spring rawing!

Hi everybody! I’ve been lurking on the forums for a while, this community is one of my prime raw resources when I’m looking for information or recipes and it’s served me very well thus far. I tend to stay away from net forums for fear of spending too much time on the net, but I keep being drawn back here!:)

I turned 24 not too long ago and I think this temporal junction beholds a state of transformation, of evalutation and contemplation of one’s purpose. At least, from what I can tell from myself and the friends of mine who have recently or are about to traverse the 23/24 cusp. I have been vegan for about 6 years, vegetarian for longer, and although my initial reasons for making these lifestyle changes were ethical in nature, out of concern for the animals involved, veganism opened me up to a whole new palette of foods. While vegetarian I ate a lot of packaged processed nonsense and replaced meat with dairy. When I made the choice to go vegan I had to take matters into my own hands, and I suddenly became much more conscious of what was going into my body. Foods I never much enjoyed suddenly became favourites, and I became quite the vegan cook. This sort of consciousness inspired in me a strong interest in healthy eating. However, raw food, lacking the animal welfare component that had inspired my switch to a plant-based diet, seemed like a distant paradigm, one that originally seemed more over-the-top than necessary.

I have done a particular herbal cleanse a couple of times in my life, once three years ago and again in September. This cleanse involved taking a set of herbal teas and tinctures during three initial days of fruit fasting, two weeks of majority raw foods, and another week of controlled, healthy eating with a good portion raw. Both times I noticed more balanced energy, but the second time around I took the cleanse further and ate high raw for three weeks, avoiding wheat, soy, sugar, anything processed, caffeine, chocolate, drugs and I felt awesome. The depression and lack of motivation I had been struggling with all year lifted. After the cleanse I was eating really well and still some percentage raw for a while, but then school got the better of me and my eating habits got a lot worse, relying on whatever happened to be vegan in the cafeteria, coffee, etc. Then there were the holidays, with excessive amounts of carbs and chocolate and sweets. The depression returned.

But having experienced the potential healing power of a raw diet, I began to read on the internet about the raw lifestyle. During an intense period of inner transformation that began around my birthday in January, I began an every day yoga practice and began getting more and more into raw foods. For the last couple of months, I have been reading as much as I can about raw, getting inspired. I’ve got a few raw books and I’ve been preparing more and more raw recipes. Some days I’ll be eating close to fully raw, while others I eat primarily cooked, but for the most part it’s about 50/50. The regular yoga practice and the emphasis on healthy, raw eating has dissolved my depression and anxiety to quite an extent. Physiologically, my body really wants me to feed it living food… when I do eat heavy cooked foods I feel slower and more lethargic, and when I eat raw I feel an unbelievable sense of well-being.

Still, temptation abounds, and raw has been a lot more difficult for me than going vegetarian or vegan ever were. Partially because of my affinity for tofu, soy milk, bread and yummy vegan baked goods! I’ve been easing myself into it, but I think it’s time to take the plunge, so to speak. So, staring April 1st I’m going to do a full month of ninety-something percent raw, leaving room for herbal tea and some ‘controversial’ raw ingredients (I keep hearing different things about the true ‘rawness’ of agave, nutritional yeast, maple syrup, almonds, dried herbs, etc, but I don’t believe flavouring quantities of these things will necessarily have a detrimental effect for me personally and they certainly help ease the transition!). I think it’s more than likely that I’m going to feel amazing and then just continue with it, but a month is a good commitment to make for getting started, and long enough to dissolve some of the immediate cravings for certain foods and get a feel for the qualitative change in physiology/consciousness that accompanies the living foods lifestyle.

I’m excited. I may do a cleanse as part of this month, I haven’t decided yet. Anyways, I’ve rambled for long enough, and if you got down to here I thank you for reading my mental meanderings. I’m so inspired by all of you and your dedication to your own health and the health of the planet.

I’ll try to remember to update here if anyone’s interested on hearing how the month goes. And hey, if you’re a part-time rawie like me and you also feel inspired to try an April raw challenge, please do let me know! There’s nothing like some solidarity in such an experience :D

Lots of love and synchronicity, Aurora