have to be released from the hair. My hair looks fine and it isn't greasy, it is just quite flat on the top and frizzy on the bottom - not a good look. I'll definitely be tying it up for a while. I will give this at least 2 full weeks to see what happens, and give it a lemon juice wash if things get urgent. Cravings I was also reading today how everything we crave is a result of under-eating on fruits and vegetables. Crave alcohol? Eat more fruit. Crave bread? Eat more fruit. And no you won't get fat. Eating a biologically appropriate diet will never make you fat. If you are sedentary then you may still carry a few extra pounds, but the solution isn't to eat less it is to move that body. Sedentary is not healthy. Animals in nature are NEVER fat. The only animals that ever get fat are the ones WE feed. And it's because we feed them the same biologically inappropriate manufactured crap that we feed ourselves. Food Oh man, when am I going to learn! I packed too little food today and was finished everything in my cooler by 11am. So by the time I got home again at 6:30pm, I wasn't feeling too pleased. I had taken a green smoothie made with 500g lettuce, 170g blueberries, 364g banana and 1x medium mango (forgot to weigh it!). I had that for breakfast. I had half a watermelon (1454g) that was supposed to be for lunch, but I got stuck into that at 10:30. I could have kept going if only there was something to keep going with.
For dinner I had half a papaya, followed by a soup made with the other half papaya, 160g celery, 1x orange, 1.5 red peppers and 3x tomatoes and some celery croutons. 
Conclusions Need to take more food! Otherwise I am on an upswing here and feeling pretty fab. My totals were as follows: Calories 1465, Fat 8g, Carbohydrates 361.3g, Dietary Fiber 55.1g, Protein 31.4g, Sodium My percentage totals were: Carbohydrates 88%, Protein 7%, Fat 5%.
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