A Change of Shade

Hello Everyone,

Now this post is really nothing to do with veganism, raw food or any food. Please feel free to yawn and stop reading here.

I have it in my head to start seeing what it feels like to dress differently.

Now I am not about to start to wear a ballgown everywhere I go. Although that would be an experiment in self that I would happily do.

I am planning on trying a new colour on for size. Normally, almost every day that I live, I wear black, mostly from head to toe. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes I will mix things up and wear a bit of red, but the clothes that I wear all the time are black.

Now as stylish (and lazy) this is of me, it has not gone unnoticed by my work colleagues. When we were told that it was OK to come into the office in normal clothes, one of the more sensible men in the office quipped "So, does that mean that you are going to come in wearing white?"

A couple of days later I was reading an article in the New York Times online about five people who only wore one colour.

An idea was born. What would I feel like if I dressed from head to toe in white instead of my wardrobe staple of black? Would people react to me differently? Would I be happier? Would my boss give me a pay rise? Or would people just think I was unstable?

So yesterday, I took a bit of a long lunch, bit the bullet and bought myself some new wardrobe staples. White trousers, white t-shirts and white socks which are a particular pet peeve.

While I was looking round the shops I noticed that it was actually very easy to pick out the white clothes, they shone out from the others, you could just see them. Even better there were lots of them in stock as I'm not in so much competition like when I go shopping for black clothes. This could either be a good ting or a bad sign. Time will tell.

I'm challenging myself, just for fun and perhaps a bit of personal development, to wear white for a whole month. So for the month of June, I will wear white, and no doubt do a LOT of laundry.

A Measure of Success

So, over the past two weeks, I have been doing well. Yaay me!

This is roughly what my daily food looks like.

Breakfast

Flax seed smoothie
2 tbsp Flax soaked over night in water)
2 dates, prunes or figs
A little fruit (a medium banana, two small slices of melon, a handful of green grapes)

Lunch

Green salad
Mixed leaves
A small avocado
Two (or three) tomatoes
Half a red pepper or two grated carrots.

A chopped banana or some green grapes
A few prunes
2-3 tbsp pumpkin seeds
Soy milk

Yes, I do pour the soy milk over the fruit and pumpkin seeds and eat it like a breakfast cereal.

Dinner is more of a mixed bag. Breakfast and lunch tend to be a bit more eat so that you have eaten. During the week, I look after myself for breakfast and lunch, but for dinner I eat mostly with my boyfriend, so I normally make something that we will both eat and I try to make it a meal full of vegetables be they cooked or raw.

A favourite of mine of vegan pho soup, with LOTS of bok choi, garlic and not so many noodles. I've found that if I am eating enough fruits and vegetables, then my body isn't telling me that it is desperate for bread and other carbohydrate dense food. Sometimes I give into chips or pasta, but that's only once a week.

I do snack if I am hungry, or stressed. Normally an organic apple or some pumpkin seeds fit the bill. I'm not the best water drinker, although I think I manage about a litre a day, I do however manage to drink over 1.5L in roibos tea, so my fluid intake is plenty.

As for my health, I have started to feel like my body is stronger and a little weight is coming off. And this is with only two raw meals a day, I wonder how good I will be feeling when I manage to release the need for cooked food completely?

Un-blocking

So on the subject of feeling blocked, this is what is starting to work for me. A flax seed smoothie.

A woman at work had been told by a dietician to drink, and I quote “flax seeds, soaked in water overnight, and blended until they form a milky drink”. Now I have tried this, and although the flax and water mix did indeed go milky in colour, it also went rather snotty in texture. Although this is something that I can manage to pull a face, hold my nose and swallow, it’s not really enjoyment.

I have been variously creative about this problem; this is when I struck on the flax seed smoothie. Actually this is rather simple, in fact so simple that I can’t believe that it has taken me a while to come up with.

All I do is this, blend other things in with the flax and water and that seems to either mask the snottyness or to not allow it to happen. I don’t know which, I’m not a chemist or food technician, and if I was I would tell you. If you know, would you please let me in on this?

So, some good things to blend with your flax and water are:-

A banana
A few grapes
A banana and some prunes
Ripe mango

I tried a little frozen fruit as it has been hot in Dublin for the past week or so, and that’s not so good.

I’m also conscious that flax is a good source of omega 3, something that I am not 100% sure where else I would get as a vegan. From the limited reading that I have done about flax it seems that it is one of the modern snake oils of things that you should consume regularly. I mean, anything that is reported to lower cholesterol, guard against heart trouble, boosts the immune system, control haemorrhoids and diverticular disorders, reduced the incidences of various cancers, lowers high blood pressure, improves general skin condition AND make you a cup of rooibos while you are talking to the cat, can’t be sniffed at.

Another Month

I am still chipping away here. Some days I do well, others are not so worth mentioning.

The cooked food mindset and habits are really rather tough to break out of. I can’t say that I am finding this at all easy, but I know that in the long term my physical and mental health will be greatly improved

At the moment, physically, I am feeling rather blocked. Not in the sense of just being constipated, which I am, but other than that it just feels like all of my energy is being blocked by my body. So I am feeling sluggish a lot of the time. I would like to say that I can’t imagine how this happened but that would be a blatant lie. The cause of my constipation? I have three words of explanation for you. Black. Rice. Noodles. Black rice has never been a friend of mine, but I thought that the noodles would be harmless enough. It seems that they are indeed not harmless. Just one un-helping has had me reaching for the prunes and flax.

I don’t really want to go to more drastic measures of using laxatives as we all know that course of action has it’s own consequences. The more unhealthy food that I eat it seems the more my body tells me that it doesn’t like it. This being the case, why is it so hard to do what in my mind I know is right and healthful? I’m guessing it’s to do with the things that you are taught when you are growing up and it’s very hard to un-learn the lesson of eating three (or more) cooked meals a day.

There is a certain shame associated with eating badly these days. We all know what we should eat. There is no doubt that chips and falafel are no health food. When it comes to dinner time it’s actually quite hard to say no to a chip sandwich and yes to a bowl of delicious fruit salad with a few seeds on the top for good measure. Seriously, why is this? We all know that we will feel at least over full and bloated after the chips and that the fruit salad will not only fill us up perfectly but will nourish us.

Anyway, my juicer is out on my kitchen side, my hand blender is to hand and my fridge is in fairly good shape. So let’s see how much progress I can make knowing that my body is telling me that I need to take urgent action.