Closer to the raw mono diet/ On the path to becoming the master of my life

I am starting to move away from making salads and mixing everything. Can eat oranges and tangerines together or avocado with dill and parsley, but already half of the "meals" consists of one type of product.
I am reading the 3rd book out of the 4 on the role of our thoughts and intentions in the creation of our worlds (plural, yes) by Sinelnikov (in RU only). Very similar to transurfing, but less selfish, focused on the idea of the necessity to change oneself in order to change one's world - the same idea as in the Vedic tradition. I think Sinelnikov's books and books on transurfing nicely supplement each other.
Choosing the main goal in life is not easy.
Great changes await.

I, me, mine and OM

I don't know how to produce the right OM (AUM) sound. I have never tried to meditate. I have never tried to fully concentrate on something... and don't know how to start!!!
So as I can't produce that sound, I want to hear it at least. But who makes it the right way??? Ufff. Nevertheless, I listen to what sounds lovely to me. These are several mantras (Well, Christian prayers end with 'AMEN', but Christians lost the understanding of the power, meaning and origin of this word and don't pronounce it correctly).
I love this mantra interpretation and this commercial version. Deva Premal has a sweet voice.

=) First anniversary

Around this time last April I understood I couldn't eat meat any longer. First, I told that I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian to my friends Sergey and Vadim. The reaction was "so you won't cook to us any more?" Lovely... Then I went to my friends Denise and Naira and shared my news. The reaction was something like " wow, are you sure?" Some days later I saw Owen and Heejung. Their reaction was something like "ok, but why?". A month later my mum (a dentist brought up by the Soviet medical school) came to spend a week with me in Holland. Her reaction was a pale face.
About 7 months ago I started to become a raw foodist. I shared this with Owen and Heejung. Never told Denise or Naira. Vadim and Sergey learned later. I talked to my mum only when I came back home.
Now my mum is almost as strict as I am, she eats something cooked maybe once in a month only.
=)

Several links on raw diet and similar

I've been reading everything I can find on natural living (including diets) but it used to be mainly in Russian. It was intended for me, it's easier for me to be persuaded by something in my mother tongue =) But now I want to share my views. So I found something in English. Especially for you =)

Ah, those pots and pans! Or how and why I became a raw foodist
War in vain. Why we get sick and what for
Immunity. Do we really need it?
Cooking for slow death
Where to get protein?
Do vegetarians and raw foodists risk?
Eating bread one gains not just weight

And one last link for now about menstruation. I haven't read the entire blog entry, but I read something similar in Russian several months ago and I was shocked. Well, as a child, when I learned that every girl will start having it regularly one day, I didn't understand why human females have menstruation while animal females don't but I didn't even think about looking for alternative views on the nature of menstruation then. Hm, the fact of having it in the future (and having pain while giving birth) was the reason why I wanted to be a boy then =))) Now I don't need to worry about menstruation and I perceive the ability of giving birth as a heavenly gift.

Web resources

The site I found yesterday when searching for some info on Breuss in English is very good! It contains info about all kinds of fasting for newbies. I am not that advanced in fasting but my own experience and the one of the golodanie.su community gives me enough knowledge to say that the site is good. Although it belongs to a doctor who promotes his hospital located in the Philippines, it's not just simple advertising, it's maintained for everyone who is looking for detoxification, fasting for spiritual reasons etc.

Juicer/Anti-cancer diet

Bought a juicer. Finally! My old one had some problems. I had only 4000 RUR (1 EUR ~ 45 RUR), bought one by an absolutely unknown (to me) brand taking into consideration only the parameters (trying to find the best for such a low price). Just tried it with celery, cucumbers and carrots. For this price my choice is ok. I also want a manual so-called wheatgrass juicer, but they are not sold here (or I can't find any info), and I will have to order it from the USA... Expensive it will be, as the cost of shipment might be higher than the price of the manual juicer...
Being in general against breaking what nature gives us I consider juice extraction to be an intermediate stage. Besides, I want to follow Dr. Rudolph Breuss's 42-days scheme. In my case it's for cleaning purposes (I hope), but I have read posts by people whom Breuss's scheme helped in their battle with cancer (together with the no-sugar magnesium diet which consists in beet root, cauliflower, kohlrabi, pumpkin, radish, buckwheat sprouts and rose hips only, everything RAW!. If you know somebody with cancer who is looking for a cure, I really believe I know the answer).

