Day 11- Overdose

I think that I might have overdone my wheatgrass shots. Every morning I take one shot = 30 ml on a empty stomach. I have felt very noxious every morning after taking the shot. Sometimes I have felt noxious and a bit dizzy for hours, basically until having lunch. But today was worse then ever, because without having taken the wheatgrass out from the fridge I started feeling noxious just by looking at the juicer. Well, I guess I could think that it is just the taste that makes me feel sick but I'm pretty sure that it is connected to what it does to my body. I'm also very convinced that wheatgrass is very good for my body but maybe I have done to MUCH to FAST. So today I asked my sister to help me out juicing my wheatgrass cause I actually could not stand doing it and the I only had half the amount from before. And it helped. I felt less noxious and only a little dizzy.

For breakfast I had a really good green smoothie with sunflowers sprouts, spinach, banana and water. I have completely closed the door on saying no to fruits for now. I'm just not motivated enough and don't see or feel how it would benefit me not eating fruits because what happened when I did that was that I started obsessing to much about it. From experience I think it is a lot more dangerous to set up a lot of rules about what not to eat because that will be just what you want to eat. And if you break the rules you have set up you will feel bad. For me at least it is better to focus on what I want to eat and I do want to eat what is healthy and nurturing for my body but sometimes I just want to have something cause I LOOOVE the way it tastes even if I know it might not be the best thing for my body. And in that moment when I choose to do so I want to enjoy it a 100% and not feel guilty about it.

Did eat raw for most of the day but had some pasta at work since I once again overestimated how fulfilling the lunch salad would be....you live, you learn;-)

Namaste

Maria

Day 10 - Raw sushi

Did you know that when you heat food that is heated above 188 degrees Fahrenheit, the enzymes in it break down and are rendered useless? In fact, the structure of the molecules changes completely, rendering the food inert and devoid of its life force. In other words, when you overcook food, you are actually killing its life force or Prana. "Andreas Moritz"
True or not it totally makes sense to me especially since I feel have so much more energy since I started eating Raw or Living Food or whatever you want to call it.


Today I have almost eaten only raw. Except for a few bites of divine cannelloni at work. Damn these italians know how to make their pasta way to tempting;-) Me and my sister (who by the way is totally sold on this thing called Raw food. I took a piece of Tiramisu with me home last night and she did not even want it....none of us did:-) made sushi for lunch today. But no fish was involved, only vegetables, nori and an amazing dipping sauce  that I feel in love with at the Raw Life festival in Ängsbacka. The fabulous chef that made it was Boris Lauser, the sweetest Raw Food chef that made us divine food every day. I miss you Boris!!!:-)

Almond Dipping Sauce

Here is the recipe for the Almond dipping sauce (serves 10):
Almonds 1/2 cup 
Dates 1/2 cup
Ginger 4 cm
Garlic 2 cloves
Fresh chili
Tamari 1-2tbsp (I did not have any so I just used salt)
Water 1/2 cup
Lemon 1 squeeze


Try it, it is amazing and can be used for lots of other dishes too.


Time to go to bed.
Love 
Maria

Day 9- Worried

Today I read the letter that I have received from the hospital that tells you all the basic stuff that you need to know before surgery. It doesn't say much really but it got me in a very bad mood. I felt sad and scared. I know it is not a big operation but I still think it is very scary that they are going to cut in me in such a delicate and sensitive part of my body. Well I don't really know how sensitive and delicate it is but in my head it is. I feel like surgery is the right thing to do.....but at the same time I have no idea at all. And in fact it doesn't seem like anyone does either cause everyone is saying different things. But I guess the best thing to do is to go with what feels right for me and then just pray that everything will be ok.

I didn't do so well with the sugars today. I'm sure it was my little inner child that was scared and felt like she needed some comfort, so I had 3 pieces of chocolate. I also had quite a lot of fruits but I think that also had to do with the fact that my lunch had way to little calories so I got hungry really fast after lunch. The lunch was really yummie though. We made pesto spaghetti pumpkin, with some zucchini, marinted portabella mushrooms, mung beans, avocado, pumpkin seeds, parsley and orange. The mushrooms where marinted in white miso, olive and truffel oil and sea salt.

My beautiful sister and her Raw lunch!!!

Thank you and good night!

