My way to Fruitarianism

In essence

I am a fruitarian because it is a part of material, mental - ethical and aesthetical - manifestation of my philosophy. I wish humanity to shift very soon towards full veganism and fresh fruit diet as a part of our intellectual progress. That's why I like to be a person with a regular nutritional choices rather than to be so exceptional in it as many of us here are, because that would mean that most people around share the same ethical values and respect their bodies as a comprehensive instrument of operation in this existence.

I eat primarily fruit for more than 16 years, there have been only few days where I ate less than 3/4 fresh fruit a day. I don't eat any flesh for 17 years, since early 1993.

I started with ~75% fruitarianism (my approximation to how much total raw fruit I ate in the first years) - no special preparation like salads (I could not cook at all, I was only 19), with no supplements other than dried pulverized berries and herbs in the beginning (I considered myself a herbalist since I was 11 :) I did my share of experimenting with additions 6-7 years ago (few vitamins and minerals).

From time to time I taste or even eat vegan food, mostly socially. It is not my very aim to nourish my body ideally, disregarding all other aspects of life, but my diet is strictly vegan since August 2004 (I learned about horrific methods of milk industry), and since early spring 1993 I eat no any meat, fish, eggs or anything of the kind, and don't drink milk, but prior to 2004 I had little cheese with wine on rare social occasions, and maybe tasted something what could have eggs in it, and I had honey sometimes.

I tend to eat less with years, but not always: there are days I eat as little as 3-5 apples (or something like that) that are half-fasting to me, and times when I eat much more than average 3 kg (6 pounds) of fruit.

I do not eat sprouts. Greens I eat very seldom too, only in need, for example trying to cure weird condition with an onion, or eating a dish with some leaves in a company if it is the best choice for the moment. Sometimes I ate soaked in water almonds and sunflower seeds, dried pecans and pine seeds, nowadays I prefer to take few dry and not be dependent on the process. Dried fruits and seeds I eat now and then, more in winter times. My favorites are cherries and dates. I like to make cold infusions for a night from dried berries, especially mulberries. From time to time I extent my diet with frozen berries or green peas. 

I am more a raw fruit mono-eater. I tried smoothies and salads and did not found them that attractive. However, a fruit salad could be useful when available fruits are not very tasty and in a salad they can complement each other. Fresh juices I have mostly in cafes and restaurants, but sometimes make myself one: fresh oranges with limes I like very much. Now and then I practiced fruit mono-days, I did it on grapes, apples, papayas, tomatoes; on various melons - most often watermelons - or oranges I stayed for several days in a row, mainly for experimenting.

Most of the time my kitchen equipment consists only of a knife, a tea spoon and a bowl :) I drink filtered or bottled water almost every day, but in small volumes at a time. 

I fast more or less regularly ~ 48 hours a time since I was 14 (the choice of the day depends on my mood, not the calendar, originally it was Fridays :). My longest fasts are only 3 days long.

I try to be fruitarian for principle, as good as I can - it is the most ethical, beautiful and sustainable way to live I know, and 90-100% raw - for health, because fruits are tastier in their fresh ripeness and it feels right. I have luck of motivation sometimes and difficulty to find good quality fruits I want for a reasonable price, but I manage somehow, because my several attempts to make more cheap and available plant foods to a bigger part of my diet were unsuccessful - I did not feel as good as normal already after a week or two. Some cooked vegetables once in a while did not make me feel worse immediately, but I do feel the best being fully raw for long periods of time and allow some heated meals only on occasion.

Socially I allowed myself many times to be vegan. There were several instances when I tasted very small pieces of food (as at the end of a spoon) even when I knew there were some eggs or milk in it, because I strongly dislike demonstration of ethical superiority to fellow humans, and it humbles me in a way. I remember testing something buttery and I hated it, I also expressed this emotion politely. Sometimes I get nostalgic to a certain foods of my childhood, but I have my ways to deal with it.

I had experience no miracles on my diet - just satisfaction and joy. Starting very early in life I had no illnesses to cure, no weight to loose, so I am probably not the most inspirational example for many of you. But I need to say that I stayed healthy and good looking and shaped with my nutritional choices all these years, and this means a lot for me, because I was threatened so many time with my suspectedly horrible health and even lifespan expectations.