GMO

Watched a programme on GMO on a Russian channel (Осторожно! Ген скорпиона по телеканалу Россия, in RU only). This film touches upon the main issues related to GMO in fruits&vegetables, especially soya&corn, food used at animal farms etc. but it lacks some important information, for instance, about experiments with the second and third generations of mice. As I am against GMO and try to follow the developments, there isn't much new stuff in the film for me. Two new things were information about potatoes and Brazil!!! This country is among the leaders in GMO use, after the USA. Hm... Need to search for trustworthy info.

Dehydration/Water

My condolences to relatives of those who suffered in the earthquakes in central Italy, but here I'd like to comment on just one thing said on tv (Euronews, for example). So I heard some reporters talk about dehydration of those whom the rescue teams helped (are helping and will help) after the first 24 hours. Dehydration after 24-36-48-72 hours? Dios mío, those guys don't know what they are talking about! Now I noticed this disinformation, but just a year ago I would have believed those reporters.
In the modern European society it is uncommon to abstain from food and drink during certain periods. In the Muslim world many people fast in the month of Ramadan abstaining from food, drinks, entertainment etc from dawn to dusk. In the Hindu religion all the manifestations of their divine beings to lay people at a date in the past, all deaths of their holy people etc. are celebrated by a short fasting till midday (not eating, not drinking, no entertainment etc); plus there are 2 ekadashis every month when they don't eat or drink 36 hours (night+day+night). I don't say everybody is following all these traditions, but at least they are familiar with the concept, so everybody knows it's fine not to drink for 36 hours. My personal maximum of abstaining from both food and drink is 3 days (about 72 hours) by now, and I wouldn't use the word dehydration to my condition then. In general it is good to be sure that you can survive several days without food and drink while having enough energy for something apart from staying in bed and it is good to practice this as well.

I haven't drunk water for quite some time. My very old Soviet juicer still works and makes me apple juice every day. Then oranges and cucumbers are very juicy. I believe I must drink water, because making juice is unnatural (no animal can do this), but somehow now I can't make myself drink water. The water I have access to doesn't taste good to me.

Open air market/Dried fruits

Every Friday to Sunday there is a week-end open air market in each part of Moscow. In my area we have one half-way to my mom's workplace and every Friday we buy groceries from one and the same stall with produce from the Oryol region. It is hard to find a farm in Russia that would know how to preserve well agricultural produce the whole winter (November-March) due to low technological level of their storage facilities. And I guess we are lucky to have found some contacts. Their prices are higher than the average prices on that local market, but we noticed we are not the only regular customers of theirs. Thus, good quality (and minimal giving light weight as opposed to the majority) does form loyalty =).
I know that by now apples from this part of the planet don't contain much nutritional value in general, but still it's something juicy and nice. Unfortunately, I noticed that I can eat only Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian apples, not treated or treated much less than their "colleagues" from Poland (which used to be quite fine before Poland entered the EU), France, Holland, China (uff) or Latin America.
I got hooked on sunflower seeds. Since last week I've been really enjoying some 100 grams of big & tasty sunflower seeds from Uzbekistan a time, some 2-3 times a day. I am really happy we have such good economic relations at the level of vegetables, fruits, dried fruits, seeds and similar with the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia. They are so poor that they don't treat their produce =) and thanks God the sanitation & epidemiological rules and standards for import to the Russian Federation are adequate, not exorbitant as in the EU.

