Sushi, Detox, and Good Things

Today was supposed to be a 4-hour work day -- EASY. So easy that I figured I could eat breakfast, work from 8-12, go to the gym, then come home for lunch. I brought with me 2 bananas and two honeybell oranges. It ended up that 4 hours at work turned into 7, and I still went to the gym (it's a miracle!). Needless to say, I ate most of my fruit before I got home, saving only one honeybell because I learned my lesson yesterday that you should not peel and eat the juiciest fruit on earth in your car while driving.

Sushi

I came home and threw together a sushi-type dinner in about 10 minutes. In a raw nori sheet, I rolled up some of my sunflower & carrot pate from the other day, sliced avocado, and some of these pickled ginger carrots since they seemed to go with the Asian theme --

I have to admit that I did overdo the ginger carrots, but I was hungry enough not to care. Here's the sushi alongside my dish of Nama Shoyu.

Totally simple to make. It might have been slightly more difficult if I'd tried to make all the pieces beautiful, but as you can see, I did not. I was starving! Afterward I ate frozen (well, slightly thawed) strawberries with raw chocolate sauce. Mm full and happy.

Detox

I wanted to say a little bit about detox. Everyone's detoxing symptoms are different. I heard of some people not getting any at all, which is pretty awesome for them. Either their bodies were really efficient at getting any kind of toxins out of their systems or they just ate really healthily and didn't allow anything to build up. I find that the latter would be more likely. If someone wasn't eating healthy and then decided to go raw, there would be some feeling awful in store.

For me, the first thing (obviously) was a caffeine withdrawal headache. This lasted for about three days. I expected this one. The next thing I noticed, that I did not expect, was intense allergy-like symptoms. Itchiness of my nose and eyes, eye tearing, sneezing, congestion. The interesting thing was, nothing in my environment had changed. I was still living with my cats and dogs, but they only really affect me when I pet them and rub my eyes, or sleep on a pillow that my cat was sleeping on earlier. This was different, and I had a symptom that I'd not experienced before with a cold or allergies. When all the itchiness left and I wasn't really sneezing anymore, my nose ran. And ran and ran and ran. This went on about 3 or 4 days too. It was really annoying; however, when I did some googling and found out this was TYPICAL, I think I sighed in relief. Detox sucked, but the body is very cool in how it handles things. It also made me feel bad that this all could've happened years sooner if I stopped eating all the processed food and junk.

I also had very bad acne to start out. They say toxins find their way out however they can, and mine decided to exit through my face. Awesome. Thanks. That seems to be the one ongoing thing. My skin's a billion times better now (almost 2 months raw) but I'm now making sure to take care of my skin even more and supplement with Vitamin D. They say Vitamin D (along with helping the absorption of calcium) can reduce inflammation and make skin healthier. Think of what your skin looks like when you've been in the sun for a couple hours. Starting this supplement made me feel a lot better and helped my skin out a ton. I was tested before and I was deficient (severely, actually) and I knew that without any sun exposure in the winter, I was again. I'm also taking a Vitamin B supplement because I know there are few if any natural/raw sources of B12. Vitamin B3, or niacin, is also helpful to combat Raynaud's, which I have pretty bad this winter. More on that another time.

At this point, since I still am so new to eating raw, I expect more changes to come along in the future. Some say that it can take anywhere from 6 months to a few years to be fully "cleansed," but I'm not going to worry about the time frame. I have a habit of trying to fix everything all at once, but I need to just let go a little and let things happen.

Good Things

1) I did lose weight. I may have gained a pound or two back, but as long as I feel good and look nice I don't really care about numbers. Ok, yes I do. But they're allowed to change a little here and there.

2) My anxiety, which I've suffered with for a long time, has drastically lessened. This could be a raw food thing, but it's very likely that [mostly] getting rid of caffeine had a lot to do with it. I did have a soy latte today, which is *not* raw. C'est la vie.

3) My allergies really are going away. I'm serious. I had a peanut allergy for nearly all my life. No, I haven't eaten peanuts to see if that's still around, but I used to get a very itchy throat from the nuts that were "manufactured in a facility that processes peanuts and" blah blah blah. This is the reason I really tried to avoid all nuts in the past. Lately I've been incorporating them into a lot of the things that I eat, and I haven't gotten an itchy throat in weeks and weeks. Plus, I'm living with a cat. Not a Siberian like my two semi-hypoallergenic cuties below --

No, I'm living with a big, fluffy, allergy cat (a roommate's). And I'm fine. It'll be a real test when allergy season rolls around because I was affected by nearly all the pollens.

If you've read this far, thanks for sticking around. If you've read this far and have been in the raw blogging community for some time, I'd really appreciate you linking people over to me. It would be really awesome having support, especially since I have no real-life raw people in my life. (Not yet anyway. Just wait til I move to San Francisco. More on that another time, too.)

I'm also on twitter if anyone would like to follow. @loricushner (my name, very original).

Oh look, it's almost 8pm. Nearly bedtime. Little did I know that turning 24 means I'm going to start going to bed at the same time as a 3 year-old.