Rawfully Wonderful: Staying on track.

Before I share our trip with you, I have to say that our camera broke half way through the trip, so I didn't get as many food pics as I would've liked. It was a huge bummer!

You can't go to the beach without writing in the sand!

The view from our room was gorgeous! It was a huge wide open space with lots of palm trees. We had a great little private porch to sit on as well. Great for catching up on some reading. In fact, I started reading the book, "The China Study." Ever read it? It's full of great information on the effects of eating animal protein. I'll share some of it with you at some point.

The Dominican beaches were great. Lots of distance for walking and lots of palm trees. The water was a little rough while we were there, but still so pretty!

Our first night was spent grabbing a bite to eat and then heading back to our room for the ill one to sleep:)

This is a bit difficult to see, but I'm pretty sure you can tell it's a salad. The white pieces are cabbage. They had balsamic vinegar and oil and vinegar at every meal, so that was my dressing of choice.

I have never really thought of salad as a breakfast food, but that's what I ate every morning for my meal. I skipped salad only one day for breakfast and had a veggie omelet. There was also a great variety of fresh fruit every meal as well. What I was most impressed with was the fresh juice bar. It was great! Below is the mixed fruit juice, but I also had carrot and beet juice for several morning meals.

We were in the Dominican for my friend's wedding, so we had lots of beach pictures taken. I did not include any wedding photos though since I didn't get anyones permission to share their pictures with you.

It was a great opportunity to get a few pictures of Eric and I.

The bride was so sweet, she ordered me a vegetarian plate for the wedding dinner. It was not raw, but very delicious! The only meals that were more of a challenge with raw items, were the restaurants for dinner. There wasn't always a salad option. When I did eat a cooked meal, I stayed away from meat, and made sure I was being very conscious of food combining rules. I'll have to share some of those rules with you. The biggest thing is to not eat an animal protein with carbs like potatoes or other starchy items, but I'll go into more details at a later time.

Since I love the ocean, I made sure to get plenty of time on the beach.

The figure competition bug is still in my blood, so a little leg flexing was in order! I have been on a high raw, no meat diet now for almost 5 months, and it's nice to see I still have definition in my legs. I've been doing the raw thing for a while longer than the no meat thing of course. Since this past July, I have been working on my upper body, which is always a challenge for me. I lost a fair amount of muscle mass during pregnancy and the year after Gabe was born, so I just have to keep up the heavy lifting!! I'm still planning to compete in October if life allows! I recently found an amazing raw-vegan protein powder that I just love. Several years ago I would've never thought it possible to gain muscle without eating meat, but I'm now convinced that it's possible. Even for an ectomorph!! Oh yeah, and I'll be sharing the protein info with you and a healthy way to get it a bit cheaper.

We enjoyed a little bit of snuba time!

Here's a nice shot of the salad and fruit bars at the buffets. So pretty and so delicious. My very favorite was fresh shaved coconut, but I only saw it one day. It was amazing!!

It was our first time getting to go zip lining, and it was fantastic! So much fun. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance.

There were coconuts everywhere! They were using these shells for drink cups, which was a bit wasteful seeing that the fresh meat was still intact on the inside. I tried to scrape it out with my straw:)

Just a couple of pictures of some of the local culture. This little shack was actually someones home. There were of course much nicer houses in comparison to this one, but nothing compared to what we live in here. I'm so grateful for the many blessings that we have here!