Seeing Myself as a Raw Foodist: Part 1
Today’s Raw Food Diet
- Strawberries (48 oz.)
- Grapes (8 oz.)
- Green Smoothie (7 bananas/3 peaches/ 1 bunch spinach/ 8 oz. water)
On the days that I strictly and successfully follow the raw food diet, it’s because I see myself living it as a lifestyle. I see myself, in the future, as trim, athletic, free from illness, and having abundant energy.
What about the other days?
I have feelings about what I’m missing out on. I’ve already mentioned that much of my social life is centered around meal times.
I think about
- Dinner and a movie with my wife . . . both at the same time!
- A weekly Chinese food “date” with my youngest daughter (who is Chinese by birth).
- Our Friday night Mexican food take out.
- Barbeque and Mexican food on the San Antonio Riverwalk with my friends.
- Chocolate milk and donuts with my middle daughter.
- Beer with my colleagues on Fridays after school.
- Sneaking out for a pizza buffet lunch with my colleagues who work across the hall.
And, I wonder how I’ll fill the voids that crop up by not eating that way any more.
Finding enough to do has never been a problem for me . . . even when growing up in a town where there was supposedly “nothing to do.” I can keep myself as occupied as I want . . . whenever I want. Sometimes, it even happens when I don’t want it.
However, most of those activities are either work related, household-maintenance related, or things (like writing this blog post) that I do alone.
Granted, it’s easier now than ever to find support for just about any endeavor simply by searching for a group of like-minded people on the Internet and joining it. Virtual communities (a.k.a. Web 2.0) are springing up all over the place. In fact, I belong to a raw food diet support community online.
I’ve done the chat thing in the past. I won’t reveal my online identity here, but I will say that I enjoyed quite an active “virtual social life” for awhile. After awhile, though, that got old. The conversations seldom had a lot of depth, many of the chat room denizens were there for purposes other than just socializing, and I came to the realization that I was neglecting my “real world” relationships by hanging out online. So, I stopped.
I’m confident in my ability to form new bonding experiences with my family. Granted, we may miss doing some of the old eating-centered ones together, but we’ll get it figured out.
Figuring out how to replace those activites with my friends, on the other hand, is going to take a bit more thought and work. I’ll talk about that more in another post.
