My Summer Start : Report after 4 weeks:

The last week, and indeed the whole 4 weeks, have been satisfactory from 2 points of view:

1. The ingestion of harmful, cooked food has been stopped.
2. The work of elimination, the removal of harmful accumulations, is proceeding well. That could take years to complete, but already some signs of improvement are appearing:

- A partial recovery of vitality. My movements (arms, legs, body) seem freer and lighter. Hot days do not reduce me to exhaustion as before. While a walk home in the sun, uphill with back and arm weighted, can make me feel very tired, recovery is fast.

One focus of elimination is in my throat. This forces bouts of coughing. Sometimes there seems to be a swelling of the tissues which might throttle me. My voice is affected, sounding raucous and sexy (says one woman). It's unpleasant and irritating, but not worrying or serious.

The discharge of clear mucus from the anus was quite frequent this last week, reminding me of old days.
This process is somehow satisfying and not at all unpleasant.

There's been no essential change in my diet during the last week,, it has continued almost identical to the first three weeks. My body is feeling pleasantly lean and the subcutaneous fat layer at the side of my ribs is now down to about 4 mm, down from about 8 mm a month ago.

 

 

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Jen, I am having (have been all along) a lot of trouble connecting to Raw-pleasure: I don't know if it's my Service Provider or what. Having to try usually for 10 - 20 minutes to get to the first screen, a process which often fails completely. My time available for this struggle may become less. If I should give up altogether, please remember you are always most welcome to correspond with me via my gmail email,
gurthbruins@gmail.com.

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Today is day 24 of my 'Summer Start' for 2011 - my first noteworthy campaign for many years. My intention is to stick to 100% raw, 95% fruit diet, indefinitely. This journal is to record my failure or success, or degree of such, for the benefit of anyone interested.

 

To summarise what I've eaten the first 3 weeks:

1. A quarter watermelon most days, especially the last 2 weeks.

2. Mangoes: two per day for the first 2 weeks - then replaced by litchis, of which about 25 per day.

3. Tomatoes: about half a dozen per day.

4. Grapes, my main staple during the season: start every day with a bunch of grapes.

5. Lesser amounts of bananas, nectarines, pears, sour figs, at odd times during the period.

6. About 7 raw potatoes, a bunch of carrots and a bunch of parsley: the 5% non-fruit part. I intend to discontinue these forms of non-fruit already. Today I had a cucumber instead. Is that fruit? Hardly I think, but perhaps there is a better case for tomatoes? What do you say?

7. I treated myself to an imported avocado after about one week; today I had another.

8. Brazil nuts, the last 4 days: 3, 2, 1 and 2 per day.

9. One large sweet melon (cantaloupe). (one day about a week ago, instead of watermelon)


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Jenergy, you are very supportive and encouraging, I do appreciate it!

And thes..up, thanks for putting me onto that video, I watched one third of it already and will definitely finish it soon. I was also interested to see, on the YouTube page, a link to the famous South African "fruitarian pioneer" Essie... who is now 85 and whom I met over 30 years ago. I MUST check that out too. (The links I saw may be slanted for S. African viewers?)

My weekend went as planned, mainly watermelon and litchis. To start, I did wonder how I'd take to a much larger consumption of litchis, not having done so in memory. The first few litchis raised some doubts, made me thinking of selling some of the 120+ I'd bought, but luckily I soon got into them and found I could eat 20 - 30 a day quite easily.

I finished my last two small potatoes yesterday - raw, of course, and also have parsley for only one day more. I think I'll lay off the potatoes now. Maybe buy a cucumber or two - an idea I got from reading patchwork kitten's journal.

On Saturday I finished the day with 3 Brazil nuts.
It put an idea in my mind - rather eat only one Brazil nut at a time, between rations of fruit. The idea is to sort of "blend" the concentrated fat and protein into the lower-concentrated food. On Sunday I had two nuts only - eight hours apart - and I enjoyed them more this way.

I have started many failed campaigns in the past, too many to remember and perhaps they are best forgotten. This is my first new start for a long time. So far it's been a pretty smooth ride, as I undertake the operation of clearing out accumulated rubbish and toxins from dead, cooked foods.

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simple living, Costa Rica

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rI-r5eD-ag

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thesunnysideup, nice to hear from you, feel free to write exactly what you please here - there's plenty of room for you. Thanks for the welcome.

Re your queries: in the old days I had a juicer and a blender and grinder and I used them a lot. I also did a lot of sprouting and fermentation of sprouts.

At the moment I have no such equipment, I can really be called a minimalist who likes to simplify life to the utmost. And have as few possessions as possible. Or am I just making excuses for my laziness?

So no, I eat the fruit as is, sometimes I don't even bother to rinse it. Here again I can find excuses for my laziness: I need a steady supply of 'germs' so my defenses are kept up to scratch and don't get pampered too much.

Today I bought watermelon for today and tomorrow, and a 2 Kg box of litchis because they were going cheap and I do like them a lot. Apart from those I will also have grapes and tomatoes in my boxes.

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Thanks for your warm welcome, Jenergy.

It's 11 a.m. on a lovely day here. I must walk down to the shops now to get two quartermelons (quarter watermelons) for today and tomorrow, and also some more of their delicious mangoes. That's all I need to get today I think.

Yesterday I stuck entirely to fruit, after a few days trying out some raw veggies in addition: chomping parsley, grating a couple of carrots, eating one or two raw potatoes. In total, I had:

quarter watermelon, 3 mangoes, 2 bunches grapes, 4 litchis, 5 tomatoes (fruit?), 4 dates.

That is very little if I think of the huge amounts of fruit I used to consume in the 1970s - I remember eating 120 tomatoes per day...  things change a lot over many years, it seems.

Finding this forum, with its focus so much on the right point, is also a great inspiration to me. Last night I started to realise once again the value and importance of this direction.

 

 


5.20 pm Fri 28 Jan:

Day 17 of RAW:

Three different fruits since this 'Summer Start' started:

1. Found some nice large, tasty nectarines: slightly soft and bruised or dented in one or two places, this only made the fruit seem nicer. Funny how fruit IS often nicer a bit after it LOOKS its best.

2. Bought a sweet melon (cantaloupe) instead of the watermelon today. It was harder to finish in one sitting than the quartermelons, because it was much firmer and more solid. Flavour was excellent, which is not always the case with these melons here. Sometimes they lack enough sugar.

3. Sour figs: seldom seen in a market here, usually one picks them off the common or off the low mountain tops. They are tiny, smaller than a grape, with one or two drops of sticky 'juice' having strong flavour, like a cross between marmite and grenadilla.

These days I continue to base myself on fruit and tentatively see if other things will go with this diet. I grated my last carrot today: I am feeling that my body is not so keen on these raw veggies, the parsley, carrot and potato: finding them just not good enough to bother with. They seem to impose a slight strain.

An imported avocado I had about 4 days ago went down better. But I'd rather stick to in-season stuff I think. Imported stuff shouldn't be necessary in a place like this.

I have an unopened packet of Brazil nuts which I'll open soon and see how they fit in.