Prices/Exotic Fruits

Almost everywhere in the world today the prices are going down, in several countries including Russia, they are going up, at a high pace I must say. The forecasts are not nice at all. By the end of the year fruits&vegetables&root crops are going to cost the final consumers 150% more than now. As far as I know, at present a raw foodist who economizes well can spend on food 4000 RUR (1 EUR ~ 45 RUR) a month in Moscow, but this means almost no fruits. My expenses when I count well are 5000 RUR for 2 weeks for 2 people, which normally can be extrapolated to 1 month (I have never calculated for a whole month). When I am not on such a strict budget I spend 7500 RUR per month per person. We'll see the surprises of December.
I have started to learn Portuguese on my own, I bought a CD and downloaded a lot of stuff. It's easy for me after Spanish, but many basic vocabulary words are different. As I had done with Spanish, I made a list of food I may want to eat in Portuguese. And after searching for the translations I explored the variety of fruits&vegetables in Wiki. Brasil is one of the countries which can be called a paradise for fruit lovers! I am not familiar with a vast majority of what I have read about. Brasil will certainly be on my list of countries to visit in the Americas =)

My food preferences now

Basic stuff (from the regions nearby or neighbouring countries):
apples from the Lipetsk region (to the south from Moscow)
our own pumpkins (grown in the Moscow region)
white cabbage
carrots
hazelnuts from the Lipetsk region
dill from the Moscow or Kaluga region
sun-dried persimmon from Georgia (incl. Abkhazia)
sun-dried apricot (both with the freestone, урюк, and without, курага)
mung bean (green gram, маш) in germination
wheat seeds in germination
sunflower seeds

Products from faraway regions (need to minimize):
sun-dried dates from the Mediterranean region
citrus from Morocco
pineapple from Costa-Rica
mango from Peru
pears from Argentina

There are some products I would love to consume but they are not seasonal meaning too many fertilizers are used (cucumbers from greenhouses in nearby regions or Central Asia, tomatoes from Central Asia and paprika I don't know where it is from). But sometimes I do eat these.

Winter/Fasting/etc

This winter in the Moscow region and where I have travelled was sometimes what we call "real", -20C, white snow everywhere. After 3 winters in Western Europe I was a bit nervous about how I would survive any temperature below 0, but it turned out to be quite fine. So I don't see any obstacles to be a raw foodist in the cold period of the year as many say.
But I must admit I was not a raw foodist myself because of my very strong psychological dependence on bread. Now I am finally changing this habit.
Being quite thin and slim I would have never thought I would go for a fast longer than a couple of days. But I did. Starting on the 2nd of March, coinciding with the Orthodox Lent (Great Fast), 7 days, finished today with half water-half freshly squeezed apple juice. It was really hard for me, I felt extremely weak in certain moments, the stairs were a nightmare so I didn't go out the last 4 days (I live on the 2nd floor without an elevator). I did it till the acidotic crisis which happened yesterday in the evening and although I then all of a sudden felt strong and thought to continue for several more days today I woke up too weak to move my arms. I guess this is when the real cleansing process starts, but I wasn't ready for this so I crawled to the kitchen to prepare the juice. Still a great experience!
Hopefully I am becoming a real raw foodist today. Understanding the negative issues of bread and having lived without any food for a week I guess now I am able to do this.
=)

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt

After some traveling and relaxing in the sunshine in Egypt and Israel I am back home.
My diet wasn't 100% raw. I could eat a small pita-like bread, a spoonful of rice or some spaghetti for dinner. My tongue felt all the ingredients of the tomato spaghetti sauce or the pepper in that bread. A nice sensation.

Egyptian mango is great! Its colour is orange, it's sweet and juicy. Today I ate the last mango brought from the trip. After that I don't enjoy South-American mangoes sold in Moscow anymore...

Egyptian pomegranate is very sweet. I recall the pomegranates I ate 13 years ago when I went to Egypt for the first time; I couldn't stop eating pomegranates, so good they seemed to me then. Now the impression is the same, and I still have several pieces on my kitchen table.

