Day 3: 14 Days Raw Vegan

Picture gotten from RawOn10

Today started off well! :) I had a salad which contained a quarter of a gigantic watermelon, 2 peaches, 1 nectarine, a few freshly picked blackberries and freshly picked basil and on the side, I had a plate of  spinach and kale (stems on! :) ). I had over 699 calories just for breakfast! That's a good start! :)

For lunch, I'm going to have zucchinis with fruit and I need to remember to soak the zucchinis this time them leave them to air dry (drain out the excess water). I might sprinkle some seeds over them, dunno, I'm not a fan of nuts and seeds.

For dinner, I'll just eat fruit or depending on how busy I get, I'll drink a green juice!

What I've learnt from this so far is that raw foods are not just healthy but awesome and they're like the perfect fuel. Instead of having the groggy feeling after eating loads of processed or cooked foods (especially the rather unhealthy ones), you become so awake and full of energy - read to take on the world! You can also get all your calories and all your nutrients from eating raw and you learn more about what you eat and more about your body and mind and how simple things like the quantity you eat affects your feelings or appetite. For example, I struggle to eat in large quantities. It can take me over 2 hours to down half a watermelon if I'm eating the entire half and I know that I'm eating the entire half because I see it right in front of me and I'm eating it out of the fruit with a spoon. It takes me a little less than that amount of time to eat zucchini pasta made with 3 zucchinis and a raw pasta sauce because I'm eating it all at once in a big bowl and that freaks me out (I don't know how FullyRawKristina eats so much at one go). However, if there's cut up pieces (like wedges cut in half) of watermelon in a tupperware or whatever and it's in the fridge (I didn't cut it, but I know a whole watermelon was cut) and all I have to do is pick one out and eat it and if I feel like having more, pick out another one and so on, I am pretty sure I can eat over half a watermelon in less than 10 minutes.

Being raw vegan is awesome, but I'm not going to stick to it. However, once I'm done with this, I'm going to go back to being vegetarian, but as I always have, I'm going to eat more like a vegan (cooked meals) than a vegetarian. I am also going to incorporate more raw meals into my diet 'cause they're awesome. Maybe I might even become a vegetarian who eats raw till 4. Who knows?

I'm happy.
Keep Smiling!

~Sammy

p.s I have lost about 3kg these past 3 days.
I'm not really concerned about my weight, what I'm concerned about is my health and my weight changes as my health changes. So....that's that :)

My Plan: Losing 6-10kg in a maximum of 8 weeks

Gotten from www.united-academics.org

So, for my last post, you know I'm on a journey to lose the weight I gained while I had bad joints. Here's how I'm going to do it.

• Some time this summer, I plan on doing Kristina of FullyRaw.com's 14 Day Bikini Body challenge. This is because I had a bikini body before I added the extra weight and also because I'm looking for an excuse to eat raw for about a week or two. I actually planned on a liquid diet, but because I've been sick lately, I doubt my family will let me do that even if I tell them that it'll detox and cleanse my system. Also, I am interested in finding out how many actual meals I can make without using a cooker and also, I totally ship the idea of retaining as much nutrients as possible in things used to cook, especially vegetables and we all know that some of those nutrients and healthy enzymes are destroyed or denatured when cooked. Please note that I do not plan on ever going raw vegan as a permanent lifestyle change.

• I am going to start working out 6-7 times a week again (YES!). Each day will be a different workout so my body continuously burns fat, I workout every muscle in my body and my body doesn't get so used to one particular workout, movement or series of movements. Also, doing the same workout every morning can get rather boring and that can be rather discouraging.

• I am going to try my best to cut out straight milk or keep my intake of it to a minimum. When I say straight milk, I mean, milk, like milk in tea (which I seldom drink because although I LOVE IT,  it inhibits my iron absorption and that doesn't help with anaemia), milk in a bowl of cereal..... I have a bit of a milk allergy which is not fun. Also, milk promotes weight gain and I have not just read about this, but seen it first-hand. If you follow my hair blog you will know that I school and live in two separate counties quite far from each other so I basically live in school while it's in session. At college, because I perform quite often (I'm a singer), I seldom drink milk. Whenever I'm home during a break, every morning, to my dismay, I end up having a bowl of cereal for breakfast every morning. I noticed that I add weight whenever I'm home because of this.

• I am going to keep my intake of other dairy products to a minimum too. This means that I'm going to cut down on my cheese intake (I seldom eat cheese, though (unless it's on a pizza, of course)), my trifle and yogurt intake. I'm not much of a yogurt fan. However, there's this mango, papaya and passion fruit biopot yogurt we got a few days ago and it tastes really good so I pretty much, really like it. I am going to cut down on my intake of it while at home and when I get back to school, I am not going to purchase any yogurt.

• I am going to cut down on my sugar intake too. I seldom add sugar to things. However, when I'm at home, sometimes, I sprinkle some sugar over my strawberries to extract their juice and make some really nice strawberry thing. I'm going to opt for just eating the strawberries now because I actually like doing that.

• Unless I have some luggage and I am in a train station or airport, from now on, I am going to be taking the stairs instead of escalators or lifts. I already tend to do this, but I guess I'm still going to put it on here.

• Now, now, some people say that in order to lose weight, you have to stop eating pasta. There is no way I am going to stop eating pasta. I love pasta! I can eat it every day!

• I have a friend who always wants to hang out every Saturday or Sunday, watch a movie and order some pizza with me. Depending on if we go to town earlier in the day, we skip lunch and just order pizza (sometimes, with wedges too) later in the day. From now on, I think I'm going to be ordering a personal pizza earlier in the day as my lunch and then some wedges in the evening as my dinner or the other way round to spread out my calories and not eat too many carbs before I sleep.

• If I end up not doing the above, I'm going to order earlier in the day and as my dinner, make a fruit salad (which I used to do every day after working out).

• I am not going to use any equipment when working out. However, maybe once in a long while I might go on a treadmill or full body trainer. Who knows?

• I am going to continue drinking at least a cup of green tea a day and at least a 200ml bottle of diluted apple cider vinegar for its health benefits and the added benefit of promoting weight loss.

This is all I can think of for now so it's most likely what I'm going to stick with.

Hope this helps somebody :)