So Long, All Peanut Butter

I had this nagging vague recollection of something in The China Study regarding peanut butter, and figured it applied to all peanut butter - organic, natural, etc. So I Googled... bummer...

“Aflatoxin has been called one of the most potent carcinogens ever

discovered.”

Peanuts, Peanut Butter, Aflatoxin, and Cancer

“The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils is terribly important to health.”

“The worst offenders are safflower oil and peanut oil (with extremely high

omega-6 to omega-3 ratios), cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil,

and corn oil.” p. 51

“Peanuts are forbidden. They are not nuts at all; they are legumes—and

legumes contain lectins and other antinutrients that can adversely affect

your health.” p. 126

The Paleo Diet

Loren Cordain, PhD

Professor in the Health and Science Department at Colorado State Univ.

Wiley, 2002

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

Aflatoxin is a mold toxin. p. 5

“Aflatoxin has been called one of the most potent carcinogens ever

discovered.” p. 5

“Peanuts often were contaminated with a fungus-produced toxin called

aflatoxin.” p. 34

Aflatoxin “was said to be the most potent chemical carcinogen ever

discovered.” p. 34

Peanuts and corn are the foods most contaminated with aflatoxin. p. 35

“All 29 jars of peanut butter we had purchased in the local groceries were

contaminated with levels of aflatoxin as much as 300 times the amount

judged to be safe in US food.” p. 35

The worst, moldiest peanuts are “delivered to the end of the conveyor

belt to make peanut butter.” p. 35

The China Study

T Colin Campbell, PhD

Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University

Co-author of the largest and most comprehensive epidemiological study

ever published on human health and nutrition, the China Study.

Benbella Books, 2004

Never Thought Wrestling Would Speak to Me

For the record, I can't stand wrestling, so it makes this all the funnier to me. I had been planning to go raw again on December 26th anyway, because the xmas feeding frenzy is now over, and it's also my dad's birthday. I always think my dad would've encouraged me with raw, because he would've wanted me to do better than he did and avoid all the health problems he experienced. He died young at 56. But when I caught sight of Allstate Arena's billboard featuring WWE last night I did a cartoon double-take. It simply read: RAW DEC. 26th. I literally laughed out loud. What an awesome confirmation I'm headed in the right direction!

As if it weren't enough, that happened at about 7pm. At 2:30am I was at my desk at work when a dull ache crept into my right arm, stayed for several hours and prompted me to do some Googling.

Needless to say, the time to put my health above all else has arrived. It's not the first time I've experienced this sensation, but I hadn't felt it for a long time, definitely not in the past year, because I'd made such great strides with raw foods and exercise last summer.

Now I've gained about 50 of the 75 I'd lost back. It's hard to believe, but then again, it's not.

What's done is done. It's time to look forward and thank the universe for my wake-up calls, then thank the universe again for making them gentle ones. People in their forties have heart attacks every day. I've eaten a mountain of donuts and fast food since I broke raw on my birthday in August. Stress eating is a recipe for disaster.

Throughout the month of December I've often thought about the fact that I would be at my goal weight now, had I not broken raw on my birthday. Instead, I'm sadly close to being right back where I started.

Face forward. Chin up. I can do this.

It's back to walking and 90% raw. Keep it simple. I know this works.

And we're off!

P.S.
Today I've eaten:
4 clementines
2 apples
6 T natural peanut butter *
1 cup of cumin-lemon tea

*Not the greatest choices - too much fat and not enough food (where are the greens!?), but from past experience I've found natural peanut butter, while not raw, to be a great transition food for me due to its high fat content. It's worked great before. In a few days I won't like it anymore anyway. It will be too heavy. However, it's also a great emergency raw-ish food when I feel I'm on shaky ground because I've forgotten to eat. The other nut butters still taste kind of oogy to me.

A Brand New Day

I know, what kind of nut goes raw December 1st!? This kind. That holiday sugar coma can hit the tracks, Jack. I'm actually feeling a little giddy heading into the season armed with my raw version of Where's Waldo? I'm convinced there are raw options everywhere if I'm just willing to open my eyes. I've stayed raw in some really strange places in the past, like Dairy Queen and The Cheesecake Factory - really! There's also the old emergency-organic-apple-in-the-coat-pocket trick.

