On Thursday morning, I decided that, with a long weekend coming up, it was a good opportunity for me to do a three-day raw detox. My husband was starting a full-fledged juice-fast at the same time, so I’d just have to make something for the kids to eat while coming up with delicious raw-detox meals for me. My motivation came from a) the presence in our house of Natalia Rose’s The Raw Food Detox Diet, which I’d been reading with great enthusiasm the past week or so, b) a desire to get off the weight-loss plateau I’d found myself on the past month, and c) an interest in taking the next step towards raw-ness.
Day 1
So, I started the morning off by making a blender full of watermelon smoothie. It was yummy, and fairly filling, and kept me going most of the day (with no feeling of deprivation – which is good, because I’m not a big fan of deprivation!), til it was time to figure out what to make for supper. I settled on a raw cabbage salad recommended in The Raw Food Detox Diet – maybe it’s because I’d only had smoothie all day, but it tasted fantastic!
Day 2
I decided to go with fresh fruit/veggie juice instead of smoothies the second day. My husband and I made a big pitcher of apple/carrot/celery/beet/ginger/parsley juice, which I had a glass of every so often through the day. It quickly became clear that it was a lot more pleasant to go through the day on smoothies than on juice. But I survived, knowing that I would be having a delicious bowl of raw gazpacho (also recommended in The Raw Food Detox Diet) for supper. The soup was wonderful!
Day 3
Back to watermelon smoothies for day three (and, in fact, every day since then! I’m really enjoying these smoothies!). And a different Raw Detox Diet salad for supper. Knowing that I would be eating ‘real’ food the next day made it easy to make it through the day.
Day 4
Wanting to take advantage of having done the three day detox, I decided to finish it off with a Salt Water Flush (from The Master Cleanse). According to the instructions, it should take about an hour from beginning to end. In fact, it was fairly uncomfortable for a while, and then it seemed like nothing was going to happen, and then the ‘flushing’ began in earnest. And finally finished after no less than four hours (!). I definitely felt cleaned out by the end of it, but I’d recommend that anyone considering it get started when they’ll be around home for the foreseeable future.
That done, I had a glass of apple/watermelon juice and baked a bunch of juice-pulp muffins (this time I put in raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries, and dried blueberries, and used 2 cups of buckwheat in the recipe, instead of bulgur wheat – oh my goodness they were delicious!). For supper I had steamed broccoli with a bit of quinoa pilaf and curried chickpeas. Delicious… but a great deal heavier than I had been eating. Which is probably the reason that, when I went to bed that evening, it felt like fireworks were exploding in my intestines.
What I learned from that? The transition back to ‘real’ food should be a little more gradual.
Days 5, 6, and 7
Since I had been happy with the light feeling that went with raw-detox eating, I chose to go raw during the day (watermelon smoothies in the morning, salads for lunch), and then eat something a little more solid for supper. Raw veggies with hummus and black bean dip were wonderful the first evening – as was the raw chocolate pudding (based on a Raw Food Detox Diet recipe – yumm!). The second evening I had a green salad and some quinoa and chickpeas (leftovers – almost gone now), and a bit of dark chocolate with almonds. And tonight my son made home-made pizzas.
Conclusion
One thing I noticed during the three raw-detox days was my mood – I was ok, but definitely not quite as happy as I normally am. Also not as able to focus – I could get things done, but it took more effort to get started on anything. On the plus side, I lost over 4 pounds, most of which is still off, and a few inches. And I found that it was really quite easy to go raw during the day, so I’m going to stick with that. I’ll just aim for healthy meals at supper that will be a mix of raw and cooked, for the time being, at least. So, as a step in my gradual transition to raw, I consider this three days well-spent. Also a lot less extreme than a juice fast, or The Master Cleanse. I was largely able to go about my normal routine during it, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had been starving myself. In fact, I’m planning to do it again, for five days, later this month.
And, my husband and I have both decided that there are a lot of wonderful things you can do with a dehydrator that would make raw a lot more pleasant (and cheaper than buying them in the store!), so we ordered our shiny new Excalibur dehydrator this afternoon!
Upaya Naturals has a sale on their Excalibur brand dehydrators right now, AND has free shipping in Canada (for orders over $100) til the end of 2015 at the moment. So it’s a great time to order your dehydrator and start making delicious raw breads and crackers and stew and chili and pizza and apple pie and …
Hi, all,
Our Excalibur dehydrator arrived a few days ago. It came with a book full of dehydrator recipes, some of which look really delicious. I figured I’d start out with some juicer-pulp crackers, though, since I really did want to have some of those in the house, ready for those before-dinner munchies. First batch worked out pretty well, but I think I’ll fine-tune the recipe a little before I post it here.