Maria

Day 8- Kale Chips

Had a lovely sunday. Started off with some morning yoga at Elixia in Masthugget. After biking and yoga with only a very small green smoothie for breakfast I was VERY hungry when I came home to my friend Jonas that I was going to "cook" Raw lunch with. We made a very yummie cauliflower "rice" thaistyle. I'll give you the recipe for that tomorrow if you would like to try it out. 

In the afternoon I made some very yummie Raw chips from a recipe that I found on the web. Very quick, easy and super healthy compared to the chips that some of us buy in the store....

Here is Chrissy’s Goddess kale chip recipe.  You can use the use leftover dressing on most things it is really delicious. I added some fresh chili to the original recipe to spice things up a little. I do love hot stuff;-)

Ingredients:

2 head Kale, Washed and Torn
¾ cup Tahini
¼ cup Nama Shoyu or Braggs  (I sub sea salt out to avoid soy, much smaller amount to taste)
½ cup Cider Vinegar
½ cup Water
2 scallions
1 clove garlic
1 lemon (juice of)
¼ teaspoon Sea Salt
¼ cup Fresh Parsley

Preparation:

Place kale in a large mixing bowl. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth to get a thick consistency. You may have to add more water. Pour over kale and mix thoroughly with your hands to coat the kale. You want this mixture to be really glued onto the kale.

Place kale onto a Teflex sheet, on top of a mesh dehydrator screen, and dehydrate for 6 hours @ 115 degrees. You’ll need to use two trays. Rotate kale occasionally to dry uniformly.

Sweet dreams

Maria

Day 7- Going bananas

Hangover from the two glasses of wine that I had yesterday I got myself out of bed pretty early to go to the farmers market in the city. As usual I started the day with a wheatgrass shot and I tell you, that was nasty. I normally don't enjoy the taste of wheatgrass and sometimes it makes me feel a bit dizzy, so it just felt like multiplying my hangover and making it even worse (even if it actually made me feel better after 30 min or so). Some people eat pizza when they are hungover, I have a wheatgrass shot...hahahah

But in the end it was so worth getting up and biking to the farmers market in Haga. If you live in Göteborg and you have not been there I highly recommend it. Pure love!!! So many nice things and it is even cheaper then most stores, all organic and locally grown. Went totally bananas and bought so many things that it barley fitted into my 40 l backpack. I really love going to food markets. I feel at home there and it makes me happy buying wonderful nutrient fruits and greens. Sometimes I can even picture myself in some old italian movie being the italian woman that goes to the farmers market every morning wearing some beautiful dress buying lots of fruits and vegetables for my family....prorbably not being that RAW but making divine pasta dishes and tiramisu to die for.....LOL!!!

Have eaten almost only raw today but I went to help my friend rewriting his menu in his italian restaurant. There I had some pieces of wonderful italian chocolate and a caffe latte with the kind of milk that only calfs  are supposed to drink ;-) and it was really really good! Maybe not as good for my body as for my soul but what the heck, you gotta live!!!

Buona notte!

Maria

Day 6- Wine and pasta

Buona sera!!!
Today has been a great day even if I did not stick to my RAW diet. Started off really well with my yummie morning smoothie. After breakfast I biked to the city for a meeting with a good friend of mine. During the meeting I had my first fruit (a pear) during in these 6 days. Kind of disappointing really thought I would be a lot better.....beh!!!

Had a nice lunch with lots of raw greens and some quinoa. After work though things got out of hand. Went to see a friend of mine at an italian restaurant. As I walk in they tell me that the kitchen is closed which was more the fine by me cause that way I knew I would not need to feel tempted by all the delicious food that they serve there. What happens next though is that my friends comes up to me even before I got a chance to sit down and puts a divine plate with scampi and zucchini tagliatelle under my nose (they had mixed up the order and this one was left over). Wholly crap I just did not have the strength to say no to that. And wow did I enjoy it. But I have to say that the satisfaction after eating an italian dish is not as great as after eating a well balanced raw food meal. But one pasta, lots of bread and 2 glasses of wine later I'm biking home, feeling happy and tipsy, thinking that if it is ever worth cheating on the Raw diet it should be because of the italian diet. I think I will always love the italian food no matter how raw I go. After all I'm almost italiana (at least in my heart;-)

Buona notte
Maria

Day 5- Why so many people fail being RAW

Why does most people fail being RAW? I think it is because they are just as stupid as me. I went to The Raw Life Festival at Ängsbacka a month ago without having been very RAW at all. Maybe somewhere between 20-30% of my diet consisted of rawfood. Several of the people at the festival giving lectures specifically said

