Today was a huge milestone on my raw vegan diet journey. I have completed 31 days without eating any cooked food at all. I am very proud of this accomplishment and I know I couldn’t have done it without the support of the Kanekiki Farm.
Working Through My Resentment towards our Raw Vegan Community
I woke up around 5:30 a.m. and started my yoga session earlier than usual. Jake and I are now aiming to start our practice at 6:15 a.m. My plan is to slowly push the time down until I can start my daily yoga practice closer to 4 a.m.
Our yoga practice was good but morning meeting wasn’t great for me. I am still upset at our raw vegan community because many members tend to glorify cooked foods and make it harder for others to stick to the raw vegan diet. I am especially upset that their desire for cooked foods affects our community events outside the Kanekiki Farm. You can learn more about this on my these blogs: Disappointments with the Kanekiki Farm and Is this a Raw Vegan Community?
For today’s working session I chose a job that consisted on replenishing our reserves of dry wood. It was the simplest job available and I just wanted to do something peaceful to relax my mind. Destiny and I worked together, we didn’t talk much. As a matter of fact, we are both thinking about doing a speech fast starting on Friday.
I want to do a speech fast because I noticed how much energy I waste talking. I have noticed this before and I never dared to give speech fasting a chance. However, I did go to a Vipassana Meditation retreat once, it was hell, I am sure I would do much better now. Friday seems like a good day to start, we will see how it goes.
I enjoyed moving wood. It was simple, easy and fairly monotonous. There wasn’t much to think about.
Private Meeting with the Co-Owners of the Kanekiki Farm
As soon as we finished work I ate five papayas, six is just too much to eat on a row. Then I got ready for my meeting with Vicky and Barb. They are two of the co-owners of the Kanekiki Farm and they recently decided to have private meetings to check in with us individually and find out how we have been doing lately.
My scheduled time was at 10 a.m. We had the meeting inside Vicky’s car, with both of them sitting in the front and me sitting on the back. The meeting was short, they asked me the same questions they asked everyone else.
I told them I was still angry about the whole “raw vegan community or not” issue. They understood and respected my views. It is clear that they also want to bring about some change in that regard. They appreciated my share and I appreciated theirs.
Vicky and Barb also shared that they are concerned about my thoughts of leaving the Kanekiki Farm, apparently other people have been sharing these ideas with them. I told them that I had been thinking about looking for another raw vegan community where I could live, but I haven’t done any research yet. I trust we will be able to find a solution that works for all of us.
I definitely don’t want to go back to Boulder, Colorado, at least not until it is warmer. I would prefer to stay at the Kanekiki Farm, at least for another three or four months. The last question they asked me before ending our meeting was if I had used any drugs or alcohol since I had arrived. My answer was no and I felt proud to know that was the truth.
Raw Vegan Diet Support at the Kanekiki Farm
After our meeting I went upstairs to make some important phone calls and work on my fruitarian blog.
The following two hours were somewhat stressful. I had to call customer service from Airbnb to complain about some guests I have been hosting lately who didn’t behave so well. I also had to call Groupon to pause the deals I have going on in Boulder, Colorado. On top of that, I called my parents and shared with them what I have been going through. The conversation I had with them wasn’t as enjoyable as the one we had a few days ago.
At 12 p.m. we had our “RAWR meeting” which is also known as our raw vegan diet support meeting. This time we started the meeting with Bill teaching us a culinary class on how to prepare raw foods. He taught us some basic skills like how to handle knives and showed us how to sharpen them and use them in different ways to avoid cutting our fingers. He also showed us a variety of different techniques to process raw foods such as bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini and onions. I really enjoyed the class and I look forward to having more of them.
After that we sat down to talk with Bill, Vicky and Barb. Vicky and I discussed the changes I suggested we should make the Kanekiki Farm website to better reflect the type of raw vegan community that we have. Vicky appreciated my opinions and she is considering making some changes in the community and to the website.
A Legitimate Fruitarian Bodybuilding Workout
After that I had some more papayas and continued to work on my fruitarian blog. Then I headed to the gym to do a legitimate fruitarian bodybuilding workout. I say legitimate because so far I have been trying to practice fruitarian bodybuilding but I have only been able to follow a perfect fruitarian diet from time to time. Now that I am only eating fruits I can say with pride that I am in fact a fruitarian bodybuilder.
I decided to start tracking how much weight, reps and sets I am doing on my workouts during this fruitarian fast. I am planning on remaining on a fully fruitarian diet for the next twenty five days so I can explore more precisely the effects of a fruitarian diet in relationship to bodybuilding. I hope I get to find out if it is possible to build muscle on a fruitarian diet and how hard or easy it is.
The workout went pretty well, I took some notes. This is what I got:
*Note: These numbers are estimates since they do not include the weight from the bars. I am not doing this “scientifically”, I am just taking notes as I go. This is not a proper double blinded research experiment, I am just having fun. I am also working out on a gym with very limited equipment and space.
Bench Press: 90 lbs = 15 reps
Biceps Curl with Bar: 0lbs = 20 reps
Triceps “Kick-Back”: 20lbs = 15 reps ; 25lbs = 6 reps
Squats: 50lbs = 13 reps ; 60lbs = 4 reps (I have an injury on my leg and squats are painful)
Pull-Ups: 0lbs = 4 reps (I have no excuses here, four reps is pretty lame)
Deltoid Fly: 10lbs = 19 reps
Shoulder Shrugs: 35lbs = 20 reps
I don’t know if this was a tired day or a pumped up day. I will just keep track as I go and we will see where this takes us.
From Fruitarian Diet to Papaya Fast
The rest of the day was spent writing more articles for my fruitarian blog. I also ate another bunch of papayas. I may have had 20 or 25 on the whole day. It is hard to eat more than that. I wonder if I can eat 30 in a day. I will try tomorrow, or the next day.
Today would have been my fourth day on a papaya fast but yesterday I had some oranges and jackfruit. I guess I am back on day one. I am really enjoying the simplicity of this fast, but I also want flexibility to eat other fruits and have some salad from time to time.
Before going to bed I took a picture of the rising moon and some papaya trees. It is a beautiful night to live in the Kanekiki Farm.
READ ABOUT DAY 36
