The new me...

People are trying to kill me. No, not some ninja hired to take me out. Huge corporate conglomerates have been secretly poisoning me for years. They have been adding toxins and hormones to my food ever since I was born. Now that I am an adult, I am reaping the benefits of these poisons, much like everyone else.
I have let it slide for years. Sure McDonald's is bad... but a Big Mac is tasty. Diet soda has no calories, so it must be good for you. As more and more evidence comes out regarding our filthy, triple processing, injected, and rejected food supply, the more it looks like we are slowly killing ourselves.
Eating organic is a wonderful thing. Fruits and vegetables taste a whole lot better, organic meat is more succulent , even something as simple as an organic pop-tart has much more nutritional value than anything can buy at your local grocery store. So what has stopped me from eating these foods in the past? Honestly, it's the time it takes to prepare healthy meals and more so, the cost of everything. I love pears! I can get a pear at Publix for 89 cents. A place like whole foods, and organic pear costs well into $3-$4, for one! So I pushed it off... "Ah it's too expensive!" I rationalized to myself as I continued to eat junk.
Recently I have been re-evaluating myself. I used to be REALLY fat. A good 450. Over the years, I have slowly brought myself down to a fat, yet better 300. My wife and I were doing what we called a "poor man's Nutrasystem" where we would have a diet shake for breakfast and then lean cuisines for lunch and dinner. This worked. We did lose weight. But it didn't feel right. All the processed foods were low in calories but high in other things like sodium and ingredients we couldn't pronounce. The organic nature of food still clawed at my brain.
I decided that now was the time to try an entire lifestyle change. I am in a period of transition and what better a time then now to embark on something that could potentially fix my life. I am not a fan of fad diets even though I have been on almost all of them. The one that has always intrigued me the most was the "raw food diet". Though it is called a "diet" it is really just a lifestyle of eating unprocessed foods that haven't been cooked above 115 degrees. There is a whole bunch of science that goes with it, but essentially you eat healthy things your body was meant to eat while eliminating the unhealthy crap. Now I love fruits and vegetables more than most people. On this type of diet, not only would I be able to consume endless amounts of raw vegetables, but the process of eating would also make me healthier in other ways.
To be honest, other than the little research I have done, I don't know much about it. I have bought a book and will be using the internet as a tool in my quest to be mostly raw. You wonder what mostly raw means. Well, I refuse to eat raw meat (sushi excluded) and I do not want to eliminate that from my diet altogether, so I will, on occasion, eat cooked meat. Mostly lean chicken, but sometimes red meat as well. I want to start at about 80% raw 20% other and want to eventually get to about 90% raw foods. Other then meat and perhaps the occasional baked sweet potato, I will have everything raw. No sugar, no artificial sweeteners, nothing processed. I will need to give up my coffee it seems, but I might sneak a black coffee in every once in a while :)
I am going to go through this adventure and keep a log of it here. Wish me luck.