- Don't go home and try to bee a 100% raw if you where not on a raw diet before and don't obsess about it cause you will fail. And what do I do? I go home and after 3 weeks being mostly raw I decide to go on a 100% raw diet + taking away all sugars such as fruit, berries, honey etc. I'm sorry but that is just fucking stupid. During the last 4 days I have felt like going back to the time when I had eating disorders and could not stop thinking about food all day. So today when I woke up with my stomach totally freaked out and me feeling pissed of as soon as I walked into the kitchen I decided to stop this nonsense and start listening to my body instead. I will still try to stay away from sugars but I will enjoy my berries even if they do have some sugars. And I will add more steamed vegetables and quinoa to my diet. So what I did today was just adding some berries, some boiled quinoa and lentils. And it felt soooo GOOD it made my body very satisfied and it took many hours after lunch until I got hungry again.

Anyway here is a link to a very good video where they talk about the different reasons for why many people don't succeed being raw. 

I made almond milk this morning...yum yum. I used the milk for my morning smoothie:

Smoothie

Almond milk

Organic berries

Spinach

Mungbeans 

Flaxseeds

Cucumber

Felt really ignorant this morning when I realized what I was doing but I guess it was just one of these things that I had to do myself in order to truly understand that it doesn't work. 

Sweet dreams!!!

Maria

Day 4, Why am I doing this?

Today I have really been asking myself several times why I'm doing this RAW-vegan non diary diet and if it even is healthy. The reason for asking me these questions is that I have been constantly hungry the whole day. And when I started to calculate I realized that I get very few calories per day and that does not really work for someone like me who is biking, swinging kettlebells and is up on her feet running around when working. I think that I really can't do a 100% RAW diet while no eating any sugars because if I want to do that I will have to turn the apartment into a sprouting facility so that I have tons of sprouts to eat and juice. But I have no desire to do that so somehow I will have to figure out another way to balance my diet in order to feel satisfied and not be running around dreaming about food, I just don't have time nor the desire for being this obsessed with food. Food is very important for my health but there are other things that are just as important or more. 

Todays menu has not been vegan nor a 100% raw and still I have been really hungry:

Breakfast: Wheatgrass shot, almonds and some buckwheat with berries.

Lunch: Two fried eggs, steamed broccoli with some butter, spinach and tomatoes.

Lunch nr 2 after the gym: Big sallad with greens, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, and 3 slices of bresaola.

Snack: Some walnuts, olives and a carrot.

Dinner: Salad, one avocado, tomato sauce, mung beans, sunflower sprouts and some nuts.

I had also promised my sister to make her a RAW dessert this week so I made her a berry sorbet. 

1/2 banana 

1/4 apple

Frozen mixed organic berries
Some cardamom 

Put all of it in a blender/mix and viola....yummie sorbet without any added sugars. So delicious!!! And lots of nutrition for you beautiful body!!! My sister was very happy when she came home from work and found her little surprise.

I would love to hear about your experiences if you have ever been on a RAW-vegan no sugar diet or anything similar. And also I would love to have more yummie recipes from you my friends! 

Good night!

Maria

   

Day 3 - Crawings

Today has been a day with a LOT of cravings for sugars. And after telling my wise friend (who has tons of knowledge in nutrition) about this he told me that either I have to start sprouting as hell or eat some meat/ eggs and maybe eat some cooked food. Otherwise I will not get the all protein that I need nor the calories. Also the cravings wont go away until I change that. So tomorrow I'm going to try and add some organic eggs to my diet and see if that helps.

This was todays food menu:

Breakfast: Half cucumber, some sunflower sprouts and almonds

Lunch: Wonderful RAW mushroom soup, a recipe that I found on Johanna´s Björks blog Råfrisk. Thank you wonder woman for sharing your yummie recipes.  

Snack: small sallad and some cashews

Dinner: Big sallad 

Cheating snack: Some frozen berries, while writing the blog:-)

Here is Johanna´s recipe!!!

 Picture borrowed from Johanna Björk

Creamy Raw Mushroom Soup

Two Portabello Mushrooms

About 10 Crimini Mushrooms

1 tbsp or 1 bag Miso Powder

3 tbsp Sesame Seeds

Olive Oil

Truffle Oil (it’s not raw, but some cheating is allowed)

Nama Shoyu

Salt

Pepper

Rinse and cut the mushrooms into smaller pieces and blend with a few glugs of olive oil and some water if needed. Add the miso powder, Nama Shoyu, sesame seeds, salt and pepper and blend again. Then add truffle oil to taste (if you want to be 100% raw, skip it). If you want you can also try to add a clove of garlic, but I like to give the mushrooms as much tasting room as possible. Serve with some fresh thyme on top.