Organic fruit I prefer most of the times I can.

How I got the idea

My fruitarianism began from one tiny sentence I read - I don't remember the author (he was quoted in a book I was looking through, which I don't remember ether - I used to be a reading junky :), and it sounded like this: "The prize to pay for eating anything other than fruit and nuts is too high". I was already several months strict vegetarian at that time, but the sense of it - or all senses I put in this words for myself - amazed me more and more.  There were "explosions" of ideas in my brain for many days, one realization after another, but I new right away that this is it! :) The idea of eating only fruits and seeds without damaging even plants seemed to be the answer to the most philosophical issues I had as a teen adapting to being adult. I even did not know the word "fruitarian" for many years after, nor the word "vegan" - so poor was the informational field around me.

By the way I came to vegetarianism (veganism, actually, with some stupid occasional exceptions, because I did not know anything about milk and eggs industries) through some my favorite poets (they were Buddhists as I learned later), and then I discovered Patanjali sutras started to practice yoga seriously and realized that the only way to do it is accepting Ahimsa; zen koans later  refined my moral credo and "bridged" my intellect and my ethical core.

Detailed Nutritional Story

I was a child of two healthy young students in a big city, who were not into kids at all :) I was breast-fed normally, but when they tried to introduce some common foods into my diet I refused quite violently, and all my later childhood I heard funny stories about my fight against feeding. Once my pediatrician even took me for 3 days to feed "rightly", and returned me as a "hopeless baby" earlier than planned.

Orchard

When I was 1 year old, I was given away to my grandparents, who lived in a smaller city in their own self-build home with a big orchard, vegetable garden and potato field. Our diet consisted of fresh, self-sun-dried or preserved in glass fruits (depended on season), traditional tomato-onion salads with sunflower oil, vegetable soups (tomato, cabbage and beets), rye and dark wheat breads with milk, some fresh and cooked veggies, and self-made bakery on special days. The orchard was amazing, I still dream about it. There were many big fruit trees - apples of many types - the fruits were kept raw in a cellar for many months, 3-4 types of pears, blue plums, apricots and peaches, sweet and sour cherries, several kinds of mildly sweet grapes, bushes of raspberries, black and red currants, gooseberries, etc., and underneath all possible other verities of berries (small wild and normal strawberries, for example) and vegetables, many tomatoes and aromatic green peas. Picking them all was a great fun. I still prefer these types of fruit to others and dislike excessive sweetness of some commercial fruit varieties.

Animals

My grandparents also held chickens who had their own house and run around with cats and dogs. They were fun to play with, but I hated the special raw egg drink I was given regularly: yolks and whites of 2-3 raw eggs were simply mixed into a liquid and it was considered very nutritious.

I needed to drink goat milk, provided by a neighbor every day, because it supposed to be good for kids and better than cow milk. I made friends with the child of a/the goat, and was horrified when (s)he was killed for meat by specially invited professional. I was 3 or 4 at that time, I don't even know whether I ever ate this flesh, which is horrible to me. I probably pushed this experience deep into subconsciousness, because I forget about it for many years. I also lost my other friend around that time, a dog, under wheels of a car. Both of those buddies were white in color, and till this day I feel something indescribable by seeing white fur animals. For example, when I was already a young woman, I tried to help an albinos cat from the neighborhood, and I was devastated when I saw the wounds from other people and cats on his body, and when I eventually lost him out of my sight. The other dog of my grandparents, wonderful Chapa, recognized me with joy 10 years later, when I was grown up and came backto visit.

Preschool Diet

When I was 5, I went to live with my parents again, to another large industrial city. They both were very busy professionally, and I was submitted to a 24-7 kindergarten, but I was taken home every late evening and on weekends.

Those were tough times: for the early breakfasts at home I was given scrambled eggs with beacon, bread with butter and cheese every morning and there was a bitter argument almost each time, because those seemed to be inedible to me.

