Week One: Former meat eater attempts to go vegan

Well- you could say I drank the kool-aid. I'm an absolute believer in the raw food diet. What? After only a week? All it took was reading a few chapters in the Hallelujah Diet by George Malkmus and meeting Jerrod and Nikki Sessler. Jerrod beat cancer with this diet and he and Nikki invite people into their home on a weekly basis to teach others how to prepare delicious raw food recipes and be thoroughly entertained by their children. The information I got from them convinced me this diet is life-changing. There are a few personal things too, like the fact that all of a sudden my sense of smell is super-human.
What changed? What did I do this week? First of all, per Dr. Beth's recommendation: I have been making these enormous salads for dinner, saving half for my husband to eat normally, and then putting my half in the food-processor and making a green gazpacho like soup out of it. The first night I was a little apprehensive and scooped it out with pita chips, and wouldn't you know it, later as I'm watching Glee and burping (a very common occurence since my food poisoning) I realized that all I could taste was the pita chips. EWW GROSS! I know, sorry to share (TMI!) but it made me think, hmmm.... my body only had a hard time with the pita chips. Everything else was digested just fine!
Now, as a person gets into the raw food diet, as Jerrod Sessler told me, it is difficult to go 100% raw right out of the gate. I'm to shoot for at least 50% as I transition. That said, hopefully there will be a little grace when I backslide and eat, say, four pigs in a blanket at a party. I may need to define the raw diet too- which means all fruit and vegetables and NO ANIMAL PRODUCTS! For some reason people keep talking about sushi whenever I talk about my raw diet. No, it's not raw fish... it's raw fruit and vegetables. Specifically, it is the raw food diet as found in the Hallelujah Diet book by Hallelujah Acres (www.hacres.com) which encourages plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, no soy products, no dairy, and no foods from the SAD or Standard American Diet. Nuts are to be eaten sparingly and a common phrase I have seen in the book is, "Eat your fruits and juice your vegetables." The diet is supplemented with BarleyMax powder and recommends juicing 2x a day. Immediately my Jack LaLane juicer is dusted off and has been used a lot more, despite the 15 minutes of clean-up after each juicing and the inferior juice it makes compared to a masticating juicer. Did I mention that I don't have a dishwasher? My other coveted kitchen item that I see in the kitchens of all raw foodists is a VitaMix. Anyone not using theirs, please contact me!