Many Russians are not familiar with custard apples, called ['eshta] in Egyptian Arabic or chirimoya in Spanish. I know it from my Spanish experience and quite like it. As far as I can tell, Egyptian eshtas don't differ from Spanish chirimoyas.

In Sharm El Sheikh there is only one supermarket with fixed prices, called Metro. Everywhere else they will try to get maximum from each client. In Metro there is a small stall with nuts and seeds where I found natural shelled almonds, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Moreover, they sell organic dates (filled with almonds).

My hotel wasn't 5 stars, but the restaurant offered a lot of fruit and vegetables. No mangoes or eshtas, of course (these are expensive there), but tasty melons, fresh (!) dates, very juicy cucumbers and very good tomatoes, cabbage, red cabbage, leek, lettuce, iceberg lettuce, carrots... No problem for a vegetarian or raw foodist.

I tried to make myself drink water, but it was really hard for me. Tangerines or cucumbers seemed enough.

Moscow: first impressions

After +15C in Istanbul I was greeted by snow and -2C in Moscow. Snow! I missed it so much.

Plastic bags for each and every type of fruit including if you buy one pomegranate. I tried to refuse at several supermarkets, but they said it was against their rules.

Bottled water only in plastic bags. In the very heart of the city, in Elisseevsky supermarket in Tverskaya street, there are many types of still glass-bottled water, but in other districts the situation is different. I visited about ten shops and supermarkets in my area, and only in one, the most expensive one, I saw two types of still glass-bottled water (Evian). At the same time, almost everywhere here I saw sparkling water in glass, the famous in ex USSR countries Essentuki.

Istanbul

Current location: Istanbul, Turkey
It's such a considerable change in veg quality! Fruits travel a long way to Holland, pass all kinds of treatments to be allowed to the internal market; locally veg and fruits are grown with too many chemicals to taste good. I was used to this neutral taste, and now it feels so good to eat more natural raw food!

I am eating tons of Turkish tangerines. They are simply great, and there was no treatment mentioned on the boxes. It's the season of pomegranates as well, and in small kiosks or cafes they offer freshly made pomegranate juice, a completely new experience for me.

Radish and lettuce, nice cucumbers and wonderful tomatoes - finally! After quite some time in the overcivilized EU! Please, Turkey, don't aim at entering the EU with their horrible agricultural standards!

Not raw. A lot. Recently, in Holland, sushi, seaweed salad (with some colour enhancer), in Turkey, black olives, baklava, Turkish bread, boiled potatoes with spices, several types of jam. The worst was that in the plane I ate some cheese included in the food they serve at 11000m, and I am sure it wasn't vegetarian. I feel guilty, it was the first time I ate something non-vegetarian fully understanding it.

Airport. In the shopping area for passengers at Schiphol there is a kiosk where they make smoothies, including with special nuances like addition of green tea and echinacea in powder. But vegetarian sushi were present only in the supermarket before the passport control.

Galata bridge. While passing by a fish restaurant Balik:
Come and see our menu - Thank you, I don't eat fish - Just come, I will show you vegetarian [dishes]. - OK.
Oh, what he showed... every single dish was with this or that kind of fish. In the end they offered me a glass of still water. And one of the waiters came up to me to talk about vegetarianism and how will I act when I get married and have children - how will I cook meat and fish for them... "Fish is very healthy, doctors say." But "I respect your choice" - this is phrase so pleasant to hear.

Spice market. So many spices, nuts, dried fruits, herbs... Amazing. I tasted and bought, among other things, raisins which were dried on the vine, sun-dried apricots and figs. They taste great.

Not raw today

Today in the morning I went to a town in the northern part of Belgium to stroll about the flea market. At the same time it seems to be my last visit to Belgium for the coming many months or even years, and I did a bad thing: bought 5 pieces of dark chocolate and several small and very small bolletjes (bread) and ate everything during the day. What I noticed is that even that I didn't eat all at once and didn't need water to drink with the food, I did feel very thirsty afterwards. Really thirsty. Frankly speaking, I didn't remember this feeling. No chocolates, no bread anymore, bye-bye.

