Eating Like a Bird
In January I embarked upon a juice fast in effort to alleviate some very uncomfortable menopausal symptoms including sleeplessness, lack of energy, night sweats, hot flashes and basic irritability. I went two weeks on only fresh juices, water, teas and miso broth. The symptoms went away pretty quickly and I felt great! I knew I would probably have to do a fast about every three months in order to keep up the results. But when April 1st rolled around I really wasn’t looking forward to fasting. I didn’t like going through those long days of always feeling hungry. I loved the results but not that constant growling of the stomach.
So instead I decided to modify a bit. I would do a basic raw food diet without the gourmet fare. This meant I would do the juices, the teas, add a few raw smoothies, and eat my raw trail mix to take care of the hunger pangs and desire to chomp.
I’ve been on this diet for over a week now and it is going great! I’ve had a couple green salads, eat trail mix every day, which consists of goji berries, raw cacao, raw sunflower seeds, and raw pumpkin seeds. It’s kind of like eating bird food.
As far as cleansing it is a great cleanse but a little slower going than a juice fast would be. This means it takes a bit longer to experience the result, yet the result is still coming.
A true fast is an opportunity to give our bodies a break from digesting. It is a good thing to do a couple times a year, but if you want to keep the results of a fast you have to really watch what you put back into your body after cleansing. I’m feeling a renewed commitment to my raw food lifestyle which tends to come around every spring after eating way too much cooked food all winter. I love the hot soups, breads, potatoes and comfort food the winter season brings. Which is why it is a challenging time to be a raw foodist. However in everything there is balance. Perhaps I could eat raw half the year and add a little warm food in the winter without leaving behind my raw food lifestyle.
I feel confident my raw food lifestyle will keep the menopausal symptoms away. They never returned full force since my fast in January but I could feel them returning.
Although the medical field has explanations as to why women have these menopausal symptoms, i.e. hormonal imbalance, and associated problems, I couldn’t help but feel that my symptoms were related to toxicity. I just felt toxic! Prior to my fast I tried a lot of the suggested supplements to keep the symptoms at bay, but they just didn’t work for me. The fast was a quick fix and actually quite long term considering they symptoms didn’t begin to return for nearly three months.
My toxicity theory was justified by the way I felt when I cleansed. However cleansing and eating a raw food diet may also help to balance our hormones which would alleviate the symptoms. I don’t have to know exactly what is going on, all I have to know is that eating like a bird gives me back my youth and vitality.