welcome to my first posting!

today is monday, july 14, 2008. today is the "first" day of my 100 day raw food challenge, although i have officially been challenged by raw food since march 12, 2003! after many attempts and many failures to break my addiction to cooked food, and specifically my addiction to cooked JUNK food, i made a commitment to myself 2 days ago to absolutely QUIT. to quit all cooked food, all junk food, and to establish myself as a 100% raw food vegan. i have been struggling with and against this for 5 1/2 years. when i eat raw food, i feel wonderful. when i eat cooked food, i feel terrible. simple enough, if life were a math equation. but it is not.

so 2 days ago i made this commitment, and yesterday i found Bunny Berry and Raw Fu, and her wonderful 100 day raw food challenge. so i joined up. now i have a community of fellow strugglers! and i made another commitment to myself, today, to document my challenge - to boldly jump into the 21st century! - and to create a blog for my journey.

so today, july 14, 2008. i am exactly 38 1/2 years old. i weigh exactly 122 pounds and i am 5'4" tall. my waist is 28", my abdomen is 33", my hips are 37 1/2" and my thighs are 22". and i can't beleive i'm going to publish this online. i must be crazy!

i am undertaking this challenge to improve the health and condition of my body. i'm in good shape and i'm healthy by any standards, but that's not enough for me anymore. i want to be in incredible shape and be amazingly healthy. i don't want to just look good, i want to look as good as i feel, and i want to feel better every day than i have ever felt before in my whole entire life! i am ready to set and achieve performance goals that i KNOW are possible with a 100% raw food diet.

i'm NOT ready to put those on this blog, yet, though! i have to take some time to think them through. i will say that for sure, some weight loss, more muscle, look better, all the vanity issues. more than that - i want to compete in the Bikram yoga competition. will i be ready by october? can these hips do hanumanasana? or full camel? can i run another marathon? what is possible? i want to find out!

here is my diet, since right now, it's kind of all about the food: green smoothies, approx. 40 oz a day. green smoothies are dark leafy greens (i love kale) blended with fresh fruit and water. also, eating fresh fruit, preferably with seeds, and eating the seeds of that fruit (as in watermelon). to drink, 32+ oz of lemon/limeade made with raw agave nectar, 32+ oz of yerba mate (unsmoked) with raw agave nectar, 40+ oz fresh water. that's it for now. getting my fats from seeds in the fruit and from avocados (which are fruit) and i'm going to get a durian this weekend. come fall, i'll add in coconut and flaxseed. for now, no superfoods, no supplements, nothing powdered or dried - just fresh fresh fresh fruits and veg.

and here's the exercise: daily Bikram yoga practice. daily walks. daily mini-exercise breaks with a dvd. and we'll see how things go over the next few weeks!

i have pictures to post of my gorgeous bod - not so much "before and after" as "now" and "later." my email server is down, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. the official Raw Fu challenge starts August 1, if anyone wants to join (www.rawfu.com) and share the love with me! it's gonna be awesome. or, as we corny raw foodies like to say, RAWESOME! but my challenge has begun. i'm off to a good start!

namaste.