Food

2 kg tangerines from Morocco (waxed, yes), several oranges from Brazil, bananas 3 pieces, some strawberries, dates 2 pieces, 400 g almonds from Italy in the evening, some other nuts for breakfast.
Woke up at 5:30 and couldn't sleep more, but during the day slept several hours.

Today

Today I went to the supermarket early, at 8 o'clock, and tried some freshly baked warm bread, 3 types (small broodjes). I did like all of them, but felt that one was too salty or felt provançal herbs in another one.

It seemed to me so warm outside, but my neighbour returned several minutes after me, well dressed, but complaining about the cold and with really cold hands. According to buienradar.nl, it is 7.8C now. I was absolutely fine, without gloves.

35.7C in the evening.
As for other food, again I ate a lot.
Different nuts, bananas, tangerines, oranges, strawberry...

Temperature and food today

37.1C in the evening.
Today is my smoothies day. A mix of vegetables ground in the morning; nuts, bananas and strawberries in the evening. I am very far from the mono diet now. More than 1.5 kilo oranges from Brazil, 1 galia melon, more nuts.
I think the tastiest bananas are those with many brown dots, not those that get brown by parts of surface at once, and today I enjoyed such dotted bananas =)

What is "too much"?

I wonder if it is fine to eat some 600-800 g of different nuts everyday... One week in a row already...
And those 3 melons a day or a kilo of citrus, is it too much?

Not raw

The other day I tried to "explore my senses" and had a bit of extra pure chocolate with mascobado sugar. I still like the smell, but it is already too sweet for me and I felt funny afterwards. Today I decided to see my reaction to bread and bought a small white wheat broodje. It felt a bit different than before, but I still liked the taste and the smell.

Food

Not that much as yesterday =)
1 very small galia (budget) melon, a standard galia melon, nuts, 1 kaki, leek, 5-6 Fair trade bananas (these were very tasty)

Food today

Eat too much...
Hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, bananas, kakis, dewberry (bramen), salad (lettuce, leek, paprika, cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, green onion, alfalfa, lime juice), wild tomatoes. Bought a litre of Evian in a glass bottle, drank 2/3.
Fresh dates from Israel.

Macrobiotics

I came across this term just several months ago, but I was a determined lactovegetarian then, with ideas based on the popularized Vedic knowledge, and didn't read anything on macrobiotic diet. Today I did. This whole idea of eating what grows in your area and in accordance with the season appeals to me, but it wilted due to my love for fruit in general and exotic fruit in particular. Where I live now, in Holland, we have local apples and pears which I don't like, strawberries, maybe plums and cherries, berries. Where I normally live, in the central area of the European part of Russia, we have apples, pears, plums, (sour) cherries, strawberries, other berries (gooseberry, blueberry, currant, cranberries, buckthorn - it grows in Holland as well, but they don't sell it), tomatoes. And this is it. OK, it's possible to grow physalis. But I love melons, watermelons, apricots, peaches, tangerines which grow several hundreds kilometres to the south from Moscow. It means that to eat all this I must move to the south... Macrobiotic diet suggests avoiding sweet fruit, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and stick to other vegetables, nuts, seeds and cereals. As for nuts, in the Moscow region we have only hazelnuts. The energy aspect of macrobiotics (yin and yang balance) is nice. Of course it is necessary to be or pursue equilibrium in everything. So, once again, I will try to eat less sweet fruits and more vegetables or non-sweet fruits like cucumbers.