In the supposedly half-elite children-facility I hardly ever eaten anything but bread with some traditional sweet drinks made out of dried fruit. My portions of unattractive foods were happily taken by my pals. My parents talked to my mentors many times and asked them to leave me in peace, because they give me better food at home, but the "educators" still tried to force-feed me now and then. Those ladies had their own understanding of right and wrong, they, as I understood later, were cruel to children physically and emotionally, but this is a different story.

A supper at home was standard, as far as I remember: a soup, a big seasonal salad, a boiled cereal dish or potatoes with some meat by side, a small desert. My parents were strong on "good nutrition" and everything were made fresh and counted by nutritional value according to books. They had not had any money-worries and we always had best possible food in normal understanding. On the weekends we often had guests and had special dishes made for them, or gone to parties to friends homes, where I ate mostly sweets.

At that time I learned to hide the food I don't want to eat: meat - in special bags for street dogs, many children did the same; or sometimes under the furniture, I even through it out of the window. Often I was left to sit alone in the dining room till I ate one or another dish I did not like. Funny, most of the time it were deserts - pies, which I disliked in the early childhood for some reason, especially ice-cream.

Early school years with free Summers

Summers I spent by my other grandparents in the other big city, and I had all freedom I wanted, because they were working all the time, and even the rest of the days I spent on streets, running wildly with my friends till late at night, playing and gathering mulberries, apples and pears and other fruits right in the public parks and half-private orchards, sometimes stealing them for fun. Fruit were in abundance in summer, and very cheap. At home I preferred them and all kinds of bread.

But my relatives we wealthy people, and I remember eating deli meats and fish often, as well as chicken soup and boiled beef. I remember liking eating most of those things, and especially salami and caviar (which I ate with tea spoons) - later I was always confused by this memories.

Living at home I was happy to go to school at 7, because I dreamed about it, and because I gained some liberty. In that time I was already disciplined in "normal" breakfasts (I won only in removing butter) and suppers, but the rest of the day I was free to eat what I wanted. In school it was some pastry with fruit-based drinks, the most suitable for me stuff they had in the cafe, though they had a milk-drinking program there, and at home it was bread with something on it (most often with vegetable pates and cheeses), nuts and seeds, my favorite fresh tomato salads, cooked vegetables and lots of fresh fruits.

Playing with tastes I slowly developed into a gourmet.

Tropics

We went to live to a sub-tropical country for a couple of years when I was 11 - that was a paradise to me: I was demanded to eat only some beef regularly (my parents believed that meat make us smart) and I must say liked it a lot, without any spices, and the rest was an impressive variety of tropical fruits, we have them all over the place in huge quantities. Our home was loaded with specially delivered pineapples and bananas the whole time, and in stores one could by so many very ripe fruits for several cents a kilogram only.

Mango was my favorite from the standard fruits, but with other kids on the streets we spent lots of times climbing on all possible wild trees and discovered new fruit types like special kinds of tamarinds, but most names of them I don't know till now. I do remember the tastes and miss them the same way I miss all other non-commercial, mildly-sweet, full of deep flavors fruits of my childhood.

Simeon

One episode was important (I was 10 at the time): one day some kids from very poor families on the next street decided to get some money from us by beating up a young black cat with long sticks, standing in a circle and pushing it inside of it from one to another. Their were right with their expectations: all other kids run home for money to bail the cat out, but it happened that my mother was there and saved the cat, and we took him home. It was painful to see what a fear he had of all people, he accepted only us and never went outside or came near the door, even when he became mature and needed to find a mate. And from the beginning it was clear that he was trained to do things cats never do: e.g. to stand in his back feet, asking for food or permission to go into a room... This example of human cruelty made me think a lot.

Middle and high school years

Anyway, after we returned to a temperate climate, we gone back to normal routine. I started to eat more sweets, sometimes lots of candies at ones, and dry-roasted seeds.

Caffeine

In that time I also became caffeine addicted. My father drunk lots of espresso, and my mum was into black teas - I followed them both, stopped adding sugar very soon, and ended up with huge doses of green tee and mate (Paraguay tea) in the following decade. The habit crashed me later many times, rob my sleep and made my mood unstable.

