IT'S JUST HARD SOME DAYS

Hi there, the following was edited from a note I sent to Megan. She's been on a cross country drive to Arizona, sending me encouraging text messages. I love my little Meggy!

I didn't sleep well last night. I awoke at 3am, excited about the day's singing performance, and didn't get back to sleep before i had to get up for work at Arnolds Way. Uy....

I was all raw today. That's good.

Yet, out of the 6 days i've been on my new plan, today was the hardest day with food, oddly enough, just because i wasn't able to stick to my routine of meals with snacks. Today was a day of snack, snack, snack, pick, pick, pick compulsively.

6 o'clock in the morning, i was starved, up since 3a.m. and in my home in Manayunk with no food there. We've been staying at my moms, but Manayunk was closer to where i performed. Starving, i grabbed a handful of almonds because even if it wasn't fruit before noon, at least it was raw. (I've been doing really well with the fruit before noon, except for this morning. Even the other day when i had a rice cake at the market for 'breakfast', it was well after noon).

On the way to work, i found an apple in a bag from yesterday, so i had that.

At work, i had several green smoothies until 12:30. I was so starving and counted the minutes until lunch!

At 12:30, i had a huge raw salad. It was like the best thing i ever ate in my entire life - lots of greens and purple cabbage and chunky carrots and 1/2 avo smashed and a tiny bit of raw vinaigrette, a whole clove of garlic sliced, a little pumpkin seeds, chunky tomatoes, nutritional yeast, some marinated onions someone had made, mmm, a little lemon and agave. BIG salad! God, it was divine. I was like a person on the dessert how they would be for water, that's how i felt about this salad. So so gooooood.

My bowels are operating HEALTHILY from all of this fiber and i move them 3-5 times a day, carayyyzy, huh? I guess it's all the fruit? And the salad.

Later, i was hungry and had a slice of raw bread. It was GOOD! I went back in the kitchen and finished the entire box, eating 4 more. That's when i started thiking, "uh, oh. i'm headed for trouble"...back to my compulsive ways.

I hadn't really anticipated how i would handle work and forgot about the fruit as snack thing, forgot to really pay attention, forgot to really keep myself to a schedule of meals, which i'd been much more conscious of at home. Also at home i don't have raw snacks...raw bread...staring me in the face at every turn. Raw bread is ok during a meal, but i shouldn't really eat an entire box as a snack. I just intuitively KNOW that.

Things didn't really escalate until i started making these baklava flavored coconut date balls. Delish! I just kept tasting the batter over and over and over. I think i was bored. I just like to eat sometimes. And i was tired. I couldn't understand why i felt so bad and then i realized, 'hey dummy, you've been up since 3a.m."

I picked on 5 walnut halves, had a 1/4 of an avo, just picking.

Later, making raw toona, i did the same thing, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. I just kept tasting spoonful after spoonful. Dinner was no dinner, it was just picking on toona. When i was done work, i ate a brownie type dessert, not because i was hungry, just because, because, just unwinding. i was ready to drop by then.

When i got home, I watched a little TV and at 8pm, i actually felt a little hungry, which i took as a good sign. Maybe i didn't do THAT bad at work being that i was genuinely hungry again, so i had a few clementines and a pear.

Work was QUIET...I was way over-tired...and food is stimulating. I think that's the whole story in a nutshell. I have to plan my day out better next week and focus more on keeping to my routine when i'm at work. It makes me feel safe to keep to my schedule of eating when i'm HUNGRY at meals with controlled snacks in between. Losing control picking and tasting makes me feel bad. It's counterproductive.

So then i came home and my mom is majorly frustrating me. I'm so worried about her and she is so bad at taking care of herself. She had diarreah ONCE this week and she got an ANTI-DIAREAL med from the dr to take DAILY now. I said, "Are you NUTS? You're going to take an anti-diarreah med DAILY because you had diarreah ONCE, when your son had it on the very same day and we're not even sure WHY you had it, that it might have just been a bug?" She's like all innocent, "What? The dr. said I should probably take it as a precautionary measure...." I was just LIVID. Diarreah is the body's way of expelling what it doesn't want quickly and effectively. WHY STOP THAT?? I really felt like screaming. It's so hard, it's so hard. She is so ignorent, she just doesn't get it. I'm so frustrated. God, i feel like crying now.

Yesterday, she ate a bagel for dinner, potatoes for lunch and toast for breakfast. I was out performing all day. If i'm not there feeding her, it's like she's not capable of making sound healthy decisions for herself. I bought her kefir (i know it's dairy), but it's supposed to help reinvigorate the intestinal flora, and i keep having to remind her to take it and then sometimes still she won't, but complains about her digestion. I told her tonight i'm going to stop caring so much because she obviously doesn't care about her health. Her eyes are so blood shot from all of the meds and she walks around like a zombie and she wants to take more meds. It's just so hard some days.

xoxo michelle joy