Let's go RAW for a month!!!

The other day a gourmet RAW foods cookbook caught my eye and so I started perusing the recipes. The dishes sounded fabulous and I was interested in knowing more. I have been doing a little online research about this whole raw foods phenomenon and am very interested in giving this type of diet a try for the next 30 days. A couple of years ago I went vegan for 30 days, it was a fun journey and I learned a lot about new foods and a new style of eating. While it is a lifestyle that is not suited to me, I was happy with the experiment and had some fun new recipes added to my repertoire. This time I am looking forward to a new food adventure and hope at the end to have developed some new and healthy eating habits. I have ordered a food dehydrator and two raw food cookbooks which should be delivered sometime in the next week or so but in the meantime I can get started without those items as there are a bunch of nice web sites with information and recipes which are easy enough to follow. I have read that it is helpful to be able to track calorie intake as well as nutritional information so that I can ensure that I am eating a balanced meal and getting enough calories each day so I have found some web sites which will allow me to input the ingredients and get the nutritional information, this is kind of neat to me.

Here are some simple rules I want to follow for the next 30 days, this may grow longer as I learn more:
I read on a blog about a Doctor who suggested an 80/10/10 ratio of intake, that would be 80% carbs (mostly fruit but minimum of 5% from green leafy veggies), 10% protein and 10% fat. I will be moderate with vegetable oils (olive, coconut, etc.) light on the salt but liberal with herbs and spices, light on sweeteners. I also plan to weigh my foods so that I can calculate the nutritional information as close as possible. I will keep a log here, hopefully a daily log, so that I can track this diet and see my strengths and weaknesses as well as pinpoint any potential mistakes that I make on this journey.

Tonight I started simple and made a quick and easy snack:
Peanut butter goo balls:
1 C crunchy peanut butter
1 C creamy peanut butter
1 C protein powder ( i have a vanilla flavored one that I used)
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 C oatmeal (not quick oats)
unsweetened shredded coconut to coat balls

Mix everything except the coconut together and roll out into about 1" balls. It will make about 30. Roll in the shredded coconut and refrigerate so that they firm up. Go here for the nutritional information.

So I am off to a good start with my little snack and looking forward to my new cookbooks too!

Here are some other useful links that I found and will be referring to throughout this experiment:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/12/30-days-raw/
http://www.rawmazing.com/rawmazing-recipes/
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1805341
http://www.calorieking.com/foods/search.php?keywords=apple&showresults=yes