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Why I am Glad I am No Longer 100% Raw Vegan/Beegan
And in fact I don't percent myself about it at all anymore!
Date: 3/15/2009 3:06:57 PM ( 15 y ) ... viewed 2530 times I could write a long treatise but am trying to learn to type my thoughts more succinctly (esp. in the interests of needing to get back to other things).
It was a long, long thing for me -- the Raw Thing. I did it many different ways with varying amounts of success in sticking with it. I guess that two different times I was 100% raw vegan or beegan for 6-7 months each and there were a few years I was about 70-80% raw, and there were times in between all those times that I ate both cooked and raw, vegan or vegetarian and non-vegan and non-vegetarian.
YES I do in the "end" believe that raw vegan diet is probably the most healthy diet on the planet I have ever experienced, but NO, it did not work for me in the long run.
There are several reasons for this.
One, I am a social creature. I like people. And I like people pretty much no matter what they eat. One particularly dear friend came right out and told me, the last time I was attempting 100% raw (a little over a year ago), "I don't like it." I said what? How could he say that? "I don't like it." I felt I HAD to do it, I told him, because of my physical problems when I didn't.
Two, I learned -- during a period of about six months when I had VERY little money for food -- that I did NOT have to be on raw diet to get better. I got better while on 80% cooked diet. That was a mind blower. I also realized it was not just what I ate -- cliche, I know -- but what I FELT inside, what healing my emotional and spiritual bodies had experienced (especially in finally meeting my 20-year-old niece that was raised in another country and whose father, my only brother, died three years ago). There was something very, very healing in spending a couple of months with her.
Three, I LOVE to cook. I love making raw stuff too, but I don't want all the limitations of preparing only raw. This also takes away limitations of who I can feed -- and feed in a way that they can feel truly satisfied and not just that they went to an extreme eater's house for an unusual semi-meal.
Four, I love to eat both raw AND cooked foods.
Five, I feel it is MORE important not to be judgmental of others and not to hurt others than it is to eat just so. I did not feel I was judging them, but they FELT judged, and in the end that felt like the same thing in a way. If I cannot do it without making others feel badly, then I'm not doing it right. At least, that is how it seems to me.
Six, I have a LOT of other things I want to be healthily obsessed with other than food, and being 100% raw and organic, for it to be fulfilling, is not only a full-time job but can be overly expensive, making the obsession take even more out of me.
Seven, I don't know why really. It just feels right to do what I'm doing right now the way I am doing it.
I am happy to say that although I am not as healthy as I want to be, I am doing MUCH better than I have in three years or more. For that I am very thankful and grateful and I have also come to believe that my thankfulness and gratitude have a lot to do with how healthy I am.
What percentage raw am I now? I don't do percentages anymore. I just call myself a "mixed eater" now, because that just about covers any possibilities, and then I'll add that I try to eat organic, healthful food that is raw or cooked in a healthy way and am vegetarian most of the time.
When it comes to the issues of bees, eggs, poultry and other flesh foods my main concern is where it came from and how the animals were treated when alive, what they were fed, were they pastured or free range and all that sort of thing. I'm into eggs a lot lately (poached in glass) but that is probably a passing fancy, and I encourage myself to make the vegan choices the lion's share of the time.
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"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and education system....We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." – Charles Bukowski 1920-1994
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