Hi Folks,How ya'll doin'? Did you have a good Thanksgiving? I had Tofurky, it was yum!
How do you like my little naked man here, the pied piper! I searched under "God" and he came up. I liked his little pecker so i kept him!
I'm doing well on my plan with Megan. It's turned out to be an all vegan plan with green smoothies for breakfast and lots of fruit snacks on my best days. Other days, like this morning, I ate a cooked breakfast. It was so cold, 25 degrees when we awoke, and the bananas were STILL green from the cold, that we opted for oatmeal and whole wheat toast with vegan hot chocolate for breakfast. It was delish and I remind myself that ANY meal is good as long as i don't binge.
In terms of health, however, I acknowlede that green smoothies for breakfast are optimal.
I'd thought, well, maybe i'll have a salad for lunch, then, but we went to vietnamese. And I enjoy the rice noodles, so i did that, and enjoyed them. Which is important to me. Letting go of guilt and trying to accept what is and not beat myself up but try to aim for overall progress is my motto these days. Sometimes it's just as cleansing as a green smoothie to have an attitude filled with love and acceptance. Again, as long as i don't binge, i feel like a success.
I'm not sure if I am indeed one, but i feel like it. Mind over matter.
There is something to be said for the journey I am on.
My friend Meredith asked one day so matter of factly it actually gave the journey validity, "Are you still working on legalizing and inner balance?" There is something to be said for this journey. I don't know of other raw foodists were were obese who lost all of their weight who were also former binge eaters. All of the obese people I know that went raw and lost all of their weight were not binge eaters. Maybe this is just a STEP in my journey?
I know eventually, i will get there.
I had a few bad days when i went off totally, back to the cheese and the shrimp and binge eating non stop, but thank God, i've been able to pull myself back together.
Megan is very encouraging! I love my little Megan-dearheart. She lets me write to her as much as i want, and you know what? I really love it. It helps me. I even check in a few times a day sometimes. She even lets me send her really long letters.
Last week during the binging, i did some writing, which revealed I was feeling a lot of shame. This seems to be a theme for me, shame, feeling ashamed. Perhaps that is what precipitates binge eating for me? But i use the binge eating to express it.
I'll try to really focus in and if i feel shame coming on, allow myself to express it and acknowledge it, without having to binge eat as a means of expressing it.
I'm going to try not to focus on weight too much, too. It is what it is. Weighing myself daily when the scale goes down is fun, but when it doesn't go down, it makes me crazy in the head. Weighing myself and being discouraged precipitated the last binge, "Why am I working so hard for that number?" What good did a binge do? After the binge, i'm even heavier that before I even weighed myself.
It dawned on me to do a week-long banana feast or a smoothie feast to get the extra weight off, but i couldn't make it happen. Is it a good thing or a bad thing i couldn't do it? I don't know anymore. I just had to accept. And move on. And that's where i'm at.
Nevertheless, my conscience is telling me I was better on raw. My body is telling me some things I find worrisome and discouraging. While i so enjoy eating, say, regular spaghetti and whole wheat bread and all of these yummy non-raw things today without needing to binge eat as a reaction, I'm fearing a little what they are doing to my body. I'm feeling symptoms in my body that frighten me, like stiffness in the joints. I don't know, maybe i'm just stiff? Or maybe it's because i'm not raw anymore.
I guess since i am not a raw foodist anymore, i won't have the tremendous health benefits that raw foodists, do, like limber joints, like abounding energy, and delaying menopause. I'd always dreamed of having a child someday and hoped I'd be fertile for a good long time due to raw foodism. Maybe now i'll never have a baby.
I'd turned to raw food to stop binge eating, to lose weight, and to re-grow my thinning hair. The hair never regrew. (Neither did Dr. D's. He's bald). I did lose weight and kept it off miraculously for 3 years, wow, I never did before, but i didn't lose it all. I was still binge eating.
My weight was undeniably MUCH better on raw. But at a certain point, i stopped losing. I routinely ate gourmet raw non stop. I maintained my weight and gained 20-30+ lbs, but it nver went above that.
I never lost anymore signigicant weight until i found 811.
But, then i got frustrated that i had to go so fat free, so gourmet free, so salt free to lose weight. Then i started eating beans (less fat than nuts) and then I went nuts and lost it all. At least now the FEAR of cooked food "causing binges" is gone. I don't think it "causes" binges or everyone would be binge eating.
Two other raw foodists i know, men, have lost all of their weight on gourmet raw. How do they do it? One exercises non stop. The other does not exercise at all. They're not binge eaters. They may not even calorically eat that much.
