Hi...Basil here.

I am a girl who lives in San Francisco. Just slipping into my 21st year. I have embarked onto the journey of rawness a couple of years ago. I basically Got really into yoga when I was 16 which got me off the booze and pot scene before I got out of hand for too long...I also quit eating meat as an experiment and I never wanted to go back, gradually I became sensitive to the whole cruelty of animals and health issues and so on...A few months later I startedto carpool with a guy to yoga who I soon found to be strongly attracted to, I soon found his secret...I couldn't help but want to be caught up in his scheme. His routine was drinking mostly raw juices a fruity one in the morning, a green one in the afternoon and a red one in the evening and eating an avocado everyday, snacking on olives and swigging off the flax oil bottle. So I just followed his plan and it was freaking awesome!! I didnt read any books, just did what he did. Then, I moved to San Francisco and we lost contact...killing my support system was not good for keeping me on track.

Soon after the move I little by little went back to cooked food, and found veganism to be good enough, though I still knew deep down that I wished for my old routine to come back again.

So here I am 2 years later. Eating cookies and muffins, enjoying every bite and then regretting each little snack! I hated it. If I had to skip yoga for a few dayss I would feel so fat and ugly! Which i know that I am neither, but we all know the feeling, right! But I definetaly can see the bread rice and pasta almost immediately after I eat it. Not to say that I wasnt also eating healthy foods too, Idefinetally kept my fair share of raw fruits and veggies.

I ran into a raw foodist and the spark became a fire...I went home and i couldnt stand to be eating cooked food anymore. I went and got The sunfood diet success system (which I tried to get the first rawfood time around but it was out of pring) and some other books, and I became obsessed with the whole thing...It was not so good. I had all these negative feelings about cooked food, it is hard to explain what happened but all the sudden I was different and I was in a rush to get all the knowledge and do it right, and not do anything else! This lasted about a month.

That was just a few months ago, and I had to quit before I drove myself and my boyfriend crazy. When I went back to eating some cooked food, I had all these feelings of guilt, and disrespecting the food and failing and blah blah blah.

Anyway I have decided to try again with a lighter approach using cleansing to ween me off cooked foods...I am doing the master cleanse right now, which I know isn't totally raw and it is also not really the best fast, but it is familiar so I am trying to use it as a tool to get out of my old eating habits. And it feels like it is working well I am going to do a blended foods diet for a couple of weeks, to get me in a good routine for starting the "3 day cleanse" and I will top it off with a green juice fast when I have squeaky clean intestines to absorb all that pure oxygen prana lifeforce. I know this doesnt sound like a lighter approach persay, but I am also going to play it by ear and see how it all goes...

I am also looking for a raw food nutritionist to guide me along, until I can have a better well rounded understanding of being totally well balanced...hopefully I can afford it.

When I finish my routine, hopefully with success...I am going to just eat what I want (or hopefully guidelines by the nutritionist) and hope that cooked foods dont sound appealing, but I dont want to be obsessed over it. I know I need to transition, so I wont kick myself in the ass over a little bit of cooked stuff.

Wow, that turned into a novel...I tried to keep it sortof simple, theres so many more things I could say! So anyway thats where I am and It feels good to get all that off my chest since I dont talk much about it to anybody.

Thanks for listening!

basil

"Freedom of movement, Freedom from pain
Looking exactly the way you want to,
Not the way other people think you should look"
-Mary

Welcome. Keep at it Basil, let your body guide you, you'll get back to totally raw eventually.

hey basil. nice to meet you... i don't know if we're coming from a similar place, but i share a lot of feelings about food in general, but it's because i've had an eating disorder for a while. i don't consider myself to have one now but i do have a disordered mentality. but i never felt guilty when i ate 'pure' and 'good' foods, raw foods etc. so i'm hoping to feel much better now that i'm trying it.