Raw Objectivism

Today marks the beginning of my clean program. On my way back home last night, I stopped at a Whole Foods Market to pick up some fresh, organic produce (since the choices at Meijer in my small Midwestern town are limited at best).

Today’s Weight (7:00 AM)

119.4 lbs

Total Calories Consumed: 1210
Fat: 19 g
Carbs: 215 g
Protein: 59 g

Breakfast (7:30 AM to 9:00 AM)

Green Smoothie
1 c. organic spinach
2 organic peaches
2 Scoops RAW vegan protein powder
1 11.2-oz ONE Coconut Water
½ c. Filtered water
Blended until smooth

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Tags: Clean Program, detox, green smoothies, Juicing, Raw Vegan, Vegetarian
Posted in Clean Program, Diet, Macrobiotic, Vegan, Vegetarian | 5 Comments »

Unsoaked grains used for today's lunch.

Over the past few days I’ve been doing research into both the Paleo and Clean diets. They are very similar. Both eschew the consumption of processed foods, promote consuming whole foods that can be found in nature and promote the consumption of meat (with Clean, all meats –preferably grain fed—are allowed after the detox, only some are allowed during the detox – see this post for more information).

There is however, one major difference between the two diets. Clean allows the consumption of grains (except gluten-containing or gluten –contaminated grains) and legumes and Paleo excludes them. The reasoning behind this is that human beings have only been consuming grains and legumes (like other agriculturally derived foods) for the past 10,000 years which is hardly enough time for humans to have evolved to digest them properly

Toxic Food

Grains and legumes contain anti-nutrients like lectin and phytic acid. Phytic acid reduces the absorption of minerals including calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium. Lectins damage the body and cause leaky gut syndrome which causes undigested food particles to enter the blood stream. Lectins also cause inflammation.

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Tags: Clean Program, Lectins, Macrobiotics, Paleo, Phytic Acid, Soaking Beans, Soaking Grains
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Today is the last day of August and therefore the last day of my scheduled macrobiotic diet. I have discontinued consuming dairy, eggs, caffeine, alcohol and smoking for the entire month. It was a great success in the fact that I have managed to not consume any of those items for a month. However, I didn’t follow the mindfulness part of the diet. I overate and didn’t chew my food as well as I should have.

Overall, though, I would say that the diet was a success. I have felt better not drinking, smoking or consuming caffeine than I did while I consumed these items.

Alcohol Consumption

I have no plans to start smoking or drinking caffeine tomorrow or any time in the future. I am, however, undecided about drinking. I am thinking that I might try drinking this weekend when I am at my grandfather’s 80th birthday party and see how that makes me feel. I can use that as gauge to see if I plan on drinking on a regular (weekly) basis.

However, I am concerned that if I start drinking again I will go back into my old habits of binge-drinking nearly every weekend. I’m not sure that I know how to control my drinking. It is one thing to have one drink with dinner and stop. It’s another for me to be out at the bars and have only one drink. And once I have that second drink I tend to stop caring if I get drunk and just keep drinking. It seems “fun” and let’s me have “fun” in a situation where I’m really not enjoying myself. Drinking to excess, like overeating, is just another way for me to run away from the fact that I’m not being fulfilled by my life.

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Tags: Binge eating, Diet, emotional eating, Macrobiotic, Vegan, Vegetarian
Posted in Macrobiotic, Sober, Vegan | 2 Comments »

You Are What You Eat

The Clean program is a detox program that was designed by Dr. Alejandro Junger MD. The program was created to remove from our bodies the toxins we come into contact with as a result of living in a modern world. These include the external toxins, such as the products we put on our clothes, hair and skin, and internal toxins from the food, beverages, medications and tobacco products (and other drugs, if applicable) we consume.

The program is three weeks long, during which you consume 2 liquid meals, one solid meal each day. The liquid meals are eaten for breakfast and dinner, and the solid meal for lunch. A 12-hour fast should occur between dinner and breakfast to aid in detoxification. The reasoning behind this is that when your body is concentrating on digesting it does not have energy left to remove toxins from your body.

