This time a year ago we were half way through our 30 day rawstravaganza. It was amazing.
Now, a year later as I finish a huge morning smoothie, I'm in the mood to take stock of how that month of revising my diet has stuck with me. There are many things I keep doing, and are obviously a stuck habit as a year in the making will testify.
First and foremost, FRUIT. The amount of fruit I eat has easily tripled in the past year. Breakfast is regularly 3-6 pieces of fruit, even if I'm having oatmeal there's an apple, an banana and a pile of berries cooked into it. Snacks are fruit salads, desserts are baked fruits. Fruit is awesome. I just can't get tired of it. Give me a whole, perfectly ripe and juicy pineapple or cantaloupe and it's entirely likely I will eat the entire thing. No shame. I don't remember eating this much fruit before this. Fruit was low on the snack scale, and certainly wasn't a 'proper' full meal. Not anymore!
secondly, eating this raw that I would only ever have eaten cooked. Oats are a big one. I actually had to Google whether raw oats were properly digestible by peoples- I'd never thought about it before! (actually, now that I type that out, it's a little embarrassing. But let's move on.) ground flax is another big one. Shredded raw coconut. A whole bowl of sugar snap peas is still a major treat for me. I will make a raw stir 'fry' with diced carrots, sugar snap peas, sprouts and coconut shreds in sweet chili sauce and eat the heck outta that bad boy.
Salads. I eat a salad at least once a day. Salads are infinite in variety and texture and content and I will eat all of them. I also have developed a piquant pet peeve when someone covers some sad wilted iceburg lettuce in ham and cheese and hard boiled eggs and cream dressing and calls it a salad. STOP IT.
*ahem*
BANANAS ARE BOSS. Seriously, I have a bunch in the fridge at work at all times and several bunches at home in various, carefully cultivated levels of ripeness. I experience minor panic if I run out of bananas; I'm all like "now what am I going to eat!!??" Ditto to various extents: spinach, almond milk, oats and oranges.
On the other hand, I'm also more aware that if I eat too much raw food in a day, my digestive system is not super happy with me and I'll experience quite a bit of intestinal bloating. So I have learned some minor moderation, in the spirit of enlightened self interest.
GETTING SICK. In the last 13 months I have had a minor scratchy throat twice- once for 2 days, once with some sniffles for 4 days. This is definitely the least I've been sick ever in my life. I work retail, I have people sneeze, cough and talk at me all day, I handle money, and I work with people who have gotten sick multiple times each in the past year. I have travelled and gone to night clubs and taken the TTC (not for the faint of heart!) and nothing. Thanks, fruit.
I stil think quite often to the things I learned during January last year. I'm very happy that a lot of the lessons stuck with me so forcefully.
