Sleeping Patterns; Food Enzymes

As I was still emptying my fridge of 80/10/10 non-compliant foods, I decided to conduct an experiment. With a tin of sustainably fished tuna and another of similarly fished salmon, I wanted to know if eating this fish might affect my sleep.

I decided to conduct this experiment after I had enjoyed the best sleep that I’ve had for I can’t remember how long – from 10.30pm to 6.30am where I stirred briefly but went straight back to sleep – which just happened to be the night following my last post.

The next day I ate similar food to what I had posted including some quinoa for breakfast and a cappuccino, except that my night-time salad comprised lettuce and tomatoes from my Food Connect box along with the tin of tuna. I had a fitful night’s sleep waking just after midnight and again at regular intervals after that.

The following day I ate similar food including the quinoa for breakfast and the cappuccino, but this time my night-time salad included some extra ingredients from my patio including basil, mint and parsley along with the tin of salmon. And I had a similar night’s sleep waking just after midnight and a few times afterwards.

To be fair, in the past I always enjoyed a half or a third of such tins on a meal, so perhaps what I ate each dinner was really too much for my system. But what I ate was no more than what I would have eaten if I had gone out for dinner.

Anyway, the following day I ate again in a similar way but with no fish at dinner time. My sleeping pattern that night was from 10.30pm to 4.30am and then 5.30am to 6.30am, and since then I have enjoyed a couple of nights sleep going through to 6.30am – but only after days with no animal protein. So I’m reaching the position that eating fish at night-time might affect my sleep that night. But I still need to check how eating fish earlier in the day might affect me. 

The timing of meals and eating has become another item to investigate. I have read on the internet that it’s best to finish eating by 7pm at night, but there are some people who finish by 2pm in the afternoon. As I trawl the web right now, I’m reading that 5pm is a good time too. 

I rather like the idea of finishing eating earlier in the day. I understand the concept of food needing time to move through the stomach and also that we need to finish eating at least a few hours before bedtime. So I’m working towards making my last meal for the day as early as possible and in the meantime ensure that it is earlier than 7pm.

This afternoon I’ll be collecting two boxes from Food Connect – a Family Fruit box along with a Mini Mixed box. My first order from Food Connect was the Mini Mixed box which was enough for me at the time. Since I’m now predominantly on the 80/10/10 program with its fruit focus, I believe I can handle both boxes but will use up some of the vegetables in the mixed box by making soup for my Mum. However I do wonder whether eating all this fruit is sustainable. If we all decided we wanted to eat this way then I’m sure the farmers wouldn’t be able to cope, or perhaps over time their focus would move away from other crops onto fruit. So I am mulling about how I’ll proceed into the future.

Just to make things more complicated, I’ve become fascinated with Food Enzymes. As I keep trawling the internet and the local library for information on raw food, the word “enzymes” keeps appearing, and finally I’ve found a fascinating book that can explain it all to me.

"Food enzymes for health and longevity" by Edward Howell, published in 1994 and based on a book by the same author first published in 1946, is recognised as a classic and provides ample evidence of how important the enzymes are that we are either endowed with at birth or that we assimilate when we eat raw food or take enzyme tablets.

The part that I’ve appreciated reading the most is that eating raw food is very helpful to us because after we’ve eaten some raw food the enzymes are still intact in the food and help to predigest it, thus leaving our body’s enzymes free to do other important work. However cooking food at a significant temperature destroys the food’s enzymes.

I’ve been reading the book while helping to see my Mum through withdrawal symptoms from the heavy duty drugs that she has been on for shingles. Note to self: in the future, if I am experiencing significant pain and believe I can handle the pain, don’t take heavy duty drugs as withdrawal from them can be challenging. 

My Mum went through a fasting phase because she didn’t feel like eating anything, and then she started feeling so nauseous that she needed to go into hospital. It just so happens that a section in the Food Enzymes book explains what she might have been going through. 

It seems that most people who fast go through what could be called a healing crisis where they feel nausea and vomiting. Because we eat so much cooked food, the enzymes in our bodies spend most of their time helping to digest the food we eat. When we fast, the body’s enzymes can now work on healing our body by repairing and removing diseased tissues through the various elimination means.

