Real Simple...Eating.

Sandy asked me a great question a couple of days ago, and I felt it warranted an entire post. :)

Her question (condensed version):

How do you feel about getting proper nutrients from just eating watermelon for a lot of your meals. Watermelon doesn't contain much in the way of nutrients that our body needs. The body needs vitamins and minerals and fatty acids, amino acids, etc. to perform its basic biochemical functions.

How I survived 4 years of college.
Before I dive into her question, I have an interesting fact to tell y'all that I don't think I've ever shared on this blog. When I was in college, I was a poor starvin' international student. I did not eat at the cafeteria because I felt I could eat much cheaper on my own.

Luckily, my tastes were really cheap and simple. I instinctively went for a very high carb, low fat diet. Haha. Basically, for most of my college years, other than the occasional eating out with friends or at events, I lived on boxes of cereal (no milk) and cans of corn.

Yes, you read that right - cans of corn. Jolly Green Giant Niblets was my grain of choice. I would eat them straight out of the can, too, being too lazy to walk downstairs to use the dorm microwave. I liked them cold and crunchy-ish anyway. At mere cents a can, it made for a cheap meal. Sometimes, I even splurged and had two cans at a time. Oooooh!

I'm aware that you're probably making fun of me right now, as many of my college friends did. They had no idea why I would want to eat the same strange thing, almost day after day unless they dragged me out for a proper meal at Taco Bell (Blink You'll Get Big Buns!) or Subway (Eat Flesh! I mean, Fresh!).

But although I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to my palate, I actually have always had pretty simple tastes. If I find something I like, I keep going back to it, again and again. And here's the point I'm getting at: No, I didn't necessarily thrive on a diet of mostly processed grains (and when I wasn't on grains, I ate junk, like most college kids typically do). But, I survived 4 years of it, which is a pretty long time.

So back to Sandy's question.
I know I say this in every other post, but please remember, I don't claim to be an expert. I just try to learn from others who have done this successfully over the long term and if what they're doing works for me too, then I gladly keep it for myself and share it in case it helps someone else too.

I don't plan to eat watermelon only for 2 years. :) In fact, when I was newly transitioning last year, I once made a list of fruit I'd eaten in just 41 days of this diet. It was mind boggling, the variety I'd had up to just that point, and it's certainly grown a mile longer since then.

I personally think variety is very important in a fruit diet. However, I don't think you have to worry so much about variety on a day to day or short term basis. I like to think of it more like, "How much variety have I had this year?"

We live in a time when hundreds of varieties of fruit and veggies can be made available to us via import. But if we lived a more secluded, old fashioned life, we'd likely stick to what we can grow locally - which would still be a good variety, just not nearly as vast.

Eating only one fruit for awhile?
I like eating tons of watermelon during watermelon season, first because I know I won't be able to get it during the rest of the year, and second because it is just so amazingly delish. There are other summer fruit that I enjoyed tremendously last year too, but this year I am finding that I am happy on an even simpler diet and have not desired stone fruit yet, although I will no doubt eat big amounts of them before the season ends.

I also find that eating simply on a day to day basis makes me FEEL good. Things digest quickly and my body functions run smoothly. I get to focus on other things I like to do and not have to think about food much. I feel clear, energized and serene. I like to capture that feeling and keep it as much as I can. I also sense that my body does some internal house cleaning when I eat that simply, because it has the extra energy to do so since I've given it a break from digestion.

One thing to keep in mind, is that when I eat watermelon for a meal or for the entire day, I eat A LOT of it. Watermelon may seem like just sugar & water to most, and it is a very light fruit. But when you eat enough of it, then you get enough of whatever your body needs that it provides.

Watermelon Nutrition
For example, Nutridiary tells me that a 15" long, 7.5" diameter watermelon contains around 1355 calories. If you ate only a few slices of it, then it wouldn't carry you much past an hour or two. But when I eat watermelon only for an entire day, I tend to eat the entire watermelon and often more if I'm running that day. Taller, fitter and more athletic people would easily eat the entire watermelon in one meal.

Watermelon, eaten in a sufficient amount, thankfully does contain lots of nutrients! I did a little search this morning and found this fact sheet, (change the amount to 1 whole melon to get an accurate picture) which tells me that watermelon is indeed swimming with an abundance of fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins and minerals!

Cool huh?

For a little extra reading on how fun, interesting and healthful a mono diet could be, I like this article by Anne who is a long time fruitarian.

I hope this helped a little to explain the method behind my madness. Other watermelon or mono meal nuts please feel free to add any thoughts you might have. And happy weekend, friends!