Wednesday 22 May 2013

Why mostly raw?

Simple.  It's working for me, and I feel amazing.  Week and half in, and a sneak peak at the scales tells me I've lost over 14lbs now  and oh, how nice it is to potter without needing to constantly sit down because the pain in my back is doubling me over.  How lovely not to be nearly crying in pain as my left knee crumbles under my weight yet again - the joint becoming ever more sore, my right knee aching from taking the extra pressure of me hobbling.

How lovely to swim with my son, go on, albeit a short, bike ride.  Wonderful to sleep properly at night and wake up feeling rested.  Lovely to feel energy and once again have it affirmed that a lot of the lethargy that dogged me was food related.  For sure, the weight I carry does not help, effectively, I am giving a constant piggy back to two full grown women... and I was constantly telling myself I'd do this and that when I'd lost a bit of weight and felt better....

Well 3 days into juicing and raw eating and I felt better...  I'm doing things I thought I'd need to loose a fair bit of weight before I'd be able to.

I'm also enjoying creating new recipes for Rye and myself.  Tonight we ate mostly raw chilli.  This is what I did - and wow it was tasty.

Rice:  1 finely chopped (processed) cauliflower & 1/2 spanish onion, finely chopped.

Raw veggies of choice cut up into bite sized pieces.

Dressing:  
4 ripe tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
3 spring onions
large handful of cashew nuts
tbsp of creamed coconut.
1tsp of chilli powder
1tsp of cumin powder
1tsp of ginger
1tsp of corriander powder
1.5 tsp of paprika
1/2 cup of water
1 roasted pepper (Jarred, add some of the jar juice too)

Mix raw veggies with the "rice" and blitz the dressing ingredients in the blender or processor, until the cashews are well processed.  Pour dressing on top of veggies and rice, mix through thoroughly, and leave to marinate for at least half an hour.    

To serve, chop up an avocado and pop on top of the chilli, with sliced lettuce, and a dollop of yoghurt, or cashew cream, and nom.  I also lightly steamed 2 mini corn on cobs too.

Oh, yeah, I added some of my marinated mushrooms too, as a kind of side dish.  Gosh this was tasty - the dressing with cashew nuts had a real hint of chilli mince flavour, it was really delicious.  

A typical day is beginning to look like this:

Late breakfast:  
A green juice, and an avocado, or I blend the avocado into the juice and have a smoothie.  
Rye tends to make his own fruit, sweet juice and then have a small glass of my green juice.

Lunch/afternoon snack:
 I normally make fruit "ice cream" in my vitamix - but to do so, one needs to add some liquid... well my masticating juicer is able to deal with frozen fruit, so for the first time I decided to use it to make ice cream.
Frozen banana mixed with frozen raspberry.  Delicious.  Rye also had a chocolate fudge chopped up and added to his ice cream.  (the fudge is the old pinterest recipe of a can of condensed milk, 2-3 100g bars of dark chocolate and butter, microwaved for 3 mins - except I simply melted it in the Kenwood chef, used most of it as a frosting for birthday muffins, and what was left over I popped in mini muffin silicon cases and froze.. I confess to trying one, and gosh, very fudgy, freezing really improves the fudgy texture)

And then tea is a high raw veg meal, perhaps the chilli above, or courgette noodles, with a tasty dressing or sauce, I've also had a nut pate and crudites.   I have to say the noodle salad below is one of my favourite meals, and I've had it LOT these past few weeks.  I do sometimes add a cooked component, perhaps some roast chicken, or prawns, one evening we had vegetable omelet with raw veggies accompaniment.
There's lots of other flavours, and recipes I'm looking forward to trying and so far Rye has enjoyed the raw meals too, tho his meal was a little different to mine tonight, as I wasn't sure he'd like the chilli:
This was his tea:  some of the chilli with yoghurt on top, cucumber sticks, 2 corn on the cobs, and some grapes and a buttered seeded roll.  And for supper he's had a veg chocolate muffin (i.e. normal chocolate muffin with the pulp from juicing added to the mixture).  The real joy here, is that Rye is mostly eating what I eat, no need for a separate meal - sure he has other things I'm choosing not to eat at the moment, bread, potatoes, cheese, chocolate...in the main, he is eating what I eat and it is just making it so much easier to changing my eating habits - plus of course he is also eating a super healthy diet.

This is how I choose to nourish myself going forward, I'm not claiming to be vegan, vegetarian, raw foodist etc, I simply acknowledge that for myself personally, I am feeling bloody amazing eating a diet that is predominantly raw - and the happy side effect is weight loss.

Its probably taken me a year to get to this point, mind, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the the rest of this year takes me :-)

Btw, quite a few people have been asking about my spiraliser; I have this one:


3 comments:

forties@heart said...

Oh good for you, well done. I have started juicing, but still pick at other foods that I am cooking for the family, so aren't really feeling any benefits yet.

nocton4 said...

Go mama x

Fiona said...

Well done Jacqui, on both the weight loss and the healthy eating.
Where do you get your recipe ideas? Are you following a plan of some sort, or just scouring the Internet for stuff that appeals?
I loved all the foodie pics :-)