Stress

Probably, I started to drink more and more coffee and tea to deal with stress: I was living in a permanent neurosis at home, because both of my parents had quite a temperament. On top of that, I was always expected to be the best at school, we studied 6 days a week, 6-7 lessons a day with a huge load of homework (even more later when I went to a math-class), I needed best notes to go to university, and I had a music school parallel to usual one, with permanent exams, tests, concerts, and practicing piano.

Herbs and fasts

BTW, I was 11 when my interest in healing powers of plants make me read the books on the subject, draw and analyze the known plants. I was around 13 years old when I read a book on medicinal fasting and started to practice short-terms fast regularly (at first, each Friday I would drink only water, but I became very hungry the next day and could not always handle it right).

Ahimsa

When I was 17-18, I started to practice hatha yoga. I read many theoretical books and understood that without being a vegetarian there could be no any progress in all stages of yoga. I was also thinking about my favorite Chinese and Japanese poets, who were Buddhists, and after researching also their philosophy I understood that there is one underlying principle of nonviolence (ahimsa).

This was a big step in realizing ethics for me. I was not particularly touched by western philosophers before, and their realization of their moral laws was either incomplete or I was not aware about some ideas that could suit me at that time.

Books and films about Animals

As a child I read many excellent books about life of animals and their psychology, watched wonderful films about nature, I depicted wild animals and admired their beauty, I played with them and felt no big distance at all (our smart, kind and elegant cat was a member of the family and had a impressive personality), - but it never became clear to me that I eat bodies of the same kind of beings. Later I thought it was a part of cultural mystification and that made me angry, also I had troubles to forgive myself for being so blind.

Interestingly, that we had one little book in our huge home library with vegetarian recipes, and I looked through it before and read the introduction, but there was not even a word about moral aspects of meat-eating.

Plants

Living in highly urbanized areas most of my life, I have not developed good understanding of plants, we even had not had any plants at home, which was unusual.

Martin

But in later times I had my window right in front of the cores of few big trees, and I could watch how they change, how beautiful they were, I could observe life full of events of birds among the branches, and one tree became very special to me, so much that I gave it a name, Martin (the name is from a medieval European poem I liked).

There was a long alley of beautiful healthy trees on that street, but when I left, they all were cut down. I cannon describe you what I felt. I was able to watch the last of those trees that survived for longer on the dental clinic area was cut ... piece by piece. I could not stop it and could not take the pain. I went away and remember telling a friend I met on the street all about it, and he agreed that it was an awful and stupid act to destroy perfectly fine plants for no other reason than "redesigning" the area (they planted new trees later). I think most of people would agree with it.

Giving up meat and fish

The day I stopped to eat flesh was a windy gray day of early spring, I was 18, I was standing for a while still, looking in the window, I had in my hand a black and white photograph picturing a slaughtering of a caw (I got it from Green Piece by chance, I believe) and simply understood that I could not do it any more.

The first months were hard emotionally for many reasons, but I never had even an idea to go back. The ugliest episode of craving was this one: I was watching my mom giving our cat a portion of freshly boiled fish on his plate, and I realized I was ready to grab some pieces and eat them with the same pleasure my cat did. I went to my room and cried about my weakness.

To help myself to be stronger I cut out a picture of a seal, looking in horror out of oily water from a magazine I was reading, and I looked in his eyes each time I was tempted by the smell of food, to remind myself, what this food is.

People around me were alarmed by my decision, because, as I found out, I could eat only a little part of normally offered foods. I never learned to cook and did not realized how radical my decision was. I was told many times that I would simply die very soon from serious diseases. It may sound strange to you if you, for example, live in California now but in that society at that time it was the common belief.

I met the first vegetarian person in my life only 11 years later (a beautiful vegan Girl in my Spanish class).

Despite all my dramatic determination - I thought I would rather die than live the way people around me do (I was traumatized by the divorce of my parents and unexpected level of corruption in the society, these could be contributing factors of my mind set of the time) - I did not want to stop to exist too early and to painfully, and had reasons to believe that there were people in human history who survived this way. I had no idea that so many people I liked (including some of my favorite artists and scientists) were vegetarian - in my culture this information was filtered out.

