My first attempt to eat all raw foods

My first attempt to "go raw", as raw food eaters would say, was in November 2008, which was a silly time of year to start in hindsight since I realise that your body takes a while to adjust to eating raw food and I ended up feeling pretty cold for most of the time (I live on the edge of the French alps)!

My other mistake was to think I could survive on salads and fruit all day long (after all, the raw foodists seemed to, so why couldn't I? After 3 days, my stomach was so full but I felt weak and couldn't concentrate. I was starving! One evening, I worked out my calorie consumption for the day - just 750 calories - no wonder I was hungry!

I started filling up on nut butter and tahini (not raw) in between my main meals of salad, but my tummy felt a bit better and I did feel very healthy, albeit cold and definitely craving some warm food.

About 2 weeks in, I spotted some new raw biscuits on sale in our local health food shop. "Raw and not salad!", I thought and so I grabbed a few bags, thinking this could be what I was looking for. I couldn't wait to get home and opened one of the Tomato and Paprika flavour bags. They were delicious! In fact, I was overjoyed to have found something that tasted so good and was also raw.

When I got home, I emailed the producer of these biscuits (called Biscru) to say thank you for making such a delicious raw food and he should really think about selling it into the UK, since I was sure there'd be a market for them. A few days later, he got back to me and said thanks and yes, he'd really like to sell them to the UK and, would I like to help him?!!!

Although I'd never considered this and also never done anything like it before, I thought "why not?" I loved the product and thought the concept was so novel. I had no idea what would happen but I agreed to meet him a few weeks later in Annecy.

After 3 weeks on my raw food diet, despite the Biscru, eventually hunger and cold got the better of me and I cooked a soya burger and some stir fry vegetables - they tasted delicious! Looking back, I also remember feeling pretty awful a couple of hours after I'd done this - tired and heavy feeling, but put it down to needing to adjust to cooked foods and carried on regardless. Then later that evening, still feeling hungry, I ate a whole bar of Lindt 85% chocolate (and was awake all night as a result!!!)

Now I know that soya is one of the worst things I could have broken my raw food trial on.... but more of that in another post.

What did I learn?

Raw food did make me feel better, but I needed to find a different balance of foods.

The timing wasn't right - I resolved to try again when the weather was warmer.

That Biscru are delicious and my love had opened up a new opportunity.

I still love chocolate!