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...