The last day of fruitarian lunch!

Day number 16. Only 4 1/2 more to go. It wouldn’t be so bad, but I end up eating the same thing day in and day out. The monotony is a lot harder to deal with than anything else. Smoothie for breakfast, fresh fruit for lunch, avocado for dinner with dried fruits and nuts with a few Larabars thrown in there, day after day. Tonight I had a special treat of calamara olives which were a nice change of pace. I never noticed how often we get offers to meet up for dinner. It’s been hard having to turn people down because I don’t really feel like going to a restaurant and eating fruit while everyone else is enjoying these fantastic meals. Only 4 1/2 more days….

I was looking up more info on Fruitarians now that I’m in the home stretch and it looks like I’m in the same company as Leonardo DaVinci. Here’s the only “famous” fruitarian that I could find. Actually, more accurately, I should be associated with Steve Jobs and Gandhi since they were both fruitarian for a while then quit, which is exactly what I plan on doing. Today was tough since it was freezing cold out. The last thing you want on a cold day is a frozen smoothie for breakfast, but I choked it down and then took an extra hot shower. Lunch was dried fruit and nuts but at dinner I broke down. It was the first time if you don’t count my planned “cheating.” I really, really wanted something “cooked” so I had a piece of toast with my regular dinner of an avocado and tomato juice. Plain toast has never tasted so good! I blame the breakdown on my girlfriend. She was the one who left bread sitting out on the counter, in plain sight, looking so delicious, so fresh, so willing to be toasted. It’s siren song was just too irresistible. Trust me, I felt guilty with every warm bite.

Yesterday was the day I had been looking forward to for weeks. Not only did we have amazing vegan tacos provided by Así Soy Tacos!, but we were also invited to an excellent vegan potluck. The main issue I generally have with potlucks is that most people don’t like to cook. You will go to these events and it’s just an Uncle Eddies/chips and salsa fest. Last night was a nice change of pace. There was a huge selection of food, but after only eating sweet fruit for the past two weeks, my favorite thing there was the bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. I’ve been missing salt in a big way, so that was perfect. Homemade ravioli, cinnamon rolls, and jellyroll twinkies also hit the spot. Today was back to more of the same, a fruit smoothie for breakfast (an orange, a banana, fresh cranberries and apple juice), some nuts and raisins for lunch and dried and fresh fruit for dinner. Only one week left. The one negative effect this is having is that every time I go out and eat regular food my stomach ends up getting upset. But then again, I would probably get the same upset stomach any time I sat down and ate nearly half a bag of Doritos, twikies and cinnamon rolls for dinner…

I’ve made it half-way and to celebrate I went out and had a veggie burger!

Just kidding. I’m still sticking to it. Smoothie for breakfast, Larabar for a snack, fresh fruit for lunch, avocado for dinner w/tomato juice and some dried fruit. There’s certainly not a lot of variety in my routine. I found a recipe for fruitarian ice cream, so I may try that making that this weekend, but I’m thinking it sounds like just a colder version of the smoothies I’ve been eating.

The one thing I will agree with is that I do feel like I have more energy than usual. But that small amount of extra energy I have isn’t worth never getting to eat regular food, or go out to restaurants, or have salt, or pick up a quick snack, or get popcorn at the movies, or try a bite of something my girlfriend made for dinner, or eat a piece of Tofurkey with our pups. The list goes on and on…

Ten days into this fruitarian diet I think I’m finally starting to get used to it. When I got home tonight, it was the first evening that I didn’t really crave something salty and actually wanted another fruit smoothie. I ended up having some dried fruit that was around and a handful of nuts and juice. It doesn’t sound like much, but it actually ends up being pretty filling. I’ve noticed that changing my eating habits to rely on a bunch of small meals and snacks prevents me from getting that “I’m starved” feeling all the time. For breakfast I had another smoothie. This one was banana, orange, grape juice, frozen cranberries and ice. I’ll probably forgo grape juice in my smoothies in the future. It makes it too sweet. Lunch was fresh fruit again as well as a Larabar. So far, the only Larabar that I’ve really liked is the peanut, but it’s fun to try all the different flavors. I could pretty much make it an entire day eating those peanut bars, they are that good.