A domani!

Maria

Day 2

Started off this day with probiotics and a fresh shot of wheatgrass. I'm not going to lie and say that it tastes great and makes me feel great. In fact I really don't like the taste and it actually made me feel noxious. But I'm convinced that it is doing great things for my body so I will keep on making and drinking it. But I can't live only on a wheatgrass shot especially not since I was going to the gym afterwards so I needed some breakfast. I did not have any idea about what to have since I can't really have any of the things that I'm use to having. I LOVE fruits and usually I have smoothies with greens and fruit to make it sweet and yummie. But I really did not feel like having a green smoothie or green juice without the fruit so I went for a salad instead. When my sister got out of bed and saw me having  the salad she said...-But are you having lunch already...hahaha. Then she went to the fridge and looked at all my greens in there and said...you poor thing. Pretty funny since most people stuff themselves with foods that has no energy what so ever. If she should feel sorry for someone it should be for them the way I see it. But I guess it just shows how obsessed we are with food having to be a pleasure more then really nurturing to our bodies. I know that it can be both but if I had to choose one of the two I would rather have my food being nurturing then a pleasure for me.

The salad was made of the things you can see in the picture plus flaxseed oil, hempseed oil and some fresh lemon juice. (and yes the mushrooms are not RAW)

After a though workout in the gym with my sister we made a kind of salad taco thing. Very yummie and fulfilling. Then I went to work at my friends italian restaurant. OMG the whole place is a huge temptation for a person that loves italian food and has just quit sugars, wheat and diary products!!! Tiramisu, pannacotta, cheese, lasagnas to die for, chocolate....yes the list could be very long . But I manage pretty well, the only thing that ended up in my stomach was a little bit of tiramisu cream that accidentally slipped on too my finger;-)

For dinner me and my sister had zucchini pesto spaghetti with cherry tomatoes, avocado, pumpkin seeds, olives and sunflover sprouts. The pesto was made with olive oil, lemon, garlic and basil (all mixed together). It was so delicious and what made me very happy is that my sister really loved it and she has enjoyed all of the raw food that I have made for her so far. And she says that the food gives her more energy and makes her feel better too. Hurray for RAW food. I'm in love!!!!

Sweet dreams my friends see you tomorrow:-)

Love

Maria

Day 1!

Today at lunchtime I decided to quit sugars for the next 4 weeks. The reason for doing so is that I was diagnosed with cervix cancer stage 2 a couple of weeks ago and many of the alternative medicine experts out there seems to agree on that quitting sugars together with a well balanced raw food diet and the right supplements will make the healing process much more powerful. And some of them specifically talks about how efficient it can be to quit sugars if you want to heal from cancer.  I'm reading and learning all that I can about my new diet and about how to heal. But I know that there are many of you out there that knows a lot more than me about those things so I thought that by writing about my process on a blog, I might get a lot of input from YOU. So please if you have any experiences, recipes or anything else that you want to share with me please do so. 

The first day has been pretty good. I left Copenhagen at noon after spending a wonderful week there with some fantastic new danish friends. I had my last doze of sugar for breakfast. Strawberries, blueberries and cashew-cream...yum:-) On the bus I had a smoothie and now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that it had some sugar. My friend Sören made it for me so I'm not quite sure what he put in it but the taste was a little sweet.

After landing on Swedish ground I went to my new favorite place in town, the Lasagneria. All the lasagnas that they make there are SOOOO good but they are hardly raw and contains both wheat and sugars. So I just had to go with a RAW salad that included, tomatoes,  ruccola, lettuce, walnuts, red union, olives and a little bit of parmegiano cheese. Very good and almost raw;-)

Later today I went grocery shopping. At first I was thinking...what the hell can I buy now that I don't eat diary products, no sugars and RAW. But there was a lot of yummie things that ended up in my basket as you can see in the picture. Since I had late lunch  I had a small dinner that consisted of one cucumber, some celery, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. I also made a wheatgrass shot that I has been gurgling while writing this blogpost. The sweet guy that I bought the wheatgrass from in Denmark told me that gurgling helps the body to benefit from all the goodies that wheatgrass has to offer. So I gurgle ever day:-)

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to drop a comment:-)

Namaste

Maria