Today is day 21 of my 'Summer Start' for 2011 - my first noteworthy campaign for many years. My intention is to stick to 100% raw, 95% fruit diet, indefinitely. This journal is to record my failure or success, or degree of such, for the benefit of anyone interested.

To summarise what I've eaten these first 3 weeks:

1. A quarter watermelon most days, especially the last 2 weeks.

2. Mangoes: one per day for the first 2 weeks - then replaced by litchis, of which about 25 per day.

3. Tomatoes: about half a dozen per day.

4. Grapes, my main staple during the season: start every day with a bunch of grapes.

5. Lesser amounts of bananas, nectarines, pears, sour figs, at odd times during the period.

6. About 7 raw potatoes, a bunch of carrots and a bunch of parsley: the 5% non-fruit part. I intend to discontinue these forms of non-fruit already. Today I had a cucumber instead. Is that fruit? Hardly I think, but perhaps there is a better case for tomatoes? What do you say?

7. I treated myself to an imported avocado after about one week; today I had another.

8. Brazil nuts, the last 4 days: 3, 2, 1 and 2 per day.

9. I forgot this: One sweet melon (Cantaloupe) about a week ago, on a day when I couldn't find watermelon. Unlike some melons, it was sweet enough, too large to finish in one sitting, I needed a 20 minute interval.

My Summer Start : Report after 4 weeks:

The last week, and indeed the whole 4 weeks, have been satisfactory from 2 points of view:

1. The ingestion of harmful, cooked food has been stopped.
2. The work of elimination, the removal of harmful accumulations, is proceeding well. That could take years to complete, but already some signs of improvement are appearing:

- A partial recovery of vitality. My movements (arms, legs, body) seem freer and lighter. Hot days do not reduce me to exhaustion as before. While a walk home in the sun, uphill with back and arm weighted, can make me feel very tired, recovery is fast.

One focus of elimination is in my throat. This forces bouts of coughing. Sometimes there seems to be a swelling of the tissues which might throttle me. My voice is affected, sounding raucous and sexy (says one woman). It's unpleasant and irritating, but not worrying or serious.

The discharge of clear mucus from the anus was quite frequent this last week, reminding me of old days.
This process is somehow satisfying and not at all unpleasant.

There's been no essential change in my diet during the last week,, it has continued almost identical to the first three weeks. My body is feeling pleasantly lean and the subcutaneous fat layer at the side of my ribs is now down to about 4 mm, down from about 8 mm a month ago.

Report on Summer Start after 5 weeks of 100% Fruitarian:

I'm feeling good. Nothing to rave about yet, but good enough. Better than 2 months ago. What's nice is to have escaped the mindset of before, when I knew I could do better but lacked the motivation and resolution to do so. Now my mindset seems quite different - beyond struggles.

My fat layers have not got any thinner the last week. That's OK, because I can feel detox is still going on fast enough. I can tell by the coating inside my mouth at night - I've read that the inside of the mouth reflects the inside of the stomach. Discharges of mucus from the colon are less frequent now. I can still feel my throat as the focus of discomfort, and still have a nagging little cough at times, but most of the time not. I'm sure this will stop at its own time, when the detox has gone far enough.

When things are ready I think my body will decide to get rid of all the superfluous fat, as this no doubt contains a lot of fat-soluble toxins which the fat was there to sequester. (or imprison). But I can't entertain or harbour those toxic passengers for ever - at some point they must go.

I finished my packet of spinach on Tuesday, I'm not buying more. Nor am I buying any more greens or cucumber before I feel a desire for such. To that extent I am now daring to trust my own instincts.

I've decided to cut my overt fats to one Brazil nut maximum per day until my remaining 140g of nuts run out, then nothing. For the next 3 months my main staple will be grapes. Supplemented at the moment mainly by watermelon, mangoes and 4-5 dates per day.

I have no cravings at all for anything that I am not eating. That is a state of affairs in sharp contrast to past campaigns.

After 6 weeks of 100% Fruitarian:

Reading my last report (after 5 weeks), I might just as well repeat the first two paragraphs - they still apply exactly. Except my throat feels better, but the cough is not much better yet. Time is all I need for that.

I also carried out my intention of not buying greens. When I pass the fennel bush along the sidewalk, I pick off one-thirtieth of a gram of green seeds, and eat them. That was enough greens for me last week.

Also, as intended, I ate exactly one Brazil nut per day, except on Wednesday (or was it Thursday) when I left it out.

Yesterday I left out the dates completely - they're not so good I don't think. My morning food was a bowl of grapes and a tomato and one tiny sour fig; my midday food was a quarter watermelon, and my afternoon food was a mango, 2 bananas, 4 tomatoes and a Brazil nut.

Hello everyone -

Continuing from my profile, there are a few more things I'd like to say.

Before joining this forum, I already joined 4 others on similar diet.
Why? Because interesting discussions are going on on all of them, there is a wealth of info re the experiences, thoughts and feelings of people engaged in this interest.

It seems a good thing if all those pursuing this interest get together, share their ideas and deeds with
one another. Not necessarily all on one forum, in fact preferably not, I'd say.

Michele has expressed her interest in knowing more about us, not just our dietetic side, but more about the whole person. And Maltron has gone much further than anyone else that I know of, in sharing personal details of his life. After all, we are here to support and encourage one another as friends, and friends will naturally be interested in your whole life.

That has made me think that I must spend much more time introducing myself to my fellow-members than I have done on the other 4 forums so far. I've got to say much more about everything that is me, especially my thoughts as I am essentially a thinking person.

But I am now a member of 4 'diet' forums, and who knows how many more to come...

It doesn't make sense to repeat the same stuff on 5 different forums. So I plan to put the material on my own websites - in fact I already have websites on my astrology, autobiography, literary output, graphic art, musical compositions, philosophical ideas, etc. Apart from those, there are my published contributions to chess, mathematical, gardening, cat, sudoku, philosophical, poetry, music, etc, forums.

It just remains to add a special website for my fruitarian life and journal, which will include my blog "A Summer Start" as it stands on this forum, and continue from there:

http://dietexperiments.yolasite.com , to which I will add regularly.

 Also, I like the look of flickrwire, which I just discovered today, and plan to be quite active on it for the next few weeks posting photo blogs aimed at giving a picture of my lifestyle here in Wynberg, Cape Town. See these photo blogs (only two so far!) at

http://flickrwire.com/gurthbruins .