Raw Food Diet - 30 Day 'No Fat' Trial - Day 9Today is day 9 of my raw food diet trial with no overt fats. Weight My weight was down by a whole 0.2 of a pound this morning to 122.5 pounds, which brings my total weight loss for this raw food diet trial to 2.5 pounds. Exercise I woke up feeling very tired and a little nauseous this morning. Nevertheless I got up at 5:00 and did 30 minutes on the treadmill at 13% incline and 5 kilometers per hour. I had to hang on to the sides of the treadmill this time instead of swinging my arms like usual. I just felt so tired. My heart rate was at 130 at the beginning gradually increasing and it was 150 when I ended. I was supposed to do shoulders and triceps today but since my shoulder has been so sore I decided to steer clear of isolated exercises. So I just did 3x10 pushups, 3x20 planks and 3x25 V-Sit ups and some yoga - sun salutations, shoulder stand, plow, bridge, wheel, cobra, bow. My shoulder felt better when I woke up, and even better after the exercise. During the day it got super painful again and it is now really sore. Calories I am re-thinking what I was saying about calories yesterday. I know some people count calories as a way to ensure that they are getting enough fuel to perform at their peak athletically and this is very valid. However, I am far from an athlete at this point, and I think I am being a little too fast on the trigger to think that too few calories is the cause of drops in energy. This is only day 9 and I can't possibly expect to be through the detox. The tiredness and lack of energy for exercise that I am sometimes experiencing is far more likely a result of the detox brought about by such a low fat raw food diet, than too few calories. I think the fact that I am counting calories for the purposes of this raw food diet trial shifted my focus. The main thing is to listen to my body and eat according to hunger. Whether that comes out as 5000 calories or 2000 calories is irrelevant. Without thought to calories, on a daily basis I am eating quite a similar number of calories anyway. I am only tallying up the calories at the end of the day, so I am not being influenced by trying to eat more or less during the day. The only thing that is important is for me to pack enough food in the morning to see me through the day, whether it is a big eating day or not. Detox As far as the detox is concerned, you may wonder why I have so much detoxing to do, since I have been on the raw food diet for 2 and a half months already. Well, cutting the overt fats plays a big part in this. Everything I am eating now is so easy to digest; it allows my body the time and energy to do the more important work of clearing out old junk. Fats are much slower to digest. Before I began this raw food diet no fat trial, I would do a few days of low fat and then a day or two of high fat. Since fat stays in the blood for quite a long time after being consumed, I was slowing down my detoxification quite dramatically. Then there is also the fact that 32 years of bad eating habits cannot be erased in a couple of months. While I have been cleaning up my diet for the past few years, even at its best it was far from ideal. So I expect to be detoxing for a few years! However, as I go along, I will feel good more often than I will feel bad. In fact this is already true. And even when I feel bad I still feel better than the very best I used to feel when I was in the midst of dairy, caffeine and processed foods. I have a ton more energy now than I did when I was 16! Symptoms At 12:00pm I started to feel horrible. The nausea from early this morning returned along with a strange shaky feeling, and my shoulder began throbbing in earnest. Half an hour later it was gone, only to return at 2:30 and then disappear again at 3:00. Cravings I had some major cooked food cravings late last night and today. I was thinking of avocado maki rolls WITH RICE! Extra Sensitivity I seemed to be extra sensitive to smell and sounds today. People's perfume was irritating me. It just smelled like toxic chemicals. There was a guy sitting opposite me while I was reading my book on the couches downstairs during lunch, and he was chewing gum. I could barely concentrate on my book the sound seemed so magnified! There was music on and he wasn’t that close to me and it’s a busy financial district, yet I could hear every smack of his lips and it was driving me crazy. Water Something I’ve noticed which is pretty cool is that I barely need to drink water during the day anymore. There is so much water in the foods I’m eating that I’m just not thirsty. I drink one to two glasses of water during the day whereas before I would drink about 2 liters. I am peeing just as much as ever, and my urine is clear colored so I know I am not dehydrated. I know that when I was eating cooked foods or even just raw foods but with added salt, I would be so thirsty all the time, I would just drink and drink and still seem to be thirsty. I’m still thirsty when I wake up in the mornings though and usually have about a liter of water. Food I took a liter and a half of smoothie to work containing 3x small cucumbers (254g), a head of romaine lettuce (250g), 2x mangoes (500g), 3x bananas (340g), 1x apple (114g), and strawberries (257g). In the picture it looks like baby poo, but it was actually really tasty. I had all of it for breakfast. 
For lunch I had half a watermelon (1820g). 
For dinner I had a blueberry, date and banana smoothie with 350g banana, 3x dates and 100g blueberries. 
Conclusions Probably my toughest day so far, more from a mental point of view than a physical one, for the first time I felt that it was a little hard. Not the 30 days, that is short, but just thinking that since this is the healthiest way to live - can I see myself doing it - the low fat raw food diet - forever? I can see myself doing it MOST of the time, certainly I can see a low fat raw food diet being the default. It's the way I want to live, it's what I aspire to. But the way I feel today, some less healthy stuff should be on the cards! I almost felt like writing about cooked foods and how they’re not so unhealthy if they’re simple foods and low fat, but that's just trying to justify the fact that I would love to eat some cooked food right now! And the cooked stuff I would love to eat isn’t that low fat either, haha! So my totals for today were: Calories 1838, Fat 8.7g, Carbs 465.6, Dietary Fiber 52.4, Protein 28.8g, Sodium 68.1mg. Percentage Totals: 91% Carbs, 5% Protein, 4% Fat.
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