Raw Cleanse Recap & A Sample Day

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Enough about that.  On to the good stuff.

I’ve been through with my 2 weeks raw foods cleanse for a week now.

Here are a few things I learned from my experience that I wanted to share.

The rundown:  

 ♥ Be Prepared.  Allow for transition.  Eating all raw foods is not hard.  It just takes a little transitioning & a well stocked fridge.  If you have plenty of options to choose from, you won’t feel deprived.  The 1st two days were the most challenging because I felt like I needed my stomach to feel heavy after eating so I craved the usual starches (oatmeal, beans), which tend to fill me up & give me that “full” feeling.  When I’m not eating raw, I eat a lot less fruit, nuts, & avocado.  During the cleanse, I ate more of these foods, which took a few days getting used to.

♥ Keep it simple.  Yes, there are amazing raw recipes out there (like this raw veggie sushi, yum!).  But the point of the cleanse, at least for me, was to eat simply.  To eat simple, basic, whole foods & put my taste buds on a fast from overstimulating (albeit healthy) foods.  Many raw foods use dehydrators (yes, I know it’s not heated past 117 F, so it’s still “raw”) which make the food more processed & more calorie dense.  Which is fine, but for me, the point was to eat whole, unproccessed foods.  The most processed I got was Lara bars, & towards the end I bought some raw granola made from buckwheat (which tasted like such a treat!).

♥ Careful with nuts & seeds & oils.  When you cut out starches & are left with fruits, vegetables, & nuts, it’s hard to eat enough calories without relying too heavily on nuts & seeds & oils.  When I’m eating normally I don’t eat nuts every day (& you know what I think about oils, even if they are “raw”).  Sometimes I’ll use them for a dressing or occasionally in a salad or dessert, but it’s rare for me to just snack on nuts or seeds.  When I was doing the cleanse I craved nuts & seeds.  I actually salivated just looking at them!  I tried to limit my nuts to no more than 1/2 c. a day.  Also, I tried to eat only raw nuts, but I did use roasted pistachios in a few of my meals, like this one.

♥ Easy to follow.  I had no rules for my cleanse other than to just eat my fruits & vegetables uncooked (I “broke” this rule once when we had our going away barbecue & ate some grilled vegetables & pineapple) & try to limit nuts/seeds.  Also, I did use a very small amount of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil in one of my fave raw dressings (see below), but tried to avoid oils.   I ate whenever I wanted.  It still tended to be about 2 times a day.  When I say times a day, I don’t mean meals, but rather, grazing periods.  I’d typically eat sometime mid-morning then again around dinner time.  During these times I’d have a meal but then snack or have dessert an hour or two later.  This wasn’t set in stone & wasn’t even something that I set out to do, it’s just what more or less naturally happened.  When I focused on eating A LOT of greens & fruit, my craving for nuts & seeds was tamed.

I think for most people who go on a cleanse & crash & burn do so because they set too many rules.  Make it simple & easy to follow.  For me, knowing that I could eat as much as wanted, whenever I wanted helped subside any irrational fears that I’d somehow go hungry because I wasn’t eating my normal comfort foods (like oatmeal or this soup).

♥ Raw foods are cleansing.  What does this mean, exactly?  For me, I felt lighter, had a bit more energy (which was GREAT since we were in the middle of showings & packing during this time).  My skin didn’t clear up though, which surprised me.  I actually broke out & my skin was awful.  A result of cleansing?  Perhaps.  Now that I’m off the cleanse my face has returned to normal.

I also lost some weight.  How much, I don’t know, I haven’t stepped on the scale (remember, I wasn’t going to, because I didn’t want it to be about weight loss).  My clothes are looser & I feel better in my skin.  After the 2 weeks without eating any processed or cooked foods, chips, bread, peanut butter, or sugar alternatives, I felt like I have a better grip on what I think I need vs. what I want.  More self-control, more in-tune with my natural taste buds.

♥ What I ate during the raw cleanse:  a ton of watermelon!  I kid you not, I think there were a few days where I ate a half a watermelon or more  (fortunately they were only $6 at Costco!).  Lots of green smoothies.  Sugar snap peas, avocados & seaweed (roasted nori sheets, I know, not raw, but again, good enough for me) & jicama.

I also ate a lot of simple salads using pre-washed, spring mix greens (from Costco, of course ) & some chopped tomato, diced avocado & balsamic vinegar.

When I felt like I wanted something more substantial, I’d have some green peas.  I buy frozen organic peas from Costco.  To prepare, I put peas in a colander & defrost for a few minutes under running hot water.

Sliced apples w/ a handful of raw almonds, fresh strawberries, jicama sticks w/ lime juice & a dash of sea salt, a huge salad w/ a great raw dressing.  These are all foods that filled me up & satisfied.

I also liked to eat raw cauliflower, cucumber slices, & thin celery sticks.  I often made a creamy banana shake with frozen bananas & some water, in my Blendtec.

For dessert:  I had a Lara bar almost every day for the first week.  Then I discovered these great little treats–medjool dates rolled in coconut topped with half an almond.  Since I was getting plenty of sugar with all the fruit I was eating, I felt like my natural sweet tooth diminished.

I discovered, too, that I have a major food sensitivity to raw cacao, both whole raw cacao & cocoa nibs (not to be confused with unsweetened cocoa powder that is the processed cousin of raw cocoa).  I bought some during the second week, just out of curiosity, since I know it’s a big deal in the raw foods movement.  After about 2 hours of eating a handful, I felt like I was going to throw up.  I thought it might have been a fluke so I tried it again the next day.  Again, after about 2 hours of eating, I felt positively ill.  Similar to how I felt when I ate raw wild elderberries (I actually threw up that time).  So no raw cocoa for me, please.

Here’s a sample day on my cleanse.  I did eat more than what is here.  Add a Lara bar, an apple or two, & maybe some nori sheets w/ an avocado.

For Meal #3, I seasoned 2 c. raw peas (frozen organic peas in a colander, defrosted under running hot water) with 2 TBS. dehydrated chopped onions, 1 TBS. seasoned rice vinegar, dash of cumin powder & topped with some siracha sauce for heat.  The salad was a mixed traditional raw salad with Dreena’s raw caesar salad dressing from ED & BV (I LOVE that stuff, it’s soo good.  Makes me want to eat salads all day long!).

While I often had this version of a green smoothie, a close second was green lemonade.   You can juice the following recipe, but I prefer it in a blender because instead of 0 grams of fiber as juice, you get 21 (!) as a smoothie, which makes it more satisfying & filling.

Here’s the recipe for green lemonade & the jicama salad.

♥♥♥  Questions about my cleanse experience?  Feel free to comment below!