Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Peanut Butter & Jelly

It's quite amazing how the Universe works. I was feeling kind of down about my blog yesterday. After I posted the blog, I felt people may interpret where I was coming from in a way that wasn't intended. I was kind of losing the drive to go on AND... The next day I got a mass of unexpected emails from what seemed to be people reading my mind and responding. I now see where Angela gets her drive to continue like this and I am BACK BABY!

Look what Jerry wrote, WOW!:

[He almost died after being convinced by a friend to do 16oz of food.]

i almost died just reading about it ! !

thx for the blog -- good idea : when a book or a speech is over, it is over -- but having the chance to follow "a real" raw-ster gives an apt dimension -- it makes a nice rhyme with what we already have experiences and read you about and provides answers in our new territory to questions we haven't even thought to ask

a good sort of concordance through the days -- it's nice of you to put some yourself in the blogs by telling your own thoughts

i hope you keep it simple enough that it doesn't become a burden or a repetitive drain -- to me, it will be nice to hear from you on the blog and nice to know that it's not bogging you down doing it

keep good

Thanks so much Jerry! You have taken all burden off of my shoulders.

January 28th I ate:

11 AM Green Vegetable Juice
(It was soooooo nice to drink green juice again!)
1:30 PM - Meal 1:
1/4 avocado
3 tablespoons of Tahini
2 teaspoons of cut up green onions
1 handful of Mung Bean Sprouts
1.5 ounce of alfalfa sprouts
2 handfuls of cut up small tomatoes
**all the above mushed with a fork in a bowl
Romaine lettuce leaves to wrap the above in and EAT
(Oh, it felt soooo good to eat my staple once again!)
4:30 PM
Green Vegetable Juice
5:30 PM Meal 2:
2 green sapote
8:00 PM
Watermelon

Selene wrote:

Could you please list the ingredients in your favorite Green juice (the one you believe to be the most beneficial and hopefully delicious) and also the ingredients of "Tahini" for those of us who don't know exactly what this is (the stuff you mash with a fork along with your other ingredients listed). Do you suggest we make it ourselves or buy it, or both.

I believe the most nourishing green drink is Carrot Spinach juice. It is great to strenghten parastalsis and for the entire digestive tract as a whole Many of you know that I am into Dr. Norman Walker's work. Carrot Spinach juice is the number one juice he drank the most. When I am at home, I get the best spinach and carrots from the California Farmer's Market. I literally drank that carrot spinach juice every day for years as my first veggie juice of the day... and when I am back in the states, I am going to drink it everyday again. My favorite tasting juice is to make the base carrot and romaine lettuce. As crazy as it sounds, it tastes like chocolate milk. Do an entire head of romaine lettuce with SWEET carrots and add a bit of spinach to make it creamy. You can even add a stalk of celery to give it a salty taste and a really SMALL BIT of fennel to give it a chocolate twist.

Dr. Norman Walker's book, Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices has a mass of the vegetable juice combinations he says is the most nourishing to the body. I choose many of my combinations based off that book. All his books actually reference to these juices and of course colon cleansing. Become Younger, by Dr. Norman Walker is the book that got me to jump into a 100% Raw Food Diet overnight.

As for the tahini, I just buy an organic source in a bottle from the local health food store. More power to you if you can make it yourself. We carry Artisana’s Tahini which is excellent. I use that when I am in the US.

My Tahini desire is brand new. It reminds me of Peanut Butter & Jelly from my past. When I was growing up all I ate was PB & J. I was repulsed by meat. My family always tried to get me to eat it as a young kid but I wouldn't so my mom would put HEAPS of Peanut Butter on my sandwich to make sure that I got enough protein. I wasn't on a special diet or anything, I just couldn't stand it. Then highschool came around. I was hitting puberty late. When I look back on it, I think that everyone was just hitting puberty early. I feel that it was the food they were eating which includes hormones from meat that accelerated their puberty. I went to the hospital to see if something was wrong with me and they offered me some sort of cow's hormone to speed up my puberty. Thankfully, my mom and I rejected the treatment and we just waited it out. We later found out that people that took these hormones were running into problems and that some were even dying. In high school I started introducing "Subway Sandwiches" into my diet. Then I went to college. Now I really wanted to fit in so I ended up working out massively at least 3 days a week... and... I was eating anywhere between 2 – 6 Double Double Hamburgers from In-N-Out Burger a day. Now I am 100% Raw with some slight injuries that will come and go for the rest of my life due to lifting heavy weights like that. This little skinny body of mine was benching over 300 pounds! It’s so crazy what we do to ourselves.

We just got to NZ and my body is begging for a break from Air Planes.

