livingthelife's journal

[livingthelife]

AGE:        40
HEIGHT:   5'6"
WEIGHT:  118 lbs

2005-2007 by volume
50% raw plants (whole & juiced)
30% cooked grains
20% raw lowfat dairy, nuts, & vegetable oils

1/2008-10/2008 by volume
50% raw plants (whole & juiced)
30% cooked grains
10% raw lowfat dairy, nuts, & vegetable oils
10% raw lean meat

beginning 11/2008 by instinct
raw whole plants
raw whole animal food

*more herbs and less fruit than I did previously
*only a small amount of dairy, and only cultured
*wide variety of RAF

I don't know if I will continue drinking all sorts of tea and kombucha like I currently do.
I do drink mostly water, so once I'm on a good routine with the diet I can look at beverages more closely.

issues I hope to resolve
*dry, "aged," thin skin
*lack of satisfaction & sense of well-being
*digestive problems
*complicated routines of diet & hygiene

[boxcarguy07]

Cool, looking forward to reading and seeing your progress!

And if I may say so you are so pretty and your eyes are beautiful!
Also, this may be a generalization, but why is it that every woman with very short hair like in your picture that I have met/seen seems so chill?

[livingthelife]

Thank you, thank you!

I can't wait to compare this photo with next year's.

[livingthelife]

FISH OIL

I'm also using Blue Ice fermented cod liver oil daily (I added it when I added raw meat). I plan to take less in the summer when I'm not so parched and pale.

I have the skate liver oil capsules and they are not a good value. They also contain plant wax, an unspecified antioxidant, and rosemary extract (the latter for preservative). This is not always mentioned on the product labeling or webstore descriptions! I won't buy them again.

[livingthelife]

WATER

I'm inspired by the good info on this forum to investigate options for quality water.

Right now I'm using distilled with a pinch of salt, a blessing, and 24 hours of moonlight or diffused sunlight.

I plan to look into:
-low-tech filtration for current source of distilled water
-high tech ionizer

I also plan to call the distilled water company and ask about their processing (how many cooling / collection phases) and filtration. I also want to know if they add disinfectants (which are added to typical bottled spring water).

[boxcarguy07]

WATER

I'm inspired by the good info on this forum to investigate options for quality water.

Right now I'm using distilled with a pinch of salt, a blessing, and 24 hours of moonlight or diffused sunlight.

I plan to look into:
-low-tech filtration for current source of distilled water
-high tech ionizer

I also plan to call the distilled water company and ask about their processing (how many cooling / collection phases) and filtration. I also want to know if they add disinfectants (which are added to typical bottled spring water).

Wow, where did you hear that about the disinfectants? I buy spring water, I should find out if the kind I get has them. 

Also, I notice you said you say a blessing over the water... are you familiar with Dr. Masaru Emoto?

[livingthelife]

HYGIENE

After posting on the "...laundry..." thread, I realized how complicated and ineffective my personal care is. Constant application and removal of plant oils that neither "clean" nor moisturize, determined by a social model of early industrialization that dictates when to wash, eat and sleep.

So,

- I'm going to use the sauna every 48 hours that I haven't broken a good sweat,
     relying on this for my primary cleansing
     (I use a fairly low temp - 130 - and only stay in until I get sweaty)

- I'm going to "wash" with only water,
     and the seasalt/baking soda & essential oil blend we use for teeth, if needed

- I'm going to wash only how and when I think I need to
     (I started this a few weeks ago by showering only every 48 hours & wiping down intermittently)

I expect to keep using a few drops of the apricot kernel oil/chamomile EO blend for spot moisturizing as needed; perhaps eventually it not be neccessary.

No more oil pulling,  no oil "cleansing," and no soap (this is seriously drying, and natural soaps leave behind an impenetrable shell of glycerin that is hell on skin - anyone using it on their teeth may want to reconsider - if you don't believe me, wash a spot of pavement with soap & then try to rinse it clean)

[livingthelife]

Wow, where did you hear that about the disinfectants? I buy spring water, I should find out if the kind I get has them.

