After two days of juice, I graduated to solid food, but for the next few days, I was restricted to raw fruits and vegetables, excluding citrus, pineapple, and avocado. I wasn’t sure how this would go. After not eating for 21 days, this means taking just a few things that look good and seeing how I feel.
Meals are served at 8 AM, noon, and 5 PM, with a large window of fasting at night. You can also eat amazing baskets of fresh fruit between meals. The raw vegetables are not appealing, but the cooked ones look amazing. I usually eat a large salad at home most nights, but eating many raw veggies has been a chore. Others have told me they have felt the same during re-feeding, so it’s nice to know I am not alone.
My energy has not been as robust as I thought it might be because I can’t eat that much. I would have paid a lot of money to eat some cooked food served as dinner because it looked amazing. Luckily, we are only two days at each stage, so cooked veggies are coming soon.
I did manage to go on a short hike in the historical cemetery around the other side of the block behind the center. They have a self-guided tour, as many of the grave markers were notable people forming the town of Santa Rosa. There are many old oak trees, so it was a shady, quiet time in nature. After a half hour, I felt my energy go down, so I headed back.
I attended the class presented by a raw food chef. I could never go completely raw in my eating. If you think eating whole food plants exclusively is difficult, think about eating 100% raw. She looks amazing and has amazing energy, but eating raw is far more restrictive. I attended her classes because it is a different way of thinking about food, and I liked getting the information. She made a dessert made entirely of fruit with dehydrated whole bananas for the crust, a mango pure with psyllium to help thicken it, and fresh berries on top.
