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...

breakfast

-1 cup buckwheat groats, covered in water, soaked for about 30 mins
-1 golden apple, roughly chopped and cored
-1 tablespoon date paste (or one large date, or 2 small dates)
-cinnamon to taste
-sea salt (optional, to taste)
-4 large mint or spearmint leaves, more if smaller
-1 teaspoon slivered ginger, skin peeled
-filtered water, to blend

breakfast usually looks like this for me: a fresh green juice with lemon, then sometimes a piece of fruit or a green smoothie. pretty light.

i've been experiencing some pretty heavy feelings of detox of late though (cloudy thinking, tiredness, slight moodiness), and i woke up wanting something a little heavier to start my day. it was delicious! all minty and sweet and sort of "cozy" feeling.

detox is an interesting thing. sometimes i push myself to go a little faster than my body is willing to go i think and then i have to pay for it. until yesterday i was pretty much subsisting on fresh juice, fruits, and light salads. i was all very proud of my progress and how i thought this was a sign that i needed less food.

well, i was doing great on less food (which is a step up from before i must admit, where i would have been fainting). but the transitioning body is a storage house of pent-up junk. i forgot about that attic full of 23 years of cooked, non-vegan food! and all of a sudden i expected to be able to thrive on fruit and juice. a little naive... but we learn. ;)

it will take years to gradually clean out my body, and sometimes i get a little frustrated with the mountain of work ahead... then i remember i have to enjoy the process. and that i'm never going to achieve PERFECTION. but i can allow space for infinite growth.

that's something i've been contemplating a lot lately: infinite growth. what parts of my life have a binding "end point" and which ones will grow and develop with me, always challenging me, and always teaching me something new?

peace,
porter

thoughts on pasta ("food"?)

i have been having thoughts of late about how we take certain things for granted.

take pasta.

not many would question whether or not pasta was food. but let's examine this a little:

-you take wheat, which no one would eat in its natural state unless they were starving. it is tasteless, brittle, and dry.

-then you grind it down, refine it, add water to it, mix it, shape it like play-do, and dry it.

...the product itself is inedible, so you have to...

-heat it AGAIN.

-before finally it is called "a meal."

i was reading this fabulous book by matt monarch yesterday called raw success. in one part, he makes the case that any "poison" taken in small does, over a long period of time will not result in death. rather, it will create something like our population today: people struggling with things they shouldn't be: disease, weight, depression, eating disorders... it is a S.A.D. (standard american diet) picture indeed.

basically, ANY food is a hinderance to the system. it's a balancing game. you get nutrients, but you give your body undue work. in order for the scales to balance out somewhat (or lean slightly in favor of your body), you need to be eating food that is the LEAST difficult to assimilate. this will depend on your current diet. any modification you make towards a diet that is easier to assimilate (i.e. nutrient & water dense foods: fruits and veggies in their raw state) will start to improve your health.

to start consuming ONLY raw foods overnight might have the opposite effect. it would be similar to taking a huge dose of poison. detoxification must go at the same comfortable rate as "toxification"... small doses over time. otherwise, your cells will be unleashing "debris" at a faster pace than your elimination organs (colon, skin) can deal with and you will have horrible symptoms.

slow detox makes you feel invigorated, cleaned, and renewed and is definitely preferable.

so does this mean that if you are eating pasta you should stop? well, there are greater evils is what i'm saying, and eliminating "carbs" or "fats" or "proteins" is just too myopic of a plan. i recommend slowly eliminating processed foods. simplification of your diet. eating more vegetables and fruits in their raw state, and moderating (or eliminating completely) "complex un-foods."

examples:

-mysteriously processed meat patties (i.e. hamburgers, sausages),

-supposed "whole grain" breads with their endless list of useless and damaging ingredients

-any animal product or bi-product (essentially a "processed food" given their unnatural diet, the excruciating pain and stress that becomes the flesh you eat!)

basically, anything that comes sold in a package. because if nature didn't make it edible in the first place, then it isn't FOOD! it is something designed by man to trick our taste buds into thinking it is suitable for our body. see: michael pollan, in defense of food.

anyway, baby steps...

my journey to raw

july 2007 i decided to bite the bullet and "go raw."  immeasurably inspired by my visit to NYC's pure food and wine, i figured it was worth a try. 

things i had already given up before going raw:

beef

dairy

refined sugars

packaged foods

things i was still eating that i needed to give up:

fish

eggs

cooked food

alcohol (wine at that point)

it wasn't easy and it wasn't simple.  

it was certainly worth it though.  

for all that i "gave up" i gained things that were so much more important:

1. no more colds or sore throats

2. no more hypothyroidism

3. no more anemia

4. no more apathy/sense of "lack of purpose" on earth

5. no more mood swings

6. effortless weight loss

7. increased strength and endurance

8. unexpectedly marked spirituality

9. a completely new positive outlook on life, awakening to its infinite possibility

in fact, it all happened so fast i got a little scared and went back to eating cooked food for dinner for about 5 months before i was ready to really embrace all that i was being offered.  

my goal is to inspire others to embrace this lifestyle.  it is not a fad diet.  it is common sense that exposing something to heat would destroy it.  our bodies, like all living bodies, were not designed to take in denatured, processed and reconstituted pseudo-food.  but don't take my word for it, see for yourself!