The Fresh Network Blog

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 11

First things first: to those of you following this little adventure of mine, apologies for the long hiatus since I posted the last update. Life has been super busy but the beauty of that is that I have discovered that this regime is easy to stick to even when you are on the run - just as long as you remember to get the green juices and smoothies in before you head out.

So yes, on Day 11, I - former greenophobe - am officially in shock at how easy it is proving to consume vast quantities of greens (2lb/900g per day).

My only question: why didn't I try this before? I have tried every other way of being raw, and with varying degrees of success: high fruit, no fruit, high fat, low fat, simple (just fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds) fancy (to the point I started to wonder about the carbon footprint implications of having my dehydrator running day and night) and every combination of the above.

The only thing I hadn't ever tried was consistently consuming a huge quantity of mineral-rich greens and building the rest of my diet around that. This experience is suggesting that when you do this, the rest naturally falls in place.

They say it takes 21 days to establish a new habit, but I feel as if I have been working up to this one for the last 5.5 years - in other words, ever since I first started eating predominantly raw foods. Putting away this volume of greens would not - could not - be anything resembling easy if you attempted it without first transitioning away from the standard diet.

But if you have been raw for a while you are probably consuming significantly more greens than the average person anyway (not hard when the average person's raw greens consumption hovers somewhere between 0 and 10g a day!) so you're already on your way.

I am not going to post my food diaries this time since I can't imagine anyone would be interested in trawling through eight days' worth! So instead a summary:

• I have been basically doing as on days 1-3 only with even more seaweed (anyone else out there who has eaten a whole bag of dulse in a day?!?) and, since a big delivery arrived from Aconbury Sprouts last Wednesday, huge volumes of sprouted greens, which means...
• I've been having one or two 2oz shot of wheatgrass a day (and I don't even know how I'd calculate that as part of the 2lb since it is often claimed that a 1oz shot of wheatgrass is nutritionally equivalent to 2.5lbs of organically grown vegetables!)
• I have also been drinking pints of my favourite juice of all time: cucumber with sunflower greens.

I first tried the above drink at the Hippocrates Health Institute when I was there in late 2006. Smells and tastes often carry with them powerful associations about the times and/or places we first encountered them, and the attraction of this juice is no mystery as with every sip I feel transported back to the Florida sunshine!

And it clicked with me last week that this is not, in fact, the first time I have enjoyed such extensive interaction with all things green and leafy. Although the folks at Hippocrates are smart enough not to tell guests what volume of raw greens they will be consuming, it has dawned on me that if you follow that program properly you are actually eating way over 2lb/900g a day.

The daily diet at the Hippocrates Institute can be summed up as twice daily wheatgrass shots, two big glasses of green juice, and two visits to the buffet, which is basically a showcase of green and leafy in all its various permutations, from spinach and lettuces to sprouted greens of every variety to sea vegetables.

This is not just the Hippocrates Institute though. It is a description of the food served at all of the most cutting edge health and healing centres in the world.

So what's changed in my world as a result of taking green to the extreme? In a nutshell:

• I've felt super-focused. For example, I have recently moved house but it is only since I started on the green regime that I've been able to face tackling piles of still unopened boxes. I haven't merely been unpacking them; I've been joyously creating order and serenity around the house, room by room
• I've been on a consistent and seemingly unshakeable natural high
• I have officially "got the glow" and I'm getting the comments to go with it : )   

More soon...    

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 3

Although this is Day 3’s write-up I am writing it early in the morning on Day 5. And five days in I can say that it is NOT DIFFICULT at all to eat this many greens.

I am amazed!

It is partly because of the way I am doing it, which I think is probably pretty essential in order to stay in the happy zone with it – I’ll tell you ALL about that below.

To my surprise, mega amounts of greens are going down VERY easily – all it has involved is a change of mindset. When I am ready for a meal or a snack, instead of asking myself: “What do I want to eat?” I am asking “What do I want to eat that contains loads of greens.” : ) And thanks to the way I am doing it, there are enough choices – sweet and savoury, light and satisfyingly filling, simple and spicy – to cater to any mood.

So here is the secret to easily getting seemingly impossible quantities of greens into your diet every day... 

Use or adapt David Rainoshek’s “FOUR WAYS” approach.

