This morning I woke up pretty early. There was barely any light. I set in bed for a couple of minutes, put some clothes on and headed to the fruitarian community room.
Yoga in the Morning
As soon as I got there I took all my clothes off, except for my boxers, grabbed a yoga mat and practiced yoga for 30 minutes. I did some gentle sun salutations and a little bit of breath work. It felt really nice to take my quite time in the morning to stretch and breathe. I would like to make that a daily routine, but I have been saying that for five years…
Around 7:30 a.m. I put my clothes back on and headed downstairs to the kitchen for our morning meeting. I got there a little late. I had already been placed in one of the work groups: Weed Whacking.
Our job consisted on heading over towards the back of the farm and chopping off a bunch of cane grass around the bananas trees. Cane grass is like a giant weed that can grow up to 20 feet talk.
My Favorite Job so Far at the Kanekiki Farm
Bill, one of the co-owners of the Kanekiki Farm taught us how to use the machete and the comma. The comma is a short, knife-like looking tool with a large curve. It is used for cutting grass close to the roots. A machete is a pretty well-known tool, long like a sword, with a VERY sharp edge and it is used to clear long patches of tall grass, open coconuts and slice people in half.
Our training was pretty basic: Always have a firm stand, don’t leave the machete on the floor and be sure it does not leave your hands when you are swinging to cut a branch. It was a bit scary, but that made it more exciting and entertaining.
To be honest, I think that cutting cane grass has been my favorite farm activity so far. It is a relatively easy job and it can be done without depending on anyone. You can easily zone out and chop your morning away. After working for a couple of hours I could easily notice the large area that I cleared up and that left me feeling satisfied with the work I had done.
Two hours went away pretty fast but I must admit that towards the end I was a little tired and my hands where sore from all the whacking.
The Challenges and Benefits of the Fruitarian Bodybuilder Website
As soon as we finished working I headed straight to the kitchen and made myself a smoothie: Bananas with papayas, my go-to meal. Then I went upstairs and worked on yesterday’s blog post.
I must admit I’ve been pretty disappointed with the performance my website has had over the past month. I am not getting many visitors and what is worse, I don’t understand how this system works. I feel pretty frustrated with it because I have put much time, money and dedication to build this site and it still feels like it has multiple errors and areas to fix. Needless to say, I am not making any money with it.
On the brighter side I can remember that, even though I was hoping to make money with this project, money is not the reason why I started. This website is more of a creative project and so far this blog has served me to record and share ideas. Since there isn’t many people reading, I will say that more than being a source to share, it is a space for me to contemplate and journal the experiences I am going through. Cheaper than seen a therapist, that’s for sure.
Orange Juice and the Life that I Live Today
After working for an hour on the computer I headed downstairs to make myself a large glass of orange juice. I ended up making a whole litter and it lasted me less than 20 minutes.
Now I am sitting in a couch, typing these words while a couple of my fellow farm-mates work on their own projects. I have my headphones on and I am listening to a remix of a song called “Let’s Go Home”. It remind me of dryer days in Boulder, Colorado, driving my brand new Subaru and heading over to work. Life is much different now, not better or worse. This is a great experience so far, I am glad I am here. Much Love.
Fruitarian Meal Plan, a Need or a Convenience?
One thing I left out from yesterday’s blog was a conversation I had with Barb about the fruitarian diet. Her posture on the subject is that we need to consume some vegetables and that we can’t thrive with fruit only.
She mentioned that all the people she knows who only eat fruit tend to have teeth and bone problems. She named Anne Osborne and her child as examples. She also shared that Michael Arnstein had taken supplements while he was a fruitarian which was a little disappointing to hear since this whole time I thought he had been a 100% fruitarian all along. I guess I won’t know the truth unless I talk to him and even still he may sway from the facts. At the end of the day we can trust everyone or trust no one, or something in between.
I like fruitarianism but I am not married to it. It is obvious that I am passionate about it and this exploration has been beneficial to me. I don’t know what I would be doing if I wasn’t here in Hawaii, maybe teaching yoga or working as massage therapist. For some reason this is the path I chose and for the moment, this is fine with me.
One thing I did benefit from my conversation with Barb was her point on making sure I get enough calories. The high water content of fruit makes it easy to digest and sometimes I forget how little I am eating.
Truth is that I don’t feel hungry when I eat so much fruit. As a matter of fact, eating cooked food makes me feel hungrier than eating raw. I think it is because cooked food is dehydrating and takes a bigger toll on my body forcing me to be less comfortable and crave another meal to distract my mind.
Perhaps this is the truth or maybe I just bought into these ideas. Regardless of that I made a commitment to myself to be more mindful of my caloric intake and eat more fruit more often. I will also continue to eat my vegetables, not so much because I think I need them but because I like salads and I enjoy some variety.
I already tried using apps like Chronometer and I found them very insightful. However, I am not a person that can easily follow any routines and putting all that info on my phone everyday feels like a chore I am not willing to take. I am sure that if I started tracking my calories now I would drop the habit after a few days.
Orange Juice Coma
An hour or two after finishing my first glass of orange juice I went downstairs for round two. I am not sure why, I guess I was afraid I wasn’t eating enough. Perhaps that’s another reason to start counting my calories, or maybe I need to get more in touch with my feelings.
I made another liter of O.J. and drank it quite fast. After that I was gone, I felt heavy and really tired. I laid on the floor and that felt good. It wasn’t painful, I just felt full.
I worked downloading some videos from my camera to my computer. It was frustrating to see that, not only do I not know how to edit my videos and post them online, but the quality of the sound and image I have been filming is pretty bad. Perhaps it was a bad choice to get a GoPro. I should have given the decision more time.
During one of my bathroom breaks I went downstairs and decided to make myself a fruitarian salad. I thought maybe some fat would make my belly feel better. There isn’t much logic to that, reverse psychology doesn’t work on our digestive system.
The Biggest Fruitarian Salad I Ever Ate
The salad I made wasn’t too bad, at least not like the one I had last night. I added some avocado, green beans, a little lemon and cucumbers. I ate it quite fast and as soon as I finished one of my friends asked if I was ready to make another one. I thought to myself, why not…
* Side note, I had asked this friend to show me the recipe of the gigantic fruitarian salads she has been making and we agreed that tonight was the night we would prepare it together *
We probably spent an hour making that fruitarian salad. It was incredibly time consuming. We made enough for three people, but in reality, we could have fed a party of 20 with it.
The fruitarian salad contained some unripe papayas, carrots, tomatoes, sprouts, avocados, cucumbers, zucchini, two different greens that grow in the farm which names I don’t know and some sea vegetables that I also don’t know how they are called. On top of all that we added a sauce containing ripe papaya, tomatoes, garlic and some spicy peppers. It was delicious and certainly more than I needed.
We took our fruitarian salads upstairs and ate them together. I wish I had weighted them but if I had to guess, I would say each bowl weighted 5 to 10 pounds. I am not exaggerating, tomorrow I will grab some weights from the gym and compare.
I think it took me two or three hours to finish the fruitarian salad, I had to take breaks. We watched a whole movie while I worked on my fruitarian salad and I barely got to finish it by the end. Now I feel heavy but very proud.
This is not something I would do daily. If I did, I would have to work my way up to it. Ray, my friend who made the fruitarian salad with me, finished hers in under an hour. However, she has been a raw vegan for three years and is used to large quantities of food like that. For me, it was more of a fun challenge than a need. I probably won’t do it again tomorrow but it was fun to try and succeed.
Now I feel like a whale.
Goodnight,
