Raw food!

So.. I switched to a raw vegan diet for three reasons.

Chemo made me gain 30 pounds. Going into chemo I thought, well, meh... at least I'll lose weight and it wasn't until after my last treatment that I actually asked my oncologist about my weight gain that she told me that quote... "yeah, its weird. Women on chemo for breast cancer almost always gain weight"... ummm thanks for the heads up. The raw diet will help me to lose this excess weight and then I can feel a little more like myself again. It is inevitable that you lose weight on a raw diet.

Reason 2: I've been hearing from a lot of people and reading testimonials that a raw diet "saved my life" and "cured cancer". I'm not convinced that it will cure my cancer but I do believe that it could help to save my life. First of all, my cancer is estrogen based... in fact the very one thing that makes me a woman is my very demise. This irks me but is reserved for a different blog. Estrogen is in a lot of things but is more prominent in processed foods. Bottom line is... avoid ingesting estrogen as much as possible (this is a bummer because my favourite food of all time, tofu, is one of the estrogen rich foods I should steer clear from). The next step was to eat only non-processed foods so fruits and veggies, cooked or raw. I started reading up about nutrient rich foods and learned that once one of these super foods was cooked at over 104 degree F it lost a great deal of its nutrients. Weird, because I thought the eating veggies, no matter how, was the best thing you could do. I bought two books at the sale at Chapters a few weeks ago. The first was called "100 Best Foods" and it outlines the valuable nutrients in 100 of the best health foods. This includes all kinds of raw fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds. There is a profile on each and it describes all the benefits of eating each. In fact, it says if you each raw cashews you are almost guaranteed to never have heart problems. That's amazing. The second book I got was called "Raw Food" and it describes the raw food diet, its benefits and then there are all kinds of recipes. We've tried a few; raw borscht, raw burritos in lettuce wraps (hold the beans and give me a chopped up nuts and seeds mix), and sprouting. Next on the list is raw vegan sushi sans cooked rice and instead zucchini cut into angel-hair strips. The problem is finding uncooked soya sauce. On to my third reason.

I love the challenge! I feel, and always have, that if I have control over anything it is what I choose to put into my body. Though it can be challenging and usually a super-fast crash course on whatever I decide to do, I am successful.

Its been a week and a half and so far its smooth sailing. I already feel better and I feel like I am making an effort to naturally rid my body of this cancer.