So, I started to read all books on nutrition I could find and I realized very soon that vegetarianism may be even a healthier choice than omnivore diet. That was just great. As a result during few months I almost excluded plenty of bad foods out of my diet (white sugar and almost all salt, white bread with yeast, fried dough, and many others). Some of the books I read on the subject were quite lacking, but I appreciate those random invaluable pieces of advise they gave: they helped me to stay on my way, and even though most of the the provided information turned to be misleading, I do not regret spending so much time on those first books.

I cleaned my body (colon and liver) with various techniques, including yoga mudras. I used my practical knowledge in short term fasting and herbal cleansing powers. And very soon I was totally convinced that it was a great way to live.

In one of those books I found somebodies positive opinion on eating only fruits and nuts and warning on the consequences of choosing other foods (as I already described earlier), and I was certainly mentally and physically ready to receive the message: I just new it was the right thing to do - something I always wanted, perfect in so many ways.

Experiments with frugan foods

At the beginning I manage to keep fruit content in my diet over 3/4 and used to "jump" into fruits by eating only, for example, oranges, bananas and apples once a day for a months or two, but I could not hold it for long. I returned to eating fruits, nuts, seeds, grains (oats and buckwheat), and other veggies - fresh or heated, preserved, or spiced. I always ate fruit separately, because those meals were my real joy, and I always ate them first thing on a day. Often I would eat around 2-3 kg of common fruits of the season and 100-200 g of seeds or nuts a day, maybe more. I was a poor university student at that time and could not afford to eat as much as I wanted what I wanted.

I did have some difficulties: my perfect skin became too dry and more sensitive, I had periods of indigestion, excessive appetite sometimes and feeling cold and tired.

But when I ate fresh fruits and few nuts only I felt absolutely amazing, I could not even believe such physical happiness all the time was possible. It made me more beautiful and sensual, my running and dance training became more joyful, and my memory and concentration ability improved significantly.

In winter time I ate preserved and commercially dried fruits in addition to expensive tropical varieties. As addition to fruit and as a replacement for nuts I used to soak sunflower seeds, or eat them simply dry-roasted - they were very cheap, and that was very helpful. Sometimes I was trying to nourish myself with oat flakes (very thingy cut and crushed, most of the time preheated), I add cold or warm water or juices in it.

I also tried it with lentils (soaked and/or cooked rapidly), buckwheat and quinoa later. I felt OK, but not wonderful. Sometimes I ate lots of frozen berries or green peas, but I certainly prefer them fresh. I was experimenting a lot with dried fruit many times in various proportions. Cooked vegetables were also a part of my trials, as well as making smoothies with bananas and strawberries as a foundation, but I returned to whole fresh fruit just because they were much tastier.

There was a period of eating many avocados, 2-8 a day, and I liked that and had no problems with fan in them, and my weight remained unchanged, but the problem was their low attainability, high price and often low quality (bruised).

Later I also tried eating "raw" bars, mostly "Lara Bars" (cherry-almond-dates type was my favorite), but I learned that they are often of low quality in stores (not fresh), and not raw for the most part, as well as most dried fruits and nuts. That was a big disappointment.

There were also periods, beginning from 2002, when I tried to introduce organic tofu in my diet, but I could not hold to it for long, because I felt only half-satiated, and kind of less energetic after it.

I experimented with wild fruit mixes, because I was longing for something in taste I could not find.

I ended up with eating only fresh juicy fruit day by day primarily by elimination of other acceptable fruitarian foods, that turned out to be not very attractive to me. I was always open to try new things if they sounded reasonable, but after you know what's the best for you you tend to chose only that, and it is fruit for me, as they are - the amazing variety of most attractive and plenty nutritious frugivore foods.

The word "Fruitarian"

The first more or less complete information on fruitarianism (I learned the word in the same time) I found in internet in 2003, when I was 29, I believe, I was site FUN (Fruitarian Universal Network), and I was just bursting with joy realizing that I am not the only one.

