Connie-
You are doing great! Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is a journey and it takes a long time to make a new habit. I am continually working on mine, and I have periods of being too lax sometimes as well. As for the raw: I find the easiest things for raw to be breakfast smoothies, and salads. So if you really wanted to have 2 raw meals each day, you could do those for breakfast and lunch, and then a cooked dinner. As far as the “junk” food in the house: make rules for yourself that are realistic. Like maybe one or 2 days each week you may partake. Try different things and see what works. And yes, post that picture!

Remember that long list of things that I was going to do? Well, I broke almost all of them. I did manage to do the 5-day water only fast. Yeah for me! And I am still drinking only water and smoothies. No coffee; no tea.

But as for the rest, I won’t bore you with the details. I did manage to eat mostly raw for the first 12 days (5 of which were fasting anyway) but then I went out for lunch with a friend–after which I managed 3 more raw days–but after that my discipline went out the window. If it’s in the house, I want to eat it. And the family wants it in the house…

It seems that the easiest thing for me to do is water-only fasting! If I am not eating, I am not succumbing to temptation to eat whatever everyone else is eating.

The only good thing I can say is that I am now very conscious of my need to get my appetite under control. It would appear that Dr. Jeff Hazim (www.wellwithu.com) is right. I am addicted to food–my taste buds are still in control! It’s not that I eat so much (any more) as that I need to train my brain to LIKE the healthy stuff MORE THAN the unhealthy stuff.

I am eating less and I am losing weight. Without a scale I don’t know how much, but I had to buy a belt to keep my pants up and the other day had to add 3 notches to it. And I am feeling better. But I am finding myself hard-pressed to find healthy things to eat that I look forward to eating! I’ve got two containers of raw crackers (different kinds) at my desk and I cannot bring myself to eat them! I tried raw beans from the garden–ewww, gross. My family loves them raw, but I had to blend mine into a smoothie to get them down! Raw brussel sprouts, blech. Raw chard, not so much.

I love tomatoes and now that they are ripening rapidly I’ve been eating lots of them–in smoothies and raw soups–but I had a couple of sick days and learned that one can eat too many tomatoes! Lost two days to sick headaches on that score. I made a green soup that’s chilling right now–but I’m procrasting about eating it because it’s made with the juice of several tomatoes I sliced up to dehydrate yesterday (too much acid?) and some of the pulp from almond milk I made today (weird and whacky combo?).

This is a tough and slow journey for me, but I will persevere. I have a new goal–to post a picture of the new and improved me on my website. 🙂

Connie