Angela Stokes has lost all of her weight, but she barely EATS anything at all anymore. She drinks juice mostly.
I got frustrated ultimately from 811. I never learned how to make it work for me as I'd hoped. That's what Megan is hoping to nudge me towards.
Yesterday I got kinda scared that I've lost my taste for raw. I was cleaning out the cabinets and came across bag after bag of raw snack chips, cookies, crackers. All of them had gone soggy and stale. So i threw them out. I could have re-dried them to perk them up, but they didn't appeal to me anymore. Because they were old? Or because they were raw? Maybe it's just because they were old??
Sometimes i'm happy to be just like everyone else now when it comes to food. It's freeing - off the cuff - to just end up at the local vietnamese place for lunch - rice noodles and tofu, instead of having a carry around a bag of bananas or constantly worry about what i'm going to eat, or spend a million dollars at All The Way Live. I never made it out of there with a bill under 80$. Today, lunch was 15$, how sensible.
On the other hand, now i'll just be like everyone else with diabetes and heart disease and rhemetoid arthritis.
And my weight is obviously not as GOOD as it was on raw.
Maybe i'm completely deluded and offbase, but to me, the most important thing today is that i am controlling my eating (except for those few bad days preceeding thanksgiving). It's been about 4 weeks with Megan, and maybe i haven't lost a million pounds, but it's a great feeling to just be eating normal meals and not be out of control, MOST of the time.
I've been batting around the idea of alkeline vs. acid and wondering if too much acid-causing foods precipitate binges. Any thoughts on that? I'd love to hear your experience with binge eating and how it relates to acid/alkeline.
I've also been aware the last few days of my feelings and impulses around food. I sometimes feel inexplicable guilt after eating, then ask myself to let it go, and I do. I know when i start feeling guilty again a binge is imminent. When foods become "good" or "bad" for me, it can set me off. Jan asked me if this was going to happen around non-vegan foods, being that Megan wants me to eat Vegan. I suppose that's a possibility, but I try to view the vegan thing as a CHOICE, not a command. Megan is easy going and she constantly reminds me, 'I'm not going to yell at you..." It seems to help. Less "you must do this" produces less need to rebel.
I also feel drives to eat fake bologna sandwhiches in the middle of the night when i can't sleep, but thank God, i've been able to say 'No' to that impulse, too. I eat grapes instead.
Emotionally, it's been a tough week, and i have to DO something to release the tension, frustration, anger....instead of eating... Today i had to just call my mother's dr i was so frustrated. In fact, both my mom and Cliff's mom are sick again, and it's discouraging. How much can we do? We run from one to the other, i make meals for Cliff's mom she used to love and now turns her nose up at. Her urinary tract infection is back for the 3rd time and it decreases her appetite and makes her want to sleep. "Come on, mom, wake up, eat." It's draining. My mother started herself on anti-biotics because she thought it would stop her diarreah, when she didn't even know the cause of the diarreah yet. When i spoke to the dr he said she shouldn't have done that - now they couldn't test the stool to see what the cause was. My mother is a pill popper. I keep harping on her about how the anti-biotics are killing her digestion. "Really. i didn't know that." How many times have i told her....
Sometimes, i just feel like i'm having a nervous breakdown.
The more involved you become with your parents, if they're not well, the more frustration you face. If you don't get involved, you don't feel the frustration. Plenty of people have aging parents, but we're there daily and in the midst of it all and feeling it. It's TOUGH, but we've made the choice to be involved. I don't know how people who have children AND aging sick parents who they are involved with cope, let alone have jobs, and they keep the house clean and food on the table. I don't know HOW they do it.
I guess they don't have a blog.
I have to remember to meditate more and think of God more and turn things over to Him more. HE knows better than i do what's best for me (diet) and will lead me if i let him, if i listen, if i first ask and if i'm open, and willing to take direction, which i am, i think, sometimes. Hell, i know i'm stubborn and bullheaded, but i'm not that bad, am i? I'm just trying to go with the flow, go with my desires and not feel BAD about them.
But i'm noticing, asking, allowing and waiting for the prompting to go further with raw. It really does have to be driven by an internal motivation for it to stick and not just be another "diet" I go off of.
And HE will watch over our parents, or at least give us peace that God's will will be done, if we remember to turn everthing over to Him.
Let go, let GOD. Let go, let LOVE.
It's a good thing. A good practice. And, I know that eventually, if i do that, everything will work itself out.
xoxo michelle joy
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