Veganism

In short, in Summer 2004 I learned that I am almost vegan and just rounded it out.

When I was already 30, I found videos about milk industry and for me exploiting cows so badly was even worse than just killing animals for flesh. Since then I never put a milk-product in my mouth, knowingly (at least once I did by mistake). I was happy I had not eaten dairy normally previously, only sometimes in certain situations (on occasion a slice or two of cheese with wine in restaurants or on parties, few times fruit yogurt, or something baked with butter in it I guess), but right before I turned vegan I ate goat cheese, because I felt drown to it.

The same for chicken eggs: if before I could try a cake with most probably eggs in it, but knowing how the birds were treated in modern industry I would not touch such cake any time I could avoid it nicely.

I was difficult with leather: after discovering that it is not always only a byproduct of the food industries I hunted for non-leather shoes desperately.I kept my leather shoes from earlier time because I could not find a suitable replacement, even spending lots of money on vegetarian shoes. Till this day I keep couple of pairs of shoes made with leather, even though I manage to find good one from man-made materials.

Other types of close were not a problem: I was given only two leather jackets and one fur coat in my life before I turned vegetarian, and soon I gave them to other people who wanted them. There is still a 9-years old coat in my wardrobe with some surewool in it, and I do not feel the necessity to replace it: it is unlikely that anybody would want my old jacket, and it is unreasonable to waste resources for another one just to make a statement or feel better about myself. 

More raw?

After 2002 I started to research food deeper, and began to eat only raw nuts (pecans and Spanish almonds, and later pine seeds in special packages) or other additions to fruit. I never went 100% raw for a whole year though, there always were few exceptions. In the first year it was glass-preserved green peas in winter several times, and some rice and potatoes in spring. In the next I added some baked yams and potatoes for a while, but in a few weeks noticed that it did not work well for me. Later it was some tried fruits and seeds that were not raw after all. And then I realized that there was no need for me to pay so much attention to being raw all around - I felt perfectly fine being simply high raw.

Recent years

If I have enough time and money to provide myself with fresh organic fruits, I chose them almost exclusively. Unfortunately, sometimes I don't manage my shopping well, or sometimes I prefer to save money if to get what I want would be way too expensive.

Sometimes I feel it is appropriate to test or eat some vegan food in social situations, and I still have emotional moments where I chose to eat something solely for its taste and memories it wakes up in me (for example, it was like that with baked potatoes, that we used to bake after sitting around open fire with my friends whom I will never see again). It took me normally 1-3 times to eat those foods and to realize that the taste is actually quite different from that in memory, and that I can do great without it.

Traveling a lot, living in various cultures and managing turbulent and at times  unpredictable circumstances tough me that I should keep an open possibility to consume not the most preferable foods. I am not willing to put myself under additional pressure striving for illusional "purity" or ability to tell a perfect story about my dietary achievements.

Conclusion

We, human beings, are often tightly bonded to our foods, but there is nothing overly dramatic in making new better choices. We are able to handle such changes. I often used step by step rule (stopping one undesirable habit at a time) and it was difficult only in the very beginning with few random relapses later - that's nothing. Most of my predispositions vanished after 3-4 weeks, and left only a feeling of relief and satisfaction with myself and some of that impact on the world around me. It is better to touch the living world gently.

Wish you to find your way easy and stay on it with joy.

My Health

My body measurements and indexes are normal:

• BMI: 18.9 - 19.05 (Body Mass Index between 18.5 and 24.9 is normal). The highest in my life must have been around 23-24.
  
• WHR - 0.69 at the moment (A Waist to Hip Ratio of 0.7 for women and 0.9 for men have been shown to correlate strongly with general health and fertility. Women within the 0.7 range have optimal levels of estrogen and are less susceptible to major diseases.). I am female.
• My body fat percentage at the moment is estimated to be around 20 % using the U.S. Navy body fat formula, or around 23 % using the formula developed by the YMCA. (Average for females is 32%, ideal - 22%). Go figure. But I am not very skinny!