I’m pretty unsure about a lot of the claims of this diet, but the one I do believe is that you feel better when you wake up in the morning. I don’t know if it’s just eating a healthier breakfast, or eating breakfast as soon as I wake up versus waiting until about 9 AM when I’m at work, but I do feel like I have more energy. Today’s morning smoothie was a bust. It was a banana, orange, fresh cranberries, pineapple juice and ice. Waaaaay too tart for 6:45 in the morning. I had a late morning snack of a Larabar and some fresh cut fruit from Ralphs. I’m still not sure of the negative effects of eating mixed fruit since I don’t feel any difference after eating all one type versus mixed. Dinner was an avocado with lime, black olives (yum!) and tomato juice. It’s a pretty small dinner, but it seems to be more than satisfying, even on days I go to the gym. I also had a few nuts thrown in there as a late night snack. One thing I was wondering…are fruitarians who eat nuts looked at by other fruitarians like the people who say “I’m vegetarian, but I only eat fish” are looked at by other veg*ns?

I didn’t have a chance to write yesterday since I was too busy eating my weight in Tofu Pesto Sandwiches and Dee’s Nuts Donuts. It was absolutely fantastic. Around midnight my stomach was absolutely wrecked, but it was completely worth it. Today I felt great. I started the day with another smoothie. Even when I’m done with this diet, I’ll probably stick with the smoothie for breakfast routine. I end up feeling much better in the morning than my normal routine of eating a Cliff Bar. I skipped lunch but had a Larabar. I had never tried a Larabar before and it was surprisingly good. For dinner I ended up eating another smoothie. Since I had a normal meal last night, I had no problem going back to eating fruitarain today. The smoothie I made was one of the best ones yet. I didn’t know how it would turn out since I was just using what was around the house. It was cranberry juice, frozen blueberries, mango, a banana and some ice. I also realized that I have no idea how to cut up a mango.

Tonight at the grocery store when I was picking up avocados for dinner I was really tempted to cheat with something warm, or at least salty. We were out running errands and the only thing that was close by was a Jamba Juice. The last thing I was interested in on a cold winter night (and by cold, I mean Pasadena 58 degrees cold) was a cold smoothie. But I did it anyway. I choked down some pretty gross mango concoction they call “Mega Mango” that they make. I think it’s the first time that I’ve ever been to a Jamba Juice and not walked out of there with a veganized Peanut Butter Moo’ed. The rest of the day was filled eating the same exact thing I ate yesterday, a smoothie for breakfast and nuts/dried apples for dinner. I think I would go crazy if I didn’t know I was going to be able to have a real meal tomorrow night. I’m allowing myself one “normal” meal on Saturday night. This week’s meal will be spent at Pure Luck. I am going to eat the shit out of that Tofu Pesto sandwich!

Now that I’m into this for 5 days I’m really not feeling “the benefits” outlined on The Fruitarian Foundation’s website. Their first claim is:

More mental power, more mental clarity with new and total different ideas, more creativity and happiness, more energy, rejuvenation, increase of auto confidence, auto esteem, and freedom from the affective dependencies of ALL kinds!

If anything, people say I seem more irritable. I don’t see that anywhere on their site.

I started off today with a smoothie once again, the same one as yesterday. One change today was that I was actually looking forward to lunch. There is a farmers market downstairs from my work on Thursday and one of the vendors has all kinds of dried fruit and nuts. I was able to find a bag of raw mixed nuts and a bag of really tasty dried apples, but everything else that was a dried fruit had added sugar or oil. Oh, wait, that’s not entirely true. There was a bag of natural dried pineapple. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen naturally dried pineapple, but it certainly doesn’t look like anything I want to put in my mouth. When I saw it in the bag it instantly reminded me of those vacuum-sealed bags of dried fish you see at Asian markets. No thanks. For dinner it was another avocado and half a smoothie. The other half went to my girlfriend who exclaimed that it was “surprisingly good.” There’s no way I would be able to make it through 3 weeks without our Vitamix Turbo Blend 4500. I’ve been running it through its paces the last couple of days and it can pretty much blend anything that you throw at it completely smooth. You ended up with chunks of ice cubes and half blended frozen bananas with our last blender, but not with the Vitamix. It’s now become the most important appliance in the kitchen.