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My Raw Journey: Leela
This is where I began my journey to raw veganism.
My Raw Journey
How I found out about raw vegan diets:
I remember my sister describing fruitarianism to me sometime when I was a young child. It sounded idyllic.
(I was raised as a vegetarian, consuming dairy, eggs, grains, veg, fruits, etc)
At this location, what was once the Here There camp, I was a vegan adult who had the freedom to choose my diet among an array of free options. Having returned to a cooked vegan diet (around 4 years) after sampling a meat diet (a few months), I meditated on what was the most economical and environmentally-friendly diet I could have. My thoughts returned to fruitarianism, though I was not sure it was healthy.
Regardless, I centered my diet on fruits that I foraged, which included:
- feijoa (AKA pineapple guava): similar to guava
- kousa: creamy, cheesy
- persimmons: sweet and crispy or gooey
- silverberry: astringent sweet little berries
- unedos: both creamy and gritty, mango-banana flavor
- lilly pilly berries: crispy & watery, clover-flavored
- passionfruit: tangy wet seedy
- ginkgo: dry fiber astringent cheesy umami
- orange
- pomegranate
- apple
- fig
- plum
Within a few days, I found myself more active and productive: sprinting around Berkeley, barefoot in a loincloth bikini, charting fruit trees, and centering on my mission of thriving on locally grown resources.
However, after a couple months of managing public harassment and conflict with a fundamental preference to be naked, my internal struggle with society resolved itself as returning to commercial produce and cooked food, which sunk my energy and I delved back into my social media addiction- where I learned about raw vegan culture (e.g. Freelee, zoodles).
How I have transitioned:
I keep a lot of fruit on hand, honoring cravings of nostalgic foods without restriction- including interpreting and connecting with their associated memories. Over time, these feelings have neutralized and I’m finding an ease in this fruit-based diet.
Salads, initially seasoned with conventional cuisine spices & herbs, have played a role in replacing traditional meals.
What I eat:
At the present time, I predominantly eat store-bought fruit, including savory “vegetable” fruits. I also eat baby & mature greens (mostly brassica and spinach; eaten on their own and in salads).
These fruits and leaves are eaten when desired, which does not have strong correlations to a time of day (eg salads in the morning, midnight oranges, midday mangoes, handful of leaves whenever, etc)
Example of what I eat in a day:
- 4 oranges
- 1 mango
- 5 medium avocados
- 2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes
- a few handfuls of baby greens
- a handful of dates
HOW I DESCRIBE MY DIET NOW:
I describe myself as a raw vegan (due to the consumption of leaves), though many consider me to be fruitarian (due to the lack of nuts)
Why I eat this way:
During prior diet styles (since-birth vegetarian, cooked vegan, brief dabbling omnivore) I had regular bursts of light acne and a deep unsettling feeling that consuming denatured biomatter was denaturing me in ways, such as:
- asymmetric tissue development
- premature aging
- prolonged youthfulness
- frayed hair (particularly cooked beans)
- limiting capacity of thought (particularly salt)
I have had minor allergic reactions to various commercially available nuts (brain fog & acne), plus they are difficult to harvest manually in nature, so they are not part of my diet.
Fundamentally, I sense that my present form of raw vegan / fruitarian is a much safer diet style – and that the raw salads are the one remaining source of confusion. In the past I have gone several months without salads so I expect to leave them behind again, however they have settled my nervous reaction to crowds in confinement (such as the supermarket) and it feels like the leaves are helping scrub my gut.
I eat a lot of avocado, which feels like it’s restructuring my fat-based systems. On a fruit diet, avocado can induce a strong “disassociative” experience, much like ketamine, except it feels deeply grounding in observing bodily functions.
Durian, another fatty fruit, feels incredibly grounding and healing.
Recommended reading: Summary of The Durian Theory
How long I have been eating this way:
I have eaten a predominantly fruitarian diet for the last 1.5 years, though the transition I described started about 4 years ago. (At the time of this writing, I am 34.5.)
Challenges I faced in the transition:
1) This process has caused me to more deeply observe the insanity of modern civilization. This was a very difficult phase and was the justification for both numbing myself with cooked foods and giving them up.
2) Internalized voices of people echoing modern diet lore played upon the notion of motherly concern for my health choices (allied with advertised food culture of the 1950s) which was, also, an internalized voice.
3) My favorite fruit, durian, grows exclusively in tropical regions and is expensive to import. I have considered moving to a tropical durian-growing space, but my living conditions are specific (must be allowed to be naked in nature). Considering scalability of my ideal lifestyle, I find that it is important to develop a 🌱 growing movement that tropicalizes inhabited temperate zones to be suitable for 🗺️ growing durian.
People who influenced me:
Freelee “the banana girl” “the frugivore”
Michael Arnstein
Allen Manglona
Tina & Chippy “FitShortie”
Lexi Tavares
Eli Martyr
Nikolaos Mourtogias
”Juicing” Jules
Olivia Hertzog
Lissa “Raw Food Romance”
Ways to support my raw journey:
Post forage guides for your property or region
Give me fresh durian
Post a place to stay where:
+ nudity in nature is allowed, in a warm, humid climate
+ me and my loved ones can enjoy foraged or affordable fresh durian
= share privately to leela at leelamaps dot com
Join me!
I am available to converse about transitioning to a raw vegan diet: contact me by leaving a comment below.
Transitioned or transitioning to a raw vegan diet? Share your Raw Journey!
My Childhood Home
This is where I grew up.
Neighbors would come and go, but for about 18 years we stayed in this house during the weekday nights & mornings and long weekend days.
This house held our rituals:
Wednesday Top Ramen “noodle night,” Friday “pizza night,” Sunday bagel mornings with dad
Hindu ceremonies at the closet altar and at the backyard Shiva Lingam
Our backyard was wild and grassy until my dad took it upon all of us to implement a regime of black landscaper fabric, pebbles, and a eucalyptus that overgrew its space.
In our front yard we had a small, non-fruiting pomegranate tree.
We usually had two cats, sometimes an aquarium of fish, hamsters, and other assorted pets that did not linger for long.
My sister and I shared a messy room, which we were to have tidied before mealtime.
My parents shared a dark-themed room, with a portrait of a sexualized woman straddling a dragon in an ornate frame at the head of the bed.
We were a conflicted family. Arguments raged frequently so we kept to ourselves.
Yet, with dinner-time rituals we congregated on the couch to appreciate a fundamental family bond.
I was born, 1988-09-03 16:45
I was born 10lbs 15oz with my umbilical cord around my neck, giving me a blue face, auspiciously on the birthday of Krishna to a Hindu-practicing family consisting of my parents, Amy and Jeff, and my older sister Maya.
The holy woman, Shree Maa, of the temple they participated in, the Devi Mandir, had a premonition that I would be capable of great things that change the course of society, if I so chose to.
(couldn’t that be said of anyone?)
POV: Naked in Berkeley
I was arrested here.
About that…
I had half a joint and couldn’t justify blocking my skin from the sun with clothing.