The book appears to me to be more oriented to medical practitioners as it discusses research conducted in the same or similar fields. However, there are sections at the beginning and end including two interview dialogues along with a summary of the salient points that helps to explain the reasoning in the book. So I’m very pleased that I borrowed the book from the library.

However it didn’t give me the definitive guide for a healthy way of eating that I’m looking for, despite being very happy on the 80/10/10 diet program, as the main recommendation for people on cooked food seems to be taking enzyme capsules. So I’ll continue trolling the web to see what other ideas might come up about what appears to be a very important topic. 

From week to week, I never quite know what little snippets of information might catch my attention and influence what and how I eat. I feel like I’m on a treasure hunt, with good health as the prize.

Mixed Messages

Clearly, I don’t know where I’m at right now. One minute I love the 80/10/10 diet and the next I’m ready to step away from it. And if I’m confused then I can only imagine what anyone reading the past few posts might be thinking…

But moving on to being predominantly 80/10/10 is such a big move that I’m happy to forgive myself for feeling a bit uncertain about staying on it. However, the hands that drive me to the organic food stores and reach inside my bag for my purse don’t seem to have the same problem. Perhaps it’s the lovely fresh feel of ripe fruit or maybe my stomach is dictating what it would prefer! I’m not sure but I do sense that regardless of my worm farm still being swamped by what I provided two weeks ago and the rapidity with which my freezer fills up with fruit scraps, some part in me seems to be perfectly happy to continue, and so I’m going with the flow.

I do notice the difference between where I am at right now and where I was at just a few weeks ago. Over Easter, I cleaned out 5 tomato tubs and the accompanying connections when one month ago I could only handle cleaning out 2 tubs. Admittedly towards the end of my 3-hour marathon, I was starting to falter. However, that still doesn’t take away from what felt like a significant increase in energy.

I’ve stopped logging everything I eat in Nutridiary. Instead, I aim to eat 400 calories of fruit at each meal, which this morning was handled by eating 5 prunes and then a rock melon followed by 3 small apples accompanying some quinoa. Later in the morning, I enjoyed a soy cappuccino.

For lunch, I had some persimmons followed by a mandarin, while I started my dinner early by enjoying 7 mandarins mid-afternoon followed by a large plate of lettuce, celery, tomatoes, parsley, mint and lime juice a while later.

Even though I’m not logging my intake every day, I’ve just decided to check how I’ve gone today. Even with the inclusion of the cooked quinoa and the soy cappuccino, I am well within the 80/10/10 diet guidelines but have eaten 81% raw foods today. So I’m nowhere near being able to use the tag of 80/10/10 rv which means that I’m complying with the 80/10/10 guidelines and also am eating raw vegan food. But at least I have something to aim for!

I think I’m doing too good a job in getting enough calories as today’s intake has far exceeded the amount I believe I need to maintain my weight. Fortunately, if I exclude the soy cappuccino and cooked quinoa then I’m just under my daily quota. I’m not worried about being over the quota today as twice in the past week I’ve been under the quota, so today is a good opportunity to make up the difference. But what I’m pleased to see from checking out today’s consumption is that when I move off the cooked grains and cappuccinos I’ll know how much I need to eat to meet my caloric requirements.

For the moment I’m still holding onto the grains. I used to love cooked rice with milk and honey as I was growing up and this transformed into my preferred breakfast of cooked brown rice with a piece of fruit. It’s such a pity that brown rice is a grain and therefore frowned upon within the 80/10/10 diet. Otherwise, it would be a perfect food for me to eat as it fits the 80/10/10 guidelines.

Unfortunately, I keep reading that grains are not good for me as they are not easy to digest. I still have some brown and basmati rice in my fridge along with the quinoa that I recently cooked and once I finish these off, I don’t plan on buying any more.

I’m starting to settle into a pattern with how I’m sourcing my fruit and salad items. This week for the first time I have bought a family size box of fruit from Food Connect, which amuses me as anyone looking at me would wonder where I would fit it all. But fruit is such an easy food to devour that I know there won’t be a problem at all. In fact, in addition to the family size fruit box, I have also bought additional kilos of persimmons and mandarins, along with an extra rock melon and some figs. For my night-time salad, I have taken on a kilo of tomatoes and two lettuces. I picked up the family sized box of fruit with the extras on Tuesday and by my reckoning, I’ll be buying more fruit by Saturday if not before.