1. Eat your greens
2. Make blended green soups
3. Make green smoothies
4. Juice them

Now personally I adapt this system rather than follow it to the letter. First off, David recommends only low-glycaemic fruits in smoothies, and there are very good reasons to avoid high-glycaemic ones. However, for now sweet fruits are the all-important “spoonful of sugar” that helps my green medicine go down, so I am enjoying pineapples, oranges, bananas and so on in my juices and smoothies.

Secondly, I just can’t do hard-core green soups. If it’s blended cucumber (one of the most popular bases) with some dulse and sprouts and other ‘tame’ veggies, no problem, but add more than a small handful of strong greens to that and it’s NO THANK YOU from me! : ) I physically can’t get them down. Maybe that will change over the course of this trial...    

So anyway, without a doubt, the best way to consume large amounts of alkalizing, nutrient-rich, enzyme-rich greens on a daily basis is to have some of them juiced, some blended (into soups or smoothies, or a combination) and some whole.

Getting Get Fresh! magazine in the US

Since we announced the US launch of Get Fresh! magazine several weeks ago, many of you have approached us to ask why you can't find it in your local branch of Whole Foods Market or other health store.

We have contacted our distributor and can confirm that the current issue of the magazine, pictured, is currently on sale in over 200 stores across the country. The states that have the most outlets selling it at this point are California and Colorado, though this first US issue is on sale in selected outlets in a total of 35 states.

For administrative reasons it is in no stores in New York City yet - this explains why so many of you there have unfortunately been frustrated in your attempts to get hold of a copy from your local health store, but that is being resolved as quickly as possible. In the meantime, remember that you can get it from Pure Juice and Takeaway, just off Union Square. 

Our distributor has stated that the quickest way to get the magazine into your local store, if it isn't there already, is to put in a formal request to the management of the store. Just inform them that Get Fresh! is available in the US through One Source Distribution. This is the leading magazine supplier of health stores in the US; but if by any chance they need contact details, they can call the company on (800) 541-5542 or fax an order to (888) 329-3117.

Don't forget that if you simply must have your copy now, the last six issues are available to download from our website.

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 2

This is a quick round-up of day 2 of my challenge to eat at least 900g of raw greens a day. Amazingly, I exceeded the target by quite a margin. This was not down to over-enthusiasm so much as poor fridge management; I am still getting used to the technicalities of shopping for this quantity and variety of short-shelf-life fresh greens, and I had stuff I had to either eat yesterday or ditch.

In the past I've been as bad as the next person for throwing food out. Polls consistently show that in the UK we throw away on average ONE FIFTH of the food we buy. I cannot claim to being any better than that statistic in the past, but all that changes now. I am upping my game; not just on the nutrition front, but also on the 'being a good citizen of the planet' front. Which means not buying bags of produce, often shipped in from other countries, only to forget about them and end up throwing them out.

I am not about to start chowing down on rotting greens, but I am keeping a much closer eye on the contents of my fridge to avoid the likelihood of finding nasty unidentifiable objects in there.

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 1

Raw green foods are the NUMBER ONE missing link in the modern western diet.

Whether someone is on the standard diet, is vegetarian or is vegan, it is almost guaranteed they are eating too much fat and sugar and not enough vegetables, of which greens are the most nutritionally potent.

And most people continue to eat in this way when they go raw - just using different foods to get their fat and sugar fix, and favouring these "instant satisfaction" foods over the less appetizing green veggies. 

We have been conditioned to think that five small servings of fruit and vegetables a day is enough and that is still the official word from most western governments. Chances are, if you have been researching raw food for a while, you already know that is rubbish!

In restaurants, it always amazes me to note that the average person will polish off every morsel on their plate except for anything green and leafy. Lettuce leaves or sprigs of herb that the chef added "as a garnish" (since of course this "rabbit food" is not an essential nutritional component of the meal) are usually to be found neatly pushed the side of the otherwise empty plate.

Greens are the missing link in the diet for two reasons: the MASSIVE amount of nutrition they provide with NO undesirable trade-offs, and the fact that when you are consuming them in large quantities you'll naturally be eating less - a lot less - of the foods that don't serve you.

Greens are also the ultimate BALANCING food. Eat enough of them and they balance your appetite, they balance your blood sugar, and they balance your mood, all of which helps you to achieve balance in your external world : )

More about all of these subjects soon. For now, here are the results of day 1 of the challenge... 

