Eat, Pray, Poop

Eat: Vegan raw ONLY with an herbal detox combination of capsules

Pray: For a washroom within 3 minutes

Poop: Lots.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did not necessarily pay too much attention to all the details of my first retreat program, as I never really tend to with any of my adventures in life (i.e. moving to the states for school without knowing anything about the school system or the fact that you do not receive blankets & pillows when living in a dorm), but as the food lover that I am, I probably should have this time.

As we sat down for the first meal of the program, my ears perked up immediately when I heard the word raw. "Raw…", I thought to myself, "Interesting... Wait. Only raw?!", was my next thought and sure enough it was. I am pretty open to trying new things, especially when it comes to food, but what I was in for this time no one could have predicted. When signing up for this retreat I knew that, since it was called "Fresh Start Cleansing", we would be doing a lot of detox stuff, however, combined with the raw diet, it just about took my experience to a whole new level….

The first two days were new and exciting, and I do have to admit that most of the "gourmet raw food" meals that we eat here are quite scrumptious. We had raw lasagna that actually tasted better than a "real" one and that coming from someone like me who had an Italian grandmother indeed means something! Raw curry, angel (zucchini) hair pasta with marinara sauce, smoothies, salads, juices and tons and tons of exquisitely tasting desserts, which are what I look forward to every single day as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. Though, once day three rolled around I just could not get the image and smell of a nice steamy, hot, COOKED chicken curry out of my mind as I sat down for dinner. To further elaborate I should probably also mention that since it is vegan raw food, we are also not eating any gluten or diary, AND in order for the food to be considered raw and keep all the benefits of the digestive enzymes in the produce, it is never heated above 43 degrees or 118 Fahrenheit - yum. All of this is supposed to help cleanse your system and in combination with the herbal detox capsules we are taking for breakfast and dinner, it is safe to say that after day 3, everyone was able to "let go" of a whole lot (my apologies for the images you might be getting right now, but hey, this is how our body detoxes...;)

Then there was day 4…. I sat down for lunch and let me tell you, I could not look at another freaking green leafy thing on my plate anymore, let alone bite into it. -Sure enough we had yet another salad for lunch and my stomach just about turned upside down. I ate it anyways because I was starving. Having successfully cleaned out my plate, I started my favourite topping at the table and we, or more so I, started to fantasize about sweet. Cakes in particular. Not surprisingly, there was no dessert for lunch this day and that was when Aimee and I started eating the leftovers of our 9 other retreat mates, since they so happened to "not be hungry at all", while Aimee and I wolfed down anything and everything in sight. Tip: If you eat enough "raw-wanna-be-real" food it will actually start to taste like the real thing once you get to about the second plate…. Dinner is usually more substantial, yet luckily for Aimee and I, we were looking at salad once again when we sat down for dinner. "A nice appetizer", I thought until one of the staff members put down a little dessert in front of me and I just about almost started to cry. That night the dessert for most of the participant was "too heavy or sweet" so Aimee and I ended up with all the leftover desserts at our end of the table, which was also when I decided that it was time to pay the kitchen a visit to make friends with Wayan, our chef for the week…….

I just started an album and in the picture above you see our first breakfast: Fresh fruit salad topped with young coconut flesh yoghurt, dehydrated carrot & currant muffins and coconut-honey butter. On the right side are our herb capsules and the tumeric-honey-lemon liver cleansing shot.