Steve Pavlina has been doing a raw food trial this month which we’ve been following with mixture of amusement and disgust. 84 bananas? Yuck.

I heard about raw foodists a few months ago and Laura and I have been steadily increasing our raw food intake ever since. Here are our findings:

(You are hereby forewarned that a discussion of yucky bathroom topics follows.)

First of all, I have been eating 99% vegetarian since September. In college I did the same thing, but at that time I ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches and other unhealthy stuff. This time I am doing things right, putting the veg back in vegetarian you might say.

Even this time around I was eating a lot of dairy at first, which I have cut back significantly in the last three months. Many days I am entirely vegan (except for honey). The biggest differences I’ve noticed are that I feel much better after eating and I have to eat more often.

Now for the raw food. I would estimate that my diet is hovering around 30% raw. This is not very much for a raw foodist, but compared to what I was eating before (about 2%), this is a huge change. I am eating more fruit and lots of raw vegetables.

One of the strangest effects so far has been in the toilet. When Laura and I were going to yoga class regularly, I looked into a yogic diet. On this diet, your poop is supposed to float. All of it, all the time. I thought that was totally strange and couldn’t really imagine it happening. Guess what. It happens. My poop is consistently floating. When I go eat something unhealthy, like a big plate of nachos or meat, it sinks. So cool.

Another effect is that I can’t eat things like I used to. For example, usually I bring my own food to work at the group home, but the other night they made corn bread. I love corn bread. So I filled up a cup with corn bread and put some milk in there and ate it. Yum yum yum. I was on a roll, so I made a quesadilla with a flour tortilla and some cheap cheese. Let me tell you, not ten minutes later I had a stomach ache like none I’ve had since the Peace Corps. I had to make myself throw up for about 15 minutes. The corn meal and flour had combined to make these big, dry pellets that felt like a huge rock in my tummy. Disgusting. I am going to cut back on white flour and definitely steer clear of cornbread.

We highly recommend introducing more raw foods into your diet. You will notice a difference after just a few days, even with only a modest increase of raw foods. Just being conscious of what you eat can create a marked shift in your appetite. My next goal is to cut back on sugar.