Today, January 29th I ate:

11 AM - Meal 1:
1/4 avocado
3 tablespoons of Tahini
3 sprigs of parsley
1 handful of Mung Bean Sprouts
1 handful of alfalfa sprouts
1/2 cucumber diced without the skin
**all the above mushed with a fork in a bowl
Green outside part of the cucumbers to dip the above in and EAT
4:30 PM Meal 2:
1 pound of cherries
6:30 PM Meal 3:
3 tablespoons of chia seeds soaked in water
1 handful of goji berries
1 small handful of dried mulberries
1 – 2 Tablespoons of Tahini

Anonymous wrote:

isnt that extreme. like your taking the joy out of raw food by eating strict amounts of food. no longer is it about quality, your questioning the quantity of your food. sounds anorexic to me. Have you heard of orthorexia. its when the obsession with eating cleaner and cleaner takes over. you plan your meals and get upset when you 'slip up'. matt i think your great but your taking it too far. you call it 'inspiration' to get back on track. but things like 12oz. meal once a day..thats getting crazy! it sounds like anorexia to me. enjoy raw food..graze. by limiting yourself and planning ur meal sizes ur setting yourself up for a binge. thats an eating disorder my friend. i think you need to sit back and observe ur obsession. i care for you. Angela dosent go that far/ she just enjoys her food...without strict habits. Raw food is going too far nowaday. its sounding like an eating disorder rather than a happy lifestyle. I was anorexic before and I had the same habits. Isnt life about no boundaries than restrictions. Ask yourself, are you more free and happy? I would think not. Just think about it okay.

Thank you for your comment, your concern, and for sharing your viewpoint. From my perspective, for where I am at, two Raw Food Meals a day like this is not a restriction but feels more than adequate. I am stabilized out at a different diet than most. Eating any more than these typical amounts leaves me sluggish and I generally have no desire to eat more than that. I don’t feel any sense of limitation in my being and I am grateful for that. Additionally, I am happy to say that there isn’t any remorse from eating figs on that day. It was my intention to share this experience in a fun and animated way, through this blog.
Yes, I am aware of the condition known as Orthorexia. I don’t consider myself to be experiencing Anorexia or Orthorexia. However, there does seem to be an occasional OVEReating disorder that I am currently examining and that is where you are my inspiration. I will say, dipping those wet honey syrupy figs in tahini brought me back to that PB & J Sandwich as a kid. The fig filling tasted just like the jelly and the tahini like the Peanut butter. YUM!!!

In the next Post I will respond to Elaine. I love you much too Elaine!

Elaine wrote:

Not too long ago, you mentioned about giving up all salt. The attached email is from
Dr. Robert O. Young, who has been educating me about the function of acid/alkaline
as it relates to health and disease. Dr. Young is very strong in his belief/knowledge
about salt. He believes that the non use of salt is a huge miss in the health system.
I am just trying to find the truth about this issue. I am using Dr. Young's product of
ph-salts, and measuring for the resulting ph of the urine.
It seems that my raw eating habits, about 90%, is helped by using the salts Dr. Young
recommends to stay alkaline. Would you please think about this information, and maybe even consult with Dr. Fred Bisci and Dr. Young and post something either to
your blog or to me personally. Love you much.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Matt,

Thank you for taking the time to share your life with me. I have been following Angela's blog for the last two months and was excited to see that you had set up one yourself.

I am curious to know how active your lifestyle is. For the most part I work and live in the backcountry, carrying heavy backpacks and hiking many miles through tough terrain. Essentially exerting a lot of energy. Since I have been raw I have been injured and not backpacking. I am wondering what a raw life style would be like on a raw diet and wanted to know if you had any recommendations for foods. Lighter is better I suppose. Also I am curious as to what your activity levels are like. This is all new to me so I am trying to absorb as much info as possible and you and Angela have been very helpful. Thanks so much! Happy Thursday.

Kelly:)

Anonymous said...

Hi Matt,Thanks a lot for what you do. I recently discovered your work and was amazed how young you were to exhibit such wisdom. I discovered live foods in 1990 and it has changed my life. I have learned the hard way thru personal experimentation and am happy to find confirmation in your writings. Sharing your daily thoughts and meals with us is soooo precious, don't let anyone discourage you with remarks about anorexia. Many hygienists believe that examing our stools is a good way to monitor our health. What do you think about that. Would it be too gross for you to share that part of your experience?

All my peaceful thoughts,
Wangamaud

RAW FOOD R&R: Rations & Rational said...

Regarding the comment from anonymous which begins:
"isnt that extreme.... sounds anorexic to me."
Like you have become Matt, I too thrive on 2 small meals very far apart or sometimes only one big salad and some Tocos/Hemp powder in water at 6 after running the steep Hollywood hills for 1 1/2 hrs!
BECAUSE...I am a slow oxidizer. The food takes forever to digest even though it's all raw greens and avo or coconut butter or seaweeds.
I also make nutrient dense choices that go a long way.
I used to be programmed to eat a lot to get the variety in the standard diet. I was aging myself by stuffing too much into those poor cells and my system was totally out of whack.
Now my body functions well on a monk's worth of food and like you I exercise with vigor 4-5 days a week.
You do not present yourself as anorexic to me. You seem like one of the most well-informed intelligent young educators out there!
CHOW! (ciao!)

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