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge

I have an announcement to make. I am about to embark on a nutritional challenge that I feel in my bones will be life-changing.

I am about to go WAY outside my comfort zone around eating healthily, and commit to staying there for at least a month.

But first, a confession.

I'm not proud to admit this and it's not clever, but...

I am a REAL baby when it comes to consuming anything dark green.

Sure, I can eat a mountainous spinach salad as long as it’s liberally adorned with guacamole or something similarly creamy and highly seasoned. I've long been adding a token handful of greens to my staple cucumber-celery juices. Thanks to these virtuous nods to the importance of mineral-rich foliage in the diet, I used to think I had the greens base fully covered.

But I recently discovered that what I considered to be copious quantities of greens was far from that. I first wrote about this topic here (it’s near the bottom of the entry), and ever since then the idea of experimenting with extreme amounts of green has been in the back of my mind. 

It all started when I was introduced to the work of the amazing David Rainoshek, promoter of the concept of juice feasting, and one of the world’s leading authorities on that and other super-nutrition-related subjects. David advises juice feasters to consume at least 2lb of leafy green vegetables each day.

That’s 900g, folks!

Bags of green leafies that you buy in the supermarket or grocery store are generally around 100g-200g. My “mountainous” spinach salads? Anything from 100g-150g. And that, bar the odd sprinkling of herbs here and there, would be it for the day.

Since I heard about this I have upped the green ante, but I am still getting nowhere near David's target on a daily basis. And I can't help wondering how different it would feel to reach it consistently. So....for the next 30 days I will be experiencing life on extreme amounts of green, by committing to meeting David's target every day (or at least having a darn good shot at it and getting there most of the time!)

So, to put this in context, you know the ginormous bags of spinach they sell at your local store? They're probably around 200g, so I'll be consuming the equivalent of 4.5 of those every day.

To do this will be to leave my comfort zone far behind.   

Like most raw food fans I habitually go heavy on the sugar and fat and light on the dark greens.

But my energy levels have been heading south in recent months, together with my concentration, plus I've been suffering from killer cravings. I can identify reasons for all of this, which I will go into in a later post, but for now, the point is: this is a GREAT time to experiment with the super-green, super-nutrient-rich way of eating.

I'm back - with my Raw Guide to Bali

Sarah here. As some of you have noticed, this blog has been dormant for a while. Rather a long while. I have had emails enquiring as to whether I am still alive, and if I am, whether I have decided to opt for a life of leisure. The answer to both questions is yes, but the latter was, sadly, over all too quickly ; )

If you are wondering why this post comes accompanied with a photo of a baby monkey, it's because I recently returned from three weeks in blissful Bali (and a day either side in skyscrapered Singapore). Sometimes a holiday's gotta be a holiday, so I left my laptop behind and re-charged my chi with 21 days of complete R&R. And let me tell you, after a particularly mad, manic and multi-tasking start to 2008, I slept for England.

But enough about England.

Bali: I fell in love with this Indonesion island the first time I visited it, in the year 2000. This latest visit was my third and, wonderful as it was from start to finish, I was in agreement with my five-year old son about the absolute highlight: feeding bananas to the impossibly cute wild macaques (a Balinese breed of monkey) in the Monkey Forest Sanctuary. If there ever was a real-life enchanted forest, this is it, as nestling among the trees and creepers is a lost city of ancient temple ruins. 

Bali... I celebrated my birthday at a beachside restaurant that was all candles, crashing waves and chilled music. No, it doesn't get much better than that. 

But is Bali a good place to go if you want a 'raw holiday'? Well, fresh juice is fairly widely available in restaurants and cafes (much more so than in the UK), within two minutes of where I was staying was a juice and smoothie bar (mostly raw), and across the road from it were two markets selling durian. Young coconuts (you drink the refreshing, nutrient-rich water and then scoop out the flesh) are widely available in swanky hotel bars and humble beach shacks alike.

Our location turned out to be about as ideal as it gets for the raw food fan, but as this is an island where neither juice nor durian nor ripe tropical fruit nor young coconuts are hard to come by, it is hard to go wrong. On the gourmet food front I was expecting slim pickings as I knew from past experience that it's hard to get a decent vegetarian, let alone vegan, meal in most restaurants on the island, whether western or traditional. On the whole, that hasn't changed.