Week 3 – Raw Vegan Challenge

 

This weeks post I’m going to get very personal, which is something I am extremely nervous about. When it comes to my personal life I’ve always been quit private, only sharing with a few people, people I felt really comfortable with, people that made me feel safe. This is something that the internet will never offer, but I do want to be genuine and honest! I’m a real human being with real life problems, and I promised I wasn’t going to sugar coat it. 

If you haven’t read my previous posts you can click here for week 1 and here week 2. Also, this week I wont be sharing daily journals, because at this point I have created a daily routine of eating which is almost the same every single day. I will be sharing my daily routine to give you an idea of what I eat in a day. 

 

 

Daily routine:

I always start my day with half a liter to a liter of water to hydrate and awaken my body. After drinking the water I chill a bit, (depending on the time I’ve got left) do some yoga and freshen up. My first breakfast is a smoothie bowl or when I’m in a hurry a couple of bananas and a date bar. Then in between meals I’ll have some snacks like date bars, raw chocolate, dates, fresh or frozen fruits and other raw treats. Dinner is always the same, I always eat a big salad and sometimes some frozen fruits or raw treat as dessert. During the day I drink at least two liters of water, I have to add that when it’s summer and a bit warmer most of the days I end up drinking three liters.

 

 

Time to get personal

So I guess its time for me to spill the beans and share a reoccurring struggle I’ve faced this past week, well actually yesterday. Starting this “cleanse” I decided not to drink alcohol during the entire month, because let be real, wine isn’t very cleansing to the body. This cleanse started the day after my birthday, so the first day I had a huge hangover! This made it easy for me think “I will never drink again”, but come on, the moment I forget the agony of the hangover, is the moment I forgot all about that. But since this cleanse was a raw food diet I would never eat or drink anything that isn’t raw, because I’m kind of an perfectionist and I really want to see this through without “cheating” and binging on cooked foods.

Note: All the alcohol I drink is indeed vegan.

The moment I found out wine is technically a raw food is the moment my struggle started. Every weekend, or whenever my stress or emotions were in a peak I felt like having a few drinks and already started planning the first weekend after my cleanse. Yesterday my cravings were very intense, so I decided not to give in and not to drink, but I did ask some close people for some advise in this matter. And I came to the conclusion that its about time for me to learn how to have balance and control, because even though its a struggle, I can abstain from alcohol, but most of the time I end up drinking way over my limit plus I used to drink to escape my problems, emotions and stress (which never really works anyways). Although this is probably an excuse I told myself to have a drink, I did choose to have two glasses of wine and not a single drop more to learn how to control myself and I guess I succeeded, yesterday I had 1 and a half glass and not a single drop more. 

Although I am a bit embarrassed and disappointed I drank wine during what was supposed to be a “cleanse”, I am proud that I didn’t lose control causing me to end up drinking way over my limit. Today I am going to a sweaty Bikram Yoga class and hopefully this will help me “cleanse” my system once more. I am confident that when I’ll have my next dinner party I can stick with just a few glasses of wine and maybe one day even quit drinking all together, but for now balance is already a big achievement. So i guess there is a silver lining to all of this. This is me, not perfect, just human. 

Ever since going vegan I’ve struggled with attaining this image of “perfection” when it comes to health and lifestyle, knowing there is no such thing as perfection. So I’m not gonna fool anyone and pretend to life a perfect life over social media, no I’m actually gonna share my struggles with all of you. Its very hard for me to share all of this, but you know what, if I’m gonna share my journey, I’m gonna share not only the beautiful but also show the ugly, because we’re all just humans and non of us are perfect. Maybe I’ll be sharing more on this subject in another post in the future. 

 

 

Observations:

• I don’t want to jinx myself but I actually think that my eczema is going away, the past few weeks my skin hasn’t broken once. Hopefully next month my eczema will be totally gone and if not I’ll be looking into other holistic methods of removing it. 
• This brings me to another skin related point. Some people have noticed my skin clearing up and starting to look very healthy. Ive never dealt with acne but whenever I used to drink alcohol or lots of junky and oily food my skin started to become a bit more bumpy. 
• Although I haven’t lost that much weight (still some kilos), I do notice that my body is starting to tone a little bit more. I know that this process would go a lot faster if I wouldn’t be indulging with all those raw vegan nut based treats, but at least I’m becoming more mindful of this!
• It’s still a bit of a struggle to eat proper meals when I’m outside of the house, but Its a bit less hard then it was during the first two weeks of this challenge.

 

 

Conclusion:

One of the major things I’ve learned during these three weeks of being raw vegan is that my bond with food goes way deeper than I sometimes realise. Besides being an emotional eater, I also eat when I’m feeling bored and that can sometimes be a problem. Being raw for already almost a month did change my eating habits in the sense of me becoming more mindful of what I’m eating. Its also no longer a struggle, even though dinner is still nothing other then salads, I’m actually cool with that at this point. 

After this month of eating raw I’m sure that my salad and smoothie game will be strong! And you know what, I actually don’t think that I’ll go binging on cooked foods when this challenge is over. Maybe this month has been more about learning to have balance and becoming mindful then actually cleansing to be honest. No matter what, I’m happy decided to do this.

I know that I’ve been slow with bringing out recipes, but I promise that from this point forward I’ll make a little more effort working on them, I’ve just been very occupied past few weeks. But starting tomorrow be sure to check in for more raw food recipes.

Bless,

A.J