Small Steps Forward

“How does the body adjust to cooked food? The body creates mucus and uses this mucus as a filter. All the surfaces of the digestive tract that are designed to absorb the nutrients from food become covered with mucus film that protects blood from toxins. The mucus film begins at the tongue and continues all the way through the intestines. Many people can see this mucus on their tongue. People who have a thick mucus coating on their intestines usually have white tongues as if they just ate sour cream. The body creates a little mucus, to begin with, to filter out the toxins from the cooked food. The more cooked food we consume, the more mucus the body produces as a protection. The more harmful the food substance are to the body, the more this mucous film builds up. As the years go by it becomes thicker and harder.

“Our body initially creates mucus when we eat our first cooked food as a baby. The next time we eat cooked food the toxins in the food do not penetrate the body completely because of the mucus protection. You may ask: what is the mucus made of? The human body, brilliant as always, creates the mucus from the cooked food itself! This mucus covers our entire digestive tract, to prevent us from absorbing the toxins in cooked food that would make the body sick.

“We are afraid of e-coli, salmonella or other bacteria, so we cook, pasteurize and irradiate everything. Food is now highly processed and prepackaged. We eat a lot of cooked food and, therefore, our body creates a lot of mucus.”

Excerpt from Chapter 2 of “12 Steps to Raw Foods” by Victoria Boutenko

I am at the rapid weight loss phase of raw, where the mucus in my body is put on the Oriental Express out. Not only can I see it, I can feel it.

People used to look at my hands and feet and remark that they looked swollen. And they did. It wasn’t an injury or anything which made they look that way, it was mucus. I can already see the difference in my hands. That extreme puffiness is gone. There is still a little puffiness on my feet, but it’s reduced dramatically.

I’ve been noticing a difference in skin sensitivity as well. Poking along my arm, I feel a difference in the skin and flesh underneath. There is a layer of padding missing. I not only feel the difference in my fingers, but in the skin and flesh underneath receiving the touch. It doesn’t take as much pressure to feel and receive the touch. It’s so weird. I keep poking myself wondering at dramatic contrast between how it feels now and how it used to feel.

Mosquitoes used to tear me up and my only indication that they’d been biting was the horrendous itching sensation which followed their visits. More frequently now, I am not only aware when they land, my skin seems to respond to them being in the vicinity. It’s such a weird sensation. It feels like what I imagine Spiderman’s “Spidey Sense” feels like. Something else I’ve noticed is that when they bite, the itching sensation isn’t as horrid as it used to be. Is there something about mucus which doesn’t respond well to mosquito bites?

I’ve told people I know that I’m about to lose more weight more quickly than an unemployed crackhead with a million dollars. I don’t think they’re prepared for the reality of that. The last time I started losing weight like this, some people I know “just happened” to bring up a conversation about drugs. Which was their way of asking “What the hell is going on with you?” Why they didn’t just come out and ask about my rapid weight loss, I don’t know. But I think I’d better start planning on how to handle the sideways conversations now. Maybe I’ll just hand out little cards listing websites with info on raw food. Or direct them to the YouTube video of a guy losing 100 pounds in 6 months.

All I know is that I’m looking forward to buying cheaper clothes, having more energy, and lugging less body mass around. The weird thing about losing weight so fast is that it seems to simply melt. Just disappear into the ether. When I first heard about how fast you lost weight with raw, I kept imagining saggy skin hanging off different body parts. But that isn’t what happens. It just seems to dissolve. As if it had never existed in the first place.

Weird. But you know, welcome. Very welcome.