Few bits of experience

Once I made an attempt to examine my deviations from my nutritional plan:

Spring 2010

I was evaluating my "nutritional" mistakes by making a time line for the last couple of years (with exceptions in the past months) and periods without them, how I remember it, and decided to share them with you. I am already feel sorry for the readers - it may sound disappointing, it kind of was to me. I feel like I should not post it on a lfrv site, but I publish it here for the sake of honesty in sharing experience. I am not counting occasional food tasting (tiny amounts).

All other meals I had were fresh fruit (and little nuts seldom, lately - none). I still don't know in each case, why exactly I did that. Here it goes:

October 2008 - January 2009

More than 4 month 100% raw fruit, many times mixed;

February 2009: a small vegan dish - once; (reason: made for me by a very good friend);
March 2009: brown rice (cooked) with cayenne, tofu with curcuma - few times in this month;  (reasons: emotional crises; attraction specifically to curcuma and cayenne, before eating them on other food I tried to drink them with water).

May - July 2009: 100% (not sure; if there was an exception, then I just don't now what it was and when anymore);

August 2009: corn chips (baked), carrots (raw) with humus (not-raw) - few times each;
September 2009 - mid October: carrots (raw), guacamole (raw, fresh, but spicy), cabbage (raw) - few times each; (reason: by corn and cabbage it could be emotional attachment, childhood memories, together with weakness after a coldness/flu, could be wish "to belong", because it was in a social situation);

mid October 2009 - mid February 2010

4 month 100% raw fruit, strictly mono-eating - experiment.

mid February - April: cabbage (raw) and some raw and non-raw vegetables, bread without yeast (felt not that bad as expected, but without big satisfaction - disappointment), green peas or artichokes (caned; felt very bad from both!) - all few times;

(reasons: by the first cabbage salad with other vegetables it was what I call a "taste crises" - fruits became way too sweet and "tasteless" to me at the same time, I became very sensitive to flavors of spices I recognized around me and I was unsatisfied in a strange way, so eating the salad felt good, but it was salty and made me feel pretty uncomfortable afterwords; as for others: traveling in places with too little ripe fruit evaluable, bad organization, nervousness).

BTW, I felt worse emotionally when I had raw carrots and cabbage (not fruits, to eat them are against one of my main principles) than eating not raw peas (but they were way to salty or felt like that to me and it disturbed my water balance badly).

Fruitarian Journal

I was asked many times about my typical daily or weekly food intake. I am not into journals a lot, actually, I am not disciplined enough to write everything down regularly, but I tried several times, and I can show you what I eat on an example of few weeks.

Another problem with carefully righting down everything you eat is that the process of counting itself interfere with my normal eating behavior. During the time described below I believe to eat less than normal, because I needed to check every time, how many pieces I am eating, and as the result I was asking myself: do I really want the next piece, and sometimes the answer was "no". I was also trying to go different way to give you more adequate information about my food intake: I was preparing in one place the load of food for a day, and in the end of it I was counting, what left. But this way requires even more discipline, and I could not monitor well enough all the pieces I discarded. I eat always when I am hungry, but in the most of the cases I don't feel hunger, because I start eating just because ...it feels like it :) Plus, in the two weeks I was extremely busy, and sometimes forget to eat due to the tasks I need to complete, it happens to me quite often though ;). So, please, keep that in mind, evaluating my records.

1 pound = 454 grams ~ 1/2 kg,

organic = organically grown, without chemicals, "ecologically clean", "bio" (in Europe).

First 17 days from the beginning of the site:

2010-05-07
Less than a glass of water in the morning, 2 medium carebian papayas after noon, 6 big juicy Valencia oranges (organic) later, 2 apples (organic) in the evening.

2010-05-08
Half of a glass water in the morning. Today only personal watermelons, I had 3 of them, and nothing else.

2010-05-09
1 personal watermelon, a small one, 3 middle big carribean papayas, 1.5 pounds (~ 750 g) of strawberries (organic), some water, little by little during the day, ~ 1 glass.

2010-05-10
3 big caribbean papayas, 3 big mangoes, less than a glass of water during the day.