For Christmas this year I want the coolest gift ever, the gift only I can give myself, the gift that keeps on giving... you guessed it... RAW FOOD FREEDOM!

Join me and come January 1st we can all breathe a sigh of relief at already having a month under our belt when everyone else is just taking the plunge. I really want to encourage you to share your funny stories of raw victories over holiday temptations. I'd love to hear them! This CAN be fun if we decide to make it so :)

I also want to encourage you to create a little black book, in my case a little red one. It's about the size of my hand. Inside it I currently have sixty-five reasons for going raw. I also put a little Law of Attraction twist on this new tool for success. Instead of merely listing all the reasons, I wrote each one out as: I am so happy and grateful I'm a raw foodist because ________. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. I felt so fantastic when finished. Often I find my mind cannot recall a single one of those reasons in a moment of extreme temptation. I feel better knowing they're all written down and at the ready. I also feel better knowing I've already sent a ton of gratitude out into the universe in regards to my raw food dreams.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I thought this captured the spirit of the Holiday better than anything else. Just an update today, but I've been drinking a lot of green smoothies, and three days in a row this week I walked five miles along the lakefront. I'm up to a quart of green smoothies a day as of yesterday, and thank God I discovered grapes as the ideal replacement for the banana! I think it was even the flavor, not just the consistency that didn't agree with me. You may remember I always reach a point with raw where I don't like bananas anymore at all. So it stands to reason my body is sending me a message and I finally got it... after six years of green smoothie failures to launch. I've had them all week now with grapes, and I'm doing great. I love the instant energy boost. It's not an abnormal hyper feeling. It's more like someone injecting me with a great night's sleep. All the sudden, I'm not the least bit tired, but I'm not wired either. It's sooo nice. Just love it.


I'm having some apple-cinnamon-raisin chia meal right now too. Good stuff, even cold. That I do like smooth and creamy. I didn't go out for Thanksgiving this year. I could've, but I preferred to stay in and I'm cool with that. I've been sleeping a lot this week, not because I'm tired, but more of a relaxation-hibernation phase. I wake up after about five hours, and force myself to go back to sleep. Then I have these fascinating epic dreams about all kinds of things. I'm going easy on myself about it. My schedule will be pretty busy in January with school starting up.

I've also had a recent experience with a well-meaning friend thinking she could force me to take injections to lose weight. I was relieved to know a family member had nothing to do with it, so it wasn't a multiple-person intervention, but it sure felt like that for a week or so. That was really upsetting. I felt it was no one's business but my own, but here I am writing about my raw food journey, so that's rather hypocritical. I'm still sorting out my feelings surrounding this experience.

In the spirit of the holiday I've been watching the Extraordinary People series on Youtube. I feel so inspired by these incredible people, and they make me feel very thankful for all that I have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yQAU0mgLSA

Were All the Stars and Planets Perfectly Aligned?

Today I've been thinking an awful lot about all the things that led to my incredibly amazing but brief raw food success last summer. I'm writing to you from Cooked Food Hell, by the way... full-on cooked food addiction... no freedom in sight.

As you know by now, I was raw for almost two months in June and July of 2011. I have to admit I was in a really great place at the time.

In June I was in love. I had decided to move back to Chicago and had just left my job. I had a whole month off before the new owner of my place would take over, so I was also taking a vacation to see a raw food buddy in Canada. I had decided to become a minimalist as well, and had been ridding my life of all kinds of clutter. It was summer, my favorite time of the year, and I had been studying and utilizing the Law of Attraction diligently for a good six months.

In July I moved into my awesome new minimalistic studio. I was really happy to be living near my former sister-in-law and littlest niece and nephews again. I started a new job. I went through a really painful break-up. I discovered I could no longer drive professionally, because I was no longer willing to use sugar and caffeine to stay awake. So I began training as a dispatcher instead. I'd lost a bunch of weight and was really excited to be wearing jeans and tops I hadn't worn in eight years. I felt fantastic!

