The Calorie / Weight Thing

So I'm in my 3rd week of eating 811 transition, with raw fruit and greens all day and a high-carb low-fat cooked vegan meal at night. I'm averaging 2500 calories a day as advised.

There have been several threads on 30Bad that I've read where other newbies are freaking out about the amount of calories, or that they're gaining weight.

Here's my experience on the calorie-weight thing:

I was logging everything I ate BEFORE starting this. BEFORE 811 I would try as hard as I could to calorie restrict to 1800 per day, eating gluten-free vegetarian whole foods, and almost every single day, I would cave in and binge at night -- usually on corn chips or frozen yogurt. almond ice cream, nuts, or other high carb high fat item. With this bingeing, my daily calorie total was usually about 2500. A few days before monthly cycle, it would jump to maybe 3300 or more.

So NOW when I get freaked about trying to cram in 2500 calories of fruit, or that I had 3700 calories due to tons of datorade a couple days ago during my monthly cycle, I can refer back to the old records and relax. In all honesty, I would have been eating just as many calories of crap without 811, and suffering much more for it.
My weight is pretty much the same. Yes I get a little discouraged, but the benefits have been so awesome it's hard to whine. At 51, I've learned my body takes time to adjust to new things, and this new fruit fuel is a big adjustment.
It's okay that I haven't lost weight because I don't want to lose weight too quickly, as I think that's a mistake. I'm one of those people who believe that a big reason our body stores extra fat is to sequester off nasty toxins that the liver cannot deal with due to too many demands on it. I think that slow weight loss is healthier on the internal organs for this reason, and that when the body holds onto fat despite one's best efforts, it might be a good thing -- maybe it knows our liver isn't ready to handle what's stored in there yet.
I feel so emotionally stable eating this way, so calm, so centered. If I never lost weight, that alone would keep me wanting to eat this way.
I'm a fairly sedentary office worker heading into menopause. I cannot expect my body to lost weight easily.
Where I see the greatest hope for health is this: Eating this way has given me so much more energy, and my energy is fairly stable throughout the day. This makes me WANT to exercise, and able to do more. It is this dynamic that I want to bank on for creating better health and weight loss. If I can continue to gently up the consistency and intensity of my exercise, it will gradually change my body composition enough so that my metabolism is working with me, not against me. In my past way of eating, I wanted to exercise too, but just didn't have the energy, or was emotionally wrung out on certain days and just couldn't.
Even at 2500 calories, I'm undereating on carbs if I follow DurianRider's formula of 10 carbs per kilo of body weight. I'm musing on this.
The more I'm learning from Durianrider and Freelee's videos, I'm really starting to look at things much differently. The glycogen-depletion theory really explains alot. I remember fighting alcoholism in my twenties -- was I consuming too much due to my body's craving for sugar? Whenever I would stop drinking for a few days, i would end up eating massive amounts of sweets and ice cream to compensate. I could never maintain emotional equilibrium -- but now that I'm eating plenty of carbs, I'm totally feeling fine emotionally. Was my whole childhood of tantrums and emotional upheavals due to glycogen deficiency? My adulthood depression and over-reacting emotionally just a symptom of carb starvation? Alot to consider.... it's making more and more sense to me.
I'm experiencing so many subtle benefits and new sensations in my body, I'm perfectly happy to keep going a few more months whether or not I lose any weight. Something big is changing inside, and it's worth pursuing.
Many people seem to be coming to this from a previous experience with Raw eating. I am not. I ate healthfully, gluten-free and mostly vegan for the last several years, but hardly close to raw. So this transition period is actually a learning phase. I'm slowly learning the difference in how my body feels after a raw meal and a cooked one. I'm honing in even more on how certain foods make my body more sluggish than others. I can see how in the future I might have the motivation to go 100% raw, but it seems like a huge proposition right now. I like the comfort of knowing I can have a cooked dinner if I want -- keeping it low-fat and high carb. I'm thinking my best approach after this first 30 days, is to next try and include one or two raw days every week.