The best part is now that we’re past the summer months I have moved back into growing veggies on my patio. In the past couple of weekends, I have planted out 5 new tomato plants along with a tray of snow peas and 2 trays of both lettuce and celery seedlings to complement the 2 trays of herbs that I’ve managed to keep alive over the summer. One of the herb trays has mint in it so I have an excellent example of how mint spreads out to fill the available space. In sympathy for the basil that is in the same tray as the mint and fighting to keep its space, I have planted some extra basil seedlings in the parsley tray. I’ve set myself a goal of controlling the mint’s growth, but I’m not sure who’s going to win.

So it looks like I’m set to continue on my predominantly fruit journey. I do feel a bit sad that I’m not using my Thermomix quite as much as I was, but it proves to be very helpful when friends or family visit or when I need to provide a few meals to my Mum as she recovers from shingles. I have also noticed that Douglas Graham has included recipes in his 80/10/10 Diet book that would suit being made in the Thermomix that I must try in the near future.

It feels strange to be on predominantly fruit. When I’m dining out it’s hard to find a meal that is acceptable under 80/10/10, so I have decided on two options. If I’m out for breakfast or brunch then I’ll have scrambled eggs on toast. I know, I know, totally against the 80/10/10 guidelines but an easy way to handle things and also an opportunity for a little break. For lunch or dinner I would have some fish on a green salad which is also against the guidelines but again I don’t mind having a break occasionally.

I judge how my journey with raw food or more specifically 80/10/10 is going by how well I sleep. When I’m being “good” – and I’d consider the fruit, salad and extras I’ve had today as being “good” - I pretty much sleep right through for 7 hours or more. When I’m not, I’ll wake up in the early hours of the morning and find it difficult to get back to sleep. I’m enjoying this journey because I feel like what I’m doing is starting to make a real difference to how I wake up in the morning and how much energy I have during the day. I think this lifestyle is a keeper!

To be 80/10/10 or not...

Have you ever seen something that you know is really good and would provide wonderful benefits but when you looked at it some more you wonder whether it’s the best fit for you…

I’m starting to feel that way about the 80/10/10 diet. Actually, I feel funny when I write the word “diet” because this feels more like a lifestyle than a diet. While listening to the Raw Healing Patch radio show on Blog Talk Radio, I also heard them mention the word “lifestyle” as well in relation to “80/10/10”, so I’m not alone.

I’m not playing with this way of eating to lose weight as I’m slightly underweight and while some people who might be following the 80/10/10 diet aspire to be or are super-fit athletes, I don’t fit into that category either. I’ve just had a fascination with food for some time now.

What concerns me most is the amount of fruit that I need to buy to sustain this lifestyle option, and also the amount of fruit/vegetable waste going out through the general rubbish bin.

I’m eating 1.5 to 2 kgs of fruit a day along with a significant quantity of greens where I’ll blend a whole cos lettuce or some silverbeet leaves with other ingredients to make up a green juice. I’m buying extra fruit every second day if not daily just to keep myself going.

I’ve completely stymied my worm farm by feeding them way too much fruit and vegetable scraps that are taking them longer than a week to get through, so now I’m putting out my general rubbish bin much more often.

But on the positive side, I do feel really good when I am predominantly 80/10/10. Over the weekend I planted out 4 punnets of lettuce seedlings and then went back to get the same number of celery seedlings and didn’t have a problem with getting them out onto my patio in one day even though I needed to wash out 4 trays and the accompanying perlite pebbles. And then I weeded part of my backyard as well. I was a bit surprised at how much energy I had on the day.

It’s not that I can’t handle the way the diet works. I’ve always liked numbers so it’s no surprise that three weeks after I started dabbling with the 80/10/10 diet, I’m still logging my progress on the Nutridiary website.

Seven days out of the past ten, I’ve met the 80/10/10 requirement and on those days have been 79% raw or better. The remaining three days were weekend days when I was with family or friends, so perhaps this was no surprise also.

While I’m considering whether/how I’ll continue with the 80/10/10 diet, I’ve started reading another book. What feels like many years ago, I read about Food Combining and found the concept very interesting. I even had a food combining chart on my wall that my sister had given to me. But I never really took the principles on board.