I learned this because I was buying the local grocery store chain's own brand of spring water. I read in the paper that they had pulled a batch because routine testing revealed high levels of disinfectant. I searched around online and learned that tiny levels of disinfectant are added to bottled spring water as an industry standard.

I don't have any references, sorry; this was awhile ago that I researched it

Also, I notice you said you say a blessing over the water... are you familiar with Dr. Masaru Emoto?

Yes, though I think he pushes his theory a little too far. I personally feel that blessing the water creates a energetic link between it and me - that link being the intention of health, which glorifies the creator

[boxcarguy07]

I personally feel that blessing the water creates a energetic link between it and me - that link being the intention of health, which glorifies the creator

  that's a nice thought, I think about things somewhere along those lines as well

[livingthelife]

It's only been 4 days since I quit grains and hyper-hygiene, and I'm not feeling too great today.

First, my face is so dry that it's flaking, but my body seems to be less dry than usual. I used a little apricot kernel oil for moisturizing last night and this morning, but I think it's only plastering down the flakes. My hand are also really dry, but since I have to wash them with soap I'm going to have to use some kind of moisturizer. I feel like I'm looking ooooold.

I'm also getting nauseous sitting down to raw fat + meat at every meal. I lived so many years never eating any fat and now it's fat, fat, fat.

I'm starving and I'm not eating enough. When I was eating bread, I felt full (too full), and the sugars carried me through. Now I know I'm not eating enough calories, but I'm having a hard time getting the food down. I'm also thirsty all the time, but I'm not drinking enough water because I'm not used to it...

I think overall I'm better off; that my skin, once hydrated and enriched with nutrients, will improve, and that I will soon be able to pleasurably consume enough calories to satisfy. Other than the aversion to the food, my ordinary digestive issues have cleared up already.

There's some stress, also, because of offering these changes to a teenage girl. She wants to embrace them, but her every twinge is a drama that she lays on me (as she should). I told her that she should eat what she wants, that I'll provide and prepare whatever she wants without question. However, she chooses raw liver but adds so much mustard that she gets heartburn, then the loose poo is a hysteria... So I'm not sleeping too well.

So, ugh.

[livingthelife]

Well, since my last post here I ate about 1/4 lb of veal steak w/ butter & kraut. At first I felt better. Then I went for a walk and started to feel really terrible - spacey, nauseous. When I got home I ate 2 bowls of cereal w/ milk and I swear it was like a drug - I felt immediately "better," and sleepy and very sedated. I wonder if my blood sugar is screwed up. Bread always gave me an uncomfortable spike (I'd actually crave sugar after eating it). Yet I don't know what to do if it is a blood-sugar problem, and I really don't trust drs or their "remedies."

At any rate, I can't cut out grains for the time being. I feel like crap and I'm going to lie down for awhile.

[Nicola]

Well, since my last post here I ate about 1/4 lb of veal steak w/ butter & kraut. At first I felt better. Then I went for a walk and started to feel really terrible - spacey, nauseous. When I got home I ate 2 bowls of cereal w/ milk and I swear it was like a drug - I felt immediately "better," and sleepy and very sedated. I wonder if my blood sugar is screwed up. Bread always gave me an uncomfortable spike (I'd actually crave sugar after eating it). Yet I don't know what to do if it is a blood-sugar problem, and I really don't trust drs or their "remedies."

At any rate, I can't cut out grains for the time being. I feel like crap and I'm going to lie down for awhile.

Blood suger is one problem and the other may be gluten? Tracy on this forum (page end):

http://www.zerocarbage.com/showthread.php?tid=455&page=2

Nicola

[goodsamaritan]

Quitting RICE or cooked food wasn't easy for me either.
It took a 14 day orange juice fast for me to physiologically reset my system to get rid of cooked food addiction and with it rice addiction.
I'm Filipino and every Filipino is addicted to rice.

