The Body is a Wonderland and So Much for the Winter NOT Kicking My Ass and Other Nefarious Misadventures

I feel compelled to share the both the ups and downs of this raw food experience. Certainly the ups far outnumber the downs so far. Every day feels like a muddafriggin vacation inside my body. For those fortunate enough to be able to travel to St. Barts and trip on acid with Hansel and the spider monkeys, I feel a solidarity with you. I just hope that while you're there, you have enough vitality to do more than fart in the sand and meditate about your sun tan. Because lately, me feeling like The World Champion is the rule, while feeling sick, low, sad, slow, or funky is a very rare exception.

The blog-father counting his IQ or getting ready to eat the photographer?

Nevertheless, two weeks ago I spent four days on death's door, totally beat down by the flu. OUCH! it hurt. I squeezed in one epic 3 hr swim-bike-run on Monday, but then, 'till Friday, it felt like my vertebrae got run over by a truck. The whole time I was thinking, Is this low fat raw vegan (LFRV) diet totally BS? Or rather, is it my lackadaisical version of raw that is the true BS?

Despite the New Year's resolution, I have actually not been 100% LFRV-- more like 90%. For the most part, though, a typical training day includes 6 grapefruit, 20 bananas, 1/2 lb of dates, 1/2 lb of leafy greens, 1/2 avocado, 1/2 lb of berries, 10 stalks of celery. It's typically 3200-3700 calories. And so far, it hasn't been enough-- I'm losing weight. So, I'm very much open to the possibility that I'm doing this wrong.

I have a few occasional calorie-dense cooked-food holdouts, like rice/bean veggie bowls at Chipotle, or steamed veggies and rice, or hummus with romaine "dippers", especially when my fruit isn't ripe-- whatever it takes to get in calories at the end of a long day. But I'm kind of in limbo right now, thinking that I am neither fully committing to the raw nor getting enough calories from my naughty cooked-meals. Or it may be something different altogether. I'm getting at least 8 hours of sleep, but could it be that I'm missing genuine rest? Or is my body starving for sunshine and fresh air?

What are the chances that last week's sickness was actually my body detoxing from 29 years of bad karma?

Was last week's "flu" the karmic revenge of a deep fried MickyD's hash-brown-soaked-in-tomato-flavored-high-fructose-corn-syrup, sticking its middle finger at me?

I had romantic notions that there would be no detox process for me and a) only radical healing and b) dramatic performance improvements. For whatever reason, sickness happened. After four days of muscle aches, head aches, congestion, zero appetite, and zero medication, my body finally rebounded after a 16 hour nap that seemed to sweat it all out.

What may have been the scariest part of the sickness was that the physical pains were feeding into emotional pains and professional chaos was undermining both, and then this strange shit-storm was distorting my entire decision-making process. I almost made some very bad professional decisions. It's funny how only about one year ago, a family of rotten feelings were almost a daily occurrence. So, I feel like the last year has been a huge detox. But to say I'm done detoxing is like saying I love the big hairy horseshit of the technocratic world... which I don't.
 
Now that I'm back in the pink, my workouts have resumed much of last year's prior vigor. Missing those workouts last week was a major inconvenience and all-around bummer. But I just have to trust that my body had its own important priorities to take care of. And my body's priorities for healing are not always in line with my priorities. For instance, amidst last week's physical and existential aches and pains, I also felt like I was re-experiencing some of my spine and shoulder pains from my bike crash of 2006. My sleep was frequently interrupted by spasms in my shoulder and flashes of sharp pain in the area of my spine that took the brunt of my crash. Perhaps my body just had extra healing to do now that it finally has enough nutrients and cooperation from me to re-build.

Still, I didn't have much of an appetite at all for those four days. And like I said, I lost a lot of weight. I don't usually weigh myself, but since August, I think I lost about 15 libbies-- so, down to 135 lbs. For those who have expressed concern, I'm with you...to an extent...or maybe not...

Weight loss is certainly not my goal, and actually runs contrary to all of my vanity. Rest assured, I was actually bracing for a period of weight fluctuations during this transition time to raw. It's not a complete surprise. Most long-term raw foodies speak of the body's initial shedding of gunk and also clumsiness at learning how to get enough calories from high volumes of fruits and veggies. Hopefully, after last week's trip to purgatory, I will very soon be honing-in on a stable body weight that is appropriate for me. For the last two weeks, I've been more mindful of weighing myself regularly and pounding down larger smoothies and have rebounded back up to 145 lbs. 

This awkward phase also has me questioning the whole concept of "appropriate" weight. I wonder if our culture doesn't have a seriously warped sense of what optimum wellness looks like and feels like.

Are these folks an okay image of wellness? I'd like to think so, even though they're kind of skinny. But do we have any real life examples? 

 

Andreas Raelert is a skinny BADASS who will win the Ironman world championships at Kona 2011.

Every time I run/watch a marathon, I'm blown away by how you can just never judge performance by looks. Performance and wellness seems to come in all shapes and sizes. I've seen too many 4 foot tall 65 year old Korean ladies blow by me in the final 5 miles to trust an outward appearance as the be-all and end-all of health.

Jack LaLaane is my brother-from-another-mother.

Exercise does the body good. Jack says "exercise is king and diet is queen". But I wonder if it isn't the other way around. That's definitely something I want to delve into deeply and explore first hand. I certainly haven't met but a small minority of people, let alone athletes, who I consider an example (or even proponent of) eating the following:

a) a diet compatible with the last 10 million year of primate digestive track evolution,
b) a diet with deep moral compassion for ourselves and our fellow sentient beings,
c) a diet that is energizing on its own, (without supplementation from stimulants like caffeine),
d) a diet that makes one feel good/happy about themselves,
e) a diet that is sustainable economically/environmentally,
f) a diet that nurtures a deeper connection with nature,
g) a diet that helps the body cleanse and repair itself,
h) a diet that is delicious, fun, and simple,
i) a diet that can fuel super-powered athletic performance and creativity.

I say I've met "a small minority", but actually I don't think I've ever met anyone, in person. Yet, that's what I'm going for.