Live Your Life Be Free!

I remember watching my brother breaking two eggs into a glass first thing in the morning, then downing the whole thing, without putting his glass down in between gulps. He was about 16 (making me about 7) and wanted to get bulkier… and at the time, this is what people did. That was the first time I saw it… someone doing something yucky and unpleasant in order to look like what they want to look aesthetically, and of course, to maintain good health.

On Friday, I picked up the book The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose off of my book shelf, which I borrowed from a friend. The diet encourages a slow progression to Raw Foodism, which is a diet where everything you eat is not cooked. It relies on fruit, vegetables and nuts, prepared with blenders and juicers among other tools. One of the things that attracted me to the book was Natalia’s slim and healthy look (not like some diets like Atkins with an overweight author – not exactly a great source for advice!)

The book made a lot of good points, about the body’s need to be constantly cleansing itself and ridding itself of "toxins". It also relied on fresh fruit and veggies, instead of synthetic powders or fake sweeteners which also appealed to me. I bought a vegetable juicer and am now enjoying vegetable juice in the morning and eating many more fruits and vegetables than usual. I feel very healthy, and actually had three different men hit on me this weekend while I was running errands and exercising – whatever it was… it was working! But, as more time passed, I started to become a bit tired, headachy and unable to think. I kept reading the book, and near the end I saw what the author, Natalia eats in a typical day (pg 87):

• Noon: 30 ounces of vegetable juice
• 1-5: A whole watermelon or other fresh fruit
• 6:30: Cherry tomatoes and organic carrots
• 7:30: Large gourmet raw salad or raw entree/soup and other raw "treats" and possibly a glass of wine

Wow – this is considered a healthy diet? What about getting protein to build muscle to weight lift (thereby preventing osteoporosis). What about having enough calories to get stuff done every day? Most people have crazy schedules – so how is it possible to get it all done on just a watermelon and vegetable juice before 6:30 pm? Also, what a sacrifice for health! Talk about yucky and unpleasant! This made my brother’s egg drinking seem like nothing – that just took him a few minutes, this raw foods thing/starvation thing was every day. 

So… the diet started going on thin ice. The final blow was last night when I was so hungry that I could not think straight enough to define a word to my friend. What is the point in living life if I am too listless to think? That being said, I will continue juicing vegetables and eating more healthy foods because it tastes good and feels good. So – the whole weekend experiment was not a waste of time.

I guess we all make sacrifices in one way or another when it comes to health. The health nut sacrifices the foods that they crave, and the person who gives into their desires sacrifices their long-term health and their aesthetic appearance. As my friend says, it all sucks. It sucks to be healthy because it doesn’t taste as good, and it sucks to be unhealthy because you get sick and look fatter. You just have to decide which thing (that sucks) you want more.