Post-harvest fruit and vegetables treatments

Of course I knew about the waxed apples and washed carrots, but I was negatively surprised by what I have just learned. If you go to this website, you'll see some pictures of the cleaning process of tangerines. "Cleaning and pre-dryng is necessary before final waxing." And for cleaning special detergents are used...
Mamma mia. Waxes are "designed...to reduce the weight losses, heightening gloss, and prolonging effective shelf life". Yes, it's all about prolonging effective shelf life. With citrus it's not that bad. But if I want to bite an apple and eat it with the peel? I don't want to eat wax...
This is a good reason for me to avoid imported fruits and vegetables that have to be treated due to different sanitation zones and requirements. Unfortunately, even within the EU or even in Holland citrus or apples are treated.

Temperature and food today

36.8C in the evening.
1 l freshly squeezed orange juice, 1/2 galia melon, bananas, tangerines from Spain, oranges from Chile, walnuts from France, pecans from South Africa, almonds from Italy.

On the net with oranges it is said "fruit treated with wax authorized in the EU (imazalil tbz)". On the net with tangerines it is said "treated with ortophenilphenol, imazalil and natural wax". Hmm...

Today and yesterday: food, yoga

36.5C in the afternoon.

Yesterday I decided to cook dinner for my good friends. They think I am vegetarian, and don't really support me even in this. So I haven't told them that I am that strict now. As I am going back home soon, I am distributing my stuff among my good acquaintances, including food I bought long ago, like macaroni or canned vegetables. So yesterday I cooked dinner from what I had bought before switching to raw. It was some brown rice, some barley, some pasta, green beans, all with spices, beet-root and spinach from cans, wasa. I was going for yoga later, and as it's better not to eat anything 1.5 hours before the class, so I told them, I did join my friends only for a spoonful of each of the food types. It wasn't much altogether, and my stomach felt fine during my yoga class. But at night I felt strangely sleepy, not as usual now, I didn't like the experience, especially as I wasn't planning to sleep at all! It was the election time in the USA and I was following.

The yoga class was not very intense, but we didn't have class for 2 weeks. I was on the fully raw diet during many days in a row (with the exception right on that evening). During the class I started to yawn which is very unusual as yoga brings me energy in general. We did a lot of twisting of the upper back - and it was much easier for me than just several classes ago! - and other exercises for the back. I slept several hours during the day and when I woke up, I felt all the muscles of the side ribs. I like this feeling. How could we feel the muscles otherwise? =) And we have so many, jiji!

Today in the early morning, at 4:45-5:00, we gathered at a friend's place to watch the culmination of the election campaign and had breakfast together. There were bananas, mango and water for me. Then I had tangerines, walnuts, more bananas and in the evening cantaloupe, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts.

Had a walk around the town. It's so small, that a bit more than an hour is enough to stroll where I like.

Temperature and food today

36.5C in the afternoon, 36.7C at night.
Today with more precise numbers:
Before 22:00
Water, 0.5 l freshly squeezed orange juice
After 22:00
4 kakis, 3 oranges, 1 tangerine, 1 galia melon, salad (red cabbage, leek, green onion, red onion, проростки, Chinese cabbage, yellow paprika, cauliflower, tomato, cucumber, carrot)
Very strange. It didn't seem to be a lot. The pauses between the meals were short, but I felt well.
My rhythm is not appropriate now, go to bed very late.

My weight is the same, it is stable since I was 14 years old, about 45 kg, with maximum last winter (52 kg) and minimum when I ate the halva and got sick (43 kg).
I read that many raw foodists lose weight. It's not my case :) I guess mine is already optimal.

Water and plastic

Yesterday I read an article (RU) about water in plastic bottles. The main idea of the article is the following. In the production process of plastic they use antimony. In time plastic releases antimony into the contents of the bottle. According to some comparative studies, the amount of antimony in plastic bottles is 30 times higher than in glass bottles of water.
So buy water in glass bottles!

Temperature and food today

35.8C late at night.
I am glad I have drunk a lot of water today, because I didn't drink water for many days and almost started to make myself do it. Today I drank water with pleasure.
3 melons (yup), 2 small kakis, 3 figs, salad, tangerines.

PS: What I call kaki (in Dutch) is persimmon in English.