[livingthelife]

Oh, good info, folks. Thanks for looking in on me.

I'm half alive again... Had a sauna and a nap.

That cereal and milk made me sick, just like it always did before (and eating 2 bowls after 4 days of abstinence didn't help).

I do think there's an addiction issue, because I can really crave gluten, as Tracy pointed out. And I tended to overeat it - it seems to be an "off" issue with me.

I also quit juicing when I quit bread, and I know there's a good amount of fructose and sugars in juice, so that was probably a double-whammy. I hated juicing, though. Such a time-consuming pain in the butt, and unless it was sweet juice it was hard to get down.

I just read some of AV's book, which came in the mail today. I think he would recommend some orange juice at the moment! I'd been also trying to keep fruit consumption down, so I was consuming even less sugar...

And I've had endocrine issues in the past.

Obviously I'm going to have to have to use more intuition.

As far as blood sugar problems... I so do not want to be tested.  I don't want to create any "record" of health test results, especially since I'd probably refuse conventional treatment anyway. Has anyone else dealt with blood sugar issues?

[goodsamaritan]

Hi, go easy on the oranges in the orange juice fast (not feast). It is just 1 pint a day + as much distilled water as you want.  No other food.

Here is the description of the orange juice fast: http://www.curemanual.com/detox-protocols/intestinal-cleansing/orange-juice-fasting

Some people should balance their blood sugar with taking lecithin supplements (as a source of fat) while doing the OJ fast.

[livingthelife]

Well, I became very ill last night with vomiting & body aches.

I have to rethink what I've done here. I went from about 1-2 oz of RAF to 12 oz RAF / per day. I cut out about 2 servings of grain and about 8 oz fruit/veg juice / day.

I know I was having a blood sugar problem because I could recognize that in my hunger, fatigue, and sweating. This could be either an "addiction" or normal reaction to starvation of the basic fuels I was accustomed to. Perhaps I'm just "addicted" to food.

I also know I was increasingly grossed out by the RAF, but ignored the gag reflex and ate it anyway. I even had trouble getting down a mere 1 oz of non-dairy RAF before.

Perhaps there's a reason most people in the world do not eat RAF? A reason we should not be eating it in large quantities?

The only thing that got me through the night was sipping some fresh apple juice my husband made me. Last time I had the flu, fresh juice was all I could handle. Yet my daughter said the daily green juice made her nauseous.

Judging from his book, most people whom AV has helped with RAF were dying. I was not nor am I dying (though I wasn't so sure around 2AM).

My conclusion at this point is that RAF and raw juice are so intensely concentrated and bioactive that they are actually medicine. They shouldn't be consumed every day, nor in large quantities. We shouldn't be puking so much! Most folks I know, though sickly, are not gagging and puking frequently when they dine.

Interestingly, no one else in my family became ill from the same RAF. They ate them in much smaller quantities than I did.

I feel I got carried away with this RPD. I'm going to return to this model:

by volume
50% raw plants (whole & occasionally juiced)
30% cooked grains
15% raw lowfat dairy, nuts, & olive oil
5% raw meat & fat

I expect that I will juice and eat non-dairy RAF every other day, probably alternating. Weston Price Foundation recommends either grating frozen liver into other foods or freezing liver into pea-sized pieces & swallowing like vitamin pills (not, incidentally, eating even 1 whole ounce at one sitting). I aim to try the "pill" approach for all non-dairy RAF. The less gag the better, and it will be easier to prepare & store.

There seem to be some folks here who are doing well with a strictly RPD, and that's great. It's just not for me.

[TylerDurden]

There are 2 common mistakes people make when turning to RAF - they assume, first of all, that if raw animal food is healthy, that the more they eat of it, the faster their healing-rate will be. However, raw food contains far more (healthy, bioavailable) nutrients than cooked-food, so you actually need to eat less amounts of food than you would on a cooked-food diet. I also found that not eating for a whole day, here and there(but drinking alkaline mineral-water) was also useful. In short, constant digestion usually weakens the body and diverst away essential resources which could otherwise be used for healing.

