How I Feel Poisoned Nearly Every Time I Eat Out

[Note: This post was written before I committed to 100% vegan on 1 January 2015.]

I love the high-fruit lifestyle because it’s simple and it helps me to feel energetic, clear, and balanced. I eat this way 80% of the time which means that out of 21 (7 x 3) meals during the week, all but 3 are high-fruit and I give myself some wiggle room for overall imperfection.

Of those 3 non-high-fruit meals, two I generally eat at home and one is a Friday or Saturday night dinner out with my family. Part of my decision to live a high-fruit lifestyle AND remain “social & fun” with my family and friends is to aim for 80%, rather than 100%, compliance.

However these meals out are starting to take their toll.

This past Friday I enjoyed a delicious Thai lunch with two of my favorite girlfriends. I had some coconut base veggie soup and the Thai Garlic entrée which was composed of a medley of sautéed vegetables and fruit (yes, bell peppers are fruit) with jasmine rice.

Then that night we went out for sushi. I had miso soup, a seafood salad which is composed of raw and cooked fish with a mountain of shredded onions and dressing, and some extra sashimi.

The next morning I had two local-farm fried eggs in butter with two slices of sprouted grain toast, as I usually do on Saturday mornings only. Dinner was a huge homemade Caesar salad and then we went out for a movie which always involves movie popcorn (without “butter”).

So FOUR non-high-fruit meals this week. Too much! It’s astounding that this used to be “normal eating” seven days a week for me.

After a week of eating mostly raw & steamed fruits and veggies, Friday nights and Saturdays are starting to not feel so great. This is why:

1. We really have no idea what is in restaurant food. While we may read on the menu and see on the plate the main food ingredients, we have no idea what kinds of oils, additives, spices, and salt are used. There are a lot of undetectable ingredients that matter a great deal when being health conscious.

When preparing food and eating at home, knowing the contents of food is as simple as reading the ingredient list and/or sticking to foods like fruits & veggies that don’t require labels or lists. Eating out is a crap shoot when it comes to knowing ingredients.

2. Eating cooked food is very dehydrating. Cooking food cooks the water out of the food. This is why every dietician will tell you to drink eight 8 ounce glasses of water per day. It’s simply to replace the water that’s been cooked out of cooked food. A diet high in raw plant food doesn’t need as much supplemental water.

3. Restaurants typically use an insane amount of refined white table salt in their food. As you may have learned in my free 8 First Steps to a HAPPY™ Kitchen guide, refined white salt is cellular poison.

Edema a common reaction in my body when I eat out too much. The refined white salt essentially poisons my blood from the excess, and the probably cheap, cooking oils slow down the salt processing & elimination. Sometimes I feel like I have water balloons taped to my calves and thighs and my ankles turn into boneless “cankels.” It’s not attractive, but more importantly, it feels horrible!

You might say, “Well, Carla, clearly all that fruit is causing you trouble. Perhaps you need to back off.”

I’ve thought the same myself.

But I’ve navigated through the situation and have realized a few things.

1. Having a “stomach of steel” is nothing to brag about. I used to feel rebelliously superior in my youth when eating a breakfast of hot coffee and cold pizza after a morning cigarette. In comparison, I now feel I have a fragile stomach.

This is good!

Because fruit is so easy on the body to digest, the body becomes accustomed to expending its energy elsewhere…healing, rejuvenating, creating. When difficult to digest foods or substandard ingredients are digested, the well-cared for body protests with vigor.

There is no merit in regularly digesting inferior, hard-to-digest food. When extra energy is allotted for difficult & complex digestion, other body functions – often at a deep cellular level – suffer. This is how disease is created slowly over time.

2. Too much fat + refined salt = edema. Too much sugar + fat = blood sugar imbalance issues. In general, most people eat too much fat. A diet high in fat is best paired with non-sweet fruit and vegetables with no salt. The healthiest fats are whole food fats like avocados, seeds, and nuts.

3. Before converting to a high-fruit diet, I probably had a chronic case of edema and didn’t know it. I dropped two clothing sizes effortlessly when I improved my diet. Most of it was probably water retention that became so normal I didn’t even notice it.

The above is a photo of a delicious, beautiful meal I enjoyed several weeks ago. It was made with farro, butternut squash, onions, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and roasted cherries. It tasted SO GOOD! And I felt awful for two solid weeks afterwards. The oil or butter (I have not idea which or which kind) wrecked havoc on my digestive system.

Will I stop eating out? No, not yet.

Does every additional week eating according to the high-fruit lifestyle encourage me to move from 80% to 90% or 100%? Yes. I can see why the top promoters of the high-fruit lifestyle commit 100% of the way!

I feel so wonderful, light, happy, at ease, and clear eating fruits and veggies. While it’s fun and tasty to eat foods besides fruit on the weekend, it’s starting to not feel so great by contrast. This is the body’s way of saying: do more of what feels good!

You really have no idea just how great you can feel in your body until you give the high-fruit lifestyle a try. Luckily, I never feel poisoned when I eat locally at Delisheee Yo, so that will remain my go-to favorite place to eat out!