At least 51% of the food you eat should be raw. Water is consumed throughout the day to ensure urination each hour. If no bowel movement occurs during the day, an herbal laxative or castor oil is taken to aid the process. Movement (light to moderate exercise) should be added to your everyday routine.

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Tags: Clean, Cleanse, Diet, Dr. Alejandro Junger, Macrobiotics, Vegan
Posted in Clean Program, Diet, Macrobiotic, Vegan, Vegetarian | 3 Comments »

With the end of August quickly approaching, it is time for me to decide what I do next. I made the goal to go macrobiotic for the month. I am on track to meet this goal (only three days remain). The question is, do I continue being macro after the month ends or do I try something new?

August: A Synopsis

For the month of August, I gave up alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, processed foods, added sugar, dairy and eggs. Basically I decided to follow a vegan Macrobiotic diet. The reasoning behind this choice was two-fold: I wanted to rid myself of my addictive (tobacco and caffeine) and destructive (alcohol to excess and tobacco) vices, and I wanted to see if I could rid myself of my constipation and cramping by excluding dairy and eggs from my diet.

By far the hardest thing to give up was the caffeine. I had caffeine migraines for a week and a half after I drank my last diet soda. I didn’t have much nicotine withdrawal (or at least not that I could separate from the effects of the caffeine withdrawal) and giving up alcohol was easy (see yesterday’s post for more details).

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Tags: Bloomingfoods, Bloomington Indiana, Clean, Diet, Feast, LFRV, Macrobiotics, Paleo, Sober, Vegan
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Watching Jazz in New Orleans

As part of my macrobiotic experiment, I have eliminated alcohol from my diet for at least a month. It has been 28 days since I last consumed alcohol. My last drink was consumed in a live Jazz bar in New Orleans, so no one can claim I did not give alcohol a proper send off.

Giving up alcohol was effortless both physically and mentally. I only drank on the weekends when I was still drinking, and after one weekend of not drinking I felt great. I was able to get up at a reasonable time on Saturday and Sunday morning, I wasn’t hungover, and overall I was more productive during the day than I would have been otherwise. I decided I liked this plan. What I didn’t take into account were the social ramifications of not drinking.

So much of American culture seems to include drinking. After work we have happy hour, on the weekends we go to bars, or have parties at a friends house that include drinking. And it’s worse in a small town. If your only options are the movies, bowling, going to a party or going to the bars, it’s more likely that your activity will involve alcohol. And with a primarily 20-something crowd your likelihood turns into a near certainty.

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Tags: Bloomingfoods, Bloomington Indiana, Circle of Death, Jazz, Kings, Macrobiotis, New Orleans, Ride the Bus, Screw the Dealer, Sober, Vegan
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Today is rice day! That means that all I eat today is (you guessed it!) rice. I decided to go with long-grain brown rice because it is rather hot outside and long-grain is more yin and therefore more cooling than short-grain rice. (A typical rice fast is done with short-grain rice.)

Soaking Your Rice

I was busy last night with working out and going to that Japanese steakhouse so I did not get a chance to soak the rice for 3-12 hours as Jessica Porter (author of The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics) recommends. Soaking allows the grains to be more digestible as it neutralizes the enzyme inhibitors as well as the phytic acid in the grain.

During my past rice fasts I usually soaked for at least 5 hours before consuming. Some suggest soaking grain in an acid to aid the fermentation process and make the grains even more digestible. I’ve not tried that, but may in the future (using lemon juice as a natural, vegan and organic acid source).

Cooking Rice

I cooked the rice using my new rice cooker. I love this thing; I can turn it on and walk away. (I’ll be sure to include pictures next time. I forgot, sorry.) It switches itself to warming mode once the rice is done cooking which allows the rice to be served warm. However, the rice cooker does make a mess when I fill it with two cups of dry, long-grain brown rice and three cups of distilled water (purified with a Brita filter). The starch in the rice tends to boil up in the water and make a mess on my counter so I have learned to place the cooker on a paper towel and move it away from walls while cooking to prevent paint damage.