Secondly, it's generally a bad idea to mix cooked and raw foods together. The 2 require different digestive processes(cooked-food requires the stomach to produce much more stomach-acid etc.), so, if one is suffering from digestive problems, it's really best to stick to raw foods.

[livingthelife]

WATER FOLLOW-UP

I called the distilled water company. They use a single steam & collection process and mechanical filtration only.

After looking into it, I think that coconut charcoal will be sufficient to bring the drinking water into a level of purity that I'm satisfied with. Being a fan of low-tech and a cheapskate, I decided to buy a pound of loose media and dump it into the distilled water jug, then strain out. I was told that this pound should treat about 2000 gallons of water, but it must be agitated to work. So I'll open a new jug, dump it into the empty jug of charcoal, agitate periodically over 24-48 hours, strain back into the original jug, add my salt, bless it, and let it "brew."

I don't know that an alkalizer is going to work for us. We have an old house with an odd kitchen configuration, they're more expensive than I think I want to pay, and they act on tap water, which I really don't want to drink, even treated - I have more confidence in distilled.

[goodsamaritan]

Don't let that 1 case of food poisoning scare you.

This whole year I can count that I puked out on dirty mussels, dirty oysters and probably the chicken liver a few days ago.

My wife is on a primarily cooked diet and she's suffered 3 severe food poisonings this year.

I also experienced the incompatibility of raw food with cooked food in the same meal.  For example, rice does not go well with raw eggs or raw beef.

My children are primarily cooked food eaters.  But they themselves have discovered that raw animal food does not mix well with the cooked starches.  So when they have a raw egg meal... or any raw animal meal... it is just that one single food... no food combining whatsoever.

I eased into raw animal foods starting with wai diet because eggs and fish were easy raw because culturally we are exposed to sashimi (I'm grossed out at cooked salmon and cooked tuna).  But I followed Tyler's advice on the gradual reduction of cooking land animals... it must have taken me 1 to 2 months to fully adjust to not being grossed out at raw land animal food.  A few more months to get used to eating raw animal food that has been in the refrigerator for 3 days.

I don't eat that much raw animal food myself.  I usually only eat raw animal food lunch.  Maybe breakfast I will have 2 to 3 raw eggs.  But my big raw animal meal is just lunch.  At dinner I just chat with the kids or eat some not so sweet fruit.

[TylerDurden]

2 things:-  I was referring to natural alkaline mineral-water taken from mountain-springs, not artificially alkalized water. Also, I should mention that distilled water is a really,really bad idea to drink. It's well known to leach minerals away from the body, among other effects:-
http://chetday.com/distilledwater.htm

[livingthelife]

HYGIENE FOLLOW-UP

Other than the dry skin, the sauna-water-bit o' baking soda routine is working very well. I thought I would get clogged pores or BO, but I haven't. Once I get a good sweat in the sauna, I gently massage my face to loosen up any clogged pores. My face looks very good (other than being dry), with fewer blemishes and a more even tone.

I just splash off/wipe down in between times.

[livingthelife]

Some repressed issues came to light after I started eating RAF and joined this forum. I think they're getting resolved now.

I could sum it up as too much thinking and not enough instinct (or exclusively thinking, overriding instinct). This has been a coping strategy for me in every area of life, but it has very limited success.

Part of resolving it is accepting my limitations. I embraced the RAF partly because I have a profound aversion to cooking meat/oil/fats. For awhile I cut them out entirely and illness ensued. I just didn't want to admit that I found the cooking to be repulsive; I thought I was just lazy and it made me ashamed.

I think the aversion to cooking meat is probably part instinct and part exhaustion. I tried roasting a turkey breast a few days ago and the whole process was both draining and revolting.

