Moderation
I woke up this morning with a major craving for a bagel with lox and cream cheese. Fought the urge for several hours, ate some amazing, mouth watering plums, read for a couple more hours…and it came back! I gave in, and am actually kind of glad that I did because it is the impetus for this post: moderation.
Anyone who knows me at all would laugh at my writing such a post as this, for I am the QUEEN OF EXTREME (that rhymes)!! Some highlights in Camille’s life of bold and extreme decisions: quit my job with little more than 2 months rent in the bank to start my private chef business (even though I had never been paid to cook), dropped my life (job, house, car, friends) and embarked on a solo 7 month trip around the world, drained my entire savings account to launch my website Recipe Rx, and most recently, became a totally raw vegan overnight. This is where the story will begin:
I am always searching for the best new information on diet and health, for my readers and the business as well as for my own health. Over the course of the last 5 years, I have been reading anything and everything I can get my hands on: blood-type diet, Atkins, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, food combining, Chinese, Ayurvedic, etc…I would say that my own personal philosophy is a hodge-podge of everything I learn and I am always open to changing it if something new feels right. I actually was working with a rocket-scientist turned nutritionist last year who was convinced that the “perfect diet” consists of red meat and fruit. That’s it. Crazy as it sounded, I did try it for awhile. I ultimately felt many of his theories had holes, primarily that vegetables are toxic. The point is, I am willing to try it if it seems to have some evidence to support that it works for people.
Then the day that started it all: I was hanging out with my friend, Holly, and her 3 kids (they are like my family) and she started talking about this book she was reading all about a raw vegan diet. She usually comes to me for health advice and was surprised that this was never a topic of our conversations. “Well duh, Holly, how could I ever get behind a diet of NO MEAT? I LOVE MEAT?!?!?” was pretty much my reply, but after several hours of talking about it, I knew she was on to something. I left her house and went to Chausser’s Bookstore, spending the next 5 hours sitting on the floor in the middle of health section reading through every book on raw that was there. I was hooked. That night, I called my friend Michael and told him that I wanted to try to be a raw vegan. As he has been a semi-raw vegan for several years, he was stoked to bring me over to his side. Literally overnight, I got rid of all of my appliances (including my toaster which would have been useful for the bagel today) and converted to a raw kitchen. Naturally, I had to find a way to make this taste good because there was no way I would subsist on carrot sticks alone. So I bought several cookbooks, an amazing Vita-mix blender, a food dehydrator, and a new food processor. I experimented day and night, and came up with some great stuff. We even went so far as to begin planning for a raw food delivery service!
All in all, I was never able to eat totally raw for more than 4 days. I think I would have had more success if I wasn’t cooking regular meals for my clients, but that’s not really the point of this post. The point is the issue of the “ideal” we have in our minds that we want to achieve overnight versus the journey to achieving long-lasting results through moderating our behavior and creating good habits. We are the microwave generation and it’s so easy to latch onto something that seems like a good idea and literally drive ourselves mad trying to get there (wherever “there” is). This has been my experience with attaining good health. I get on some new radical diet, totally stress myself out trying to do it just right, then fall off the wagon. Thankfully, I am beginning to grow-up and accept that the process of introducing better habits into my life takes time. It’s a day to day thing. In terms of eating raw, I was not able to keep it up because it was controlling my entire life and I was really stressed out. I was making raw food all the time, and oftentimes I wasn’t even eating it all!
Since I stopped doing all the crazy prep, I have actually been eating more raw than before, just in the form of more simple foods: fruit, fresh veggie juices, smoothies, salads, and guacamole by the truckload. When I have a craving for something (like my bagel today), sometimes I indulge it and sometimes I don’t. I love the social aspects of eating more than most anything, so when I’m out with friends I eat what I want. The biggest thing I am working on right now is to not having guilt about it. The truth is that my body is becoming healthier** now than its ever been, and that’s because have been making these changes (eating about 80% raw), but still living life and enjoying the pleasure of food without stressing if I don’t get it just right.
So the moral of today’s story: DEFINITELY assess where you are in terms of the foods you are eating on a regular basis and ask yourself if they are really supporting your long-term health. If the answer is no, begin to plot a course to get there. Eat more fruits and veggies, less dairy, refined grains, meat, and sugar (eventually you can eliminate them all together if you can). I promise you that doing so will change your life for the better, but also remember that attaining optimal health is a process and that making a series of moderate changes is the best way to create long-term success. Just as important is that life is meant to be FUN, and if you are so caught up in doing it all “perfect”, you are going to lose much of the joy of eating and stress yourself out…definitely not good for your health. Good luck, young grasshopper!
Oh, a great book on this subject is called “The Raw Food Detox Diet” by Natalia Rose. It has really changed my perception on maintaining good health on a daily basis. She meets each reader where they are with levels that you can move up in once you have incorporated the previous levels targets into your life. I drink her Green Lemonade recipe almost every morning!
** I am eating a TON more raw fruits and veggies (and I already ate alot before), juicing most every morning instead of drinking caffeine (IT IS POSSIBLE!), not eating late at night, eating much less sugar, almost no dairy (except cheese, a true addiction), and very few grains. I still love meat, but instead of eating it 1-2x per day, I think I am eating it about 3x per week and in small quantities, which suits me fine. I have finally begun to lose the 25 pounds that crept up during the dark days of depression (13 down, 12 to go), haven’t had gnarly food cravings, have way more energy and desire to exercise, and most importantly right now, mental clarity.