2010-05-11
2 big caribbean papayas, 8 Valencia oranges (organic).
8 km run (5 mi) - it took around an hour, no stops, with high intensity periods - ran as fast as I can for a minute or two, than normal again. I practice it since last summer an love the effect.

2010-05-12
2 big caribbean papayas, 10 small Valencia oranges (organic).
There was no enough liquid in my food yesterday - papaya is not a very juicy fruit, and I ate too few oranges. The next morning, today, I drink a glass of water, and I had another one after my run - it was hot.

2010-05-13
10 small Valencia oranges (organic), 1 big caribbean papaya, 2 pecans, 1 tiny piece of raw pumpkin, 1 tiny piece of raw cauliflower, 1 big watermelon.

2010-05-14
3 glasses of water, 1 big caribbean papaya, 1 small personal watermelon, very sweet one.

I had no appetite yesterday and felt tired.

2010-05-15
1 huge watermelon! :)

2010-05-16
10 small and juicy Valencia oranges, 1 handful or less corn chips (not tasty), 3 glasses of water, 1 small personal watermelon.

2010-05-17
12 small juicy Valencia oranges (organic), 1 glass of water, 3 yellow mangoes, 3 apples, Red Delicious (organic).

2010-05-18
10 small Valencia oranges (organic), 3 Red Delicious apples (organic), a small fresh veggie salad (with cabbage and radishes primarily), 2 tomatoes (organic).

2010-05-19
1 glass water, 2 very small personal watermelons.

2010-05-20
1 glass water, 6 Valencia oranges (organic), ~ 400 g raspberries (organic), 3 big tomatoes (organic).

2010-05-21
2 very small personal watermelons (organic), ~ 300 g raspberries (organic), 500 g cherries, 1 tea spoon of hummus, 2 big tomatoes (organic), 1 glass water.

2010-05-22
1 glass water, 2 very small personal watermelons (organic), ~ 500 g (1 pound) cherries, tested a raw cabbage salad with boiled quinoa, ~ 500 g fresh green peas, 3 big tomatoes (organic).

2010-05-23
~ 500 g cherries, 3 tomatoes (organic), little water, 8 Valencia oranges (organic), tasted another veggie salad (with red paprika), ~ 500 g green peas, a little water.

Another typical week:

2010-07-05,
2010-07-06 the same:
1 big watermelon, 3 pounds of blueberries, some water.

2010-07-07
1 big watermelon, 2 pounds of cherries (very sweet), 1 melon, some water.

2010-07-08
2 melons (organic), 2 pounds of blueberries, 5 small tomatoes, 2 glasses of water.

2010-07-09
1 big watermelon, 1 pound of raspberries (organic), 2 tomatoes (organic), 1 glass of water.

2010-07-10
2 melons (organic), 2 pounds of cherries (very sweet), 2 glasses of water, 5 small figs, 3 big tomatoes (organic) with some cayenne.

2010-07-11
1 small watermelon (organic), 5 tomatoes (organic), 7-10 pecans, 2 pounds of green grapes (organic), 3 glasses of water.

Something else from the past

This is what I found on my old fruitarian group on a vegetarian site.

May 13, 2008
1 papaya, 2 avocados, 1 apple, 1 pear, few almonds, water and some salad.

May 14, 2008
strawberries, avocados, mangoes, water;

May 15, 2008
mango, papaya, almonds, water.

May 16, 2008
papaya, mangoes, oranges, water.

May 17, 2008
mangoes, almonds, 3 brazil nuts (selenium!), avocados, water

May 18, 2008
mangoes, oranges, avocados, ginger tea.

June 19, 2008
cherries, strawberries, papaya, tomato soup, almonds, ginger tea.

June 23, 2008
only water.

June 25, 2008
strawberries, cherries, papaya, mango and maybe apricots later.
I don't like to bore you guys with my diet, i am nearly every day fruitarian and can eat the same for days. Wish you all even more pleasure with fruit than i have today!

July 4, 2008
cherries :-)

October 27, 2009
I had tree days with one kind of fruit a day :)
Friday: papaya only,
Saturday: grapes only,
Sunday: apples only.