greetings,

i'm porter. musician, raw foodist...

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

attachment

i have come to realize that what is more important than being "raw" is being unattached to what you eat. eating midfulling and consciously. eating to nourish your body, not to appease your mind.

at each step of the way, it seems i give up one attachment--say, to pasta--only to pick up another one--say, to raw seed cheese & kale. i notice that the new attachment is never quite as strong though, which makes me think that i must be doing this to slowly ween myself off of attachment.

i decided to challenge myself to eat very simply this month, eating mostly "one food indulgences" (aka mono-meals) and virtually no concentrated plant fat. i am feeling only slightly better than before. i notice that i have a little more energy in physical activities. other than that, i'm feeling pretty much the same. but, mentally, i am feeling very differently.

some days eating simply seems natural and delicious. all i want by the end of the day is a big green salad with a squeeze of orange juice and some tomatoes. but some days i do the mind thing:

-"why am i depriving myself of healthy fat?"
-"what harm would one avocado do?"


and it's interesting, because it's not as if avocados are going extinct and i am sworn off them for life. i am only doing this for A MONTH! but what is at play when i cannot separate my mental conceptions of food from my body's needs*?

anyway, i realized that this whole exercise of simplification and (almost) an imposed scarcity, is forcing me to reevalute the emotional importance i place on food.

it is something that runs so deep we seldom think to question it.
-but, what would you be without the food you ate?
-how would you define yourself without the foods you "love," the foods you "hate,"?
-how would you define the cultures you've experienced without describing how they cook and prepare their foods, the flavors, the spices, the presentation?
-how would you center social activities if not around meals, restaurants, and bars?


though we are becoming increasingly conscious of (and in some cases horrified by) the materialistic and superficial nature of western culture, have we considered how the role of food in our daily lives contributes to that same culture? is food another way in which we constrain our awareness, limiting ourselves to the mere physical manifestations of reality?

it has taken the removal of something i thought i "was," to realize how little of me there is in ANYTHING i do, or eat for that matter.

it seems i am in a constant state of disorientation because of the changes in the my diet that i feel i NEED to make, because on this raw "diet" my body's needs just keep changing as my body becomes cleaner. i am forever stripping myself of certain "staples," replacing them with others, which are temporary too.

no structures are stable. this is a basic fact. and i think this raw path is preparing me for the deeper understanding of that truth.





*a note on fat needs: i know that i am getting enough dietary fat, because fat exists in almost all plant life. i couldn't believe it when i was taking daily accounts of my food intake for a couple of days, finding the fat percentage go up steadily, even though i hadn't eaten any "fat." but this is so obvious if you pay attention to nature. that is why it is possible for herbivores to be perfectly healthy and grow to huge proportions on greens alone. if you ate greens all day you would be eating PLENTY of fat. but if i ate greens all day till i met my fill i probably wouldn't have time to do anything else! let's not go there...

Thursday, June 5, 2008

3rd day 80/10/10 (or so)

yesterday's menu:

another entire watermelon
2 oranges
1 grapefruit
a few tomatoes
4 bananas
1 huge dinner salad: lettuce, kale, spinach, cukes, zucchini, yellow pepper with lemon and orange juice as dressing
1 small avocado

i got 101% of my needed calories according to this calorie-counter gadget i used. i was stunned because, i really felt satiated and that's because i ate almost exactly what i needed. interesting...

i realize the one thing that i have really gained from this whole "raw experience" is my lack of attachment to food. i mean, the fact that i could be fine with just eating watermelon is a pretty far leap from where i was 2 years ago, even last year...

i think it's important to give up attachments. it challenges us on a very deep level. it diminishes the importance of our mind. it grows the confidence that we have intuitive knowledge of our true self.

yes, all that depth from a watermelon. ;)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Fruit, Watermelon



i have had this theory about fruit. natalia rose wrote in "raw food life force energy" that some people weren't clean enough for fruit. i didn't really understand it at the time, beyond the basic idea that fruit is cleansing and you should save the deepest for last.

there are so many opinions in the raw food community about fruit. gabriel cousens believes certain sweet fruits (mangos, pineapples, dates etc.) are best left out of the raw diet COMPLETELY as they cause fungus around the cells. doug graham thinks you should eat mostly fruit, and not very much fat. the man who wrote "the pH miracle" thinks you should eat all the fat you want and leave out ALL fruit (except lemons, grapefruit, and pseudo-fruits like tomatoes, etc.).

do you sense a pattern here?

i did.

it occurred to me that each of these individuals are RIGHT. but for different stages.

the pH miracle is focused on a particular audience of VERY unhealthy individuals. for them, they are transitioning from a highly toxic diet. it would be out of the question to look to fruit. all the cells would simply clean out too fast and could even cause harm. switching to "something better" like raw fats, is a step up, without being too drastic.

gabriel cousens sets his heights a little higher. most of his research was done on individuals who were already raw to begin with. they were "anything as long as its raw" diets, which include dates, lots of fats, poor food combinations, dehydrated foods, etc. for them, an intermediate diet of less fruit. it's interesting (and predictable) that cousens decided all melons caused acidity. they are the fruits highest in water and digest almost immediately after consumption.

from what i learned about cells, gas, and fermentation, it is logical that someone eating a cleanER, but not completely pure, diet would want to stay away from extreme cleansing until they had looked at the integrity of their entire diet a little closer. eliminating dehydrated foods first, for example. not going straight to the most extreme: FRUIT.

then, comes doug graham. he is interested in ATHLETES. what do they have in common? they burn a lot of calories and they are moving constantly. this would certainly help them detox faster and safer. not to mention, his diet virtually eliminates fat (to 10% or less). without fat "clogging" things up, there are very few obstacles for fruit sugar to come up against in the body...

anyway, it just HAPPENED that this morning i felt like nothing but watermelon. since summer, i've been getting a little nauseated from my modest amount of dehydrated food. and then i started having a distaste for seeds. (i don't eat nuts regularly).



today i ate:
1 entire watermelon (spread over a 5 hour period)
4 mangos
1 big green salad with a squeeze of lemon and a squeeze of orange.

this was the most amazing day EVER! and i'll tell you i REALLY wanted that salad by the end of it (but not before).

lo and behold, the "eat your greens till you turn green" girl was satisfied with just a big bowl at night. usually, i'll have at least 9 cups of greens a day! this was a big breakthrough for me...

i'll check in tomorrow to see what i feel like. it may be a phase, a seasonal thing, or maybe doug graham really has something going. hmmmm...

all i know is i wasn't ready for this last winter and i certainly don't feel deprived! (all the watermelon i can eat, are you kidding me???)