The end of phase 1

Tu B'shvat last week marked the end of the "mindful eating" phase of my blog.  I intend to post about Tu B'shvat separately.  But for now, raw food conclusions:

1) I really don't have time to blog, and I imagine this blog will continue to fall short in that regard.
2) I enjoyed learning about different diets and food lifestyles through living mostly raw, and through talking to people about living raw.  I did feel like this opened my eyes to different ways to be.
3) I saw significant increase in energy on the raw diet.  I would recommend the raw diet to anyone feeling slothful.  I also felt really settled in my stomach pretty much all the time, which was so nice.  Note: my boyfriend, who was doing "vegan" but not really focused as much on raw, did not notice any benefits like this.
4) Physical downsides of raw: I felt like I was consuming a ton of sugar from all that fruit.  I felt that the sugar and all the hard foods I was eating was really hard on my teeth.  I had some tooth pain from that.
5) I'm not sure the raw-ness was really mindful at all in itself.  The couple of times I tried to have a "mindful meal" -- meaning eating slowly, concentrating on the food itself and nothing else, chewing a bunch of times before swallowing -- I really didn't do that well.  Interestingly, I did not feel full or satisfied until I had eaten a few bites quickly and heartily, per usual.  I felt that I ended up eating *more* as a result, because it seems to be the act of forcefully filling my stomach that makes me full.
6) On the other hand, eating raw was pretty time-consuming, requiring me to take additional time to plan my meals and take "me time" to make them.  The additional time I spent preparing this food was enjoyable.

So my first phase of the month of mindful?  Not very mindful.  But it allowed me a little time to observe some things that I want to focus on.

In this post, I set out a plan where the phase from now until Purim is meant to be "formal meditation and yoga."  I started doing body scans daily starting on Tuesday, and fell asleep every time.  FORTY MINUTES IS A LONG TIME on a daily basis, when I can't seem to stay awake for it.  I don't want to give up on Kabat-Zinn entirely, but I am going to refine this a bit: from now until Purim I meditate for 20+ minutes daily.  And yoga?  That may have to wait or take a back burner, but I do intend to incorporate it somehow.

I am starting to concoct big plans for my "informal meditation" phase, including a day of no multitasking, a week of no cell phone, and mindfulness through music...