Friday, January 1, 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2010!


I wish each and every one of you a very happy, healthy, and raw....new year!!!

Cliffy and I drank wine as the ball dropped last night after we got home from Arnold's New Year's Eve Party, and made our resolutions to each other, verbally. Mine was to exercise more. And we both expressed similar desires to make more money in this year, stick together on our raw journey, continue to get the house in order, and continue to love each other. He even said that maybe we'd get married this year :-)))

The last two days have been party days with my Arnold's Way crowd. It has been so nice!

Wednesday night was a send off party for our Arnold's Way friend and sometime-employee, Rachel Costello, who got a temporary job in Boston, teaching Spanish, yay! My friend and coworker, Megan McDonnell, the genius behind my new organized home, made a fabulous raw party for Rachel. Since i'm so food oriented, i love to talk about food, so i will! Megan made fresh papaya slices, guacamole and salsa with crudite, zucchini spaghetti with her famous basil mint avocado sauce (really light and really yummy), her famous banana pudding for dessert, and i brought a cranberry strawberry pie that everyone loved. (I'm getting super good at pie making!)
Eating raw food with friends is sooo wonderful, and we all wish Rachel all of the luck in the world on her new venture, and hope to see her soon!

I feel so blessed to be a part of Arnold's Way. It's such a special place. Remember the TV show "Cheers"? That's what it's like at Arnold's Way. A big happy family.

And last night Arnold hosted a fabulous Raw New Year's Eve Party at his home in Lansdale, PA. The turnout was great, and the food was even greater. I made a Thai Broccoli Salad and a pudding i call Rocky Road as it is chocolately with raisins and nuts and reminds you of the icecream, both huge hits. Leslie Arnold brought the MOST amazing "asparagus avocado" soup, whose name did not send me reeling, but once i tasted, oh my god, i had 2 cups, it was a divine elixer! She also made an awesome chocolate pie. Megan made something she called 'macaroni and cheese', which is short macaroni shaped zucchini 'noodles' in a cheezy sauce, and it really DOES remind you of mac 'n cheese by capturing the creamy, cheezy, salty essence of the dish. Stephanie Schneibel made fabulous marinated mushrooms. Carlos and Shakaya brought fruit. Arnold made green smoothies and a coconut fruit dessert. Karen Wilson brought a to-die-for kale salad using my Thai dressing that she bought at the store. What an inspiration. THAT is going to be the new special at Arnolds Way! Delish! Why didn't i ever think to put it on Kale???

Having these wonderful parties is making staying raw so much easier.

It's 18 days for me and Cliff that we have our raw kitchen at home and that we've been eating raw together at home. I've been 100% raw. Cliff is, however, doing the best he can, and i give him a LOT of credit. He will teach himself what makes him FEEL the best.

Yesterday we had green smoothie for breakfast. He dropped me off to work and i made him a chocolate whip and packed a raw 'chez burger' for him to take with him. He gladly ate that around lunch time, but around dinnertime as his live-in chefess was at work, he succumbed to a Philadelphia Cheesesteak. He said it tasted delicious going down, but felt like lead in his stomach afterwards. At the new year's party, he enjoyed a small portion of some of the savory dishes, but didn't have much appetite.

Last night, he did NOT sleep well, which i attribute to the cheesesteak. Eating heavy cooked food and meat makes you sleep like shit. You're body is busy digesting, not sleeping. So, he will teach himself what makes him feel the best. You can lead a horse to water...as they say!

I haven't weighed myself since last week and so i'm really unsure if i'm gaining significantly or insignificantly, or if i'm just holding steady. I'd like to think i'm in the low 270's, but i don't know and i kind of don't want to know. Maybe i'll weigh myself in a few days.

I had previously gained weight from binge eating for an entire month cooked food, and i've not lost that. That was a big emotional challenge for me to get over, the impulse to lose it FAST! But i realized that everytime i lose it fast, i gain it right back.

