Man boobs. The unspoken truth.

 

Raw food update.

(I realize how many of you will read that first line, groan, and immediately leave the blog, but it’s important. To me anyway. Plus, since a few readers saw what I was doing and began a similar regime themselves, it’s important to them too.)

I’ve been on the raw food diet now for…I lost count somewhere along the way, but I believe it’s over three weeks, almost four. During that time, the following happened:

1. I lost ten pounds. Not ten pounds I could afford to lose, I was already thin, but ten pounds nonetheless.  My neck is thinner, my shirts are hanging off me, I look good in a bikini again. Also, people are starting to comment adversely. ”God, you’re so skinny!”
2. My feet started aching. It’s painful to walk now, for some reason, though of course all the organs in the body have nerve endings in the feet, so it’s obviously related. Maybe my insides are screaming for help. Yes, that’s probably it.
3. I started to feel really alive. Focused, athletic, strong, determined.
4. My skin is fantastic. I had one or two minor break-outs while I was detoxing, and I got an ulcer on my tongue that was reeeeally painful. Otherwise, I’m developing a bit of a glow. And in a world looking for alternative sources of energy, that can’t be a bad thing.  
5. My food allergies have subsided. I put this down to the fact that I’m not eating the foods I’m allergic to. Duh.
6. 6. My man-boobs (I’m a B-cup), which developed years ago after I drank way too many lattes (containing hormones) and ate way too much acidic food (which does something to encourage estrogen, I believe) suddenly look even more ridiculous than they did before.
7. 7. My senses are heightened. My sense of smell, for instance, is through the roof. Unfortunately, this makes normal food smell even better and more enticing than it really is, and I want some. NOW!
8. Friends are avoiding me. In droves. The telephone never rings any more.  Apparently, I’m considered a real bore because I’m so enthusiastic about nutrition and they’re not, and every time I eat something live and raw and healthy it reminds them that what they’re eating is dead and slowly killing them. So? What’s wrong with that? 
9. I’m not being invited out to dinner or to dinner parties. People are anticipating that I’ll be an awkward guest and start picking and choosing what I’ll eat (and they’re not wrong), which ruins it for everyone. Our neighbors called up last night and invited my partner out to dinner. My name didn’t even come up.
10. My partner makes his own food without consulting me and sits eating it, reading a magazine, hoping silently that I don’t bring up the subject of raw food, because if I mention it one more time he may lash out.
11. I paid for an internet course on how to reduce the size of my man-boobs. The trick seems to be to increase the alkalinity of your diet and do weights to tighten the chest. I begin that next week. 
12. Salads I used to eat in local restaurants now taste vile. This is because they use vegetables sprayed with pesticides and for the first time I can actually taste them.
13. The food cravings won’t go away. Cake especially. But I’ve managed to talk some sense into myself before eating them, and avoided lapsing. However, cake, being sacred, will definitely be a part of my diet again in the future. It is the law.
14. Most of the food I used to eat holds no allure or appeal any more. Pasta may smell good, but I have no desire whatsoever to put it in my mouth. And chicken….yeuw.
15. 15. Except for the soles of my feet, which hurt like hell, I feel terrific. My body has adapted quickly.
16. 16. I’ve learned to “cook” raw meals at home that are really very exciting and delicious. Raw is not as dismal or eccentric as it at first sound.
17. Raw restaurants make better raw food than I could ever make myself. I should have learned that by now.
18. I eat so much less food than I used to. When the food is raw, or in juice form, it is almost all nutrition, so you need less of it. Dead food, because it contains barely any nutrients at all, has to be consumed in bulk for the body to benefit. Afterwards, you’re soon hungry again and eating more. That’s why people put on weight. Eat healthy food and the pounds fall off you. Though not, I’m discovering, off your man-boobs, which obstinately remain the same size.
19. L.A. has some fabulous raw food places, and the health food stores here have whole aisles dedicated to raw food. Only in California. 
20. I’m developing “raw food eyes”, according to some friends. This is the intense, glaring, pop-eyed expression that people on high nutrition diets get after a while. I promised I wouldn’t, but it’s unavoidable, apparently. Damn.
21. I sometimes feel entirely separate from my physical body. Floaty, distant, totally at peace within. It’s like I’m just a high frequency spirit trapped inside a low frequency physical form. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what I am! 
22. I’m impatient and bad-tempered sometimes now. This is because raw food sharpens your nerve endings to a point and you can’t stand to be around fools any more. Clearly, I was extremely attractive to fools previously.
23. Raw food is  Oh-my-god-Level expensive. I don’t know how much I’ve spent on food and ingredients for meals these past three or four weeks, but it’s still a small fortune. I’m out of pocket by hundreds of dollars. And that doesn’t even include the cost of the course on how to reduce my man-boobs. 
24. I stopped counting the days about a week ago. But since beginning this piece, I’ve now done a calculation of how long I’ve been raw, and it’s only 24 days. 76 left to go. Yike.

So there you go. The work continues. Sorry if that’s boring for the rest of you, but I’m genuinely shocked at what a worthwhile experiment this is. Clearly, we’re eating all the wrong stuff and our bodies hate it. We’re just not listening to what they’re telling us. Same way my partner and most of my friends no longer listen to me.  

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Buy Cash’s book, Naked in Dangerous Places, here.

  

 

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