"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan

Well, my 30-day raw experiment is officially over and I thought I'd write a bit what I learned.

• Aside from day 4, eating only raw food makes me feel amazingly good.
  
• I felt full with about 500 fewer calories a day than I would normally eat.
• I am still not sure whether the above is due to the fact that the food is all raw (and the whole enzyme theory of digestion, etc) or just that eating only raw food forces one to eat whole foods. (Unlike vegetarian diets, there is not much - any? - raw junk food.)
  
• There are people out there on the raw diet who take it to scary & extreme measures. Thankfully, these are not the only raw foodies out there.
• I did not miss dairy products as I thought I would.
• I learned that my body adjusted quite quickly...and was quite clear that it did not take kindly to suddenly going back to heavy or fried foods.
• On the occasions when I would cheat, I found that the food I thought I was craving - things like pasta - did not taste as good as I thought they would.
• I *really* missed sweetened iced tea from Tijuana Flats. Drinking water there was *not* the same.
• It is impossible to stick to just eat raw without LOTS of planning & preparation. If I forgot to chop up veggies or stop at the grocery store one day, it would throw things completely off since there's nothing in the vending machine or even at the cafeteria at work to eat. (Seriously! Pre-made salads - all with cooked chicken - and orange juice were my only options!)
  
• It is impossible to eat a raw diet on a business trip to Birmingham, AL. (The restaurants we were taken to there did not seem to be familiar with the concept of *raw* vegetables. Fried, sauteed - yes. One person actually told me that eating raw vegetables was dangerous due to all the bacteria.)
  
• It is hard to socialize with friends, family & co-workers and eat only raw food. I felt very difficult and found myself spending whole meals trying to explain the concept. The other alternative was to just eat "normally" (or as the raw foodists call it the Standard American Diet - aka "SAD") and suffer the inevitable consequences. (see #6)
• I really like the green smoothies that the raw foodists all rave about but I thought sounded a bit disgusting when I first heard of them. I avoided them for the first week and finally gave in and tried one. Even things I thought would taste nasty in a fruit smoothie (greens, etc) only neutralize the sweetness a bit. Smoothies of just greens are amazingly refreshing (and a good antidote to heavy food lapses).
• A lot of people told me that eating raw could not be healthy since there are limited sources of protein (pretty much raw nuts, sprouted beans and possibly sashimi). However, I found that I didn't seem to have problems I would normally associate with insufficient protein. My energy level seemed to stay constant (I expected to have more ups & downs due to all the sugars in the fruits) and when I gave blood about 2 wks in, my iron was higher than it normally is.
  
• My cholesterol level was about 50 pts lower than my average.
• I did *not* drastically drop pounds but noticed that my face was thinner and clothes fit better.
  
• I like oatmeal better raw. I soak it overnight in the fridge and eat it cold with lots of sliced berries or honey. Really quite good.
• I have become much more conscious of just how processed everything is! I knew this before - intellectually - but spending so much time scouring menus for *something* I could eat made me realize just how pervasive un-food is!
• I learned to differentiate a bit between what my body is craving and what my mind is craving (usually connected to associations rather than actual needs).
• I discovered that physically it's not difficult at all and makes me feel really good to eat 100% raw.
• It costs too much for me to do full-time in terms of stress (finding time to do all the preparation involved) and guilt, particularly when hanging out with friends (either for being "that person" or for not sticking to my diet).
  

I would like to try to go completely raw again sometime and stick to it 100% for a full 30 days just to see if you really reach the nirvana of weight loss, clear thinking and muscle definition claimed by the hard-core raw foodists but for now, I plan to return to being "flexitarian" and simply try to get 70-80% of my calories from raw food.