Since the 80/10/10 book recommends following the food combining rules, I’ve borrowed the book “Food Combining for Health: Get Fit with Foods that Don't Fight” from the library and all of a sudden I’m starting to understand what it’s telling me, particularly since I’m going through it. This book helps to explain what happens when I break the rules, which I tend to do.

I really thought that I had given the chart away but I’ve just checked in my store room and it’s still there! This is great news as I suspect that I’ll end up with what I consider are the best bits of the 80/10/10 diet along with some concepts from the China Study book while ensuring that I follow food combining rules. This feels like I’m making it a little complex right now but I’m sure I’ll end up with something that suits me and my worm farm while being able to minimise how often my general rubbish bin goes out. I can’t wait!

The 80/10/10 Diet

I’ve almost finished reading the book “The 80/10/10 Diet” by Douglas Graham and have trialed the diet today by eating according to the 80% carbohydrate, 10% fat and 10% protein rule.

I like this way of eating. I’ve had a sweet tooth since I was a young child and I’m finding that I have no noticeable sweet cravings when I eat a significant amount of fruit. Who would have thought it would be so easy to fix that problem!

If there’s any downside it is the huge volume of food that needs to be eaten from fruit and vegetable groups in order to fulfill the 80% carbohydrate requirement. Fortunately, it makes it easier that foods that we call vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers are actually fruits so they and others like zucchini and squash can be eaten as often as preferred. Greens are also very important for their mineral content and I need to ensure that I have a significant amount of greens each day.

So here is what I’ve had today:-

Breakfast

5 prunes

300g pears with 105g bananas

Morning tea

Rice Milk Cappuccino

Lunch

190g pineapple, 75g tomato, 320g pears

Snack

100g bananas

Dinner

170g pineapple and 180g grapes

135g pineapple, 180g cos lettuce, 150g tomatoes and 150g capsicum

This amounts to over 2kg of food which is a phenomenal amount for me, however, I must remember that this volume is replacing the bread, cooked grains, beans and chick peas that I have been eating.

I have tallied all of this on the Nutridiary web site which tells me that that the foods that I have eaten today fall within the 80/10/10 guidelines, even including the rice milk cappuccino. However, drinking the cappuccino has meant that what I have eaten today hasn’t been entirely raw.

I do wonder how I’ll go eating this way into the longer term. This week I ordered a fruit box from Food Connect rather than a combined vegetable and fruit box, and I placed additional orders for some lettuce and tomatoes. Next week I’ll do the same again and also request some celery and cucumber. But what I receive from Food Connect won’t keep me going the whole week so either I’ll need to buy extras from organic food stores or else increase the size of the fruit box. There will be heaps more food scraps going into my worm farm and I’m wondering whether it will get swamped.

But overall I feel pretty good after a day of following the 80/10/10 diet. And being 91% raw – it’s a pity about the cappuccino! It will be interesting to see if I lose interest in this daily habit of cappuccinos as I continue playing with eating this way.

I’m having lunch with friends tomorrow and will aim to have a salad but won’t be too worried about whatever I end up eating. I still consider that I’m transitioning into this way of eating and even if I adopt it as my preferred eating regime there will always be times when I lapse. However from what I’m reading, my body will let me know what it thinks about the lapse, so perhaps it won’t happen too often.

New Season Ginger

In the past months I have experienced many new things including real ginger (as compared to the dried powder variety). But it seems not all gingers are the same. Food Connect kindly included some new season ginger and even more kindly mentioned in their newsletter that it needs to be kept in the fridge as it doesn’t have bark and so can dry out easily.

I have generally found real ginger to be quite strong and so haven’t finished a piece very quickly. But this new season ginger seems to be a bit more subtle and I’ve included some finely chopped ginger on both my lunch-time salad and my evening meal and ended up enjoying both. This isn’t at all like me as I have shied away from ginger in the past but now I seem to have found a variety that sits well with me. A web site suggests that for thousands of years, ginger has been used to aid digestion, nausea, menstrual cramps, and flu symptoms, and it's also traditionally been used to treat arthritis and heart conditions. I am really pleased about this as I’m concerned that my sore knuckles could be a precursor to arthritis.

