Day 29: October 29th 8:19 PM

Food Eaten: Breakfast shake, apples, dulse
Quality of Life: I am an excellent argument for or against mind-body dualism.
Physical Activity Level: Very, very little.
Raw Food Percentage: 100

I've been reading a book on backpacking recently. I just finished the chapters dealing with crime and disease. While the entire book is of course full of reasons why backpacking is fun and reasonably safe, after finishing those chapters I don't think I'll ever set foot outside of my house, much less the country.

Of course, this is just the problem of creating an exhaustive list of dangers, all of which are much, much more concerning to a person than the possibility of delightful sightseeing and french cuisine. The dangers are specific and clearly communicated. The benefits are ephemeral and hard to describe in words alone(There's only so many ways to say, "It was totally awesome!")

It occurs to me this blog might suffer from the same presentation problem, as most of my posts I'll say I feel fine in the first sentence and then catalogue any problem I'm having exhaustively over the next few paragraphs. So, in the interests of balance I would like to say that this past month has not been as hard as I might have made it seem. For the most part I've actually had a steadily increasing feeling of well being. And, while I miss regular food, I know I'll get to eat it again eventually. Its just a matter of a little patience.

Happily, I've also felt particularly good today, so I can present a post of pros for the raw food thing as opposed to only cons.

As I said, I feel quite well today. Much better than the last two days especially. I think I can chalk up my getting sick as a result of eating some strawberries and an avacado that were a bit past their prime.

Still having occasional moments where I just zone out. But they're rarer and I'm ready to conclude that it has less to do with raw food and more to do with the fact that without coffee I find it much harder to pay attention to dull things. As an interesting side note my focus has actually seemed to improve in some cases, I read Atlas Shrugged(Don't worry, I'm not a Randian, its just after you get a degree in philosophy you kind of get the itch to expose yourself to ideas you disagree with now and then) over the course of this month and am now making progress on the Critique of Pure Reason. It has been pointed out to me that it might be easier to focus on my reading and the like now that I don't have a background stimulant level to maintain in the form of regular smoke breaks and a triple espresso.

Body fat percentages appear to be fairly steady. I'm a bit trimmer, but not so much that you'd notice unless you just stared at my belly for a long, long time. And that seems like a fairly unlikely scenario.

Energy levels remain somewhat unpredictable. I felt real sleepy as I finished last nights blog post, and then proceeded to stay awake for three more hours reading. I woke up this morning actually feeling quite energetic and now am starting to go down again. I'm assuming this is a sign that my blood sugar level is still fluctuating somewhat. I haven't had a major meal today and the last snack I had was a few hours ago, so it would make sense for me to start to feel a little sluggish.

I haven't quite felt up to doing anything particulat strenuous for the last couple of days, but I'll try tomorrow if I still feel this good.

I'm not hungry all the time anymore, which is odd and a little unsettling. I hope this is a result of me finally getting everything I need and adapting to the constraints of a raw food diet and not a sign that my body has concluded I'm starving to death and has just shut down.

Anyhow, I don't think I've entirely gotten the hang of this whole thing, but I think I get the idea. So thats good. Hopefully I've also gained some form of long term health benefits. A bit of a cleanse or some sort of recalibration of my body towards more efficient biochemical processes. Maybe just some lung tissue growing back or my liver speaking to me again. I suspect I'm still dietarily unbalanced and undereating in a few things. But its not like my diet was too balanced last month either and I definitely feel better than then. At least now its unbalanced with too much of one kind of vegetable on one side and not enough of some kind of bean on the other. As opposed to too much junk and not enough damn near anything else.

2 days left now, since I haven't had much to talk about on here about my current condition for the last week or so, its safe to assume I'll be fairly steady unless otherwise noted. So, tomorrow's post will deal with a discussion of some of the claims for and against raw foodism and what I can find that refutes or supports them, so I guess I'll finally have to some damn research. Saturday's will be a sobre reflection on my personal experience followed by twenty four hours of whiskey, shisha and cake.