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Tags: Bloomington Indiana, Jessica Porter, Kukicha Tea, Macrobiotic, Rice Fast, Twig Tea, Vegan
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My journey to macrobiotics started with a cryptic phone call from my doctor after receiving the results of some routine tests. She left a message on my voicemail requesting that I call her back as soon as I could. Being the hypochondriac I am, I immediately decided I had cancer. It was really the only logical conclusion. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a hold of my doctor for the next four days (it was the day before New Year’s Eve and everyone was out of the office).

With my obsessive personality I immediately started Googling (yes, Google is a verb) cancer cures. How could I get cure this obviously deadly cancer that I was convinced I had? During my search I came across macrobiotics. Luckily I did not, in fact, have cancer (just a minor infection that cleared up with antibiotics).

The obsessive and panicked research I did, however, sparked my interest in macrobiotics. I purchased Jessica Porter’s book The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics. I started P90X not long after that and subsequently forgot about macrobiotics entirely until I saw the book sitting on my shelf around the end of July. Curious to know more, and looking for a way to lose that last bit of belly fat, I started reading.

So here is what you need to know about macrobiotics (Author’s note: This is a quick overview of Macrobiotics based on my reading of online articles and The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics. I am no expert on the subject and apologize for any inaccuracies in my information. Please let me know if you notice any inaccuracies so that I can correct them as soon as possible. It is not my intention to mislead anyone. If you would like to do your own research please feel free to follow the links referenced in this post.):

Yin and Yang

Macrobiotics is all about the yin and yang of foods and balancing that yin and yang in your body. Yang is contracted, inward, downward, heavy, dry, small, dense and hard. Yin, however is the opposite, expanded, outward, upward, light, wet, large, not dense and soft. However, as most of us have heard, everything on earth is a little bit yang and a little bit yin. It is the same for foods. So compared to salt, fish are yin, but compared to beans, fish are yang (see below).

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Tags: Belly fat, Body Pump, Cancer, Diet, Macrobiotics, p90x, Vegan, Vegetarian, Weight loss
Posted in Diet, Macrobiotic, Vegan | 1 Comment »

Vegetarian Origins

I have been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old, and I became a vegetarian for the noblest of reasons: to spite my mother. As any pre-adolescent is prone to do I rebelled from my mother’s insistence that I eat steak for dinner. She had made it and I was going to eat it, darn it! I loathed steak. The texture, the smell, the taste, the fact that it was usually pink inside and looked far too much like human flesh. It disgusted me. So I told her I wasn’t going to eat it, not thoroughly convinced I could follow through with this claim but boldly stating it anyway.

This is where my mother made her first mistake. She told me that I had to eat the steak unless I became a vegetarian. I saw an out. A free pass from ever having to eat steak again. I could just not eat any meat! It was brilliant. So I looked her in the eye, hands on my hips in defiance, and said “fine, I’m a vegetarian.” I’m not sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t that. Once she recovered from the initial shock, she made her second mistake. “You’ll never last,” she said. So, of course, I had to.

Fast forward to 11 years later. At 23 I was still going strong on my lacto- ovo- vegetarian diet. Aside from some misunderstandings about what exactly was in Caesar dressing (anchovy paste? is that even food?) and the fact that crab rangoons contain crab (who would have thought, I know, though I was probably 13 when this happened, so some forgiveness, please?) I have not deviated from this lifestyle (suck it, Mom).

Being a vegetarian has never really been a challenge for me. I don’t think of meat as food anymore. I realize other people eat it, but I don’t always remember that they do. The idea just seems so foreign. I didn’t even miss much meat when I initially became vegetarian. Aside from bacon, liver sausage and liver dumplings (don’t ask, I’m Czech, this is what we eat) I didn’t miss meat at all.

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Tags: Ayn Rand, Belly fat, Body Pump, Diet, Macrobiotics, Objectivism, Omnivore, p90x, Paleo, Raw Vegan, Vegan, Vegetarian, Weight loss
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