In the same way, I’m pleased with the path that I’m on and what makes it even more comfortable is that I seem to be treading a path already taken by others, even though my path is happening much later…

In 2005, Steve Pavlina wrote about reading “The China Study” which at that time was one of the top 500 selling books at Amazon, with a 4.5 star rating. If I’m reading its current sales rank correctly then it is much lower in the list but still with its 4.5 star rating and it seems to have remained very topical as I have noticed this book mentioned often in blogs or articles that I’ve been reading lately.

One of his most telling statements was that when he ate a whole foods vegan diet (as opposed to a more junky vegan diet that includes refined or processed foods), he could eat as many calories as he wanted and not gain weight. I must remember that I can and most likely need to eat much more as I experiment with this way of eating.

Another interesting comment he made was that many people now recommend giving up dairy before giving up meat as dairy products are among the most unhealthy garbage you could possibly want to put in your body. I’m now 3 days into giving up dairy as I’m no longer drinking cow’s milk cappuccinos and it has been some time since I brought a carton of cow’s milk into my home. It’s too soon to know how well this is working out but I’ll have a better idea a little further down the track.

At the end of 2007, Steve announced he would kick off 2008 with a 30-day trial of eating a 100% raw vegan diet. He mentions his experiences with raw food diets in the past and also about reading books and listening to audio programs from long-term raw foodists, including Dr. Douglas Graham who has written “The 80/10/10 Diet” book. Steve's final post at the end of the 30-day trial made interesting reading.

It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one going through this process. Changing one’s eating habits can be challenging particularly when they emanate from deep-seated, long-term patterns. The best part is that trolling the web shows me that there are definite personal rewards for taking the time to work out what’s best for me.

Basil Pesto

I really enjoy getting my Food Connect box. With the vagaries of weather and other conditions on the farms, one can never be sure that the items in the box will match up with the list published on their web site. But even when it does, I still get surprised as I pull the goodies out.

Basil was on the list today and I was delighted when I saw the lovely big bunch even though I’ve been growing it on my patio over summer. You see, I’ve become so used to the cut-and-come-again approach that I’m always just cutting off leaves.

A few years back I planted basil and tomato in the same pot and then completely forgot that the basil was there. One day I noticed how prolifically it had grown but when I tried to make pesto in the Vita Mix that I had at the time, it just didn’t work. So I haven’t really bothered trying again until now.

This time around the Thermomix has helped me to produce a credible basil pesto based on a recipe from a brand new raw book I received today called “Raw Food Made Easy – for 1 or 2 people” by Jennifer Cornbleet. I didn’t have any pine nuts so I replaced it with sunflower seeds which didn’t break down as easily as the pine nuts would have. But I really enjoyed this pesto and was still licking my lips after I had washed the dishes.

I also received the book “The 80/10/10 Diet” by Dr. Douglas N. Graham and have checked to confirm my recollection that his book recommends a low-fat diet and weaning oneself off salt amongst other things including garlic. He very kindly includes an FAQ section on his website that explains his reasoning.

So three of the five ingredients of this pesto are not recommended which is really sad because it tastes so nice. I think that’s a big part of why we eat the way we do, as items like salt, garlic and oil merge together so well into an almost addictive taste. It will be interesting to see where I head as I read through the 80/10/10 book – or as some people call it, the 811 diet.

I believe I need to change what I’m doing as I have sore knuckles on my fingers and a ring that used to fit onto the middle finger has now been relegated to the index finger. This could be considered a precursor to arthritis which won’t happen to me as I’m quite happy to change what I’m doing if I need to.

I’ve decided that I’ll move towards the recommendation in the book “The China Study” to follow a whole food, low-fat, plant-based diet as a stepping stone to the 811 diet. A whole food diet excludes meat, poultry, dairy and eggs, so I am now having cappuccinos made from soy, rice or oat milk instead of cows’ milk. I still have some eggs in my fridge so once I’ve used them up then I won’t buy any more. This will only be difficult when I want to make muffins or bread but I have read about egg substitutes and will experiment with incorporating them.

In the meantime, I’ll take my time to read and consider what I’ll do about the 811 diet. The good part about all of this is that there is no timeline for change which means that I can feel my way along this path and enjoy the journey.