Starting to feel at home

Wow. I've reached the last loop in my old belt. My pants are sagging like a burlap sack race and my shirts are two sizes too big. It feels great!

We went to a raw potluck Saturday and that was a nice bit of encouragement. Talked to a guy about salt and how it's related to water retention. He says by cutting it out of your diet completely you can shed 10 - 15 lbs of water weight. Recomends reading some Douglas Graham.

I do eat a lot of salt. It's in all my recipes, salads, and most of my veggie juices. My favorite snack is tomato and salt. Olives , pickles, and everything I add to the plate. I tried some dulse flakes on my tomato salad today. Must have to use a lot more of that. (Dulse is a great source of iodine at 220% per tsp). I've also heard that iodine is esential in getting the toxins back out of my fat ass.

The most important thing though, to me, is that my mood is now very light and I just feel happy.

Gardens are God's gift. We must protect our right to grow our own food.

Soil. Mine was a super-dense clay which I've turned into a nutrient-rich loam with composted leaves and veggie scraps. It is a little bit of labor though.

Play in the Dirt. Dig a hole, put the dirt in your hands, put your hands in the dirt. It'll quiet your mood. It'll make you feel at home here on planet Earth.

Detox. After thirty days 100% raw, except for the coffee, my glands are swollen and my nose is running faster than Carl Lewis. My energy is fluctuating like the stock market on Fridays. I feel like I've been ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Not really that bad and I wouldn't last ten seconds with Tyson anyway.



But coincidentally, my wife, who's been juice feasting for 73 days, had the exact same symptoms at day thirty. No bull.



I work in an aged sports bar. We serve Mexican food, burgers, fries, steaks, and other grilled or fried fare. I'm lucky in that I work the line and cold table. That means I mainly stay out of the grease and smoke, but there are a lot of temptations right in my face. The most tempting of all is the shredded cheese. OMG I love cheese. I know I can live without it and I know it's bad for me but every time I make a taco or burrito and touch that cheddar, I want to stuff a handful of it in my mouth. But for some reason I'm able to stop myself. I am able to stop. Me, stop.

Happy Birthday, Bishop

I feel incredible. The endorphins are racing around my head and there's this great feeling in my gut. It's not hunger or fullness. It's just like an amazing wonderful feeling of well-being. Where has this feeling been? I can't even remember when I last felt this good.

I've lost a few more pounds and a couple of people actually commented on it. (When you get to 260, twenty lbs is almost unnoticeable But I can feel it. I played basketball with my 16 year-old last night and hung in there pretty good. A little sore today but not much. It's amazing how much energy I have and I've been hardly eating at all. Well comparatively anyway. I even beat him one game.

Today, my son Bishop turns five. Happy Birthday, Bishop. He a big, rough kid and I know it's gonna take some hard work to keep up with him. Sports are right around the corner for him and I want to be in the best shape of my life so I can be right there the whole way.

I'm gonna be hitting jump shots and finger rolls when I'm eighty.
Man, I'm really on the raw now. Feeling great at 238.

Struggling to understand why I'm not losing weight, I begin to talk about it with my wife and myself about this situation. We conclude that my entire body must be full of toxins that have to be flushed out somehow and currently the organs that do the flushing might still be dealing with some incoming artillary fire. I've believed this since my first raw experience in 2004; my body cannot detoxify if it's still busy with the daily crap. So the toxins continue to be stored until the barrage of poison stops long enough to get the organs in good enough shape to their jobs.

Even small amounts might be blocking my progress. So I'm thinking this and I realize that I've lied to myself in saying that I'm 100% raw. I'm not. Coffee isn't raw. And neither is marijuana for that matter. Yeah I said it, marijuana is not raw. Not in the way I've been ingesting it. So much for this medical marijuana revolution taking place right now in Denver. (I don't think it's good for obbesity).

Bottom line: Until I stop consuming these toxins, my body won't detox.

It's frustrating being overweight in the first place and even more so when a tried and true method isn't working.

But I will not give up this time. I'll stop it with the coffee and the weed, fine. I'll get more sun and excersise harder. Whatever it takes, I've got to get this body back into shape.

Wish me luck. I'm still 242 lbs. This is gonna be a lot harder than I thought.

Coffee is not raw food?

Nineteen days on the raw man and I think I might be losing it. The weight that is. I'm at 242 now. Not really feeling any lighter and have some really itchy skin and powerful headaches. I have a history of migraines anyway so don't know if the recent ones are associated with detox or not.

My wife says coffee isn't a raw food item. I know - but it's my favorite beverage next to beer and I've givin up the beer, so can it really be that bad to at least have this one small vice?

Colorado's finally warming up a little. Some of my herbs are starting to green and as I peel back the dead leaves and branches that feed and protect the soil during the winter, I find there's a lot of food still out there. I uncovered some chard, sage, oregano, and chocolate mint. Then I dug up a batch of jerusalem artichokes. They're a root vegetable that are much like a parsnip but a little sweeter. My wife took some pictures and will probably post them on the daily raw cafe. It feels good to get my hands back in the dirt. Digging and working the soil has a wonderful balancing effect on my brain. It's one of those things I can do and not feel like I'm wasting any time.

I'll try to write more, but have been having issues with the mental timing. Like when I have time to write, I keep drawing a blank. The 'placemates' that I write are done at work and I call them that because I originally write them on placemats and then transfer them to the computer. I try to keep them raw and mostly in their original state. But I do work in a bar so they can be a little off the wall and at times require censorship. Thanks for your encouragement.