I no longer think that eating exclusively RAF is the answer (for me), however. The Weston Price model has felt the most comfortable for me, modified to minimize cooking. Mostly, I feel that a broad variety of high quality foods (raw being a criteria of high quality) is the most satisfying and healthful for me.

US Wellness Meats offers some precooked meat choices that will round out our diets without my having to prepare them. We also have a local farmer's market that makes their own soups and stews; they've been tasty and of acceptable quality. 

I've continued to eat raw eggs, oysters, and salmon; raw dairy; and the raw fermented CLO. 

My Slanker's order was a good value and good quality. It arrived during my "crash" and I just couldn't deal with 40# of raw meat. I kept about 1/3 of the order: the lamb suet, the bones, goat hearts, and a few other things that were easy to store and handle (unlike the cow tongue, for example). I intended to give them to my dog. The rest I gave to the only local restaurant that would have any use for them. They gave me a crappy loaf of bread in appreciation.

As I've thawed the items for the dog, we've eaten some of it too: goat heart, suet, spleen, and marrow. US Wellness Meats offers a raw braunsweiger that I have ordered for spreading on toast. I'll continue to prefer RAF over cooked animal foods within the limits of what is appetizing.

The carbon I ordered for filtering water didn't work out. I couldn't get the carbon "dust" out of the water. As it turns out, the water that has been distilled is spring water, not tap water, and most of the volatile organic pollutants in water (that would also be captured during distillation) are tap water additives. I am also adding living seaweed with the sea salt and straining before drinking. The taste and nourishment is very much improved.

Using only the sauna, water, and the occasional baking soda slurry has improved my skin dramatically. My daughter is now trying this routine as well. All blemishes and blackheads have disappeared and my skin is no longer dry.

[boxcarguy07]

Welcome back livingthelife!

I was sad to see you leave, especially so suddenly!
You don't have to eat 100% raw paleo to be a part of this board you know!

I hope you continue to do well!

[livingthelife]

Yesterday was a "typical" day. I felt good and not stressed about food.

When I woke up I waited about 30 minutes to see what appealed to me for breakfast.

I wanted 8 oz fresh grapefruit/orange juice. When I was done, I wanted green juice and something salty, so I made 8 oz green juice and had a big piece of beef jerky. About an hour later I had a buttered wheat roll with 1 teaspoon of fermented CLO. Lots of water.

I gently massaged my face with warm water and wiped my pits & butt with a warm wet cloth. 30 minutes of yoga, then got dressed.

3 mile walk with my husband and the dog.

Ran a few errands

Had lunch:
2 oz goat heart slivers
handful of corn chips*
salsa
raw sour cream
1 oz raw cheese cubes
greens
4 oz red wine

I didn't eat all the goat heart. The last slivers were no longer appealing.

I started drinking organic red wine with meals for the health benefits of the fermented grape skins and because it relaxes my nervous stomach. I usually drink about 3 oz with lunch and another 3 oz with dinner, only when it's appealing.

Housework through the afternoon

Watched a movie & had a bit of air popped popcorn with seasalt & ghee around dinnertime

Made some salmon sashimi for dinner around 7PM. I made it and tried to eat it even though it was unappealing. I ate only a small amount and my husband ate the rest. I craved raw yogurt with bee pollen and a few nuts, and lots of water, so that's what I had instead.

Massaged the dog & did a little qigong after dinner.

Stepped into the tub & gently massaged my face with warm water and cleaned p & b with a bit of baking soda slurry. Scrubbed my feet with soap. Brushed my "hair."

Played some tetris in bed with a hot water bottle on my torso (the hot water bottle has helped reduce my reflux significantly).

Good night's sleep!




*I have yet to find any corn chips that are not fried in vegetable oil. Here in PA we have lard-fried potato chips, but I'm reluctant to try them. We don't need chips, and don't eat them often, but I don't want to cut them out entirely. I plan to investigate baking some quality premade tortillas to see if they are an adequate substitute.

[TylerDurden]

Just curious, but why do you feed your dog on a BARF diet instead of a Prey-Model diet?