I wanted to try a new approach. Just eating more intuitively and having the bulk of my diet be gourmet raw dishes to appeal to me and my sensual nature, and to my meat and potatoes eating man. So, we drink green smoothies, and for meals have various salads with dressings, small amounts of nutspread on veggies or crackers, small peices of raw pie. We try to keep the portions on the small side since we're eating richer raw food. Sometimes we have homemade raw buckwheat cereal with raw milk. Sometimes we have raw cheese on flax crackers.

I often overeat, but i've stopped binge eating due to this new 'free' way of eating. No rules.

I must say one VERY important thing. Everyone who reads this blog knows i continually lost control severely with raw gourmet food when i would work at Arnolds Way. Well, during the week at home, i was 80-10-10ing, so all of the gourmet temptations at work were too hard for me to pass up, and i would go literally hogwild.

Well, since i've been eating gourmet at home, making flax crackers at home, making raw cereal, making raw pies weekly, the insane compulsion to binge at Arnolds Way is GONE. I marveled at my composure yesterday with the food there. When i was hungry midmorning, I ate several flax crackers for brunch before realizing i didn't want anymore. That THING that DRIVES me was gone. THAT is a new place to be and feels incredible.

I still OVEREAT, i VERY MUCH do, BUT, there is a HUGE difference between binge eating and overeating. Binge eating is continuous, frenetic, out of control, secret, frightening, huge quantity. To be experiencing relief from binge eating is filling me with insane levels of gratitude to be on a path that is making me more comfortable with food, that is making me feel more at peace with food. I know the work i do NOW will pay off in the future.

Obviously, my goal is to be a thin raw foodist who doesn't binge, but since dieting never relieved me of binge eating and only exaserbated it for me, I don't think more dieting will get me there. At least that's not my intuition at the moment. I think the path INWARD is going to heal me. Making peace with fattier foods at all meal times is taking the charge out of them. No binge eating necessary.

Gourmet raw may not be ideal for weight loss, especially when overeaten, but in small quantities with significant exercise, one CAN lose weight eating gourmet raw with the right attitude and belief in it. I never believed i could lose weight eating gourmet, because i always binged on it, but i think my viewpoint might change the more control i gain. Two friends of mine were BIG weight loss winners eating gourmet raw. My friend in Colorodo, Dutin, lost 100 lbs that way, www.dustinkellogg.com as did Tim Arnold.

"No deprivation" is Tim's motto, and i'm beginning to see why. It takes the charge out of binge eating to actually ALLOW yourself to eat well all day.

In Dr. Christopher Fairburn's book, he explicitly states it is imperative to allow oneself all foods (i am doing all RAW foods) in order to be more at peace with food and to stop binge eating. I'm seeing that this advice has quite a bit of wisdom behind it. I eat what i want and the binge eating is relieved.

General overeating, on the other hand, is the second thing to tackle. After stopping binge eating, when one dedicates onesself to stopping overeating, that's where the permanent weight loss would come into play.

This is a slow process. I usually do the temporary quick fix of dieting. This feels scary at times when i overdo it overeating, and i question myself what the hell i'm doing off of a diet and feel so discouraged about how i look, but sometimes, like this morning, not dieting feels liberating. I enjoyed a good time with friends last night, enjoyed the food, and didn't come home and binge!!!

That's a happy new year!

xoxoxo michelle joy

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Michelle,

I can really relate to you! Have you heard of the *five Tibetan Rites(based on yoga dicipline) as this and rebounding has helped me enormously as a serial dieter(diets make you fat, thus proper exercise is a top priority for us emotional overeaters)and compulsive overeater.

* this is a wonderfully-gentle and energising sequence - you start off gently, maybe doing 1-3 repetitions of each exercise progressing gradually to a maximuim of 21 repetitions. The number of reps isn't important, practicing everyday helps! They stimulate the Chakras(energy centres) and are based practiced on a empty stomach(before breakfast is ideal:).

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade!

Namaste:)

xoxoxoxo

Rebecca Troutman said...

Happy New Year friend!

I'm back on the horse and blogging again this month about raw fooding in WINTER. Should be interesting.

Have any good recipes I should try? I need some new tastes since I don't have a wealth of delicious fruits to choose from in January.

Much love to you
Rebecca