For the past week and a half, Kirk and I have been conducting an experiment. It's called the Raw Foods Diet. We eat . . . only raw foods: spinach, strawberries, apples, oranges, broccoli, cauliflower, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and almonds, with just water and Kombucha (a raw food drink) for refreshment.

Yep, that's about it. Every day, all day, all week long. Isn't it grand?

It took us about a day to make exceptions to this rule. We could eat soup, but not the cream-based ones. We could eat chicken, but only steamed and as a garnish for salad. We could eat sushi, but only as the furthest extent of this law we'd just laid down. You can see how it quickly became the (Almost) Raw Foods Diet.

We began a week ago Thursday because we'd heard that drastically changing one's eating regimen could result in sluggishness and even illness. We wanted to have the weekend right around the corner to recover, if necessary, and I'm glad we did. Even though we had planned to go it a week at the first run, we felt so starved by Sunday that we agreed on our first sabbath break. (I, for one, was getting particularly cranky!)

That first sabbath, we had Mexican for lunch, Starbucks for a snack, and pizza for dinner . . . and felt sick to our stomachs after all three. We were glad to strike up on the diet in the new week ahead, just to see how the good foods would take to our systems again. So this last week, we really did go for it. We went for about six days straight eating just the foods listed above, though I added a nonfat light yogurt to my berry-and-almond afternoon snack, and Kirk added Eggbeaters to his occasional evening snack choices.

Since we had dinner plans with Kirk's dad this past Saturday night, we agreed our sabbath break would run from Saturday night to Sunday night, and we agreed that the "free day" meant being allowed to eat whatever we wanted without any guilt or shame. We wondered aloud how this would feel after a week of eating consistently well.

Having completed the sabbath now, I can tell you it didn't feel good. We found the indulgent foods just didn't have the flavor we used to taste in them. They tasted . . . dead. Which is appropriate, I guess, because dead is exactly what they were! (As opposed to living foods that come directly from the earth.) I also felt sick to my stomach again and found I couldn't eat very much at meals. I couldn't even finish an iced latte! It's amazing how much your system can change once you begin feeding yourself what you need instead of just what you want.