August 3rd was my birthday, and even though it was nice, it didn't really feel like my birthday. I'd failed to make any big plans. Late in the evening I decided I was going to have Taco Bell. Then I stopped at the store for cake and ice cream. I told myself it was just for my birthday, and I'd get right back to raw the next day. I've been trying and failing ever since, never making it more than a couple of days. In August I was really feeling the pain of that breakup, and I was not liking my new job as a dispatcher, which was much more stressful than being a chauffeur, and the paperwork was god-awful. The days started to get shorter. Fall was coming, which meant my seasonal affective funk was on its way. I was gaining weight and feeling crummy about it. I began to get depressed. I ran my first 5k and that buoyed me some, but not enough to counteract the momentum of my downward spiral, which has continued for the past four months.

So the big question is:

Was raw easier because I was so happy in June? Or was I so happy in June because I was raw and it was fueling my upward spiral???

I know that I kicked off raw on June 7th, the day I left for Canada. My friends were incredibly supportive. J came to talk with me all night at my campsite in Michigan, and she brought a huge platter of fruit and another huge vegetable platter. I was set for road food for my entire drive, bless her heart. Once I arrived in Quebec I had the support of my raw food buddy K for over a week, almost two. I was on an awesome roll. I had made it through those first two weeks pretty easily compared to many past attempts, because I was on vacation, virtually stress-free, had plenty of cash from the sale of my place and in the company of someone very pro-raw.

I can't recreate that dream scenario right now. I'm going to have to continue working the at the job I don't like on the graveyard shift I don't like in the presence of the food I shouldn't be alone with. I did apply elsewhere, but I have a feeling I need to make this work somehow, that when school starts in January I'll be glad I did. Cash is tight, but I can do my best to make myself happy.

Next assignment: Figure out what I'd need to do to make myself happier. Raw does not go well when you're in a shit storm from the get-go.

Mental Prison - Cooked or Raw?

This isn't going well. It's definitely not going as planned. Part of me is completely sick of thinking about what I eat. Another part of me wants to get back to that magical state of mind I experienced this past summer when I was raw for almost two months. It's ironic that this blog is supposed to be about freedom, when I feel so trapped.

I've been dieting since I was six years old. It wasn't my choice. It was my mother's idea. I didn't have a weight problem yet, but my father was overweight all of his life. I was the first child, and at the first sign of a tummy my mother panicked, thinking she'd have fat kids. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was voluptuous in junior high and high school. I was always dieting. In high school I was fortunate enough to be part of an experimental weight loss gym class where we could eat whatever we wanted, but we had to walk everyday. I lost thirty-four pounds and was the leanest I've ever been.

I actually had to put on a little weight to be a plus model a year later, but I got a contract in Chicago and off I went... to yo-yo my way up and down the scale for another twenty-three years.

I always start out strong, but eventually I rebel against dieting and deprivation with every fiber of my being. After thirty-five years of dieting, how am I not supposed to think of raw as a diet???

Logically I know that I lose my taste and cravings for cooked food over time, but getting there is insanely difficult for me. Ironically, so is giving up dieting.

If I really went back to basics and simplified things to the enth degree. I would just walk at least an hour everyday and eat whatever. I actually ate pretty healthy when I did that program, aside from a lot of diet coke.

What I can't let go of when it comes to raw is undoing the internal damage I've done. Exercise takes care of some of it, but a plant-based diet is needed to clean and repair arteries and organs. I can't unlearn this simple fact either. I don't want to just halt the damage. I want to reverse it. But maybe I do just need to start where I am and quit trying to go cold tofurkey. Maybe I just need to get walking and relax about the food for a while, stop fighting with myself all the time. It makes me feel so fractured, conflicted and just plain nuts.

11/11/11 and Change

I found myself defending raw foods tonight with a very good friend I respect a great deal, who is also a doctor. It was a life-changing conversation. Sometimes we must be forced to fight for something we believe in to realize just how deep our passion runs. Enough of talking the talk. It's time to walk the walk.

In other news... I had a huge green smoothie breakthrough today. I've been trying to drink green smoothies for almost six years with little success or pleasure. Today I discovered bananas may have been the problem all along. I don't like thick, creamy, green smoothies. They kind of make me gag. I prefer something thinner I can slam if I have to, not something I have to slog down. I was out of bananas today, but I had a bunch of grapes that were about to go bad. Voila! The result is much more like juice! I want to try juicing again, but it's expensive. Especially all organic, and I always feel guilty about throwing out all that fiber. This is a great compromise for the time being! It reminds me of my favorite movie line... from Castaway of course, which actually came up in conversation tonight too, "And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring."