The Nourished Life: Day 2 on RRARF: Why I'm Doing It

Why does anyone RRARF? Eating real food to your heart's content while indulging in rest and relaxation for 30 days isn't really the conventional road to health... and maybe that's exactly why it works so well to resolve issues with low body temperature, digestion, blood sugar, moods, hypertension, skin, energy and even libido (really!). Anyone concerned with these problems or their general metabolic health is a candidate for RRARF.

But I want to honest and upfront with my own personal reasons for deciding to follow RRARF for the next 30 days. I've taken on a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes in the last two years that have given my metabolic health a huge boost. These changes have included:

eating more saturated fat
eating less polyunsaturated fat
avoiding processed food for the most part
getting more sleep
cutting way back on cardio exercise
cutting out coffee
fitting more downtime into every day
learning to handle stress
shaving my head

(Okay, that last one was just to see if you were paying attention. I prefer my hair long, thank you very much!)

I didn't do any of this overnight. It's been a gradual process, and it's also brought on a lot of metabolic healing. My moods are better, my body temperature is sky high, my digestion is top notch, and I have tons more energy than I used to.

My reasons for doing RRARF are more subtle, but important to me nonetheless. Like many of you, I have a long history with dieting, religiously weighing myself, and basically developing a pretty poor body image over the years. Getting over this has been something I've been working on since earlier this year. But I'll admit that this is often easier said than done. And while there's been periods where I've been pretty good about ignoring the scales and the calories, I haven't been able swear off them altogether. Over the past couple months I found myself slipping back into daily weigh-ins, counting calories, and (probably not a coincidence) getting back my old sweet tooth.

So here are my personal goals for RRARF:

Learn to listen to my body's cues when it comes to hunger. I'm really good at eating when I'm supposed to, when someone else tells me to or when I just feel like munching. I'm not so good at eating whenever my body asks me to. I plan on learning how to obey my body during the next 30 days. That means I will be completely ignoring calories. No counting, just obeying.

Give up the scale. I haven't hopped on the scale for ten days and I don't plan on weighing myself at all during RRARF (or maybe ever again!). I'll talk more about this in an upcoming post.

Ditch the sweet tooth. According to Matt, sugar can really interfere with the body's natural cues, so giving up sweets is a must for me. Nothing sweet for 30 days is my goal (including fruit, raw honey, dark chocolate and stevia!). This will also be covered in a full post soon.

Learn to love my body. There is no way I am going to live a nourished life if I'm not 100% comfortable in my own skin. My body image has improved dramatically during the last year, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Again, this topic could probably span a whole post, so I'll talk about this more in the near future.